Malgudi Days is a short-story collection by Indian writer R. K. Narayan. The book was initially published in 1943 in India by Indian Thought Publications. It was republished internationally by Penguin Classics in 1982.
The book follows the lives of different people, all located in the town of Malgudi, tracing moments in their everyday lives. Each story usually begins with the description of a person's job or daily routine and follows a slight disruption in that pattern. The endings of the stories usually feature some kind of significant turning point for the characters, for better or worse. In the story "Engine Trouble," a man wins a steam-powered tractor (a "road engine") which he cannot use, move, or store. He becomes increasingly desperate to get rid of it, as the city begins charging him rent to leave it at the fairgrounds where he won initially. After a series of increasingly disastrous failures to move it, the tractor is finally pushed by an earthquake, which plugs up an unclean water well. As a result, he reaches an agreement with the man whose wall he destroyed earlier, as the man was about to be fined for the well. In "Second Opinion," a son rebuffs his mother's effort to get him to marry. Then one day, he learns she has secretly been very ill and gives in to her demands. However, after getting a second doctor's opinion, he discovers she will likely be fine, leading him to feel he was too hasty in agreeing to marry. The stories often deal with issues of class, labor, and poverty, highlighting characters who struggle to maintain a household with their earnings. Narayan also uses historical events in the background of the story, like the prime ministership of Indira Gandhi.
A number of the stories were adapted into a 1986 television series of the same name. More of the stories were featured in a subsequent TV series, made in 2006. Google honored Narayan's birthday in 2014, with a graphic on their site about his life and work.
