[Book review] Swami and Friends
Genre: Fiction, Children
Content: 3/4
Writing: 3/4
X factor: 1.5/2
Total: 7.5/10
All the jarring, rattling and clanking, spurting and hissing of the moving train dissolved in the distance into something that was half a sob and half a sigh. Swami and Friends.
R.K Narayan
I am biased here as this book is special to me. This is the first-ever book I read. I still remember that uneventful evening when mom upon returning home from office, had this yellow book in her hand.
She just passed it to me in a matter-of-fact manner saying “Check this out, You may like it…” and went away. I don’t think to this day she knows about the butterfly effect of what she did.
I was 10–12 years old then. It certainly didn’t look like any textbook; and unlike textbooks, this looked harmless. It was small, glossy and had a beautiful scent which can’t be described and doesn’t need to be. I read it. I loved it so much that I read it once more the week after. And again. Then my small mind figured that maybe other books would also be just as fun. I never looked back since…
This book is about three friends. Any school going boy can relate to their fights, anxieties and tribulations as I did back then. That time, I felt this was serious literature.
When I glanced through it last week, I was encompassed by a wave of nostalgia. My school days descended upon me like a massive rain cloud on a dry mountain. I yearned for those times when, everyday, I used to set out of my home to school, carefree, with a sense of ‘what adventure to await today’. I had my own ‘band of brothers’. What all would we be doing today? Who will get caned by the class teacher? Will the school playground be taken by the seniors like they did last week? In that case we will have to pick up a fight. Are girls aliens? Why can’t they be like us? What believable excuse to tell mom about returning late in the evening?- which I will — because I am planning to hang around aimlessly with my buddies in the city market and gorge on samosas and badam milk- or should we go for Chaat with lassi? It’s not even noon, we have time to figure that out. Will the god-damned quarterly results be announced? Who cares anyway.
This book is just about that feeling. For grown ups, this may bring comic relief but if you had read this, like I did the first time- as a kid- this is the world.
Best read when you are 10–12 years old. The second best time is now.
Originally published at http://stormsinmyteablog.wordpress.com on June 9, 2020.
