Shahaji Mastud Assistant Professor D.A.B.N. College Chikhali

IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 324

Shahaji Mastud

Assistant Professor

D.A.B.N. College Chikhali

Maharashtra, India [email protected]

Malgudi to Macondo the Imaginary Homelands: A Study of Fictional Universe

This research paper considers the imaginary location that leads to recreate social reproduction through fictional towns. The discussions will started with the creation of Macondo and Malgudi depicted by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Colombian and Indian eminent author R. K. Narayan respectively. I go to argue that motives, influence and similarities between these authors while fictionalizing imaginary homelands. I then look at the novels selected for these purposes are One

Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez and R. K. Narayan’s selected novels written from 1935 to 1945 to attempt articulation of imaginary hometown documented in the fiction. The creative work of imaginary hometowns evaluated with comparative perspective to find vision of human life through these hometowns mapped by both authors. It will contribute to look at the twenty- first century real cities and imaginative cities in the period of colonial imperialism for understanding better human life. The treatment of narrative structures, the utilization of multi focalization, and the use of meta-fictional elements allow for the gradual transition between the real space and fictitious imagined space. Finally, this analysis investigates the concept of an imaginary space and what role it has in the novel.

Keywords: Reproduction, Imaginary, Homelands, Comparative, Perspective. IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 325

Introduction

Twenty first century has been facing tormented problems in the towns and metropolitan cities. The dragon of city life has becoming hard and tough day by day. The people, those left their home for job in the morning. There is no guaranty that they will come back safely in time to home. They have to tackle the problems of traffic, air pollution and non-hygienic food that lead to health disease. To solve this question and to lessen the problems, it is necessary to have look in the literary fictional towns and try to find some solutions through it is one of the motives of the paper.

The author creates utopian fiction to disguise the contemporary evil aspects of the world and provides better ideal model for happiness. Utopian universe in fiction has vital importance; it is a reflection of contemporary scenario. Macondo is the exciting fictional world in Gabriel

Garcia Marquez’s classic One Hundred Years of Solitude. Even, Macondo is known as the

Austrian refugee camp, since 1956, which has supplied homes to emigrant people from all over the world. Writers from Latin America discuss about home and migration, both fictional and real.

However, It is my intention that to enquire the ways how Garcia Marquez and R. K.

Narayan describes Macondo and Malgudi as town for artful and literary purposes. My concern goes in the direction that what extend the both writer has been described Macondo and Malgudi respectively? From this perspective, the subject has been discussed in the research paper. The purpose of this article is therefore to raise some artistic and ideological question behind depicting such cities in the fictional world.

Malgudi - R. K. Narayan’s Fictional World IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 326

The three eminent fiction writer of the postcolonial Indian English Writing was Mulk Raj

Anand, Raja Rao and most famous R. K. Narayan in India. All these writers are influenced with western language and Gandhi’s ideology of decolonization of the mind. First time, they depicted

Indian scenario in fiction. The panorama of Indian life was the prominent aspect of these writers.

The Indian was struggling with modern ideology and declining traditional cultural practices. The impact of Gandhi’s philosophy was great and deep in the masses of the downtrodden Indians.

Gandhi’s rejection of western cloth, eradication of untouchables and simple life of moral human values got large impact on these writers. Mulk Raj Anand echoed the voice of the untouchables in his novel Untouchables, with Bhaka’s character struggling to rebel old practice of untouchables. Raj Rao’s Kanthapura was the confusion of western thought and Gandhi’s ideology. Murthy’s transformation from Gandhi’s perspectives to Nehru’s dream of modern

India has depicted with great intensity. In the opening chapter of The Painter of Signs a traffic policeman blows his whistle to make him move on, he reflects:

“They won’t leave one in peace. This is a jungle where other beasts are constantly on the

prowl to attack and bite off a mouthful, if one is not careful. As if this were New York

and I blocked the traffic on Broadway. He would not recognize it, but Malgudi was

changing in 1972.”1

Gandhi’s one more important aspect of ideology was return to elemental life of Indian village has given large space in Narayan’s fictional art. Rather than moving to fallow western education and working as a civil servant in India, it’s better to went in villages and assimilate in the life of poor and needy people to change their life to build new India. Anita Desai said that “in the imaginary town of Malgudi he could set up a statue wherever he liked, demolish the town hall if he wished, put up a tea shop without the permission of the municipality, banish old residents and IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 327 introduce strangers, just as he pleased.”2 That’s the artistic freedom of writer and character, we can observe in the Narayan’s Malgudi.

