Book: The Guide, Author: R.K. Narayan
Read: Sep-2017
I almost forgot how good RKN is, before I picked up this book. His writing has a sense of eternal continuance that defines the civilization in the subcontinent; a sense that things were, are and will be forever. At one level, particularly to the western world, it appears like dumb, slow and/or lazy Indian but at another level thats exactly the wisdom gathered over millenia of existence. I would put RKN next to Premchanda (Hindi) in the way he captures India, Indians and Indianess. The same was later, much later discovered by VS Naipaul. As RKN says- "You don't need to go out to find a story in India; just look out of your window and there's a story."
This book itself had been successfully made into a classic Indian movie. Most of Indians actually are introduced to the film before this book itself. While the film has done more than enough justice to the book (right from casting, acting and setting), there's something missing which the reader realizes only after completing the book. That 'something' ethereal, difficult to put in words, is what underwrites this civilization and therefore the stories from RKN.
I almost forgot how good RKN is, before I picked up this book. His writing has a sense of eternal continuance that defines the civilization in the subcontinent; a sense that things were, are and will be forever. At one level, particularly to the western world, it appears like dumb, slow and/or lazy Indian but at another level thats exactly the wisdom gathered over millenia of existence. I would put RKN next to Premchanda (Hindi) in the way he captures India, Indians and Indianess. The same was later, much later discovered by VS Naipaul. As RKN says- "You don't need to go out to find a story in India; just look out of your window and there's a story."
This book itself had been successfully made into a classic Indian movie. Most of Indians actually are introduced to the film before this book itself. While the film has done more than enough justice to the book (right from casting, acting and setting), there's something missing which the reader realizes only after completing the book. That 'something' ethereal, difficult to put in words, is what underwrites this civilization and therefore the stories from RKN.
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