Malgudi on the map

When RK Narayan, one of 20th-century India’s peerless story-tellers, conceptualised the fictional, slow-paced town Malgudi as the setting for his endearing tales, he invested it with certain universal, real-world characteristics. Malgudi cannot be found on any map, he noted, and if he introduced it as a small town in South India, it would only convey a half-truth. That’s because Malgudi throbbed with the life-force of every small town in India. On that count, the ongoing effort by BY Raghavendra, the MP from Shivamogga, to get the Arasalu railway station in his constituency — where the tele-series based on Narayan’s works was filmed — renamed Malgudi may perhaps be seen to go against the grain of the author’s conceptual framework.

And yet, the project does have some elements that hold appeal. For one thing, in Narayan’s telling, it was the idea of a railway station that gave birth to the immortal first line — “The train had just arrived at Malgudi station” — that brought the town and everything about it to life. For another, Narayan is known to have visited Arasalu for the tele-series shooting and to have commended it for its fidelity to Malgudi as he envisaged it. In that sense, a Malgudi station will honour the memory of one of India’s finest writers.

There are many instances around the world of fictional places and props being brought ‘on the map’ for real as a literary tribute — and to harness the tourism potential therefrom. Indicatively, there’s a “platform 9¾” at King’s Cross Station in London — from where characters in the Harry Potter series catch the Hogwarts Express; it rakes in tourism money faster than you can say “wingardium leviosa”. However, to truly do justice to Project Malgudi, it should go beyond a mere name change: evidently there are plans for an RK Narayan museum. If the project is conceived and executed with the same liveliness of spirit that Narayan brought to bear in his writing, it could be a tribute worthy of him, without boxing Malgudi into a limited geospatial zone.

Venky VembuAssociate Editor

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