Malgudi Days

Malgudi Days is a collection of short stories by R.K. Narayan that focused on the trial and tribulations of a small Indian town of Malgudi. R. K. Narayan (October 10, 1906 - May 13, 2001), was one of India's greatest English language novelists, known for his works based in the fictional town of Malgudi. According to R.K. Narayan, Malgudi is a town "habited by timeless characters who could be living anywhere in the world" and is located on the banks of river Sarayu and surrounded by the Mempi Hills.

Format	TV series
Created by	R. K. Narayan
Directed by	Shankar Nag
Country of origin	India
Language(s)	Hindi
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	39
Running time	approx. 22 minutes
Original channel	DD National Sony TV TV Asia

Background

The series "Malgudi Days" was directed by the late Kannada actor and director, Shankar Nag in 1987, and was shot entirely near Agumbe in Shimoga District, Karnataka. The music was rendered by L. Vaidyanathan and was produced by T.S. Narasimhan of the Padam Rag Films. It included many of Narayan's short stories and novels such as Swami and Friends and The Vendor of Sweets.

“Malgudi – the fictional semi-urban town” was one of Narayan's greatest achievements. R.K. Narayan also got award for this. He created the town in September 1930, on Vijayadashami, an auspicious day to start new efforts and thus chosen for him by his grandmother.  He first saw a railway station, and slowly the name Malgudi came to him. The town of Mysore where R.K. Narayan lived has influenced him a lot to write this stories as we can see the flavour of the city in each story. The town was created with an impeccable historical record, dating to the Ramayana days when it was noted that Lord Rama passed through the town; it was also said that the Buddha visited. While Narayan never created strict physical constraints for the town, he allowed it to form shape with events in the various stories, becoming a reference point for the future. 

Plot

Vendor Of Sweets narrated the story of a sweet vendor, Jagan, his business and confrontation with his son who had returned from abroad. The title role was played by Kannada actor, Anant Nag.

Swami and Friends revolves around ten-year old Swaminathan, or Swami as he is known by other characters. Swami portrays the growing pangs of a boy who despises school, as he makes excuses and roams around Malgudi with his friends. Swami's father works in a government office and his mother is a housewife. At home, Swami shares his adventures with his aged granny, who lovingly addresses him as "Chamy." Swami also has two close friends; Mani and the son of the Police Chief Superintendent, Rajam. Swami's character was enacted By Manjunath, a regular feature in many of Shankar Nag directed movies.

The sketches for the serial were done by Narayan's brother and acclaimed cartoonist, R.K. Laxman. Thirty-nine episodes of "Malgudi Days" were telecast on Doordarshan . Subsequently, it was re-telecast on Doordarshan and later on Sony Entertainment Television, and Maa Television in Telugu.

In 2004, the project was revived with film-maker Kavitha Lankesh replacing the late Shankar Nag as director. The new series was telecast from April 26, 2006 on Doordarshan.

The nobele Laureates from India

Nobel Prize - an annual award for outstanding contributions to chemistry or physics or physiology and medicine or literature or economics or peace.

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been awarded annually as per Alfred Nobel's last will and testament.  It is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. Indians have always shown their untapped potential and have achieved Nobel prize in every field. Even though they may not have facilities and luxuries at par with the likes of USA, Britain and other big social economies but the talent, hard work and skill here is unfathomed.

Nobel Prize winners from India are with due respect enlisted below, these are great people from India who showed the world the untapped potential India has,

RABINDRANATH TAGORE(1861 – 1941) - India’s Poet Laureate   

• Nobel Prize for Literature (1913)
• Popularly known as Gurudev, India's most famous writer and poet was awarded the Nobel Prize in recognition of his work Geetanjali, a collection of poems, in 1913. Tagore was also involved in teaching. In 1901 he founded the famous Santiniketan which later came to be known as Vishwabharati University.
  
• He became Asia's first Nobel laureate when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.
• Tagore wrote many love lyrics. Geetanjali and Sadhana are among his important works.

The poet, dramatist and novelist is also the author of India’s National Anthem.

