A thriller unleashed in Malgudi
Reading is the cheapest ticket to travel. As a child growing up in Chatsworth’s Bangladesh market district, I was a quite a thriller. My vivid imagination even had me baffled. For a considerable time I made up stories about my reincarnation.
In one past life I was an English nobleman with a small castle and a multi-storey library. Evidence that Chatsworth was the stately home of the Duke of Devonshire surely helped. In another, I was a warrior in Ravana’s army as we did battle with Ram on the pages of The Ramayana. By the age of twelve I had one of those bushy south Indian moustaches so that story was not as far-fetched.
With puberty came the toolbox of charm. Dictionaries and phrase books in the Victoria Street library helped with words in French and Italian. And thus was born the myth that I was once a Casanova. I even took to wearing shirts with frills down the front and sported gold chains.
I told stories of stylish yachts moored in Monte Carlo, romantic sunsets over Kanyakumari, puffing the hookah on silk-laden caravans wading through the Sahara and the billowing manes of the horses on the Camargue. Girls with an appetite for fantasy listened attentively.
In truth, the furthest I had ever travelled by then was to Tongaat third-class on the steam train armed with two pairs of Nu-shop underpants in a brown cardboard suitcase and tepid milky tea in a newspaper-wrapped Smirnoff nip bottle.
Books were my ticket to dream. My literary itinerary included the hilarious RK Narayan. I picked up his Under the Banyan Tree and A Tiger for Malgudi for a few bob in a second-hand bookshop at the weekend and quickly devoured them.
Some years ago I read his outstanding Swami and Friends. The Guide was prescribed for us in high school. Narayan had a stellar imagination. Malgudi, the fictional south Indian town that features in much of his work was a raucous place.
In a 2001 obituary in the Independent his genius was described as, “It was Narayan’s unique achievement … to make small town India as vivid to Western readers as their own backyard … his writing remained as affectionate , clear-eyed and above all, comic, as when (Graham) Greene first fell for it in the 1930s.”
In the introduction to Tiger, Narayan writes of being inspired by the hermit who arrives at the Kumbh Mela festival, which recurs every twelve years, accompanied by a tiger that is neither on a leash nor does it scare or hurt anyone. With the tiger constantly on his mind, he chances upon a cardboard bookmark with a picture of a young tiger pleading, “I’d love to get into a good book.” And so he promised that the tiger would get into his book but he could not promise the goodness of the book.
Nowadays I travel stretched out business class with a real ticket and tweet about it. Sometimes I have one of those wide-eyed beauties alongside me but mostly I have a book for company.
Reading is the cheapest ticket to travel. As a child growing up in Chatsworth’s Bangladesh market district, I was a quite a thriller. My vivid imagination even had me baffled. For a considerable time I made up stories about my reincarnation.
In one past life I was an English nobleman with a small castle and a multi-storey library. Evidence that Chatsworth was the stately home of the Duke of Devonshire surely helped. In another, I was a warrior in Ravana’s army as we did battle with Ram on the pages of The Ramayana. By the age of twelve I had one of those bushy south Indian moustaches so that story was not as far-fetched.
With puberty came the toolbox of charm. Dictionaries and phrase books in the Victoria Street library helped with words in French and Italian. And thus was born the myth that I was once a Casanova. I even took to wearing shirts with frills down the front and sported gold chains.
I told stories of stylish yachts moored in Monte Carlo, romantic sunsets over Kanyakumari, puffing the hookah on silk-laden caravans wading through the Sahara and the billowing manes of the horses on the Camargue. Girls with an appetite for fantasy listened attentively.
In truth, the furthest I had ever travelled by then was to Tongaat third-class on the steam train armed with two pairs of Nu-shop underpants in a brown cardboard suitcase and tepid milky tea in a newspaper-wrapped Smirnoff nip bottle.
Books were my ticket to dream. My literary itinerary included the hilarious RK Narayan. I picked up his Under the Banyan Tree and A Tiger for Malgudi for a few bob in a second-hand bookshop at the weekend and quickly devoured them.
Some years ago I read his outstanding Swami and Friends. The Guide was prescribed for us in high school. Narayan had a stellar imagination. Malgudi, the fictional south Indian town that features in much of his work was a raucous place.
In a 2001 obituary in the Independent his genius was described as, “It was Narayan’s unique achievement … to make small town India as vivid to Western readers as their own backyard … his writing remained as affectionate , clear-eyed and above all, comic, as when (Graham) Greene first fell for it in the 1930s.”
In the introduction to Tiger, Narayan writes of being inspired by the hermit who arrives at the Kumbh Mela festival, which recurs every twelve years, accompanied by a tiger that is neither on a leash nor does it scare or hurt anyone. With the tiger constantly on his mind, he chances upon a cardboard bookmark with a picture of a young tiger pleading, “I’d love to get into a good book.” And so he promised that the tiger would get into his book but he could not promise the goodness of the book.
Nowadays I travel stretched out business class with a real ticket and tweet about it. Sometimes I have one of those wide-eyed beauties alongside me but mostly I have a book for company.
Hello Kiru. Read your post after chancing on your Twitter ID. RK Narayan brought small town India to life for Indians and foreigners alike. Try his book on Talkative Man.
ReplyDeleteMarvellous. Will do. Apologies for the delayed reply.
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