Death of Malgudi

I grew up in Bangalore, and ‘Malgudi Days’ holds a place in some of my earliest memories of TV serials. I have read almost all Malgudi novels. To me the TV Serial was a work of genius, One of the things that stood out for me was that the serial was made in Hindi and yet it did not lose one bit of South Indianness/South Indian culture. The accent of the actors were South Indian (the actors were obviously South Indians) and that made the serial authentic. In fact, i don’t even think about the language. Anant Nag as the ‘Talkative Man’, Vishnuvardhan as the ‘office clerk’. I guess it is because every Indian identified with the characters. For me the description of the scene where Swami’s father is teaching him algebra, is straight out of my life, even Swami’s thought process. The class monitor like Rajam, someone whom Swami almost worships. This relationship gives you just a hint of the class system that prevails even at such a young age.

The simplicity of life depicted in Malgudi is a story of everyone of us. The characters, stories and the music (tanana tana nana na…, tana na tana nana na…) are all simple, yet we remember them because we identify with them.

Malgudi had been dying for a while by the time i passed out of college. If I were to put a definitive date to the irreversible death throes of Malgudi then I would peg to be the the year 1991. In 1991 India opened itself to the world. Economic growth has led to the old India disappearing. No longer do you see teachers in Dhoti,Kurta and Gandhi topi, No longer do you see students in those ridiculous khaki shorts. Many students don’t walk to school, they ride their bikes, some are dropped off to the school by their drivers. I haven’t seen a child play with paper boats in the rain for years. Nowadays many schools don’t even have play grounds. How are kids going to form Malgudi Cricket Club (MCC)? Children in the city prefer to play computer games or watch cartoons to playing gully Cricket. Working hours are long, Elders don’t read news papers anymore. I am always reminded of swami’s father reading the new paper (I have always wanted to buy a rocking chair for my father).

Do i sound nostalgic? Yes, I do and I am, but this is also the lament of things that we have lost in the process. India has lost its innocence. India is no longer young, it has matured, and with it has come the burden of knowledge, memories of failures, regrets about past decisions. But i remember an old movie in which Ashok Kumar says “Jawani Jawan logo ke liye hain”, I guess we have to do our best and move on, place the reins of India into the hands of the new generation. And move on and seek our future.