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saturday, may 23, 2015

illustration: dipankar A quest for RK Narayan’s fictional town leads to serendipities through villages and railway stations, kaapi shops and post offices p9 Looking for

PIKU’S HERO Scriptwriter WHISPERS AFOOT Juhi Chaturvedi proves that Political espionage in the Malgudi bodily functions can make days of Raj involved both art for a great storyline p15 and science p22 Ī 9 BL saturday, may 23, 2015 cover

ercise on the Ring Road, the restaurant ap- pears like a hallucination — built to resemble a traditional home with wooden pillars, it has a swing on the porch, a tray of help-yourself ba- nanas by the door, and walls covered with re- productions of drawings by Narayan’s illustrious brother RK Laxman. What would Narayan have ordered I won- der as I peruse the menu card. The Malgudi section is a mishmash of southern starters, such as chicken-65, chicken-95 and Malgudi spl chicken. But Narayan was a vegetarian. So I flip to the Tamil menu. After all, Narayan was born that side and towards the end he return- ed to Chennai where I was fortunate enough to meet him in the late 1990s. Unwilling to an- swer the same old questions about Malgudi and his books, he preferred to discuss Tamil food habits. I had asked him if he ever thought about what it would feel like to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. “No, I don’t need a Nobel Prize. I’m too old. What would I do with it?” he said and quickly changed the topic, “So exactly which south In- dian dishes have you eaten?” I named the various foods that had found fa- vour with me, and he appeared pleased that I had enjoyed both dosa and idli, because dis- hes like that couldn’t be had in Europe, he ex- plained: the temperature wouldn’t allow a proper fermentation. The less we talked about his books, the more communicative he became. Every now and then he inspected his potted plants with a critical eye but seemed to be unsentimental when declaring that some of them did not seem to be quite alive. “I think that all things, humans included, go through a phase of de- cay towards the end. So this is entirely natural, all this,” he said alluding to his own aged body, and the fact that he had stopped giving inter- views about his books and meeting journal- ists, only then to ask as one writer might, with comradely pleasure, of another, “Would you like to see my study?” He made his way slowly through the apart- ment he shared with his nephew, with the sup- A house for Swami Doddamane in Agumbe, a village in Karnataka the hindu archives port of a crutch, over to a small room where he kept a cot and a writing desk. He sat down and rested his hand on a pile of papers. “Are you writing something at the mo- ment?” I asked. “No, this is my correspondence. Every now and then I have a typist write out letters for The road to me, but mostly I let the mail lie here and go through a phase of decay. It’s like a natural process.” He then asked me to write to him sometime, he enjoyed receiving letters. “If you don’t get a reply, you’ll know why,” he added. I did write him, but I never heard from Na- rayan again. Though the conversation about food stuck in my mind, and so Tamil grub it is. Malgudi The Munakai soup is a light sambar-like preparation with tender drumsticks and I can imagine it being eaten in Malgudi, but vathal A quest for RK Narayan’s fictional town — replete with old- kozhambu turns out to be garlic pods cooked in pickled salt, and is a total assault on the gas- world charm and character — leads to many interesting tric system. Narayan may have stuck to the twists and turns, stories and discoveries standard meals. By the time I empty my plantain leaf, I’m de- termined to find the real deal — the actual Mal- odern-day Bengaluru has an end- and lively bazaars populated by sweetmeat gudi. There are clues. Wikipedia and other less Outer Ring Road. Cars, lor- vendors, astrologers, printing presses, pain- internet sources useful for various degrees of Mries, buses whizz past, and the ters of signs, fake gurus and talkative men. disinformation place Malgudi a few hours’ noise is deafening as I — the only Although it’s a fiction created by novelist RK journey from Chennai, some 500km away, so soul on foot — dodge exhaust and dust tails Narayan (1906-2001) some 80 years ago, a Goo- Coimbatore is frequently fielded as a possibil- and share ‘pedestrian space’ with the occa- gle-search throws up several candidates in ity. In Tamil Nadu, there are in fact several can- sional lethal vehicle taking a shortcut through present-day India: one Malgudi is a gated villa didates, such as Lalgudi. the wrong lane. community south of Chennai, another is a But what if it’s in Karnataka instead? I’ve The area is Doddanekundi, once probably a pharmacy near Mysore University, and a third found evidence in the popular Doordarshan village by a pond of the same name, 20km out- is a restaurant on Bengaluru’s outskirts. This series Malgudi Days by playing the video in side the town centre. I’m looking for Malgudi, last is said to offer delicacies of the four south- slow-motion. You might recall the episode that gentlest of places characterised by a com- ern states plus a special ‘Malgudi menu’. about the mailman who doesn’t deliver an in- pletely different pace of life — old bungalows After some two kilometres of a survival ex- auspicious letter on a wedding day — the foot- cover saturday, may 23, 2015 BL 10 Ĩ

