I have just read “My Days”, the autobiography of R K Narayan who has created the fictional town Malgudi in his stories. I could not help the temptation of comparing it with “Living to tell the tale” the memoirs of Gabriel Garcia Marquez whose imaginary town in his novels is Macondo. Both Malgudi and Macondo are emblematic of the culture of South India and South America.
The titles of the memoirs of Narayan and Garcia give clear clues to their lives, novels and characters.
“My days” of Narayan is simple, clear and short. It gives details of his life as it happened from the beginning to the end chronologically. “Living to tell the tale” (Vivir para contarla) of Marquez holds suspense, mystery and excitement. There is a quote attributed to Marquez, “ Men have three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret one”. There is a Latino macho saying, ‘A man without stories is no man’. So one’s curiosity is raised as to what next would come out from his ‘story telling’. In South India life is just a life. It starts with birth, childhood, education, employment, marriage, children, grandchildren and the end with philosophical reflections. In South America it is a story.
Narayan writes in simple and unpretentious prose narrating the story and describing the characters without delving deep into any analysis. He adds touches of humour, irony and satire but in a subtle manner. Marquez’s writing is graphic and filled with rich images. He weaves fantasies and realities one after another and blurs the line between them in the same style of Magical Realism he uses in his novels. While Narayan’s narratives flow smoothly like the calm Cauvery river in the flat delta area of Tamilnadu, Marquez’s writings are like the Magdalena river of Colombia which is turbulent and unpredictable.
Marquez wrote in his mother tongue about the people who spoke Spanish like him. But Narayan wrote in a language foreign to his characters. The ordinary men and women of Malgudi speak Tamil or Kannadiga and do not understand English. It is amazing that he has made the natives to come alive in a foreign language. I could feel the emotions, characters and moments as naturally as I felt when I read such stories in Tamil with familiar local expressions.
Narayan is a writer of few words. But within his short descriptions and phrases, he evokes vividly a whole lot of emotions and feelings around the events and characters. Marquez, on the other hand, is given to overwhelm and mesmerize the reader with long, lyrical and effervescent expressions which flow tumultuously like a mountain stream. Narayan takes us through the short village roads. With Marquez it is a long journey through mountainous roads overlooking jungles, valleys, peaks and precipices.
Narayan gives details of his life one after another in a direct and linear way: his childhood in Chennai with a monkey and a peacock as his pets; his college days in Mysore; his choice of career as a writer; his short married life and the death of his wife; his struggles to make both ends meet; his experience as being part of a typical joint family; the challenges he faced in renting houses and building his own home eventually; his interactions with neighbours, relatives and friends; his success as a writer with money and fame; and the happy ending when he sees his grandson’s attempt at a short story on his next door uncle.
Maquez tells us tales of his adventures and misadventures in his signature style of his novels. His life story is dense with details, twists, turns and many labyrinths. His memoirs mesmerizes and surprises the readers. He opens his life boxes randomly and one does not know what will come out of each box. One is filled with anticipation and excitement. Marquez ends his book with this last sentence, “ On Thursday of the following week, when I walked into the hotel in Geneva at the end of another useless day of international disagreemnts, I found her letter of reply”. Later we come to know that the letter was from his childhood sweetheart Mercedes Bachart. He had proposed to her when she was thirteen and she took her time to say yes. They were married when she reached the age of twenty six.
Narayan’s autobiography avoids the larger issues of politics and history. He is apolitical and holds no ideological beliefs or associations. He does not touch issues of the day such as freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi, British colonialism, Marxist theories or the world warsof his time. The Malgudians are insular and somewhat disconnected from the issues of the world outside. They do not try anything revolutionary. Nor do they expect any dramatic changes. They are tied deeply to their millennial traditions, horoscope, rituals and practices.
Márquez relates his life to the issues of violence, wars, repressions, revolts, dictatorship, revolutions, exile, politics and history of Colombia, Latin America and the world. He refers to heroes and villains who achieve greatness and face tragic ends. Marquez was a leftist and remained as a personal friend of Fidel Castro, even after many other writers distanced themselves from the Cuban dictatorship which stifled freedom of expression. His anti-imperialist statements were labelled as subversive by US which denied him visa for many years.
Narayan lived his entire life in Chennai-Mysore area except for his travel to US, Australia and UK. He lived in the traditional Indian joint family system of grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters. Although he chooses an unconventional career of writing Indian stories in English, he follows the tradition of his Brahmin caste and works within the framework of south Indian culture in his personal life. He is austere, straightforward and modest in his style of life. He chose an auspicious day (Vijayadashami) to create his imaginary town of Malgudi for his novel. Horoscopes and astrologers played important part in his family life. After his wife dies within a few years of marriage, he refuses to remarry and continues his life as a widower. His daughter is brought up in his joint family. He never set his eyes on other women or sought sex outside. He was a teetotaller. His only sin was smoking.
