Harivansh Rai Bachchan - MadhuShala

MadhuShala and Jo Beet Gayi So Baat Gayi are the two of the best literary works I have ever come across.

Harivansh Rai Bachchan, father of the legendry Amitabh Bachchan is one of the best Hindi poets of all time.

More to come on Mr. Bachchan

Prakash

There are loads of things to be done, including the optimisation for the Best Indian Business School Blog contest which curentt Prateek is leading, completing the paper on Dutch Auctions and updating the blog template but before all that, there is something more important to be done here. I need to talk about Prakash.

Prakash left for his home somewhere in East India. Prakash is an excellent singer, plays guitar very well, a drummer and a member of a professional rock band back home.

Before he departed he wanted a second hand mobile phone and a few songs on a disk. I wasn’t able to get him that phone, I am sure Piyush would have helped him with the disk.

I knew he was leaving on morning around 4 AM and I decided I would wake up and see him off but I could’nt do that. I met him a day before when I was running for my class, last words exchanged between me and him were good bye and all the best for your studies etc.

When I have achieved something worthwhile, I would make it a point to go find him and talk to him again and see how his world has changed over all these years.

And if you don’t really know who he is, he was one of those few people who worked in our mess and made sure that we get good food.

Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan

Malgudi Days - The collection of short stories by R.K.Narayan. I have been reading quite a few things ever since I landed at MDI but Malgudi Days has been a revelation. ! I never thought that short stories could be so good. The use of the words is almost magical. Every story is has a characteristic touch. Each story ends with a positive note with an element of surprise in it.

Malgudi Days is about people of Malgudi, their daily experiences, and their stories narrated by the Author R.K.Narayan.

In Narayan's words himself
Malgudi was an earth-shaking discovery for me, because I had no mind for facts and things like that, which would be necessary in writing about Malgudi or any real place. I first pictured not my town but just the railway station, which was a small platform with a Banyan tree, a station master, and two trains a day, one coming and one going. On Vijayadasami I sat down and wrote the first sentence about my town: The train had just arrived in Malgudi Station. "

R.K. Narayan – brief biography
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami was born in 1906. R.K. Narayan spent his early years in Madras (Chennai) before moving to Mysore. He got his Bachelor’s Degree from University of Mysore.

R.K. Narayan started his literally career with short stories in The Hindu (N. Ram the editor at The Hindu happens to be a very good friend of R. K. Narayan).
He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1961, the first time an award was given to a work in English for The Guide. In 1980, R. K. Narayan was awarded the A.C. Benson award by the Royal Society of Literature and was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1989 he was made a member of the Rajya Sabha (the non-elective House of Parliament in India). He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide (1958).

His autobiographies are titled My Days and My Dateless Dairy.

R. K. Narayan – published works (copied and edited from link http://www.meghdutam.com/authors/narayan.shtml)
· 1935: Swami and friends
· 1937: Bachelor of Arts
· 1938: The Dark Room
· 1939: Mysore
· 1945: The English Teacher
· 1947: An Astrologer's Day , and other stories
· 1949: Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi
· 1952: The Financial Expert
· 1953: Grateful to Life and Death
· 1955: Waiting for the Mahatma
· 1956: Lawley Road , and other stories
· 1958: The Guide
· 1960: Next Sunday : sketches and essays
· 1961: The Man-Eater of Malgudi
· 1964: My Dateless Diary : An American Journey
· 1965: Gods, Demons, and others
· 1967: The Vendor of Sweets
· 1970: A Horse and two Goats , stories
· 1972: The Ramayana; a shortened modern prose version
· 1974: My Days
· 1974: Reluctant Guru
· 1976: The Painter of Signs
· 1978: The Mahabharata: a shortened modern prose version
· 1980: The Emerald Route (with sketches by his brother R.K. Laxman)
· 1982: Malgudi Days
· 1983: A Tiger for Malgudi
· 1985: Under the Banyan Tree and other stories
· 1986: Talkative Man
· 1988: A Writer's Nightmare : selected essays
· 1989: A Story-Teller's World : Stories, Essays, Sketches
· 1990: The World of Nagaraj
· 1992: Malgudi Landscapes : the best of R.K. Narayan
· 1993: The Grandmother's Tale : three novellas
· 1993: Salt & sawdust : stories and table talk

Links
http://www.iit.edu/~jainank/reading/db/narayan/narayan.html http://www.meghdutam.com/authors/narayan.shtml

The Nidhi Kapoor Story

Did you like this post? May be you want to read my first book - The Nidhi Kapoor Story.

Check it out on Amazon or Flipkart?