MYSORE: Scholars, novelists and academicians regaled by the magic of Malgudi paid tributes to its creator R.K.Narayan at an international seminar that started here on Tuesday to mark his birth centenary.

The fictitious south Indian town created by the master story teller of our times and whose characters from Swami and Friends, Bachelor of Arts, The Guide and scores of other literary works that have left an indelible impression on readers, will be studied and re-evaluated by critics who described R.K. Narayan as a trail-blazer in simple writing or a "favourite writer" with a "loyal following" that is the envy of other authors.

Organised by the Sahitya Akademi, Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and the Central Institute of Indian Languages, the three-day seminar is also an attempt at studying Narayan's life in relation to his works.

Mr.Harish Trivedi, Chairperson, IACLALS described Malgudi as an invention and a construct or a work of art. Anyone with an interest in fiction could hardly have missed Narayan or Malgudi.

Narayan's fictitious creation Malgudi — which is often compared to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County — was described as homespun creation and a state of mind by Mr.Trivedi.

He said that ``one could take Narayan out of Malgudi but not Malgudi out of Narayan" and pointed out that the novelist went to the U.S. when he was in his 50s but wrote The Guide in three months when staying in Berkeley Hotel.

Novelist Shashi Despande looked at Narayan's writings from different perspectives and said he wrote about ordinary men and women and resisted the temptation of "exoticizing" India but created a simplistic Malgudi. ``R.K.Narayan was a phenomenon as he lived in a non-English milieu but wrote in English," she said but noted that there was no account of Narayan's interaction with his contemporaries in the Kannada literary world nor was he referred to by the Kannada litterateurs.

Photojournalist T.S. Satyan, who knew R.K. Narayan for almost six decades, described Malgudi as a metaphor for Mysore and said there was a thin line of dividing fact (Mysore) from fiction (Malgudi).

``I remember how I sat reading them late into the night, enjoying the author's fragrant prose. I cannot suitably describe the sheer joy and humour that Narayan's Malgudi and the graceful men and women who lived there evoked in me. I also felt that Narayan was writing about people who were familiar to me in my own quiet, uneventful town of Mysore.

The seminar is being attended by about 40 scholars and academics from Germany, the U.S., France, Malayasia, the U.K., Canada who will evaluate Narayan's works during the next three days and focus on his novels, essays and autobiographical writings.

Paper presentations

There will be paper presentations on writers tributes to R.K.Narayan and different aspects of his writings in English and a screening of Malgudi Days with a talk by Ms.Padmavati, writer, actor and assistant director at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

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