Maybe it was the fact that we visited the home of R K Narayan after the opulence of the Mysore Palace, or the fact that while all of rural Karnataka seemed to have decided on Mysore Palace, nobody had thought of R K Narayan’s abode, but the author’s bungalow on a quiet residential street was like a little cocoon of quiet and peace. A lovely setting in which to imagine the most magical tales of small-town Malgudi.
It isn’t a humble abode – it is a beautiful house set in an upper middle class neighborhood. White and two-storeyed, it is a lovely home and while inside, I couldn’t help remembering his own notes on how he had acquired the piece of land on which it was built.
Book: The Grandmother’s Tale – By R K Narayan.
Far away from the town center as it was then, the realtor had promised him that it would be the bustling center of town one day. He left his noisy abode in Vinayak Street, and moved to this one – with the railway tracks to one side, the lilting hills and the then empty lands stretching between the home and the Mysore Palace.
With his characteristic wit, he wrote of his gardener, Annamalai, who helped maintain the land around his house. Annamalai, like most men of the soil, intuitively knew how to clean and maintain lands.
I stooped to look at the plants for a brief moment before entering the home and remembered Annamalai’s classification: “This is a poon-chedi” (flowering plant) and chuckled to myself.
“If he liked a plant, he called it poon-chedi and allowed it to flourish. The ones he did not like, he called “poondu” (weed), and threw over the fence.”
- R K Narayan – The Grandmother’s Tale (Story: Annamalai)
Annamalai was no horticulturist but seems to have taken care of the great man’s lands well enough.
Inside the house, it was largely quiet and the lady who stood at the entrance was happy enough to receive us. She was diminutive, and oddly neither welcoming nor dismissive. She surveyed us as if mildly annoyed with herself for being interested in us. She sometimes followed us as we entered the household and read the quotes off the walls. When it was obvious that we were in awe, and really happy to be in the place where R K Narayan wrote his gentle tales of Malgudi, she turned into a hesitant hostess and urged us to explore the rest of the house too. “Go upstairs and see the bedrooms. That’s where he slept.” she said, and I had to resist chuckling.
I wondered what the master literary giant would have to say about her. It would be an insightful description no doubt and one tinged with the gentility and charm that he saw humanity with. That much was certain.
The thing is: going to this quiet house tucked away in a residential locality in Mysore was comforting, and I thanked the brother profusely for showing me this gentle giant’s house.
“Do you realise how few ever really understand how fortunate they are in their circumstances?”
– R K Narayan
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, the author and Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Laxman, the cartoonist together enthralled the world with the spontaneity, humor and joy of Indian life.
Also read:
Nourish-n-Cherish 