By R.K. Narayan (1906-2001)
Swami
and Friends is a book by R.K.Narayan, set in the 1930s about a boy named W.S. Swaminathan,
called Swami by his friends and family. He lives with his parents and his grandmother,
and later his younger brother in Malgudi, a typical fictional town in the
Madras Presidency (Present day Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana),
British Raj (Present day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh). He has two groups of
friends: One, who are strictly school friends, and Two, his best friends. Like
any boy today, he doesn’t like to go to school and likes to have fun with his
friends, even if his father does not let him do so. I have noticed that Swami is
very scared of his father, and his grandma tries to bribe Swami to come and talk
to her.
Swami is portrayed as a sometimes rude, but kind-hearted character,
who gets into trouble very often, and also gets himself expelled from his first
school, (after also receiving whacks by his headmaster) because of taking part
in Anti-British Riots by throwing stones at the school windows. He also gets
expelled from his other school (for a specific reason which I won’t say). What
happens to him will be revealed when you read the book.
What I
learnt from this book is about how the Indians felt about what the British did
to us, and how they would butcher us for speaking against them. I also learnt
about paise and annas, which are like cents and
dimes. I also learnt about how strict
the teachers were. (They used to thrash you with a cane about 5-6 times if you
remained absent from school for a day, or about 2-3 times if you missed a class
in school). I feel very relieved that the present generations are not so
strict.
I would
recommend this book to people who are 10 and above, and anyone who would like
to rent this book from me can send a mail to me at agastya.nadadhur@gmail.com, and
come and collect it from me whenever they want to.
