RK NARAYAN'S MYSORE HOUSE TO TURN MEMORIAL

Bangalore, July 24: The flavours of Malgudi are set to come alive again.

An R.K. Narayan museum, full with the author's books, spectacles, wooden bed, clothes and other memorabilia, is set to open soon in the Mysore house where he lived and wrote for many years.

Conceived on the lines of the Shakespeare memorial in Stratford-upon-Avon, Mysore civic authorities are trying to set up the house like it looked when Narayan lived there with help from his nephew, R.S. Jayaram. They have gathered memorabilia from the author's relatives.

"His relatives have donated a lot of his books, clothes, spectacles, furniture and pictures that once adorned these walls," Mysore City Corporation commissioner C.G. Betsurmath said on Friday.

"Within the next few days, we will complete setting them up in the house almost like the way they used to be kept," he said.

The corporation has received a wooden bed, dining table and chairs, sofa, medals and certificates of honour, including the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan, and other personal items from Narayan's family in Chennai.

Located on Vivekananda Road in Mysore, some 150km from here, the date of the museum's opening has yet to be decided. But it is likely to be sooner than later.

Jayaram, who spent much of his childhood and college days in the house before shifting to Bangalore, told The Telegraph he was in touch with family and friends to collect whatever memorabilia they might have.

"We shifted all these items from Chennai and now we are still trying to get anything that might add value to the museum," he said.

Son of Narayan's younger brother R.K. Srinivasan, Jayaram said he had vivid memories of the house where the family spent a lot of time together. "We had great fun in that house," he said.

It was, however, sold off by Narayan's family to a builder in 2011. Soon after, the Mysore corporation spent about Rs 2.4 crore to buy the house from him on a prod from the then BJP government. By then, the builder had demolished parts of it to construct a multi-storeyed apartment complex.

Betsurmath said about Rs 29 lakh had been spent to renovate the house. Since the builder had pulled down some windows and doorframes and broken down some sunshades, floors and walls, they had had to be rebuilt.

"We have made it look exactly like it was during the writer's time and also landscaped the land surrounding the building," he said.

While Malgudi Days and Swami and Friends were written before the house was built in 1951, Narayan wrote Under The Banyan Tree & Other Stories, The Man-Eater of Malgudi, A Tiger for Malgudi, My Dateless Diary, and his versions of Mahabharat and Ramayan from the first-floor study that overlooks the gate.

Considered his favourite place to write, Narayan lived there till the early 1990s. But failing health took him to his daughter's house in Chennai where he died on May 13, 2001, at the age of 95.

The Mysore house was left vacant till it was sold in 2011.

K.N. Jagadish, a development officer with Mysore City Corporation, said the renovation took six months. "We deployed around 10 workers on any given day as masonry, plumbing, power wiring and gardening went on almost simultaneously," he said.