mysore
LITERATURE
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, also known as RK Narayan, is attributed to be one of the greatest Indian English writers and has found admirers in people from different walks of life, including the legendary Graham Greene. Earlier this year, RK Narayan’s house was opened to the public as a museum and it is the abode that the author had built in the early 1950s. Abandoned and decrepit for years after Narayan sold it and moved to Chennai, the house had been the subject of lobbying by Mysuru’s intelligentsia in particular and many others outside about the need for turning it into a museum like those on Rabrindranath Tagore in Kolkata and Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. The voices grew loud and alarmed when the building was slated for demolition. Fortunately, Mysuru City Corporation stepped in, bought the house and renovated it into a museum. At first, the whole place seemed rather bare. Bare that is for something that had been touted as a museum; a museum around a person such as RK Narayan whose works themselves are rich in characters and description. And yet there was a strong sense of déjà vu, of having stepped into one of the houses that he describes in his many stories – whitewashed walls, red-oxide floors, black and white photographs on the walls and one or two pieces of wooden furniture. In a completely different way. It all made sense.
THE RECENTLY-OPENED RK NARAYAN’S HOUSE IN MYSURU (MYSORE) PAYS TRIBUTE TO ONE OF INDIA’S MOST ICONIC WRITERS, BUT IT IS IN SOME OF THE NOOKS, CORNERS AND BYLANES OF OLD MYSURU THAT MALGUDI (THE POPULAR FICTIONAL TOWN CREATED BY NARAYAN) TRULY COMES ALIVE. TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS ANITA RAO-KASHI
Located in Yadavagiri, a modest middleclass area, the two-storeyed house is quite large and stands back from the compound, surrounded a patch of lawn and sundry trees and plants. Inside, the red-oxide floors gleam and are even a little slippery with the two floors connected by a gently winding staircase. The museum has been put together largely with donations from Narayan’s family and seems to have been set up with dollops of fervour. The living room has a set of display cases with an eclectic collection of awards, citations, spectacles, writing implements. On one wall was a set of black and white photographs of Narayan and his family.
Above (L to R): The man himself; A view of the exteriors of the museum; The oval-shaped study in the museum. 110
JetWings November 2016
JetWings November 2016 111
T Satyan/Dinodia Photo/Dinodia
THE WORLD OF NARAYAN
LITERATURE
Above: Stop by at The Malgudi Cafe for some freshlybrewed coffee. Bottom: Bookshelves inside the museum.
In the other two rooms on the ground floor, one had information boards on Narayan’s life, almost verbatim from Wikipedia while the other had a horizontal display case with his shirts, dhoti and other garments. Two other rooms on the first floor were similar, though one of them had a display of his coats on frames, a bit threadbare and frayed, and a bookshelf with a plethora of books.
PAINTER OF WORDS But the most interesting area, by far, is an oval-shaped study, on the first floor, about which Narayan has even talked about in his biography, My Day. On one end here are eight large windows through which sunlight streams in. This was the room where he wrote and it felt a bit surreal to stand in the space where his characters took shape, and his thoughts and words flowed. Along its length runs an outdoor verandah with unhindered views of the frangipani tree that Narayan was fond of. There’s just a table at one end and two shelves recessed into the wall filled with Narayan’s collection of books, which included copies of his own. And yet, as I wandered around, tamping down my expectations and hoping the museum was a work in progress, I couldn’t help but think it was also quite apt in a way. Narayan’s characters and his own lifestyle (as is evident from his biography and accounts of people
112
JetWings November 2016
DID YOU KNOW?
It was Graham Green who recommended the manuscript of Swami and Friends to noted publisher Hamish Hamilton.
who knew him) were far from any fluffy embellishments. It would have indeed been strange to see gussied up displays in the museum.
