INTRUSION OF ADULTHOOD IN THE WORLD OF CHILDREN IN

SWAMI AND FRIENDS

R.K. Narayan started his prolific writing career with this novel Swami and Friends written in
1935. It is the first of the trilogy. It is a great work of art. Graham Greene called it “A book in ten
thousand,”1. The novel, which is also Narayan‟s first, in set in pre-independence days in India,
in a fictional town-Malgudi, which has almost become area place in India today, due to the
wide recognition and popularity of Narayan‟s many novels. Children are plain-hearted, they
are innocent and ignorant. They do not possess the crookedness and vagaries of the adults
mind. They are highly impressionable. It is sad and unfortunate that children are not allowed to
bloom into their own individual personalities. They are sought to be molded according to the
ideas and aspirations of their parents and the society they live in. Such tendencies of child
psychology and child rearing are evident from the very beginning of the novel.

The main theme of the novel “Swami and Friends is the inter play of the imaginative world of
the child with the real world of the adult. R.K. Narayan presents the conflict between these two
words in a realistic semi- comical and ironic manner. Swami Nathan‟s father wanted him to
work out arithmetical problems while Swami wanted to loaf around during vacation. Swami
was so playful that he would have none of the studies. When his father gave him a sum on
mangoes, he kept on wondering whathey they were ripe or unripe mangoes. The fantastic
working of Swami Nathan‟s mind contrasts with the matter of fact, business like approach of
his father.

R.K. Narayan points to the fact that the minds of children are highly imaginative and creative
and they work on their own unique logic against that of their elders which works mainly on
cause effect relationships. It is this inability of the elders to peep into the child‟s world of
imagination that makes them seek to mould them according to their wishes and aspirations,
nipping the child‟s dreams in the bad. Imagination and creativity are not allowed to bloom in
full, for after all they have in due course, to be inevitably fitted into the adult world.

The people of the present generation wonder how the common people felt about and reacted to
the calls of the leaders during the freedom movement. Leaders especially Mahatma Gandhi
spoke of lofty ideals such as Truth, Non-Violence and Satyagraha. To what extent did „man in
the street‟ understand them? Did the huge masses of people really suffered and sacrificed in the
true spirit of Gandhiji‟s preaching‟s or jaws it simply mass frenzy, of course, ignited by
Gandhiji and other leaders? People born in the post-independence era wonder how it was that
such a movement on such a massive scale was mobilized „Swami and Friends‟ brings before
the readers‟ eyes glimpses of those historic days. In the same way as Charles Dickens narrates a
fictions story, against the back ground of the actual conditions of the French Revolution in
Charles Dickens‟s novel „A Tale of Two Cities,‟ R.K. Narayan depicts a glimpse of the freedom
struggle and depicts how the common people were blindly moved by the mass
agitations.Swaminthan‟s role in the freedom movement may be taken as the spontaneous
reaction of an impulsive, unthinking, even a stupid boy. But it points to the possibility that R.K.
Narayan who lived in those times might be depicting the actual pulse of the commonest people,
especially, orthodox middle class children of the kind of Swami Nathan.

Swami Nathan being the most prominent character of ‘Swami and Friends‟ is the hero of the
novel. But contrary to the conventional belief Swami Nathan was not flawless. He did not
always do the right. In R.K. Narayan‟s universe his characters are not always morally sound.
The treatment of children by the school authorities was not fair, but Swami Nathan was not
always irreproachable either. He indulged in boyish pranks, which led him to commit acts that
were at best unacceptable to conversationalists and conventionalists and morally unsound at
worst.

While he wants to grow freely in a world free from elder‟s tyranny, he is made to bear the brunt
of it at every inch of his childhood.

The minds of children are clean slates. They are innocent, but they are equally receptive to good
and bad impressions. All the pretty jealousies and rivalries and other vices, that adult minds are
prone to, work their way into children‟s minds as well.The conversation between Swami and
his grandmother about the glory and grandeur of Rajam, his new friends is highly amusing. The
old lady was full of love for her grandson, and wanted to humor him. She was appreciative of
Swami‟s imaginative enthusiasm for his newly acquired friend, but derives harmless pleasure
in playing a kind of hide and seeks with Swami in appearing to be interested in his inflated
details. The conversation shows how children can be imaginative as well as romantic.

Snobbery is characteristic of adults, but its seeds are sown in their impressionable minds right
from their childhood. These incidents show that social forces work deeply in the minds of
children. Right from their very young age, they get moulded to the persistence of social
inequalities and their own position in society. Their characters are moulded on the influences of
their living conditions and by the doings of the people around them in the society. This is amply
illustrated by these incidents in the swami and friendsChildren, after all, are human beings,
however innocent and plain- hearted they may be. It is too naïve to think that a society of
children will a harmonious, wholesome and ideal situation devoid of the follies of adults.R.K.
Narayan brings out effectively how children too quarrel and how ill-feelings grow in them, but
in spite of it, they forget their resentment and become friends again.
Swami Nathan is a striking example of a child character that is abused by the formal school
system which is not only unsuitable but detrimental to the booming of the personalities of
individuals in all their originality and creativity. But he is shackled by the oppressive real world
of elders that does not allow him to consider whether mangoes are ripe or unripe, for him
Mondays are a beginning of inexplicable drudge.

CONCLU:

In the opinion of the critics Swami and Friends is a novel that records nostalgic and childhood
experience. As Srinivasa Iyengar says “It is as though every actuality has taken Narayan‟s pen
and written out his universal epic of all our boyhood yesterdays that are now no more.”10The
themes of Narayan novels are inter-related and appear in different combinations, Narayan
displayed a remarkable insight into the working of the child‟s mind. Swami‟s activities,
adventures and misadventures, little harmless rivalries, jealousies and loyalties among the
school boys are well crafted by Narayan.