Malgudi Days
Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan as translated by Jhumpa Lahiri. I’m going to take Lahiri’s advice in the book’s introduction and read one story per day for a month.
So begins my reading in 2025.
These short parables are somewhat like Aesop’s, though sometimes the lesson isn’t as clear, yet the predicaments people find themselves in are always unique.
In “Engine Trouble,” a poor fellow spends a few annas on a lottery drawing at a carnival. He ends up winning, of all things, a flipping engine. A heavy block of metal. The carnival packs up and leaves, not being the least helpful to the guy, who was willing to return it. At some point the village authorities tell him a cattle show will be using the field soon and he must move the engine or be fined. Until then, he pays the village rent to keep the engine where it is. Finally he finds someone with a field nearby that he can move it to, free of charge, but how to move it there? After asking drivers everywhere, he realizes he can try moving it with elephant power and hires and pays a couple dozen men to help rig, ride and guide the beast as it tows the engine down the street.
It does not go well.
The elephant, having a mind of its own, decides it doesn’t like the job, rams into a wall halfway to the field and runs off. Our man is now down all that money, plus the fines, reparation costs for the wall, and he still has an illegally parked engine. At wit’s end he miraculously finds help in selling the engine to an unexpected party and that brings him into the black.
Another tale I enjoyed was “Missing Mail” in which an overly-intrusive letter carrier gets way too caught up in a family’s back and forth communications with a prospective bride for their son.
In “Such Perfection” a sculptor renders a vision of Nataraja and asks a local temple priest to stop by and consecrate it before he opens up for public viewing. The priest arrives and is taken aback by the exquisite work. He tells the sculptor that it is too perfect and will anger the gods. The priest asks the sculptor to break off a toe or something like that, it would be ok, but the sculptor does not budge and refuses.
The priest stops by several other times begging not to open the small studio for public viewing. Nothing doing, and the sculptor sends him away.
One day the sculptor opens his doors and people come and gaze in wonder at the work. It gets dark, lighting strikes flare, thunder roars, and torrents of rain begin what would soon turn arid lands into floods, killing people and livestock. In the end, the sculptor is forced to break off part of his art and life resumes as it was.