Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Malgudi Days...


A visit to ‘Crossword’ coincided with the Centenary Birth celebrations of the legendary R K Narayan, with some of his great works drowning the display ........ on an occasion like this and adding to the fact that its been ages since his works have crossed my mind ........ resisting the temptation of invading the centenary editions of his prized collections ........ the "Malgudi days" and "Swami and Friends", wouldn’t have been inevitable .............


Well back home, lying on an easy chair,...... with the company of the trees screening the Sunday forenoon’s chilled rays above along with a mug of hot choc n the bound pages of the mentioned marvels, would certainly vouch for a wonderful weekend afternoon.


As I glance the title “Malgudi Days” a smile erupts followed by my palate lingering with the taste of nostalgia ....... the long wait for the day and the hour of the week, when this piece of art was made to flow on the canvas by director Shankar Nag, added to it the genius of R K Laxman’s mesmerizing cartoons and the gratifying music by donnowho, which goes like .......... TA NA NA ….TANA……….. Ahh....

“Malgudi Days”, the simple, 'meaningless', gratifying epic ................. bringing back to life the Albert Mission School, The Sweet Shop vendor, Malgudi Railway station, the Statue of Sir Frederick Leawley, the Road Roller, The M.C.C. (Malgudi Cricket Club), the amazing Swami with his doti -topi and his always look of distress, along with his friends, the fragrance of a pre-independence rural Indian setup………n the touchy climax of swami n his friend departing.


As the pages flow from one tale to another…. The mastery descriptions of the author, (more imposing than a 70mm), adds a lot of flavors of emotions n expressions to the soul of each plot, that its visual format wouldn’t be able to justify…………… now how can the “emotions” in a line like “A donkey was standing near the gutter, patiently watching its own sharp shadow” …......... be expressed in a visual format…..


The magnanimity of nostalgic contempt which each of these simple, short, innocent, insignificant arrays of events brought to life are made worthy enough to take notice off the occurrence of almost exact incidents, at some point of its readers lives- defying the times, generations, cultures, geographies… each one of us belongs to….


As the afternoon ends with the tale, the last few pages had to say, the evening passed on with a sense of serenity as the pieces of nostalgia still ooze their taste. The errand list is added with a request to dish out a Malgudi Days dvd (if available) before the next Crossworld visit, to lighten the bookshelves of RKN’s other masterpieces.

19 comments:

Syam said...

Your blog is wonderful. Great language and flow of thought depicts your standards. Great!! keep it up.

sthavi said...

a true book lover would savour this blog and you have tempted me to pick this book and spend an afternoon like that.the mere mention of swami and others in your blog took me back to the serial which all of us as kids religiously watched next only to giant robot.
this is obviously next must read on my list.thankyou ( i would suggest you give reviews of every book you read,it will help me set the mode to read.

Gowtham said...

Dude,
you brought me back to india in a jiffy .... remember waiting for, like you said, that day/time of the week to watch Malgudi Days. Many a times, it used to be in neighbor's place, in a black-white tv - finishing up homework, eating food -- all in a hurry to watch it... hmm good times :)

btw, i do have some 13 episodes of Malgudi Days with me on DVD - but visual portray never comes close to the feelings that a reading can impart.

more such writings please...

-gowtham

Sree said...

nice one dude, though the language at parts went for OHT for me:P
the music for the visual epic was by L Vaidyanathan, elder brother of star violinist L Subramayam. N I absolutely disagree with Gowtham about the visual portrayal and reading bit - this was an exception to the usual slipage that happens in adaptations, thanks to the genius of Shankar nag!

Gowtham said...

in (a sincere & non-violent) response to the above comments posted in a smallamp.blogspot.com entry, me (politely) says:

"... me neither reads as many books as you do nor sees as many visual portrayals of such readings. of the few things that me has read and seen (Malgudi Days, Sandhyaraga, Phaniyamma, and such...), visual portrayls wasn't always close to the thoughtfully weighed-chosen words (aLedu tooka maaDi aarisida padagaLu / bhaavanegaLu) - and this
being very pronounced in case of Sandhyaraga. more me reads it, more me realizes the *gap* ...."

Ms.N said...

hey surya,

tx for dropping in. I love chennai too ...its home. all i meant was chennai and TN can do with a bit of marketing frm a "tourist point" of view!

ps: travel and living is doing a feature on the 4 metros - chk it out...

loved ur malgudi post...

Shruti said...

WOW!

Anonymous said...

I want to re-read the malgudi days right now!! but got my end sems soon...:-(
great write-up!!

Puneeth

blueglueglob said...

good to see the otherwise unknown side of a CA. good writing dude and some deep insites. wanted to tell you who dunnowho was but now you know!

Sant.. said...

hey dude...awesome write up as always...read it just now and really took me back to those days as explained by gowtham...

about the visual impact - i always believe its about how you see what is shown in these masterpieces. The same line about donkey, even if its shown in its best way on the small screen, how many can really transform that into words...

anyways you know how much i read :))....again as always...keep writing bro...

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