Mallakunta
Sreelatha,
Research
Scholar, Department of English, K. L. (Deemed to be University) Vijayawada,
A.P
Email:
srinivasulumallakunta@gmail.com
___________________________________________________________________________Abstract
R.K.Narayan, one of the most
distinguished Indian novelists writing in English, brings out autobiographical
element in his novel, Swami and Friends. It is the first novel of Narayan published in 1935. This
is really creditable for a first attempt. The novel, Swami and Friends is
an autobiographical in nature which owes much of its realism and authenticity
that is rooted in Narayan’s personal experience as a boy at school. The
autobiographical element is unmistakable. Swami’s experiences in the Albert
Mission School seem to be based on Narayan’s own experiences as a school boy.
Indeed, Swami is only the second half of Narayan’s original name,
Narayanaswami, and the shortened form “Swami” was adopted out of deference to
the novelist’s publishers, “not wanting the novel to be confused with an
autobiography”. This paper describes the autobiographical element of Narayan and it recalls his childhood and
boyhood scenes in this novel.
Keywords:
autobiographical, authenticity, childhood, boyish adventures.
Introduction
Narayan
is an Indian literary giant credited
with establishing the Indian English novel genre and introducing the Indian
sensibility to the world at large. Narayan’s literary output was amazing. He
wrote fifteen novels, five volumes of short stories, a number of travelogues,
non-fiction, English translation of Indian epics, and memoirs. The backdrop of
nearly all his fiction is an imaginative town – Malgudi - which grows from a
sleepy, dusty, unnoticeable town to a bustling hectic urban centre with the
passage of time as the writer adds to this imaginative landscape, novel after
novel.
Swami and Friends was published in 1935, is largely autobiographical though the incidents are so
filtered that the personal is universalised. It is located in a small imagined
town – Malgudi, and its protagonist a lad - Swami, studying in a primary school
in the British era. Swami’s life has its
little blitzkrieg when he is fired with the Swadeshi zeal
and goes about vandalizing his school run by the British missionaries only to
be rusticated from it. The novel is a paean to childhood – its innocence,
bungling, friendships, breakups and its own non-duplicable unique world.
Narayan is the greatest Indian writer who has marvelously crafted a world of
childhood for his readers, a world to which each one of us relates irrespective
of our national trajectories. Meenakshi Mukherjee rightly says, “R. K. Narayan
successfully achieves a universal vision” through his non-metropolitan
situations.
Swami and Friends
which deals with the hero’s growth into maturity through a number of adolescent
audiences. Being a child across the globe comes with
its own set of problems and more or less has to do with the formal academic
system which treats childhood as a phase through which a child has to be
forcefully forded across. In Narayan’s time the use of cane, the degrading and
humiliating nature of the ‘stand-up-on-the-desk’ punishment, the heavy workload
- all are exposed for what they really are: a cruel education which
mass-produces unimaginative clerks and subordinate staff to serve the British
administrative machine. Childhood is never encouraged per se: children are
always encouraged to grow out of their mould of innocence. Freedom to a child
is far and between, snatched in between classroom and homework – when free play
becomes possible – freedom for which a child is at times held criminally
accountable. But the beauty of childhood, Swami and Friends tells
us lies in its resilience and innocence. Swami and Friends begins
with the sentences: “It was Monday morning. Swaminathan was reluctant to open
his eyes. He considered Monday especially unpleasant…
After the delicious freedom of Saturday and Sunday”.
The novel’s first chapter titled ‘Monday Morning’ where the writer
takes us into the world of children and in a non-didactic, un-acrimonious tone
paints for us a world where children and their little tragedies and sorrows are
consistently overlooked by the adults. His efforts merely earn him rebuke.
Narayan was a life-long critic of the Indian educational system and he crusaded
against academics’ burdening the child with homework and regimenting his
life. As a child, Narayan disliked going to school - the novel is
interspersed with autobiographical details. It is Narayan’s forte that he
selects, alters and filters the autobiographical – Swami’s world enjoys “an
objective existence… responsive to… things outside” the writer’s immediate
life.
Swami was especially close to his grandmother who is described as
a “benign and ignorant old lady”– a widow with a kind attitude towards her
grandson who adores her and still finds her a social embarrassment. Unlike her
son, this old lady is not judgmental and critical of Swami. She has a genuinely
magnanimous attitude towards Swami. She knows that children do not share the
adult world’s social duplicity and that they speak their hearts without malice.
As such, when Swami brings home his friend and asks his grandmother to give him
a warm welcome but keep away from them, the elderly lady remains good humoured
over the entire affair.