DATELESS DIARY
As I stepped out of the house, I found the author sitting rather unshakeably in my head so I wandered around Mysuru to get a better handle on Narayan’s inspirations for his characters and situations. I asked Vishwas Krishna Narayan was nominated for of Royal Mysore Walks (that the Nobel Prize in Literature conducts a plethora of walking and multiple times. other kinds of tours including the His first piece of published whimsical Malgudi Days tour) to help writing was a book review. me in this. A fan of Narayan, Krishna had a vast collection of stories, anecdotes and information about the author. We first went to The Malgudi Cafe located inside the charming Green Hotel for a cup of coffee; though it wasn’t even remotely connected to Narayan in any way, it still seemed appropriate to do so. The Malgudi-themed restaurant sported wrought iron furniture around a little courtyard and red-oxide flooring. However, my choice of a cappuccino would probably Popular Bollywood movie The Guide was an adaptation of Narayan’s Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel by the same name.
JetWings November 2016 113
LITERATURE
Clockwise from left: The famous Chamarajapuram Railway Station; Sit by the Kukkarahalli kere for some quiet time; A view of Maharaja’s College.
not have gone down well with Narayan, a coffee puritan who swore by filter coffee! Krishna told me it was a well-documented fact that Narayan would go for really long walks every day after breakfast, sometimes traversing 10–12 km. People he met on these walks and their stories became fodder for his writing. It would have been impossible to trace those routes, so we just skipped from one point to another in no particular order.
OF MUSINGS AND MALGUDI
114
JetWings November 2016
RK Narayan’s House is located at D14, Vivekananda Road, Yadavagiri. It is open from 10 am to 5 pm; Tuesdays closed. Royal Mysore Walks does the bespoke Malgudi Days Tour as well as many other walks.
QUICK FAC T S GETTING THERE
Jet Airways operates regular flights to Bengaluru from major Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad. From here Mysuru is about 150 km and it takes around 3.5 hours to get there. ACCOMMODATION
The grand Lalita Mahal Palace Hotel is a luxury seeker’s paradise. You could either stay here or at one of the many high-end hotels such as the Fortune HP Palace, Radisson Blu Plaza or the Grand Mercure Mysuru. Mysuru also has several boutique stay options. FOR MORE INFORMATION
On Mysuru, visit www.mysore.nic.in On Royal Mysore Walks, visit www.royalmysorewalks.com
T Satyan/Dinodia Photo; Exotica/Dinodia
Since it was mid-morning, the Kukkarahalli kere (tank), a sprawling lake with lovely walking paths and nooks with benches, was deserted. This was Narayan’s bolthole in a sense and he visited it almost everyday, to go for a walk or just contemplate. “Sometimes, I went back to the Kukkarahalli tank in the late afternoon, when the evening sun touched the rippling water-surface to produce uncanny lighting effects, and the western sky presented a gorgeous display of colours and cloud formations at sunset,” describes Narayan in My Days. Maharaja’s College in the centre of the town, with its large colonial ochre buildings and beautiful pillars, is where Narayan and his brothers studied, and it still wore its old-world charm with effortless grace. We quickly stopped by at Narayan’s house in Lakshmipuram, a pale-green structure in the middle of a large compound, where he lived with his parents and siblings, even after he built his Yadavagiri house, since his family refused to move. We wandered through little, shady lanes and avenues in the old parts of Mysuru where old houses with gabled, tiled roofs sat underneath coconut trees and flanked by hibiscus and rose plants. At every place, I seemed to recall snatches from his books and short stories. But I couldn’t end my Mysuru sojourn without a visit to something quintessentially Malgudi. Hidden behind a wide boulevard and some buildings was the lesser known Chamarajapuram Railway Station, about ten minutes away from Narayan’s Laskhmipuram house. It was a lovely old yellow building topped with a gabled roof. Beyond was a chipped concrete platform and the railway tracks. Standing on the tracks and looking back at the building, it felt incredibly similar to the illustration of Malgudi railway station and the sense of déjà vu was back. It seemed like a good place to end the trip.
