Sita Bhaskar's new novel is a modern-day throwback to RK Narayan’s ‘Malgudi Days'

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. At the end of her charming novel Rukmini Aunty and the R.K. Narayan Fan Club, Sita Bhaskar quotes the Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith’s admiration for the much-loved creator of Malgudi Days, first published as a collection of short stories in 1943, and later turned into a popular TV series in 1986.

“He was a major influence in writing the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," McCall Smith is cited as saying. “Narayan succeeded in creating small, self-contained worlds for his quirky characters which gives him an avenue to explore their eccentricities and problems." The statement provides a perfect frame to read Bhaskar’s work, a fictional revisiting of the controversies over the restoration of Narayan’s home in Yadavagiri in Mysore (now Mysuru), where he spent many years writing some of his best work, until poor health forced him to move to Chennai in the 1990s to live with his daughter during his last years.

After his death in 2001, Narayan’s heirs handed over the house to a developer, who began to knock down the run-down building in 2011. That same year, thanks to a spirited campaign by a local newspaper, Star of Mysore, the Mysore Urban Development Authority declared the writer’s former home a heritage building and put an end to the demolition. Eventually, the government of Karnataka bought the property, despite protests by some local writers who felt the gesture was misguided, since Narayan, apart from being a Tamilian, wrote in English, not in Kannada, and did not deserve such an honour (even though he modelled Malgudi partly on Mysore, a city he dearly loved).