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R. K. Narayan is one of the most prominent Indian English writers to ever have graced our country. Narayan’s simplistic English stories are woven around realistic portrayals of various Indian characters, and various Indian cities with real names or imaginary ones, the most prominent of them being the little town of Malgudi.

I had brought the book during the Strand Book Fair, a haven for book lovers who wish to buy hordes of new books on a discounted price. Finally, after a year of having brought it, I did get some time to flip through the pages of the book. I was left spellbound by the amazing narrative and story weaving abilities of R.K. Narayan around various characters whom you could easily relate to the people in your every-day life. So synonymous are the roles and portrayals of these characters, such that you will often wonder, why couldn’t I think about that.

It is here, that you will definitely appreciate the brilliance of Narayan’s astute story writing abilities. Narayan was supposedly not a firm believer in age-old traditions prevalent during his times, and also married a woman outside the norms of Tamil Brahman caste, which is historically one of the most blessed upper castes in Indian Society. Still, the way he has penned the traditions of erstwhile Indian society and the dynamism involved with the advent of modernization in his stories beautifully has no wonder left a pleasant sense of admiration among his readers and respect among the western authors of repute, to name a few Somerset Maugham, John Updike and some others from our own land like V S Naipaul.

In his autobiography, R.K. Narayan attributes the idea of The Guide to an incident which he observed in the Cauvery Basin. In his own words:

A recent situation in Mysore offered a setting for such story. A severe drought had dried up all the rivers and tanks; Krishnaraja Sagar, an enormous reservoir feeding channels that irrigated thousands of acres, had also become dry, and its bed, a hundred and fifty feet deep, was now exposed to the sky with fissures and cracks, revealing an ancient submerged temple, coconut stumps, and dehydrated crocodiles. As a desperate measure, the municipal council organized prayers for rains. A group of Brahmans stood knee-deep in water (procured at great cost) on the dry bed of Kaveri, fasted, prayed and chanted certain mantras continuously for eleven days. On the twelfth day it rained. It was really the starting point of The Guide.

The Guide is a beautiful story which is spun around this simple event which still manifests, and is inspired on a true story, with a hero named Raju, whose turmoils, sacrifices and dilemma’s – Narayan effortlessly takes us through. His sense of humor, benign satire, irony, lucid and simple flow of prose is clearly evident in every page of the stories in every one of his fifty years of contributions to the Indian literature. All I can say is that they will continue to remain fresh as decades roll one by one, and the world slips into and escapes from anarchy, mayhem of the mankind. Get one for your bookshelf.

There has been a whole lot of literature regarding the period of transition of our country after the independence gained in 1947, to the present globalization days – Gurcharan Das’s India Unbound, Ramachandra Guha’s India after Gandhi. Although it is not certainly possible to compress the entire socio-economic history of India, the politics, their causes and after effects to a brief 263 pages, given the diverse and amazing socio-economic and cultural landscape of India, Sunil Khilnani’s Idea of India lives up to it’s image of being a compelling and rousing read. Although it picks up only a few key ideas that played a significant role in Indian history, it does a good job of analyzing most of the ideas presented in a wonderful, smooth and crisp flow of prose and pace.

Khilnani, subtly makes use of his profound historical knowledge and talks about Nehruvian and Gandhian ideas and their implications in present day India. As an unashamed modernist who ends up defending Nehru and Gandhi and their ideas, Khilnani also subtly captures the brief portrayals of various prominent national leaders and characters and their roles in shaping the Indian post independent history. Though most of the analysis in the book tends to be brief, the book is absolutely a pleasant read compared to the banal Shashi Tharoor, who relies more on his metaphor abilities while writing books.

The book talks about Nehru’s tussles within the Indian national congress, Hindu nationalism, Indira Gandhi and her “garibi hatao ” movement, her radical departure from the conventional congress principles, the identity of being Indian (how Nehru, Tagore, Gandhi and others had to become Indians to start bringing changes), the vortex of thought processes being influenced by inquisitive western ideas, the anatomy and economic dynamic changes of Indian cities and their growth illustrated by few examples of Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and Bengalooru, the emergence of regional parties in the Indian political space, industrialization and globalization of India, the concept of Indian state and opposition to the idea with in the congress, partition of India, as well as occasional interesting quotes to few other wonderful literature like R.K. Narayan’s The Malgudi days, the faux paus of H.D Devegowda who as the prime minister of India once said, “Please help me, I’m not an economist, give me concrete solutions.” etc.

To sum it up, after you finish this book, I’m sure that each one of you will have found a starting point to look deeply into India’s history as Khilnani further stresses in the epilogue. A bit of thinking and retrospection will also help you make sense of country’s most current problems, as I have discovered profoundly in the past few months. I will post them in coming blog posts. For now, grab this book, grab a pack of potato chips or whatever is that you like to munch on, and hit the most comfortable sofa or bed in your place.