100th birthday of of RK Narayan and his memorable short stories

Who can forget the great characters of Swami, Krishna, Chandran, Ramani and Savitri or the humble Sastri, Gaffur, the Taxi driver as well as the minor characters created by RKN or immortal places like Market Road, the snuff stalls, toothpaste vendor shop, Regal Hair Cutting Saloon, the river (Sarayu) and the Railway station. Those days the only attraction for me in DD apart from Cricket was the Malgudi Days serial (those days there were no non sense mega serials) brought to life thanks to the cartoons of his legendary real life brother RK Lakshman and directed by the popular Kannada actor and director Shankar Nag. I still remember his only villain character 'Vasu' who figured in the 'Man- Eater of Malgudi' and was a super hit loved by children and adults.

Some of the his short stories were almost textbook illustrations of how to write a memorable short story in five hundred words or less with a beautiful unexpected twist at the end and he had mastered the art of ending the story when we expected them to continue for another 1-2 pages. For him human life and the surrounding community was to be seen as close to reality as possible and he did not believe in cinematic exaggerations or even a bit of violence, obscenity, sex or crime unlike the modern day fiction and short story world.

I am sure that Malgudi will continue to fascinate the future generations even for centuries long after some of the writers of this generation would have lost their audience and RKN would live in the hearts of his countless fans for ever. It's a pity that his house in Mysore has not been declared as a National Museum of books with all his memorable short stories, travelogues and memoirs and continues to be rented out like any other normal house where as if he had been born in Europe or US he would have gone on to win may be even a even a Nobel prize and the place where he lived would have become a National Heritage site.

Anyway the enchanting literary world of R.K. Narayan lives on!

RK