MALGUDI DAYS

Malgudi days is a collection of 32 short funny and witty stories. Its author as I have mentioned in the title is R K Narayanan. The stories happen in Malgudi, an imaginary town located somewhere on the banks of Sarayu (a river in South India). Even though it is common to call Malgudi an imaginary town, you will not feel it is imaginary while reading the book. You can trace it to any village in south India. The stories carry the scent and sounds of these villages and you instantly blend into the situations in the stories. You will feel as though you are the character in the story yourself and that is the secret behind the success of this immensely popular book. Rather than revolving around a particular plot these stories wander off dreamily. Each of the stories describe the relationship between members in a family, the various social taboos prevalent in the mid ninteties. All the stories will seem faintly similar but they are vastly different from each other. The stories deal with the most ordinary men and women and that makes these stories extraordinary. Each story deals with simple people and simple issues they are faced with in real life. The stories instantly establish a connection between the reader and the characters. Some of the stories are humorous while other will shake your soul so wildly that you might cry. Anyway I can dare to say that once you read these stories the memories will last you for your lifetime. You will carry them to the grave! Indian villages which are often depicted as poverty-ridden, infested with epidemics, occupied by good for nothing illiterate fellows have another side to them. They have a charm, a charm which I cannot explain. This charm is depicted and presented in each of the stories in this book. Each story is so full of humanity and will invoke that part of you which you have forgotten in this deplorable rat chase called life. And the endings of each stories. They are also special. The author will never reveal what happened at the end and will leave it to your imagination. It will make you go mad thinking what would have happened. The author will tease you by leaving you wondering for ever as those endings will never be written as the author himself is dead. Well, to come back to our lives. This book is one of those extra extra ordinary book which you MUST read. If you do not, then you are losing something very valuable. I recommend this book to all readers.

R. K. Narayan
R. K. Narayan (October 10, 1906 May 13, 2001), shortened from Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami was an Indian author whose works of fiction include a series of books about people and their interactions in an imagined town in India. He is one of three leading figures of early Indian literature in English, along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. He is credited with bringing Indian literature in English to the rest of the world, and is regarded as one of India's greatest English language novelists. Narayan broke through with the help of his mentor and friend, Graham Greene, who was instrumental in getting publishers for Narayans first four books, including the semiautobiographical trilogy of Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher. Narayans works also include The Financial Expert, hailed as one of the most original works of 1951, and Sahitya Akademi Award winner The Guide, which was adapted for films in Hindi and English languages, and for Broadway. The setting for most of Narayan's stories is the fictional town of Malgudi, first introduced in Swami and Friends. His narratives highlight social context and provide a feel for his characters through everyday life. He has been compared to William Faulkner, who also created a fictional town that stood for reality, brought out the humour and energy of ordinary life, and displayed compassionate humanism in his writing. Narayan's short story writing style has been compared to that of Guy de Maupassant, as they both have an ability to compress the narrative without losing out on elements of the story. Narayan has also come in for criticism for being too simple in his prose and diction. In a writing career that spanned over sixty years, Narayan received many awards and honours. These include the AC Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature and the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian award. He was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament.

