"While I trekked through the fallen leaves and swirling winds of Euston to hear lectures on the theory of language, featuring Vygotsky and Bakhtin, and attended seminars on anti-racism, I was reading about the poet manqué waking up at five in the morning, going for long walks, and bathing in the river in the imaginary town of Malgudi where Narayan sets his novels." Ardashir Vakil came to England to be an English teacher, armed with R K Narayan's novel of the same name.