Trekking down a Village called India.

Recently we witnessed the passing away of Mr.K.R.Narayanan, the former president of India, a great parliamentarian, a humble citizen, a true son of the soil, a distinguished leader and a brilliant poet.

Recently I happened to read in "The Week", a tribute to him, by Jacob Mathew, a publisher of the week. It provided an excellent insight into the man. He had as a child written a poem entitled " A Poet`s plea" and sent to "Malayala Manorama". It was published and the editor replied to the young narayanan with a gift of two rupees.

He later reminisces that he hadn`t been more happier, even when he had become President of India. So moving along these lines, my mind moved on.. playing with his initials. I was instantly reminded of two other great intellectuals of our nation.

One of them is R.K.Laxman, the great Indian cartoonist. I searched for his cartoons on the net, but I could only find them on a portal on tripod by a person called Rahul Lakhote. I had earlier read, in Reader`s Digest, an interview with him. It was really good to say the least.

His cartoons have always given both laughter and triggered thought and his simple sketches have been so much in sync with the Common Man`s thoughts, that I must say, his art has by now been taken for granted.

He is in true regard, the official cartoonist of India, i must say. R.K.Laxman however did not overnight become profound in his interesting profession. He started by illustrating for his brother....

His Brother, the third angle to which my mind lingered at last, none other than the great raconteur R.K. Narayanan.

In Jacob Mathew`s article quoted earlier, he remarks that "Malayalis love Nostalgia".. In fact many of us do, We are all nostalgic at times... And I am sure any of us who have read about Malgudi or have seen the mini-series on Television would instantly go nostalgic whenever we listen to the title track of Malgudi Days...

That was the power of the stories, power of the images created in our mind, depth to which they were etched in even the most uninhabited corridors of our memories.

I guess these memories themselves are the greatest forms of appreciation an author can ever get..

During my stints of lazy browsing, I came upon this article. In which it said that Graham Greene once remarked that Narayan`s readers think that there is really a village called Malgudi in India. What he forgets is that, Malgudi is nothing, but a caricature representing all the thousands of beautiful villages in India..

Though these three great sources of my inspiration have been diverse in their professions, they all had one common trait.

All of them loved our nation, they loved our villages, they have all been nostalgic...

At the end of it all, I question myself why do I play with the letter K and R. K.R and R.K. Am I myself reminiscing about my village in KerRala..??

India, is a collection of diverse beautiful and villages, each of them with a great culture and wonderful stories to tell..