Malgudi days is my true unfaltering favorite till date; Swami and Friends my second best. I have re-read the books so many times as to lose count. It is honestly unnerving to be writing about the author’s work that I have devoured without raising a brow, but simply taken in all that he wrote without a single lull moment.
The magic of Malgudi is in the haunting aura it created to believe in the existence of this town; so true in its map, people and teeming life that it was almost impossible to not know its geographical location. The stories were left deliberately open-ended to read between the lines, take in the strangeness of human emotions and yet interpret the ending to the reader’s discretion.
Having read the books since I was twelve, I fail to pinpoint a single best story that formed a stamp in my mind. At each age there was a different story that drove a point home or made me realize something new that I didn’t know before.
I love Engine Trouble for that subtle humor peppered against the sloth-like rules of administration. While, The missing mail had hidden messages of how we take an integral person like the postman for granted; at the same time Leela’s Friend left me feeling poignant and incomplete. Whatever be the irony or hope the stories depicted, they left enough and more room to dissect the inner meaning, so much so that you could spend a whole lifetime understanding what R. K actually wanted to convey to us.
If a plural society was what Malgudi expressed, its most loved character Swami had been the epitome of every child. His childhood is synonym to our own, even before we are old enough to read his adventures. We might have already lived a good amount of it, without realizing how adventurous and utterly satiric it had been!
If a good book is one without an ending, Malgudi’s heritage is indeed a timeless one!
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