JetWings November 2016 115
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, also known as RK Narayan, is attributed to be one of the greatest Indian English writers and has found admirers in people from different walks of life, including the legendary Graham Greene. Earlier this year, RK Narayan’s house was opened to the public as a museum and it is the abode that the author had built in the early 1950s. Abandoned and decrepit for years after Narayan sold it and moved to Chennai, the house had been the subject of lobbying by Mysuru’s intelligentsia in particular and many others outside about the need for turning it into a museum like those on Rabrindranath Tagore in Kolkata and Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. The voices grew loud and alarmed when the building was slated for demolition. Fortunately, Mysuru City Corporation stepped in, bought the house and renovated it into a museum. At first, the whole place seemed rather bare. Bare that is for something that had been touted as a museum; a museum around a person such as RK Narayan whose works themselves are rich in characters and description. And yet there was a strong sense of déjà vu, of having stepped into one of the houses that he describes in his many stories – whitewashed walls, red-oxide floors, black and white photographs on the walls and one or two pieces of wooden furniture. In a completely different way. It all made sense.
THE RECENTLY-OPENED RK NARAYAN’S HOUSE IN MYSURU (MYSORE) PAYS TRIBUTE TO ONE OF INDIA’S MOST ICONIC WRITERS, BUT IT IS IN SOME OF THE NOOKS, CORNERS AND BYLANES OF OLD MYSURU THAT MALGUDI (THE POPULAR FICTIONAL TOWN CREATED BY NARAYAN) TRULY COMES ALIVE. TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS ANITA RAO-KASHI
Located in Yadavagiri, a modest middleclass area, the two-storeyed house is quite large and stands back from the compound, surrounded a patch of lawn and sundry trees and plants. Inside, the red-oxide floors gleam and are even a little slippery with the two floors connected by a gently winding staircase. The museum has been put together largely with donations from Narayan’s family and seems to have been set up with dollops of fervour. The living room has a set of display cases with an eclectic collection of awards, citations, spectacles, writing implements. On one wall was a set of black and white photographs of Narayan and his family.
Above (L to R): The man himself; A view of the exteriors of the museum; The oval-shaped study in the museum. 110
JetWings November 2016
JetWings November 2016 111
T Satyan/Dinodia Photo/Dinodia
THE WORLD OF NARAYAN
LITERATURE
Above: Stop by at The Malgudi Cafe for some freshlybrewed coffee. Bottom: Bookshelves inside the museum.
In the other two rooms on the ground floor, one had information boards on Narayan’s life, almost verbatim from Wikipedia while the other had a horizontal display case with his shirts, dhoti and other garments. Two other rooms on the first floor were similar, though one of them had a display of his coats on frames, a bit threadbare and frayed, and a bookshelf with a plethora of books.
PAINTER OF WORDS But the most interesting area, by far, is an oval-shaped study, on the first floor, about which Narayan has even talked about in his biography, My Day. On one end here are eight large windows through which sunlight streams in. This was the room where he wrote and it felt a bit surreal to stand in the space where his characters took shape, and his thoughts and words flowed. Along its length runs an outdoor verandah with unhindered views of the frangipani tree that Narayan was fond of. There’s just a table at one end and two shelves recessed into the wall filled with Narayan’s collection of books, which included copies of his own. And yet, as I wandered around, tamping down my expectations and hoping the museum was a work in progress, I couldn’t help but think it was also quite apt in a way. Narayan’s characters and his own lifestyle (as is evident from his biography and accounts of people
112
JetWings November 2016
DID YOU KNOW?
It was Graham Green who recommended the manuscript of Swami and Friends to noted publisher Hamish Hamilton.
who knew him) were far from any fluffy embellishments. It would have indeed been strange to see gussied up displays in the museum.