All the emerging postcolonial writers give space for this purpose. But Narayan was mostly interesting in the Indian town life, narrating their style of living and ritual practices in fiction. Indian villages and town are full of natural resources as well as mutual understanding of each other. The people believe on each other, they discuss the problems in the temple or under the big tree in front of the village gate. It was situated at the bank of the river mostly, constructed huge temples and newly established schools. It was multicultural village living all caste and class people in collaboration. R. K. Narayan has narrated his fictional world describing the utopian idea of village/ town. Malgudi is the remarkable example of his writing, which is the prime aspect of this paper.

Malgudi as a fictional world become very famous with the brushstroke of Narayan’s pen.

It is believed that it might be situated somewhere in Indian Territory but actually that is the mighty power of Narayan’s artistic vision. The landscape of Indian Territory with full of mountains ranges, rivers and valleys, huge temples curved in stone are the geographically presented in the Narayan’s fiction. Panorama of tradition and culture of south is one of the segments of his writing. The people of Malgudi are mostly middle class and struggling to face their middle class problems. The predicament of middle class has given more depiction in

Narayan’s town. He borrowed the character of his fiction form the road of Madras. The way how they speak and behave is also interesting. The contour of Malgudi with its vices and virtues has portrayed in many novels. In the “Author’s Introduction” to Malgudi Days, a collection of short stories, Narayan provides this discussion of Malgudi: IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 328

“I have named this volume Malgudi Days in order to give it a plausible geographical

status. I am often asked, “Where is Malgudi?” All I can say is that it is imaginary and not

to be found on any map (although the University of Chicago has published a literary atlas

with a map of India indicating the location of Malgudi). If I explain that Malgudi is a

small town in South India I shall only be expressing a half-truth, for the characteristics of

Malgudi seem to me universal.”3

After postcolonial period Narayan envisioned Malgudi as a universal town where all the people from all religious and cultural arenas came together. They will be able to live together in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics, and all villages, straining to realize human unity.

R. K. Narayan’s fictional town was an obsession of his patriotic sentiment, his idea of the united people with their virtues and vices. Rosemary Marangoly George pointed that “Narayan’s

Malgudi produced a viable Indian hometown ethos (a sense of the local), which was consciously carved out of and against an imperial era of British global dominance.”4 It was the place of his artifact that created respect for him in literary arena. Malgudi is the plausible location for an imagined future when our species has left behind the ugliness of cruelty and violence. For the spiritual and civilizational energies of India, that Narayan believed could transform our species are beyond the limits and boundaries of nation-state. John Theme comments that “Narayan’s fiction may derive from very particular South Indian specifics, but it demonstrates how fluid, fractured and fleeting these specifics can be”.5 By sharing the human striving and challenges behind the Malgudi story, his fictional world of Malgudi makes the endeavor more accessible and relatable. However, the reality of Malgudi with all its struggles is far more fascinating and instructive. IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 329

My intention is to introduce the reader deeper context of Malgudi imagined world, the place which is now largely known only as a Centre of Indian village town. When reader enter in the realm of the Malgudi, he will enter in the spiritual land of ancient India, where one can move to super mind and super mental consciousness. But more importantly, Narayan’s Malgudi depiction offers a compact account of the spiritual universe at the heart of Malgudi town.