Life

Early years
R. K. Narayan was born in Madras (now known as Chennai), Madras Presidency, British India.[1] His father was a school headmaster, and Narayan did some of his studies at his father's school. As his father's job required frequent moves, Narayan spent part of his childhood under the care of his maternal grandmother, Parvati.[2] During this time his best friends and playmates were a peacock and a mischievous monkey.[3][4][5] His grandmother gave him the nickname of Kunjappa, a name that stuck to him in family circles.[6] She taught him arithmetic, mythology, classical Indian music and Sanskrit.[7] According to his youngest brother R. K. Laxman, the family mostly conversed in English, and grammatical errors on the part of Narayan and his siblings were frowned upon.[8] While living with his grandmother, Narayan studied at a succession of schools in Madras, including the Lutheran Mission School in Purasawalkam,[9] C.R.C. High School, and the Christian College High School.[10] Narayan was an avid reader, and his early literary diet included Dickens, Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy.[11] When he was twelve years old, Narayan participated in a pro-independence march, for which he was reprimanded by his uncle; the family was apolitical and considered all governments wicked.[12] Narayan moved to Mysore to live with his family when his father was transferred to the Maharajah's Collegiate High School. The well-stocked library at the school, as well as his father's own, fed his reading habit, and he started writing as well. After completing high school, Narayan failed the university entrance examination and spent a year at home reading and writing; he subsequently passed the examination in 1926 and joined Maharaja College of Mysore. It took Narayan four years to obtain his Bachelor's degree, a year longer than usual. After being persuaded by a friend that taking a Master's degree (M.A.) would kill his interest in literature, he briefly held a job as a school teacher; however, he quit in protest when the headmaster of the school asked him to substitute for the physical training master.[9] The experience made Narayan realise that the only career for him was in writing, and he decided to stay at home and write novels.[13][14] His first published work was a book review of Development of Maritime Laws of 17th-Century England.[15] Subsequently, he started writing the occasional local interest story for English newspapers and magazines. Although the writing did not pay much (his income for the first year was nine rupees and twelve annas), he had a regular life and few needs, and his family and friends respected and supported his unorthodox choice of career.[16] In 1930, Narayan wrote his first novel, Swami and Friends,[15] an effort ridiculed by his uncle[17] and rejected by a string of publishers.[8] With this book, Narayan created Malgudi, a town that creatively reproduced the social sphere of the country; while it ignored the limits imposed by colonial rule, it also grew with the various socio-political changes of British and post-independence India.[18]

[edit] Turning point

While vacationing at his sister's house in Coimbatore, in 1933, Narayan met and fell in love with Rajam, a 15-year old girl who lived nearby. Despite many astrological and financial obstacles, Narayan managed to gain permission from the girl's father and married her.[19] Following his marriage, Narayan became a reporter for a Madras based paper called The Justice, dedicated to the rights of non-Brahmins. In his first three books, Narayan highlights the problems with certain

socially accepted practices. The first book has Narayan focusing on the plight of students, punishments of caning in the classroom, and the associated shame. The concept of horoscopematching in Hindu marriages and the emotional toll it levies on the bride and groom is covered in the second book. In the third book, Narayan addresses the concept of a wife putting up with her husband's antics and attitudes.[27] Rajam died of typhoid in 1939.[28] Her death affected Narayan deeply and he remained distressed for a long time; he was also concerned for their daughter Hema, who was only three years old. The bereavement brought about a significant change in his life and was the inspiration behind his next novel, The English Teacher.[15] This book, like his first two books, is autobiographical, but more so, and completes an unintentional thematic trilogy following Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts.[29][30] In subsequent interviews, Narayan acknowledges that The English Teacher was almost entirely an autobiography, albeit with different names for the characters and the change of setting in Malgudi; he also explains that the emotions detailed in the book reflected his own at the time of Rajam's death.[31] Bolstered by some of his successes, in 1940 Narayan tried his hand at a journal, Indian Thought. [32] With the help of his uncle, a car salesman, Narayan managed to get more than a thousand subscribers in Madras city alone. However, the venture did not last long due to Narayan's inability to manage it, and it ceased publication within a year.[33] His first collection of short stories, Malgudi Days, was published in November 1942, followed by The English Teacher in 1945. In between, being cut off from England due to the war, Narayan started his own publishing company, naming it (again) Indian Thought Publications; the publishing company was a success and is still active, now managed by his granddaughter.[13] Soon, with a devoted readership stretching from New York to Moscow, Narayan's books started selling well and in 1948 he started building his own house on the outskirts of Mysore; the house was completed in 1953.[34]