The grandmother epitomises an ideal parent figure whose
unconditional love lets the child blossom naturally. Her guidance is kind, in
glaring contrast to Swami’s father who is autocratic and stern and extremely
hard to please. Where Swami can play around freely with his granny, he is not
allowed to touch anything that belongs to his father. A tacit hierarchical
demarcation exists in Swami’s home. Swami’s father brings strict regimentation
to home – he is nearly as stifling as the school. The difference between the
school and the father lies in the fact that at school Swami is one among the
many students and is managed so that the school’s discipline remains
undisturbed while at home Swami has the privilege of his father attending to
his problems and trying to solve them. Despite his father’s strictness, Swami
holds his father in awe and hero-worships him. Teachers are an altogether
different ballgame to Swami – he dislikes them and finds going to school very
tedious and boring. The rest of the teachers are not averse to handing out
corporeal punishment to them. With his characteristic humour, Narayan balances
the bleak with the comic.
Narayan was against formal schooling for small children for he
believed “In every teacher there lurks a potential devil”. We are drawn into
the vortex of an education system that believes in dumbing-down –
a child is not allowed to be enthusiastic or expressive but is coerced into
being an unthinking cog that is geared to respond to the teacher and never
initiate. Examinations and Swami are an
incorrigible affair. Swami loves physical activities and has a laid back
lackadaisical attitude towards lif. He is a proverbial child in whose life
there is sheer spontaneity. The gravity of exams is beyond his ken. Once again,
Narayan shows us the absurdity of academics’ evaluation yardstick which does
not account for the individuality of the student – an insistent issue that runs
through the novel is the incongruity of schooling where there is no place for
children who are not academically inclined but bright otherwise. Swami is not
loquacious: he writes an absolutely correct answer which is just a few lines
long in comparison to his classmates’ half to one page long answers. Swami is
badly graded despite being correct. Narayan has rightly observed said “I feel
convinced that the… aims of education are hopelessly wrong from beginning to
end”.
It is R.K. Narayan’s unique forte that his novels ravel the
complete picture. We never ever have a world which is all black and bleak –
sunshine and happiness radiate from the pages. School has its innocent charm
where children get together, play, make friends, plot and learn to cope with
various kinds of pressures and develop camaraderie and team spirit. We cannot
begin to imagine Swami without his school and school buddies, some of whom are
meek and timid while others are bullies or brilliant. Swami’s group of friends has children with
varying temperaments, some of whom are given nicknames like Pea.
Living and growing up together in a small city with minimal distractions has
brought these children very close emotionally and made them socially dependent
on each other.
At
the end of the novel, Swami is entirely changed. Now he grows mature and tries
to understand and perform his responsibilities. He becomes somewhat serious and
sincere. He repents on the act of escaping from home and he realises the real
essence of life. Now, he understands that life is a total sum of joy and sorrow
that one has to face it at the various stages of life. The normal order was
temporarily disturbed by his escape, but now, by his return, normalcy is restored
once again. His parents and his Granny are happy, and through the efforts of
his father matters are set right and he is re-admitted to the Board High
School. Swami and Friends makes for an easy read which helps us understand the
everyday India of the nineteen thirties. The country, especially the South,
comes to us through an inverted world where children, not adults, are in focus.
Children are heard and their points-of-view matter.
It is an extremely refreshing change from the mainstream novel writing
that exclusively concentrates on the world of adults and merely accommodates
the world of children. One is humbled by Narayan’s extraordinary ability to
create an authentic world of children with remarkable ease. Graham Greene
understood the difficulty of rendering childhood successfully by adult authors
and appreciated Narayan’s efforts in Swami and Friends. Swami and Malgudi continue with us despite the
novel coming to an end. Like Graham Greene, the reader continues to be
intrigued: “Whom next shall I meet in Malgudi? That is the thought that comes
to me when I close a novel of Mr Narayan’s. I do not wait for another novel. I
wait to go out of my door into those loved and shabby streets and see with
excitement...” India’s premier cartoonist, R.K. Laxman, lent his imagination
and skill to sketching Swami and Friends, giving the
characters an identity.
Conclusion
In
conclusion, it is a great work of art, and very creditable as a first attempt.
As Graham Greene, to whom it was sent for review, said, it is, “a book in ten
thousand”. R.K. Narayan never went to school in England, nor was he a bright
student; still he has created a great work of art which must take its place
with the great English masterpieces dealing with the school world and boyish
adventures.
References
1. Narayan R. K. Swami and Friends. Mysore: Indian Thought Publication, 1942. Print.
2. Narayan. R.K My
Dateless Diary. Delhi: Orient
Paperbacks, 1969, pp. 189-190.
3. Ram. N, ‘Malgudi's
Creator’, Frontline, The Hindu, Volume 18 - Issue 11, 2001
4. Susan K. Langer, Feeling and Form, The Theory of Art. Routledge
and Kegan Paul Ltd, London, 1967, p. 292.
5. Srinath. C.N R.K.
Narayan: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. New Delhi: Pencraft International,
2000, p. 93.
6. T.S. Satyan, ‘Walking
With R.K. Narayan’, Frontline, The Hindu, Volume 18 - Issue 11, 2001.