Mysuru: In the autumn of 1986, long before cable networks and streaming platforms began carving up our evenings, families used to gather around those bulky, cathode-ray tubes called black-and-white televisions at dinnertime on Wednesdays, soaking up the unhurried rhythms of a fictional South Indian town.Based on the timeless writings of Mysuru-based novelist RK Narayan and brought to life by actor-director Shankar Nag, Malgudi Days premiered on Sept 24, 1986, across Doordarshan’s National Network. Over the next 38 episodes, it went on to capture the imagination of a nascent television audience through its simplistic storytelling — anchored irrevocably by the classic opener, ‘A Hero’, and the misadventures of a boy named Swami.Forty years later, from Sept 1-3, the original trio — Master Manjunath (who played Swami), Rohith Srinath (Rajam), and Raghuram Sitaram (Mani), now a resident of Canada — reunited to walk the very same earthy tracks of the celebrated tele series.“For the last two years, I had been planning to revisit Agumbe with my co-actors,” Manjunath said. “Since the serial is completing 40 years this month, we thought this would be one special visit.”The actors spent three days wandering through Agumbe and Arasalu, reliving their childhood selves. They returned to the rooms where they stayed during production and crossed paths with villagers who still remember when a modest television crew transformed their quiet neighborhoods into RK Narayan’s universe. They even visited the SVS School, whose infrastructure stood in for the iconic Albert Mission School in the series.Though some of the buildings have weathered into disrepair, the core of the town remains strikingly untouched.“Agumbe has not changed much. It is almost like a town frozen in time,” Manjunath noted. That timeless quality, he believes, could anchor a dedicated ‘Malgudi Days’ tourism circuit, linking Agumbe and Arasalu and bringing sustainable employment to locals without stripping the region of its rustic soul.The trio’s ‘pilgrimage’ culminated at the historic Arasalu railway station, where the Shivamogga Kannada Sangha felicitated the actors. For Rohith, standing amidst the old tracks brought a rush of emotion. “The images of those shooting days came rushing back in our minds,” he said.Agumbe and Arasalu hark back to a simpler era when television allowed us to smile at everyday innocence — and fallibilities. Four decades later, for Swami, Rajam, and Mani, it’s yesterday once more!Docu on the anvilThe trio is now developing a documentary on Malgudi Days, uniting the original cast and crew. The project will explore the production’s behind-the-scenes magic and spotlight the locations that shaped its visual soul — including R.K. Narayan’s ancestral home in Mysuru, where the legendary author once walked and dreamed up his immortal characters.eom