Macondo- Gabriel Marquez’s Fictional World

Marquez is the world’s all time most respected Nobel Prize winner Colombian writer from Latin America. He had written his fiction in Spanish language, foregrounding leftist thought against Colombian conservation ideology. Garcia Marquez feels a deep commitment both to literature and to social change. Garcia Marquez says all art springs from an ideological conception of the world, for there is no such thing as a work of art entirely devoid of ideological content:

“When I sit down to write a book it is because I am interested in telling a good story. One

that will appeal. I also have an ideological position and if it is firm, if the writer is sincere

at the moment of telling his story, be it Red Riding Hood or one of guerrillas, to cite the

two extremes, if the writer, I repeat, has a firm ideological position, this position will

nurture his tale and it is from this moment on that the story can have subversive force of

which I speak. I do not think it is deliberate, but it is in envitable.”6

Such an ideology follows in his life; he was completely revolutionary in country, the country known for unrest and chaos. He published his first Leaf Strom, it was the novel there was the seeds of world famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. He has written novel with intense desire that he will not write other novel so he used all the accomplished technique and ideas borrowed from reading of English and American writer. His second novel In Evil Hour depicts IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 330 changing modes bloodshed politics of nation and suppression of human values. In 1955,

Colombia was going through emergency period; it was not possible to write fiction so he writes story in newspaper, after that it was banned. Novel No One Writes to Colonel comments on colonel’s starvation and worst economic condition. Colonel fights bravely in war and even with starvation like a fighting cock of competition. Marquez not only write about Colombian violence but about the self-pride. The questions of self-pride are very personal and pivotal that should be solved on the personal level was the central subject of Chronical of Death Foretold. He also touched the theme of love story in Love in the Time of Cholera but his life turned with celebrated novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, it was selected for Nobel Prize in 1982.

These are some brief introduction of his representative novel, form that we can realize that Marquez was the proponent of liberal ideology. Through his writing, he sensitizes the reader and all characters become the character of flesh and blood. Their life, pride, sadness and belief become the reader’s life emotion that’s the greatness of Gabo.

Marquez depicted Macondo cycle in his many novels and short fictions. “Macondo become very famous in his corpus narrative. Macondo is a “literary village” created by Garcia

Marquez, whose work typically incorporates a geographic setting in Colombia. Macondo appears in several texts, but takes an especially prominent role in One Hundred Years of Solitude, which tells the interwoven stories of several generations of characters living in the village over a period of one century. A. Santana Acuana comments “The enormous popularity of One Hundred Years of Solitude propelled this fictional town of Macondo into the global zeitgeist.”7 Macondo was a prosperous place until it was exploited, corrupted and destroyed by the fruit company; this wave of destruction reached a peak during a general strike, when 3,000 workers were slaughtered by the Colombian army; this episode was erased from the collective memory. It is the world of IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 331 innocent and simple people turned into bloodshed and destroyed the life of morality. Macondo was established by Jose Arcadio Buendia, husband of Ursula and major character in One

Hundred Years of Solitude. Jose planted almond tree besides the main street of the town and even he constructed every house, which must get plenty of sunlight from every corner of the village. He also constructed village in the way that water form river should get from the same distance. People in Macondo are very curious about the breeding and brought up of the almond tree. He transformed Macondo village into town, when he died, there was raining of yellow small flowers. The road of village was full of small yellow flowers, so it was removed through spade so died body can move easily on the road for funeral ceremony. In the opening of the Book Fair,

Garcia Marquez’s biographer Gerald Martin, at the press conference stated that “Macondo is the literary realization of the idea of the Global Village”.8

One Hundred Years of Solitude embodies dialectic of Biblical paradigms. Generally, the novel is modeled on the Biblical movement from Genesis and Eden through world-historical events. When we first begin reading the novel, for instance, the world of Macondo is pre-Adamic and Utopian. Jose Arcadio Buendia, the founders of a New World civilization had dreamed of a great city:

“One morning, after almost two years of crossing, they became the first mortals to see the

western slopes of the mountain range...One night, after several months of lost wandering

through the swamps...they camped on the banks of a stony river whose waters were like a

torrent of frozen glass...Jose Arcadio Buendia dreamed that night that right there a noisy

city with houses having mirror walls rose up. He asked what city it was and they

answered him with a name he had never heard, that had no meaning at all, but that had a

supernatural echo in his dream: Macondo.”9 IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 332

In his dream Jose Arcadio Buendia prophesies Macondo's apocalyptic future of the city.