CHANDRASHEKAR VENKATA RAMAN(1888-1970) - recognized for his work on the molecular scattering of light 

• Nobel Prize for Physics (1930)
• Born at Thiruvanaikkaval in Tamil Nadu, Raman studied at Presidency College, Madras. Later, he served as Professor of Physics at Calcutta University. C.V. Raman won the Nobel Prize for an important research in the field of optics (light). Raman had found that diffused light contained rays of other wavelengths-what is now popularly known as Raman Effect.
• In 1954 he was awarded the Bharat Ratna. He was also awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1957.
  
• His theory discovered in 1928 explains the change in the frequency of light passing through a transparent medium.

India celebrates National Science Day on 28 February of every year to commemorate the discovery of the Raman Effect in 1928.

HARGOBIND KHORANA (b. 1922) 

• The Nobel Prize for Medicine (1968)
  
  
• Hargobind Khorana was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1968. Of Indian origin, Dr Khorana was born in Raipur, Punjab (now in Pakistan). He took his doctoral degree in Chemistry from Liverpool University and joined the University of Wisconsin as a Faculty Member in 1960.
  
• His major breakthrough in the field of Medicine—interpreting the genetic code and analyzing its function in protein synthesis—fetched him the Nobel Prize
• In 1970 Khorana became the Alfred Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology  where he worked until retiring in 2007. 
  

He is a member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute, and currently holds Professor Emeritus status at MIT.

MOTHER TERESA  (1910-1997)

• The Nobel Peace Prize (1979)
  
• The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Mother Teresa in 1979 - A  Roman Catholic nun with Indian citizenship who founded the Missionaries of charity in Kolkata (Calcutta), India in 1950.
• Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu at Skopje, now in Yugoslavia. She wanted to become a nun and joined the Irish order of the Sisters of Loretto (at Dublin) in 1928. It is as a nun that Agnes came Calcutta in 1929. Here she was extremely touched by the misery of the poor and the sick. She decided to dedicate her life to serving them. She then founded a group of similar minded people called the Missionaries of Charity and set up Nirmal Hriday  (meaning Pure Heart) a center where she took care of the dying, the lepers and other people who had been left alone on the streets of Calcutta to die. Today her group has centers all over the world

SUBRAMANIAN CHANDRASEKHAR (1910-1995)

• The Nobel Prize for Physics (1983)
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his studies on the physical processes important to the structure and evolution of stars. 
  
• Dr S. Chandrashekar is an Indian-born astrophysicist (a branch of astronomy or the study of space). After studying at the Presidency College in Madras, Dr. Chandrasekhar went to the United States for work and settled there. He has written many books on his field Astrophysics and Stellar Dynamics. He developed a theory on white dwarf stars forecasts the limit of mass that dwarf stars can have. This limit is known as the Chandrashekar Limit. His theory also explains the final stages of the evolution of stars.
  

Dr. Chandrashekar is the nephew of another Nobel Prize winner Sir C.V. Raman.

AMARTYA SEN (b-1933) 

• Nobel Prize for Economics (1998)
• Prof. Amartya Sen is the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics for the year 1998
• He is one of the most respected economics thinkers in the world. He is also an excellent teacher. He won the Nobel for his work in the area of economic theory. Some of his most important work is in the areas of poverty, democracy, development and social welfare.
  
• The ‘impossibility theorem’ suggested earlier by Kenneth Arrow states that it was not possible to aggregate individual choices into a satisfactory choice for society as a whole. Prof. Sen showed mathematically that societies could find ways to alleviate such a poor outcome.

Prof. Amartya Sen is the first Asian to win the Economics Nobel.

Other Nobel laureates having linked to India

RUDYARD KIPLING (1865-1936) 

• Nobel prize in Literature (1907)
• He was a British author and poet. Born in Bombay, British India.
  
• In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient.
  
• British writer, Rudyard Kipling wrote novels, poems and short stories — mostly set in India and Burma (now known as Myanmar). He was the Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration, which characterize the creations of this world-famous author."
  

He is best known for his works of fiction The Jungle Book (1894) (a collection of stories)