Malgudi brews A coffee shop at Green Hotel, Mysore. The hotel appears in one of ithe episodes inMalgudi Days ma sriram

age of the Malgudi post office flashes the zip van-GUDI” — two prominent old Ah, finally I’m in Malgudi! Everything looks code 577 411 in passing. It belongs to a small neighbourhoods in Bengaluru. And consider- like the TV series but less crowded. There are Malnad town called Agumbe (population of ing that of the two, Malleshwaram, founded as barely any people. No cars. 180 joint-families). a model suburb in the 1890s, has a significant Agumbe is essentially a T-junction, called Malgudi also makes an appearance in the Tamil population, it does seem the likeliest ‘circle’, with a post office, a bus stand, some Dev Anand-starrer The Guide but I trust the candidate. Furthermore, Malleshwaram has a shops and messes such as Hotel Kubera, as small screen version simply because Narayan small railway station which was utterly char- well as a bank and a school with a faded board himself preferred it to the movie. For one, the ming back then, according to those who re- outside — ‘S.V.S. High School’. Could this have Bollywood version was shot in Rajasthan and member the original building, and would been Albert Mission College in the TV series? Gujarat, which didn’t fit Narayan’s own image have inspired the initial scene Narayan wrote A winding side lane called Car Street takes of Malgudi at all, but he rather felt that Shan- on that September day. me to a village square with the Sri Venugopa- kar Nag’s acclaimed TV series, largely shot in lakrishnaswamy temple that feels familiar Agumbe, did justice to his fiction. Agumbe and a primary school where kids looking like I’m booked on an overnight train that passes Swami and friends crowd the classrooms, and Bengaluru Malleshwaram without stopping. Getting off a ruined pilgrims’ choultry built in 1906 — in- Bengaluru isn’t entirely irrelevant in the next morning in the temple cidentally the year of Narayan’s search for Malgudi, for it was here that Na- town Udupi, the nearest railhead birth. Many of the bungalows rayan came up with the name. It happened on to Agumbe, I plan to hire a taxi are distinctly old-fashioned. Vijaya Dashmi in September 1930, an auspi- and with some luck I’ll find a cab- Everybody I speak to, from the cious time to set pen to paper according to his bie named Gaffur, just like the postman to the shopkeeper re- dear grandmother and so that’s when he be- driver in Narayan’s stories. AlthoughQ I haven’t members Malgudi Days which gan his first novel Swami and Friends. First thing I do is have a meal managed to pinpoint was filmed here in 1985-86. In his autobiography he describes wander- by the temple, pure veg, which the exact room, or When asked whereabouts the ing about the streets, dreaming, planning, feels already very Malgudi. Once I desk, where Narayan shooting happened, they say: and then buying an exercise book in which he get a taxi, the driver’s name turns started writing, it “Everywhere.” Most villagers got wrote the first line of a novel. “As I sat in a out to be Krishna Prasad, which may have been in walk-on parts, doing cameos in room nibbling at my pen and wondering roughly translates as ‘food con- Malleshwaram the series that transformed this what to write, Malgudi with its little railway secrated to Lord Krishna’ and into a bustling small town if on- station swam into view, all ready-made, with a this isn’t bad at all considering ly for the duration of the shoot. character called Swaminathan running down that the Udupi Krishna temple is R The key location where the the platform.” The station had a banyan tree, a the main tourist attraction in crew spent months on end is station master, and only two trains a day, one these parts. Krishna Prasad is ex- Doddamane (‘the big house’) in coming, one going. ceptionally punctual, too, and drives up the the main street. This private home built in Although I haven’t managed to pinpoint narrow Ghat road so fast it feels like bungee- 1900 has a grand front verandah adorned with the exact room, or desk, where Narayan start- jumping uphill. pillars and a central courtyard. Kasturiakka is ed writing, it may have been in Malleshwa- We run into a thick cloud after the third the matron of the house and sits on a cot in ram. He made sure to give his town a fictitious hair-pin bend and by the time we drive into the inner verandah, surrounded by two other name, so as to be free to meddle with its geog- Agumbe, following another dozen increasing- matrons. Before I quite know how it hap- raphy and details, but the city-based historian ly scary bends in the mountain road, the mist pened, I find a steaming tumbler of kashayam, Ramachandra Guha assures me: “The folklore, is so thick that it’s like entering a fading pho- a milky, lightly spiced local health beverage, in which may or may not be correct, is that Mal- tograph of a town… or hamlet, as this turns my hand. gudi is taken from MAL-leshwaram and Basa- out to be. She tells of how the Malgudi Days shooting Ī 11 BL saturday, may 23, 2015 cover

