A few days back I went visiting an old friend at his apartment to enquire about the post-surgery progress of his wife’s knee problem, the arthritis. There was good news, but it came along with painful periods spaning over two months. Some times I feel that physical pain of threshold level and even beyond, is more dreadful than death itself. That, no doubt is one of the reasons why euthanasia is advocated. Which is why the english poet Keats says that pleasure is often a visitor; but pain clings cruelly to us.

Anyway, having heard the good news, we decided to eat-out for dinner. My friend’s choice was the newly-opened hotel ‘Malgudi’ a ‘pure vegetarian’. Is there an impure or adulterated vegetarian hotel? His wife stayed back as there was climbing involved and she was not yet quite ready for that adventure.

Being an ardent admirer of R.K. Narayan I instantly accepted my friend’s choice of the hotel more for its name than any other reason. Being located on K.D. Road, as youngsters call the Kalidasa Road, there was the problem of parking which made me reconsider his choice. But he was determined to take me there and explained why. The hotel true to its name ‘Malgudi,’ a fictional town created by that famous Indian-english novelist R.K. Narayan has got its walls painted with images from the Malgudi town as described by the author in his famous works and also from the successful TV serials directed by Shankar Nag also titled ‘Malgudi Days.’

This was enough for me to shut my mouth deciding to open it only at the hotel while eating. After some efforts to park the car in the pouring rains, we got into the hotel where the owner Nagaraj Gopal and his charming wife Poornima received us with broad smiles and warmth. I know we were in for a free dinner. I know that in America it is a common saying that ‘there is no free lunch’ in life, meaning you got to pay for everything in life.

But then we are in Mysore where these days some newspapers are offering free advertisements or for a token tariff. Let it be. But I got a free dinner at hotel Malgudi. Thank you Nagaraj Gopal and Poornima. Food was good and came in a variety that needed three floors to serve, each dedicated to a speciality food. And the walls of every floor are painted with images and pictures of characters that appear in R.K. Narayan’s books and stories revolving around the fictional town Malgudi.

And as we left the hotel under heavy rains, my mind continued to engage instelf with the thought of R.K. Narayan who was fond of me. We used to interact occasionally while he was at his Yadavagiri residence.

I felt sad that his house built in 1948 here at Yadavagiri, from where he wrote most of his books, is standing there in a dilapidated condition, partially demolished, with a guard keeping watch. When BJP government was in power and K.S. Raikar was the Corporation Commissioner, the government intervened to stop the demolition of the building by a contractor. The house was sold by Narayan’s son-in-law after Narayan’s death on 13th May 2001 in Chennai. The government bought the house and the BJP government declared that it would be converted into a memorial for the great writer with a museum, seminar hall etc.

However, with the fall of the BJP government, there was no one to take the idea of the memorial forward. Just as it has happened with the memorial for Swami Vivekananda at the grounds of the almost defunct government NTM School after the new Congress government came to power.

This is the fate of a memorial for Narayan who is credited with bringing Indian writing in english to the rest of the world. His greatest achievement was in opening a window through his works for the world to see India and understand her.

Narayan’s works were acknowledged as of world class by world class writers like Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, John Updike, E.M. Forster, V.S. Naipaul and others. Narayan has won many awards and honours — Padma Vibhushan, Central Sahitya Akademi award, Rajya Sabha member, doctorates and more. He was also mentioned for Noble prize for literature in TIME magazine.

Many may not know that Narayan worked for a time as a reporter to the Madras-based paper called “The Justice” dedicated to the rights and causes of the non-Brahmins despite being a Brahmin Iyer himself. It is significant that there was always a hidden message in his writings — about the injustice suffered by women due to the socially accepted practices, plight of students, domestic discord between husband and wife with the latter having to put up with the husband’s cruelty or non-sense etc.

And I feel sad that a city known for its cultural heritage is unable to recognise its great son with a memorial ! A Society which does not remember and honour its famous sons is doomed to remain static. No wonder we are already perceiving that atmosphere in our city. What the government or our city could not do to honour R.K. Narayan’s memory, the hotelier Nagaraj Gopal seem to have done in his own way !

Tailpiece: It is interesting to know how and when the name Malgudi, the fictional semi-urban town in South India was conjured up! Narayan created this town in 1930, incidently on Vijayadashami Day which we celebrated on 14th of this month. Indeed an auspicious day to build a town! It appears, his grand mother chose the auspicious day!!

The exact location of Malgudi is a matter of speculation and to my mind seemed to be either near Coimbatore or Mysore itself. The name, it is possible, could have been inspired from a real town Lalgudi on the banks of river Cauvery.

However, my host Nagaraj Gopal of Hotel Malgudi says his research showed that the name was coined by taking three letters from Bangalore’s Malleshwaram and combining them with the last four letters of Basavanagudi — Mal+Gudi=Malgudi. Howzzat?

e-mail: kbg@starofmysore.com

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Abracadabra……Abracadabra / by K.B. Ganapathy / October 24th, 2013