A small village with postcard image type layouts and roads. There is a statue at one end of the road, there is a school at one area, there is a market, a temple a court office, bazaar street, railway station and all the basic infrastructure that was available in any mid-size town of Pre-independent India. No, I’m not describing in general about any other town. I’m referring to the famous non-existent town of India called as MALGUDI. This town was supposed to exist in the Madras state with proximity to Mysore state. And the creator of this imaginative town is none other than R.K Narayan. I must say he is the best English writer that India has produced. The simplicity, fluency, creativeness, imagination that he has got is amazing. Malgudi has featured in many of his novels like “Swami and his friends”, “Vendor of sweets” etc. He created a imaginative town to describe his stories.

Just the basic description about the town will make us imagine the complex things such as its layout, how does it look, how are the people there etc. This is not with reference to just the town of Malgudi. This is the case with any place which you might have not visited but just heard the detailed description of it. Now imagine that you are an actor or director or in general working in film industry. If some one asks you to direct a movie, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Let me tell the most common question that strikes to you – “how am I going to recreate that village?”. Now let’s see why you will face this question. When you read the novel, you will realize that nothing in detail is described about the town. Whenever required, a few lines are mentioned about a particular lane or area or a landmark. Readers will have their own idea about the visual of the town. And the author of the novel would have his own imagination. Those who have read the book will have high expectation when they watch the movie. Keeping all this in mind, you are required to deliver the movie which can meet all these expectations.

Sounds scary right? But there was a person in Kannada movie industry who never cared about hardships. They were his day to day activity. We can somehow think about making a movie on the RKN novel by creating a huge set of Malgudi town. But this god-gifted actor made a Tele serial out of the novel!!!!! This was about 30 years ago when TV was a luxury item owned by only a few privileged people. When only one channel had monopoly in the Media business. When there was hardly any entertaining programs aired on the channel. All of a sudden a tele serial started which became huge hit with the Indian population. Even to this day, you can hear some mobile ringtones of this serial’s title song – Malgudi Days. The serial has created a special space for itself in India’s Television History. And it has got a special space in my heart and mind.

Usually I never write in this journalistic style of praising anything with all-known and coomonly used words/lines. But I felt its worth to make that effort which is my own way of expressing gratitude to this master piece made by a great soul – Shankar Nag. There will be no other person who can match to this great actor’s capability. His untimely death is seriously a big loss for Indian cinema and Television.

I had recently went on a three day trip with my cousins and friend to Dandeli. It was an awesome trip to deep jungles. The food and staff of the lodge, the trek, the scenery, the animals and birds in jungle, the leech bite etc was indeed a memorable experience for me. On the way back from trip, in train I had made a resolution that the first thing that I will do after reaching home was to write a blog about this trip. And as usual I didn’t get a chance to write a blog since I was too lazy or because of lack of interest in writing these days. But nevertheless, the oath was not erased frm my mind and I knew I would write nothing else but this trip experience first when I sit to write a blog. But in meantime I almost completed reading another novel of RKN, and in this novel also he had taken Malgudi town as place of his story. So finally when I sat down to write a blog today, I was not able to control the inner urge to pay the tribute due to the two great personalities of India, one from literature and the other from entertainment. And finally this came out.

I guess each one of us are gifted with one or other thing. But we fail to recognize that or may be we don’t get a chance to dig out that. Why I think this is because, if I see the Malgudi days serial, or if I read any novel of RKN, I get to think like “hmm yeah rite we can do like this…” There is a solution for anything, but patience is required to get that solution. A trait inside any person also requires patience to be found out. Most of the times we don’t get a solution because we back out at a time when we have almost reached the point. I wish more and more people are able to identify their special gift given by god and more and more RKN and SHankar Nag come up.