Going easy A still from the episode Dodu

turned the house upside down. The first epi- intent will get headbutted. I’ve journeyed to possible heritage structure and may one day sode that took place in the house was Maha Mysore, where Narayan lived most of his life, open for tourists and book-lovers as an RK Na- Kanjoos, the memorable story of a miserly and I find that much in that town fits my men- rayan Museum.) grandfather and his mischievous grandson. tal image of Malgudi. Indeed, I find a conclusive clue in When I step out again, I get a funny feeling the map of Malgudi drawn by Narayan’s essay Misguided that the slow pace here does set one’s inner Clarice Borio and reproduced ‘Guide’, where he talks exten- biorhythms to Malgudi time. But however on Narayan’s request in one of sively about the aforemen- close to an ideal village Agumbe might seem, his books, if tilted to the right, tioned Bollywood movie The with its kindly, unhurried, educated inhabit- and then a bit to the left, bears a But howeverQ close to an Guide. The film team (that in- ants, there are things missing. Where, for ex- striking resemblance to a map ideal village Agumbe cluded the Nobel Prize-win- ample, is the railway? Talguppa station, a of Mysore. might seem, with its ning scriptwriter Pearl S 126-km drive north, was used as a location in It’s one of the few towns kindly, unhurried, Buck) came all the way to My- the TV series. There’s also no Lawley Extension where one can hitch a ride with educated inhabitants, sore to see the setting for the — Agumbe is so frozen in time that suburbs for a horse-pulled jutka in this day there are things missing. book — and Narayan writes, “I upwardly mobile, modern people haven’t and age of imported cars. And Where, for example, is the showed them the river steps come up yet. Lawley Extension could well be railway? and a little shrine overshad- a portrait of Yadavgiri, the owed by a banyan on the Mysore ‘new’ extension behind the rail- banks of Kaveri, which was Track record A chowkidar and his black goat keep watch at way station where Narayan R the actual spot around which Malleshwaram station in 15 Vivekananda Road. The toothless watchman himself purchased a 180x120 I wrote The Guide. As I had Bengaluru may have confirms that the forlorn house indeed be- foot plot in the winter of 1947- thought, nothing more need- inspired Narayan to create the one in Malgudi longs to “Narayanappa” and then proceeds to 48 to build a graceful two-storey home. (Note: ed to be done than put the actors there and s mohan prasad joke that anybody who approaches with bad The house has recently been marked out as a start the camera.” He took them to various other locations in and around town, includ- ing Mysore’s smaller twin town Nanjangud, which he felt could be used to depict the cli- max of the plot. They even went to the top of Gopalaswamy Betta, the highest peak in the Bandipur National Park. It is easy to imagine his disappointment then, when The Guide was shot in Jaipur, Udaipur, Chittorgarh and Lim- di, instead. Quite obviously, Malgudi is indebted to the Mysore area. The most logical thing would be to presume that Malgudi, and again I refer to Ramachandra Guha, “was a composite, in physical and social detail, of Mysore and its next-door neighbour Nanjangud.” Indeed, it is a well-known fact that Narayan liked to walk about his hometown and socialise with the various characters he encountered in its streets for inspiration. Incidentally, the more urban locations of the TV series Malgudi Days are recognisable as places in Mysore. In one episode I spot what is now the palatial Green Hotel on Hunsur Road, which used to be part of the famous Premier Studios until 1989 (a studio which itself may have inspired the fictional Malgudi Film Stu- dio of the novels). The heritage hotel has recently opened a coffee shop called Malgudi, staffed by young Dalit women, and there I find myself drinking the nicest café au lait in town. I suspect that Narayan who was famously fussy about coffee and proud owner of eight different percola- tors (and was constantly chasing the perfect blend) may have enjoyed a sip of it too, if he were here today.

zac o’yeah is a Bengaluru-based author, travel writer and literary critic