What is the fictional town mentioned in Swami and Friends?

Malgudi is a fictional town located in South India in Ramanathapuram in the novels and short stories of R. K. Narayan. It forms the setting for most of Narayan’s works. Starting with his first novel, Swami and Friends (1935), all but one of his fifteen novels and most of his short stories take place here. Malgudi was a portmanteau of two Bangalore localities – Malleshwaram and Basavanagudi.

Malgudi is located on the banks of the fictional river Sarayu, near the also-fictional Mempi forest, on border of the states of Mysore and Madras and a few hours’ away from Madras.

Narayan’s assertion that Malgudi is work of fiction has not deterred readers from speculating about its actual location being Mysore, with a river on one side and a forest on the other, and buildings and lanes similar to those of Malgudi, such as Lawley road, Variety Hall, and Bombay Anand Bhavan. Other possible ‘locations’ include Lalgudi situated on the banks of the river Kaveri and Yadavgiri in the erstwhile state of Mysore.

Malgudi was a portmanteau of two Bangalore localities – Malleshwaram and Basavanagudi, the story is apocryphal. He created the town on September 1930, on Vijayadashami, an auspicious day to start new efforts and thus chosen for him by his grandmother. As he mentioned in a later interview to his biographers Susan and N. Ram, in his mind, he first saw a railway station, and slowly the name Malgudi came to him.

Picture Credit : Google

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