Malgudi Days

 This book really got me out of the reading slump. I picked up so many books during that time, thinking that I'll be saved. Alas, they were ditched. Anyway, this book is so good and relatable. That's the charm of Narayan's work. There is not a single character with whom you can't relate and Malgudi just feels like a place you've lived all your life. The irony in his book though; the man's a savage XD. He made me search many words because I came across so many words that I didn't know the meaning of. Honestly, I'm the type of person who doesn't use a dictionary; usually, one just infers the meaning of a word from the sentence. However, with Narayan's work, you have to know the meaning of such words, trust me, these words give you the homely "Indian" vibe even if the language is anything but Indian (By this, I mean English wasn't originally used in daily life in India).

Now, from my favorite stories: I actually liked all of them, but here are a few that stole my heart; yeah, I cried too.

"The Blind Dog" from 'The Astrologer's Day', yep, this here is a tear-jerking story. The dog still went back to his blind master even if the said master treated him poorly. "Engine Trouble" gave me the laughs, hard to imagine a man getting an 'engine' as a reward and dealing with the aftermath. "Forty-five a month" is a sad sad story about a father slaving off in a company. "Second opinion" is a long short story (heh, I can use irony too) but worth reading. Other than these, there are some other memorable stories like 'The Missing Mail', 'The Doctor's Word' and 'Selvi'. I felt very conflicted after reading 'Such Perfection', I'm not the kind of person who believes in Divine Power or its likes, so reading that and making sense out of it, especially in the Malgudi Setting was off-putting (for me at least). I wasn't crazy about 'Naga', 'God and the Cobbler' and 'The Martyr's Corner', but they serve as interesting cases of universal human behavior.

Now, I've picked up Wuthering Heights, hope that I don't get reading slump again. Almost wished to unsubscribe Netflix, but no, that platform is dear.😅