I relate to two fictional characters who found Monday mornings miserable. For both of them, Monday meant another week of slow suffering. Yes, I’m talking about Swami and Tom Sawyer.
Like Tom Sawyer, I developed convenient psychosomatic symptoms whenever I had to go to school or when my tutor was due to arrive. And like Swami, I fervently wished for an earthquake to destroy my school, for something to happen to the school bus, or at the very least to reach school only to discover it was a holiday.
Yet, if I have to choose, I identify more with Swami because of his sheer Indianness. Whenever I recount my childhood escapades to my children, they burst into laughter and say, “Ma, you were just like Swami. You must write down your adventures!”
Since we never learn what became of Swami or Tom after childhood, let me share a few episodes from my own life that explain why I feel such kinship with Swami.
▶I must have been six. At my Montessori school, the headmaster was lecturing us during the morning assembly about not littering classrooms by tearing pages out of notebooks. He asked, “Who tears pages from notebooks?”
Now, I had never torn a page in my life. But eager to establish myself as someone who always spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I shot my hand up and lied ‘I tear papers to make boats’.
I was summoned to the front, praised before the entire school for my honesty, gently warned not to repeat the offence, and then sent back to thunderous applause. It was my moment andI basked in the admiration.
There are countless such stories of my phenomenal innocence and spectacular ignorance—that choosing just a few is difficult.
▶There was the time, when I was about eight, that I ran away from school—rather like Swami fleeing Albert Mission School. My destination, however, wasn’t freedom but the pastry shop near the school. Since I never received pocket money, I simply stood outside gazing longingly at the pastries. While I was feasting with my eyes one of my father’s friends spotted me.
“What are you doing here?”
Without missing a beat, I concocted a story on the spot, something like my uniform got torn so I was sent back from school. Now I don’t know if he believed me but I think he did not tell on me.
▶Then there was my brief and unsuccessful career in crime.
One day I stole a fifty-rupee note from the box where my mother kept money for daily household expenses. For reasons I can no longer remember, my school bag was searched in class, and my teacher found the note. She wrote a letter to my parents.
I never delivered it.
Instead, I quietly returned the fifty rupees to my mother’s box. My mother never discovered the theft, and my teacher probably forgot all about the letter. My criminal career ended before it had properly begun.
▶And finally, a story that is quintessentially Swami.
My closest friend was a little older, much brighter, and far more popular than I was. He could run super fast, and I was as proud of his friendship as Swami was of Rajam’s. He loved recounting tales of his courage and daring.
Near our colony stood a temporary bamboo bridge across a narrow stream. One day he announced dramatically, “Yesterday I jumped off the bridge. First I wanted to jump. Then I looked down. I hesitated. Finally, I made a firm resolve, took a deep breath, and leapt.”
His account impressed me immensely.
So I marched to the bridge, stood exactly where he must have stood, looked down, hesitated exactly as he had, made my firm resolve, took a deep breath—and jumped.
There was no audience to applaud me. There was only me, limping painfully. Fortunately, I landed on a soft bed of sand, and by the next morning the limp had disappeared.
I have no idea whether my friend had actually jumped or was merely boasting.
But I certainly did. ๋࣭ ⭑
That, perhaps, is why Swami feels less like a fictional character. Reading him is like reading pages from my own life—only written by someone far more eloquent than I could ever be. ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
I have many more Swaminisque adventures to share. If you’d like to hear them, let me know in the comments. 🎤
Roots n Wings 