It was the city of ice and mirrors. Where repetitions of solitude and violence have multiply so the successiveness of history stops. Jose Arcadio Buendia was already knows, even as he does not know, what is to come.

Marquez dramatizes Macondo's rise and fall in the nineteenth and twentieth century’s, with world-historical events. But the Kingdom of the fictional world was destroyed. Garcia

Marquez also dramatizes several world-historical events and third-world histories in Macondo. It was the history of European and Western science, from Greek magnets to Portuguese navigational equipment. It was the magical city of sea routes and flying carpets, of gold, ice, and bananas. The history of the Latin American third world, its history of alienation and exploitation by Spanish colonialism, Western capitalism, and North American imperialism. In their discovery of Macondo, Jose Arcadio Buendia repeats the discovery of the Americas. Colonel Aureliano

Buendia takes us through Colombia's nineteenth-century civil wars. Jose Arcadio Segundo leads us through Colombia's banana boom and the Macondo massacre in twentieth-century Colombia.

One Hundred Years of Solitude dramatizes Biblical history of mankind as a two-part process in Macondo. The Buendia family gains greater control of nature and their resources through a development of Melquades' science and his esoteric technology. Even Buendia family grows more alienated from each other as well as from their fellow villagers and family members.

This mediation of Biblical paradigms allows Garcia Marquez to dramatize the entire history of the family as heading toward a crisis, in which the Buendia clan can come into its kingdom on earth, or destroy itself. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a metaphor for Latin America, alienation, history, final endings, and deconstruction. IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 333

Throughout the text, Garcia Marquez gives voice to the silent discourse of solitude.

Solitude takes on a variety of different meanings in the text. However, solitude is closely related to the political idea of anti-solidarity in the community of Macondo. According to Garcia

Marquez, solitude comes from the lack of solidarity in Macondo, the solitude which results when everyone is acting for himself. In other words, Garcia Marquez's novel dramatizes solitude as a negation of solidarity in Macondo. On the last page, Aureliano Babilonia reads of the biblical hurricane? That finally destroys Macondo, and as he reads, the hurricane itself begins to assail him:

“Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about the wrath

of the biblical hurricane when Aureliano skipped eleven pages so as not to lose time with

facts he knew only too well, and he began to decipher the instant he was living,

deciphering it as he lived, prophesying himself in the act of deciphering the last pages of

the parchments, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror. Then he skipped again to

anticipate the predictions and ascertain the date and circumstance of his own death.

Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never

leave the room, for it was foretold that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped

out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when

Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything

written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because

races condemned to One Hundred Years of Solitude did not have a second opportunity on

earth”10

Thus Aureliano Babilonia is imprisoned in a magic room in which time stops forever.

The final Buendia Aureliano Babilonia, is punished to a solitude forever lost in a world of IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 334 mirrors, of mirages a book. The journey of Macondo is from heaven to hell, the unreliable history leads to different opinions. Macondo is magical city, at the same time example of utmost destruction due to exploitative hegemony of ruling regime. If the respect of people and common concerns are rejected, it leads to devastation.

Conclusion

Edwin Mcdowell says “Malgudi is to Narayan what Macondo is to Gabriel Garcia

Marquez - an imaginary town peopled by an endless cast of characters.” 11 That’s why, Malgudi and Macondo are most renowned and well-known towns of the fictional articulate. No doubts, they are cultural and historical texts with conventional human reality. The marvelous ways in which Narayan depicts the panorama of Malgudi and the south Indian culture reflect his critical thoughts about Indian reality. On the other hand, the exaggerated and magical way, Garcia

Marquez embodies the narration of Macondo is unmatchable in fictional literary world. He also paints ending of Buendia family in apocalyptic way and highlights his critical thoughts about

Western reality. It is clear that the Malgudi is the tale of elemental life and the pre-colonial and post-colonial scenario of Malgudi with south Indian perspective, as a whole, are seen through picturesque tales of Narayan’s narrative power. Although it is clear that the Buendia tale of alienation and the three hundred-year history of Macondo are seen through exaggerated tales.