Literary review
Writing style
Narayan's writing style was simple and unpretentious with a natural element of humour about it.[73] It focused on ordinary people, reminding the reader of next-door neighbours, cousins and the like, thereby providing a greater ability to relate to the topic.[74] Unlike his national contemporaries, he was able to write about the intricacies of Indian society without having to modify his characteristic simplicity to conform to trends and fashions in fiction writing.[75] He also employed the use of nuanced dialogic prose with gentle Tamil overtones based on the nature of his characters.[76] Critics have considered Narayan to be the Indian Chekhov, due to the similarities in their writings, the simplicity and the gentle beauty and humour in tragic situations.[77] Greene considered Narayan to be more similar to Chekhov than any Indian writer.[1] Anthony West of The New Yorker considered Narayan's writings to be of the realism variety of Nikolai Gogol.[78] According to Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, Narayan's short stories have the same captivating feeling as his novels, with most of them less than ten pages long, and taking about as many minutes to read. She adds that between the title sentence and the end, Narayan provides the

reader something novelists struggle to achieve in hundreds more pages: a complete insight to the lives of his characters. These characteristics and abilities led Lahiri to classify him as belonging to the pantheon of short-story geniuses that include O. Henry, Frank O'Connor and Flannery O'Connor. Lahiri also compares him to Guy de Maupassant for their ability to compress the narrative without losing the story, and the common themes of middle-class life written with an unyielding and unpitying vision.[11] Critics have noted that Narayan's writings tend to be more descriptive and less analytical; the objective style, rooted in a detached spirit, providing for a more authentic and realistic narration.[79] His attitude, coupled with his perception of life, provided a unique ability to fuse characters and actions,[80] and an ability to use ordinary events to create a connection in the mind of the reader.[81] A significant contributor to his writing style was his creation of Malgudi, a stereotypical small town, where the standard norms of superstition and tradition apply.[82] Narayan's writing style was often compared to that of William Faulkner since both their works brought out the humour and energy of ordinary life while diplaying compassionate humanism.[83] The similarities also extended to their juxtaposing of the demands of society against the confusions of individuality.[84] Although their approach to subjects was similar, their methods were different; Faulkner was rhetorical and illustrated his points with immense prose while Narayan was very simple and realistic, capturing the elements all the same.[85]

Awards and honours

Narayan won numerous awards during the course of his literary career.[104] His first major award was in 1958, the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide.[105] When the book was made into a film, he received the Filmfare Award for the best story. In 1964, he received the Padma Bhushan during the Republic Day honours.[106] In 1980, he was awarded the AC Benson Medal by the (British) Royal Society of Literature, of which he was an honorary member.[107] In 1982 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[75] He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature multiple times, but never won the honour.[108] Recognition also came in the form of honorary doctorates by the University of Leeds (1967),[109] the University of Mysore (1976)[110] and Delhi University (1973).[111] Towards the end of his career, Narayan was nominated to the upper house of the Indian Parliament for a six-year term starting in 1989, for his contributions to Indian literature.[66] A year before his death, in 2000, he was awarded India's second-highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan.[112]

Legacy
Narayan's greatest achievement was making India accessible to the outside world through his literature. He is regarded as one of the three leading English language Indian fiction writers, along with Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. He gave his readers something to look forward to with Malgudi and its residents[101][113] and is considered to be one of the best novelists India has ever produced. He brought small-town India to his audience in a manner that was both believable and experiential. Malgudi was not just a fictional town in India, but one teeming with characters,

each with their own idiosyncrasies and attitudes, making the situation as familiar to the reader as if it were their own backyard.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

It is quite difficult to write about the novels written by Charles Dickens, as you have to be one among the thousands of people who have done the job earlier. But I am so fascinated by the charm and attraction I felt while reading A Tale Of Two Cities that I could not do without putting my efforts to show how I felt while reading this master piece.

The love relationship of two unusual characters, Lucy Manette and Charles Darney, passed through the time narrated by Dickens as It was the best of the times, it was the worst of the times. The couple made their way through strange circumstances. They were caught in a storm of the revolutionary atmosphere of late eighteenth century France. And they would have hardly passed through it without offering abnormal responses to the situations they were forced to face.

