Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Macondo or William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha Country, Narayan's Malgudi is a fictional town that the author created to capture the essence of different places, without being tied down to the details of a real place. Malgudi is the setting of the stories in Malgudi Days but also appears in almost all of his other novels and stories. Narayan uses the town to explore his different ideas about Indian society.
One of Malgudi's most notable features is its proximity to the fictional river, Sarayu. This river plays a pivotal role in a number of stories in the collection, particularly "Iswaran." This river has also led to speculation that Malgudi could possibly be based on the real city of Mysore. On the other side of the river, there is the Mempi Forest which is home to many different kinds of animals, including langurs, water buffalo, and tigers.
In terms of infrastructure, the town has various major buildings. There is a railway station as well as the hospital, the Malgudi Medical Center, and the Palace Talkies, the main movie theater. In terms of central educational institutions, there is the Albert Mission School and College. Most of the major businesses are housed on Market Street, where most of the central events of the collection occur.
Due to the fact that Malgudi is portrayed as a small town, Narayan is able to use its smallness to give a more complete portrait of it. In this collection, and others, he explores every facet of life in the town, bringing together a wide cast of characters to create a mural-like picture of everyday life. Narayan uses this fictional small town to investigate the mysteries of human life.