DATELESS DIARY
As I stepped out of the house, I found the author sitting rather unshakeably in my head so I wandered around Mysuru to get a better handle on Narayan’s inspirations for his characters and situations. I asked Vishwas Krishna Narayan was nominated for of Royal Mysore Walks (that the Nobel Prize in Literature conducts a plethora of walking and multiple times. other kinds of tours including the His first piece of published whimsical Malgudi Days tour) to help writing was a book review. me in this. A fan of Narayan, Krishna had a vast collection of stories, anecdotes and information about the author. We first went to The Malgudi Cafe located inside the charming Green Hotel for a cup of coffee; though it wasn’t even remotely connected to Narayan in any way, it still seemed appropriate to do so. The Malgudi-themed restaurant sported wrought iron furniture around a little courtyard and red-oxide flooring. However, my choice of a cappuccino would probably Popular Bollywood movie The Guide was an adaptation of Narayan’s Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel by the same name.
JetWings November 2016 113
LITERATURE
Clockwise from left: The famous Chamarajapuram Railway Station; Sit by the Kukkarahalli kere for some quiet time; A view of Maharaja’s College.
not have gone down well with Narayan, a coffee puritan who swore by filter coffee! Krishna told me it was a well-documented fact that Narayan would go for really long walks every day after breakfast, sometimes traversing 10–12 km. People he met on these walks and their stories became fodder for his writing. It would have been impossible to trace those routes, so we just skipped from one point to another in no particular order.
OF MUSINGS AND MALGUDI
114
JetWings November 2016
RK Narayan’s House is located at D14, Vivekananda Road, Yadavagiri. It is open from 10 am to 5 pm; Tuesdays closed. Royal Mysore Walks does the bespoke Malgudi Days Tour as well as many other walks.
QUICK FAC T S GETTING THERE
Jet Airways operates regular flights to Bengaluru from major Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad. From here Mysuru is about 150 km and it takes around 3.5 hours to get there. ACCOMMODATION
The grand Lalita Mahal Palace Hotel is a luxury seeker’s paradise. You could either stay here or at one of the many high-end hotels such as the Fortune HP Palace, Radisson Blu Plaza or the Grand Mercure Mysuru. Mysuru also has several boutique stay options. FOR MORE INFORMATION
On Mysuru, visit www.mysore.nic.in On Royal Mysore Walks, visit www.royalmysorewalks.com
T Satyan/Dinodia Photo; Exotica/Dinodia
Since it was mid-morning, the Kukkarahalli kere (tank), a sprawling lake with lovely walking paths and nooks with benches, was deserted. This was Narayan’s bolthole in a sense and he visited it almost everyday, to go for a walk or just contemplate. “Sometimes, I went back to the Kukkarahalli tank in the late afternoon, when the evening sun touched the rippling water-surface to produce uncanny lighting effects, and the western sky presented a gorgeous display of colours and cloud formations at sunset,” describes Narayan in My Days. Maharaja’s College in the centre of the town, with its large colonial ochre buildings and beautiful pillars, is where Narayan and his brothers studied, and it still wore its old-world charm with effortless grace. We quickly stopped by at Narayan’s house in Lakshmipuram, a pale-green structure in the middle of a large compound, where he lived with his parents and siblings, even after he built his Yadavagiri house, since his family refused to move. We wandered through little, shady lanes and avenues in the old parts of Mysuru where old houses with gabled, tiled roofs sat underneath coconut trees and flanked by hibiscus and rose plants. At every place, I seemed to recall snatches from his books and short stories. But I couldn’t end my Mysuru sojourn without a visit to something quintessentially Malgudi. Hidden behind a wide boulevard and some buildings was the lesser known Chamarajapuram Railway Station, about ten minutes away from Narayan’s Laskhmipuram house. It was a lovely old yellow building topped with a gabled roof. Beyond was a chipped concrete platform and the railway tracks. Standing on the tracks and looking back at the building, it felt incredibly similar to the illustration of Malgudi railway station and the sense of déjà vu was back. It seemed like a good place to end the trip.
JetWings November 2016 115