Though, Garcia Marquez's tales are anchored in the real history of the American Third World. It might say that the small history transformed into the legend of the nation has the only power in the pen of the Garcia Marquez. What finally makes reading of Malgudi and Macondo is unforgettable trip in the realm of imaginative world. The harrowing power with which Narayan and Garcia Marquez convinces us for their fictional world that was created with their fictional imagination is everlasting on the map of English literature. The result of the enquiry may be IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 335 historical, but we may get a more balanced view of the nation's history and a better understanding of the factitious cities of the arts.

Narayan’s characters don’t like change; they recognize change as worthless and inappropriate. Heroes think that change brings disastrous end in the life. When they tries to make changes, they realize their mistakes and return to natural life of Malgudi. They are connected with familial love and affection that causes their happy life. They are believed on traditional values regarding human existence, life and universe. On the other hand, Marquez’s characters face great change in their life and lost the life of peace. They are interesting in quest of knowledge and runes behind them.

The fictional town Macondo has been constructed primarily on the Colombian Caribbean socio-political environment, particularly the town of Aracataca. It was known as the birthplace of

Garcia Marquez and stories referred in fictional town are told by his grandfather. Actually,

Garcia Marquez represented the strike against the United Fruit Company in I928. It was now generally know that only a handful of people - three or five - had died during the strike. But it was depicted nearly three thousand in his novel. Interestingly, it was accepted in Colombia today, as the history of nation in collective memory that was the accomplishment of his fictional power. On the other hand, R.K. Narayan’s fictional town has been constructed on the town of

Madras, the colonial center of the British East India Company. It was also the birth place of

Narayan, he pick up many characters on the road of Madras south Indian town. He narrated story of common middle class people in his city and give them voice through his fiction. Major novels and short stories are converted into visual media and the setting of all the story is Malgudi.

Interestingly it has accepted that Malgudi is Indian real town rather than fictional town, which was the mightiness of Narayan’s fictional power. IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 336

Both writers are from different culture and background but they immortalized the fictional town in the sense that it was believed as the literary realization of the global town.

When the reader wanders through this town, though they lost One Hundred Years of Solitude in destructed town of Macondo but they will regain the peace of mind in the elemental life of heavenly Malgudi that correlates the purpose of this paper.

IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 4, April 2018 337

Works Cited

R.K. Narayan. “The Painter of Signs.” Viking Press (US., Heinemann (UK). 1976, p. 13

Anita Desai. “Narayan Country.” The New York Times. 1982,

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/07/books/narayan-country. Mar.2018.

R.K. Narayan. “Malgudi Days.” Indian Thought Publications, Nov. 1942. P. 8

Rosemary Marangoly George. “Of Fictional Cities and “Diasporic” Aesthetics.” Editorial

Board of Antipode. Published by Blackwell Publishing, USA. 2003 PP. 562

John Theme. “The Cultural Geography of Malgudi.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature.

Jose David Saldivar. “Ideology and Deconstruction in Macondo.” Latin American Literary

Review. Vol. 13 No. 25 Jan. 1985, P. 32

A. Santana-Acuna. “How a Literary Work Becomes a Classic: The Case of One Hundred Years

of Solitude.” Am. J. Cultural Sociology. vol. 2, no. 1, 2014, pp. 97–149.

Angus Graeme Forbes, Andres Burbano, Paul Murray, Grorge Legrady. “Imagining Macondo:

Interacting with Garcia Marquez’s Literary Landscape.” IEEE Computer Society. Sept.

2015 P.18

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Harper (US). 1967 P.31-32

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Harper (US). 1967 P.383

Edwin Mcdowell. “Chicago’s R. K. Narayan.” The New York Times. 1981,

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/21/books/publishing-chicago-s-rk-narayan.html.

Mar. 2018.