The Man eater of Malgudi is a novel written by famous Indian writer, R.K. Narayan, originally published in 1961. The Story of novel revolves around a man, Nataraj, a simple man of small village, Malgudi.
The Man Eater of Malgudi By R.K Narayan
Summary of The Man Eater of Malgudi By R.K Narayan
R.K. Narayan’s “The Man Eater of Malgudi” begins with the main character, Nataraj, who is a simple man in Malgudi village and has a printing shop. Nataraj is a well-known person in his village. Nataraj is doing well in his printing shop business and his business is growing day by day.
He is known as a kind and compassionate person who likes to help people. Nataraj is married and has a son named Chota Babu. He wakes up every day at 4 am as he likes to start his day with the rising sun.
Nataraj has a friend named Shastri. One day, Shastri has to go home for puja, so he asks his friend Nataraj to take care of his printing work. Shastri hands over his work to Nataraj and goes to his home. A new character enters the story, Vasu, who is a macho villain and works as a taxidermist. Vasu goes to Nataraj’s shop to print visiting cards.
Nataraj doesn’t like Vasu’s aggressive behavior but he accepts his printing order. Nataraj and his friends don’t like Vasu, they feel that they have made a big mistake by accepting his order. They should have rejected Vasu’s order.
One day Vasu comes to Nataraj’s shop and asks for help to stay in his shop for a few days. As we all know Nataraj is a good person, he allowed Vasu to stay in his shop. Vasu spends most of his time outside the shop, he only visits Nataraj’s shop to relax. He used to have arguments with Nataraj’s friends. One day Vasu comes to Nataraj’s shop with the forest officer of Mempi forest, the forest officer wants Nataraj to do his printing work.
On the other hand, Nataraj doesn’t like Vasu so he doesn’t want to do any work of Vasu’s friend. Vasu wants to impress the forest officer as he needs permission from him to hunt in the Mempi forest. Somehow Nataraj agrees to do the printing work of the forest officer. With the help of Nataraj, Vasu impresses the forest officer and gets permission to hunt in the Mempi forest. But the forest officer allows him to hunt only wild birds. Vasu gets angry at the forest officer as he needs permission to hunt big animals like elephants and not wild birds.
As soon as Vasu gets the hunting permission, he starts killing animals daily. He was piling up all the animal carcasses in Nataraj’s shop without his permission. Nataraj cannot tolerate all this so he decides to throw Vasu out of his shop.
Nataraj lies to Vasu, he tells him that his relatives are coming to his house who are going to stay in his shop so he asks Vasu to get out of his shop immediately. Vasu gets angry, he shouts at Nataraj without any reason. After this Vasu leaves from Nataraj’s shop without any proper reply. After a few days, Nataraj gets a legal notice letter from the Rent Controller Court.
Nataraj knows that he is getting the legal notice letter only because of Vasu, on the other hand Vasu was killing more and more animals day by day.
He was not showing any mercy to the animals. One day, the same forest officer visits Nataraj’s shop to meet Vasu. He warns Vasu to stop hunting in his forest. The forest officer also increases the security in his forest to stop Vasu from hunting.
To entertain himself, Vasu starts bringing prostitutes to Nataraj’s shop. There comes the famous elephant of Memi forest, Kumar who is very sick. Nataraj requests his villagers to bring Kumar to his village for treatment. When Vasu comes to know about Kumar’s arrival in Malgudi, he plans to hunt him. Nataraj comes to know about Vasu’s plan and tries to stop him.
The next day, Thanappa comes to Nataraj and tells him that when he went to meet Vasu at his shop, he found him dead. Nataraj requests Thanappa not to tell anyone about this. Later, the police comes to Nataraj’s shop to investigate Vasu’s murder. The police conduct Vasu’s post-mortem and find that he was murdered by hitting his head.
Everyone in Malgudi village starts blaming Nataraj for Vasu’s murder even though he had no hand in it. The story of the novel ends with the last new character Rangi, who is Vasu’s prostitute, telling everyone that Vasu died by hitting his head with an iron rod.
There were lots of mosquitoes buzzing around Vasu’s head, so to stop them from buzzing Vasu hit one of them on the head with an iron rod and it died on the spot. The story ends with a beautiful lesson, bad people bring about their own destruction.
AMAZON LINK : – The Man Eater of Malgudi By R.K Narayan
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