The story is painted on a torn canvass of turbulent London where mockery of law had replaced administration of justice, the guns were necessary articles for travellers, and the fresh graves were excavated for selling the parts of dead bodies. The warehouse of France in general and the theatre of Paris in particular were worse than London. The last phase of feudalism and the haunted conscience of French peasants had outrun all the notions of

civility and human etiquettes. The peasants movement for ousting the tyrant rulers partially ended on the fall of the prison of Bastille. All the prisoners freed from the Bastille jailDr. Manette, father of Lucy Manette, one the prime characters of the novel, being one of them.

Lucy helped her father to come out of the obsession of his jail term. She took charge of the boat and sailed through the demanding process of curing his father and developing her relationship with Charles. A migrant from France and language teacher in a London school, Charles Darney had aristocratic lineage that he kept undisclosed until the day of his marriage with Lucy. But his aristocratic virtue of protecting his one of the former loyalists drove him into the storm of France. Other characters, Jarvis Lorry, Defarge couple, Mrs. Pross, and others walked with the story, making its flow lucid and the contents rich.

THE CHARACTERIZATION

Dickens characterization of men and women of A Tale of Two Cities is near to the realistic. Some of them act a little bit dramatically, as and when the plot of novel so demands. Jarvis Lorry an uncomplicated banker and Madame Defarge a diehard revolutionary never depart from the strict necessities attached with their professions. But Dr. Manette turns himself into an advocate and takes the tools of a saviour in his hands for saving Charles from a certain death penalty.

Charles Dickens was the technician who used symbols as effective implements for helping the larger picture of his novel to be understood deeply. Unlike the well-sculptured use of powerful symbols in his other novels, in A Tale Of Two Cities he depended upon the sharp adjectives and salient

humour. While caricaturing the host of characters, he displayed his masterly art of telling about the aspects of contemporary society. In the same manner he narrated the pros and cones of the ongoing revolution. The vivid description of all the characters is such that if by chance any one of them passes by us, we would immediately tell that this is Jerry Cruncher (from his unique style of walking) or this is Lucy (by seeing her serene beauty) or this is Madame Defarge (from the frozen lava of her anger).

The dialogues go with the characters. Mr. Lorry and Dr. Manette are professionals, depicting the cultured face of the time; and Madame Defarge is the firebrand lady representing the wrath of the revolutionaries of contemporary France. As the novel was to be published as serial in a newspaper, the begging and the end of each chapter tend to be loaded with gunshot sentences. And when the

writer like Dickens fires a shot, it is heard up to far far pavilions. He did not give us characters; he gave us the types of people. In real life, you would find replica of every man and woman Dickens depicted in his novels. Being the mother of children having convincing looks, Dickens had animated a crowd of characters: they are proud; they are feeble. They are generous; they are greedy. They are coward; they are bold. Dickens read the life before his eyes and used it for his creations, hoping that the readers would love the same and honour the same. DICKENS THE SATIRIST While reading Dickens, humour would not fail in helping your strains disappear, making your mind lighter. Had Dickens been not a humorist as he was, he would have been known as a reformist thanks to the subjects he chose for his writings. A Tale Of Two Cities, however, running overloaded with revolution, it contains salient stock of wits and

irony. Though the thematic compulsions restrained Dickens to become outright humorist; but he fully counterbalanced it while caricaturing the characters. If we look at the novel from a different angle, then a war or a revolution is the greatest satire itself. The mankind has never learnt a lesson from the past. We go on slaughtering each other without realising the futility of our actions. Perhaps that was the biggest message this novel should have delivered.

In A Tale Of Two Cities, Dickens had distributed the humour among various pockets: the way he described the characters, the manners that the Lords of the Land followed in France, and the narrative technique in which he had no competitor. While describing the human tragedies and the follies of common men, he had endeavoured to infuse humour through the comedy of manners. But he had not tried to soften the bitterness of the

truth that the ongoing revolution was supposed to hold.

In all A Tale Of Two Cities is the masterpiece capable of imparting literary pleasure. It would shine like a gem on anyones bookshelf; and it can be a good reread.