of Shankar Nag's "Malgudi Days" TV serial links for your downloading & bhiewing pleasuaah:

Episode 1: A Horse and Two Goats - East is east, and West is west, and the twain shall meet in this one. In Hindi with English subtitles

Episode 2 : The Hoard

Episode 3:

Episode 4:

Episode 5:

Episode 6: Old Man of the Temple

Episode 7: The Postmaster

Password required for access: "malgudi".

Also the $$$ readers can now buy thirteen of the episodes of this TV serial on DVD for $19.00 only.

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Does anyone know where I can find a map of Malgudi? I know that it is included in some edition of the book "Malgudi Days". Also searching for the map led me to this tribute to Narayan written by the old scold V.S. Naipaul, and this one by Amit Chaudhuri, both of which I hadn't read before.

For those of us who had grown up with Doordarshan in 1980s India, I am sure Shankar Nag's serial "Malgudi Days", based on R.K. Narayan's short stories and novels was one of those must watch programs. Since I seem to be on a nostalgia trip these days, I have managed to unearth a few links from where folks with fast broadband connections, and an absence of righteous copyright qualms, can download and view a few of episodes of this TV serial, in which the characters coverse in very lovely Tam/Kannara-lish, a cousin of Queen's English.

Here is Episode 7: A Hero, featuring Swami, Mani, Pea, Father, Granny etc. It is approximately 90 MB Real Player file. Also for those of us who went to CBSE/NCERT/Central schools back in the country, this story was included in the English textbooks.

For me personally, one of the special connections that I share with a certain someone is that she can perfectly mimic the distinctive theme music of this TV serial, note for note. And this post is for her amusement as much as mine. Tanaana naana naanaa...Enjoy!

PS: Password required for access is "malgudi"

Back in the Mofussil ages, when Doordarshan reigned supreme over the Indian eyeballs with its programming of kitschy Ramanand Sagar's epics, Sunday evening Hindi movies peppered with too many advertisements for Lux Beauty soap, Cinkara tonics, Lalitaji's Rin Detergent etc (I leave it to the more talented mimics I know to write a cultural history of those early TV years in India), the powers to be managed to slip in some subversive programming such as Tom & Jerry cartoons, German detective soaps (I forget the name now), which I distinctly remember had a 'shocking' episode on busting of an amateur porn ring (now you know why!), and also the comedy of the Great Chaplin.

However it was "Laurel & Hardy" that held my attention and allegiance then, as they do so now. I was thinking about them late last night in bed as I was reading this in Kurt Vonnegut's latest acerbic and funny book A Man Without A Country (for the interested, this book is basically an eighty two year old socialist-humanist's chataqua on comedy, creative writing, fossil fuel powered thermodynamic whoopee, the Chosen One's, i.e., Small B's Administration of Guessers etc, and because of its slenderness can be comfortably read in an afternoon) :

"Humor is an almost psychological response to fear. Freud said that humor is a response to frustration - one of several. A dog, he said, when he can't get out a gate, will scratch and start digging and making meaningless gestures, perhaps growling or whatever, to deal with frustration or surprise or fear.

There is a superficial sort of laughter. Bob Hope, for example, was not really a humorist. He was a comedian with very thin stuff, never mentioning anything troubling. I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all the time. They could be so easily killed."

While one can find separate biographies of thin Laurel (most interesting fact: he was British, and was an understudy to Chaplin as he was starting out in comedy) and plump Hardy (he was born in Harlem, Georgia, not far from where I currently live), their lives might be more insightfully treated as a set of Siamese twins, in which the two confused heads are at constant war with each other. Or as Vonnegut again put it in the prologue of his novel "Slapstick",

"The fundamental joke with Laurel and Hardy, it seems to me, was that they did their best with every test. They never failed to bargain in good faith with their destinies, and were screamingly adorable and funny on that account".

Anyway, here you can watch a short documentary on these fellas. Finally, we come to the comedy itself. YouTube has plenty of choice morsels for belly aching laughs. Here are some of the longer ones:

Soda Fountain Skit

Reelin in the Sailors

<a href=”www.youtube.com>Big Business: Selling Christmas Trees

<a href=”www.youtube.com>You Gave It To Me

<a href=”www.youtube.com>Laurel Visits Hardy at the Hospital