Who’s the man behind the book on our doodle in India? It’s Malgudi’s native son, famed Indian writer RK Narayan. Narayan is a well known pioneer of early Indian literature and set most of his stories in the fictional town of Malgudi. Happy 108th birthday to RK Narayan!,” says Google describing the doodle posted on its India home page on October 10.
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan was born in Madras (now Chennai) on October 10, 1906. Narayan moved to Mysore from where he graduated in 1930.
Narayan started his career as a journalist and later took to writing novels, his first being Swami and Friends in 1935. Critics acclaim him as one of the greatest Indian storytellers of the modern era for the simplicity of language and wry humour with which he told his tales about the lives of common people in small town India.
Narayan, who was introduced to western publishers by the British novelist Graham Greene, wrote 34 novels, most of which were translated into several Indian and foreign languages.
His Malgudi Days (shown in the doodle), about life in a small fictional town of Malgudi and written in 1982, was made into a popular television serial. The Guide, which was made into a film starring Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman. Narayan also served a term in the Rajya Sabha as a nominated member.
He died of heart failure at the age of 94 on May 12, 2001
