Comment on the theme "friendship" in R. K Narayan's "Swami and friends"
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Answer:
Innocence and Irony
The narrative is told with the innocence of its seven-year-old boy protagonist, Swami. He does not understand maps, nor the politics of the anti-colonial nationalist movements, nor how money works. A lot of the tension driving the storytelling is based on the misunderstanding and tomfoolery that results when he and his pals try to engage with matters that they do not fully understand. Their innocence also creates a sense of irony that permeates throughout the novel wherein the narrator will sometimes tell us details that Swami himself does not know. For example, while Swami is wandering through the woods, he thinks that he is on the main road on his way back to his house. The narrator, however, informs us that he is actually quite lost on a branch road because he has been following a gentle, imperceptible curve that has led him astray.
Colonial Domination
The novel begins with Swami waking up and immediately dreading the prospect of going to school and listing the homework that he still has to do before class starts in two hours. At school, he encounters very domineering figures and hierarchical power structures. We are introduced to school first through Dr. Ebenezer, his scripture teacher, who demonizes and denigrates the native Hindu gods as "lifeless" and "dirty" objects and uplifts the Christian Jesus as a true god. This episode of British colonial domination through religious indoctrination is a more overt instantiation of a theme that runs throughout the novel. School structures his time to the extent that the central conflict by the end of the novel is that school ends too late for him to attend his cricket practice on time.