Marquez’s life is colourful and adventurous. He is a typical Latino mujeriego (womaniser), just as his father was. Besides affairs and romances, he was a regular visitor to the brothels. He claims that he was a veteran of two bouts of gonorrhea by the age of twenty three.
While Marquez chose a young whore as protagonist for his last novel, Narayan’s last book is about his grand mother. Both the books are considered as autobiographical. The title of Narayan’s last book is “Grandmother’s tale”. One does not have to guess. It is simply the story of his grandmother and what she had told him in his childhood. Marquez’s last novel is “Memories of my melancholy whores (Memoria de mis putas tristes). It is about the romance of a 90 year-old man with a young and almost adolescent whore. But the word ‘whore’ does not appear in Narayan’s autobiography or his novels. Nor is there any descriptions or narrations of sex in his novels.
Here are a few commonalities between the two writers. Both were brought up by their grand parents in their childhood. Both worked as news reporters to earn a living to start with before becoming professional writers. Both had struggled with financial insecurity during the initial phase of their carreer.
Coffee was the common stimulant for both. Narayan gulped cups of the steaming hot filter coffee made in traditional Tamil Brahmin way. In South India, you ask for coffee and you get only one kind, coffee and milk premixed with plenty of sugar. But in Colombia, there are many coffees and one has to specify what one wants. Tinto is sweetened black coffee from leftover beans and the most popular. Perico is Tinto in which half the coffee has been replaced with warm milk. Perico escuro has less milk while Perico claro has more milk. Pintadito is black coffee with milk without foam. Carajillo will make one tipsy because it has the alcohol of aguardiente/rum.
The Colombians describe the complexion of people through coffee. Whites are milk, blacks are coffee and the mulattos are coffee with milk (café on leche). In some cases there is more milk and in others less. There are a number of Colombians who look like Indians with their coffee with milk complexion. There is a delightful Colombian comedy film “Ambassador of India” (Embajador de la India) in which a crook from the city pretends in a rural part of Colombia as the Indian Ambassador of India and manages to fool the people and take them for a ride. This is based on a true story. The Colombian was able to do it because of his coffee with milk skin colour.
Marquez spent hours together in the cafes filled with the aroma of the famous Arabic coffee of Colombia. Sometimes the coffee had the aroma of women. True.. There is a popular Colombian Television serial called as “Café con aroma de mujer” (Coffee with the scent of a woman), produced in the nineties. It is the story of romance between a coffee plantation worker with the son of the owner of the estate. There is a song in the serial which goes like this
Dame un beso que me sepa a café
Café y tu lo estas con mi aroma de mujer
Give me a kiss that tastes like coffee
Coffee.. you are with the scent of my woman
Both the writers have said that their invented towns of Malgudi and Macondo are not so much as places but they are essentially states of the mind, which allow you to see what you want, and how you want to see them.
“Malgudi to Macondo: the journey of an innocent Indian through the seductive Latin America” is the title of my book published in 2012. Caution: It is not autobiographical. It is a collection of real life stories of Latin American people, their culture, history, politics and business as well as their encounters with India.
I was born in a village fifteen km from the nearest town called as Lalgudi in Trichy district of Tamilnadu. Lalgudi rhymes with Malgudi. I had spent the first twenty years of my life in the village. Lalgudi has a railway station like in Malgudi and Macondo. When I travel by train from Chennai to my village, I get down at Lalgudi station. While approaching the station, I always look out for the dense green plantations of bananas on either side of the railway, a scene similar to the Macondo station.
I was like one of the simple Malgudian characters in the stories of Narayan. But when I reached Brazil in 1996, a new world opened. My Latino friends tease me saying that I lost my South Indian innocence in the South American magical realism. The twelve years of my stay in Latin America was full of discoveries, exploration and excitement.
The third chapter of my life started since my retirement in 2012 and settling down in a place which I call it as Mallgudi. Malls surround me on all sides with their bluish green glass and grey steel. It is a millennium city of malls, money and multinational corporations.
It was called as Gurgaon and now changed to Gurugram. Here, Cows walk leisurely between the BMWs speeding on the roads. Villages can be seen through the glass windows of the Malls. Migrant workers from other states are helpers in the mansions of MNC executives from other countries. Young English-speaking professionals share seats in the metro with Oriya speaking plumbers. Mustard farms are lurking behind the mighty high walls of the multistory apartment buildings. Amidst the arid Aravalli hills, there are lush green luxury golf courses with blue water ponds. A new kind of magical realism?
I am on the lookout for a book whose title will fit the chapter of my Mallgudi life.
