Don on RKN

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gps:

I always wanted to post a blog on RKN, but never came round to it.

As it turns out, Don had already spoken for me eloquently and I am posting it in my blog without his permission:

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http://baridih.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Soothing Tales

How and Why do you recommend a book?

With a movie I guess this particular task is a bit easier since the viewer is a relatively passive participant in the experience.

For a book however I think the freedom to imagine and picturize brings with it the appendage of having to create part of the experience for one's own self. And so when I recommend a book I really have to judge the person's possible level of involvement in addition to his interest. I have to believe that the same/similar picture I drew behind the foreground of the text would possibly be recreated by him. In case that is not true, I Imagine the catastrophe to be similar to one that would unfold if an opera were to perform Ram Leela!

And so I am a little wary of recommending books.

I have been reading a collection of three short novels by RKN lately and just finished "Mr. Sampath-the printer of Malgudi.". The word that describes the experience best for me is "Tranquil". His writing really makes one want to return to simpler times, simpler ways and a simpler life. Not for his characters are the sudden changes of continent or time. His characters hardly circumscribe bigger circuits than the Lawley extension -Vinayak Road - Albertson street arena. While he trains his scope onto this geographically limited locale the number of layers of human behavior he peels off and its richness is really mind-boggling. They all do ordinary jobs and have ordinary lives and most of their meals are eaten on banana leaves and comprise of rice with a stew of some vegetables.

As one reads more of his stories one starts feeling the pulse of the town even stronger and gets a nagging suspicion that it is not entirely a figment of imagination - his or ours.

That perhaps RKN lived in Malgudi and then hid it from the world and that if one looked hard enough while traveling down south in India in a train or a bus one might just meet Srinivas or Mrigayya or Mr. Sampath with Shanti while they were making the trips mentioned in the story to better known and provably existent towns like Madras or Mysore.

I don't know if I relate to his stories well because I come from a small town and often visited my village which is quite rustic as villages go and also because most of my life I lived with my parents in a rented one room house. I do know however that people far removed from any city, town or village in India, nay even the continent, have liked his stories for their particular trait of peace.

This remarkable pervasiveness of calm throughout his writing contrasts sharply with the book I last read which was "Captain Pantoja and the Secret Service " by none other than last year's Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.

There is no need to use jargon to label his "brand" of literature when the difference between the two is best explained by the difference of experience one has when the books come to an end.

When RKN's story comes to its end I feel disconsolate at the severing of the contact I had with it's characters. I want to keep in touch with the characters for at least some more time. I want to shake their hand if I meet them or throw jibes at them or tomatoes as the case maybe depending on how they fared in my psyche.

But mostly I wish to go and live in Malgudi!

With Captain Pantoja, I remember I was quite happy that the book finally came to an end.

With Midnight's Children I still have about 30 odd pages to go before I come to the end and that is something I have been aiming at for the past 4 years!

Some books (and all of RKN's), I guess grip you hard no matter how delicately they are written, the losses of their characters felt personally and at their joy we celebrate.

Despite the caveats in the intro, I would recommend RKN to one and all!!!

Posted by Don Quixote at 3:42 PM

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