Swami and Friends (Vintage International) by R. K. Narayan

Author:R. K. Narayan [Narayan, R. K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2012-07-24T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

The 'M.C.C’

Six WEEKS later Rajam came to Swaminathan's house to announce that he forgave him all his sins—starting with his polit ical activities, to his new acquisition, the Board High School air, by which was meant a certain slowness and stupidity engendered by mental decay.

After making his exit from Albert Mission School in that theatrical manner (on the day following the strike), Swaminathan became so consistently stubborn that a few days later his father took him to the Board School and admitted him there. At first Swaminathan was rather uncertain of his happiness in the new school. But he excited the curiosity that all new-comers do, and found himself to his great satisfaction the centre of attraction in Second C. All his new class-mates, remarkably new faces, often clustered round him to see him and hear him talk. He had not yet picked the few that he would have liked to call his chums. He still believed that his Albert Mission set was intact, though, since the reopening in June, the set was not what it had been before. Sankar disappeared, and people said that his father had been transferred; Somu was not promoted, and that meant he was automatically excluded from the group, the law being inexorable in that respect; the Pea was promoted, but he returned to the class exactly three months late, and he was quite full up with medical certificates, explanations, and exemptions. He was a man of a hundred worries now, and passed his old friends like a stranger. Only Rajam and Mani were still intact as far as Swaminathan was concerned. Mani saw him every day. But Rajam had not spoken to him since the day when his political doings became known.

And now this afternoon Swaminathan was sitting in a dark corner of the house trying to make a camera with a card board box and a spectacle lens. In his effort to fix the lens in the hole that was one round too large, he was on the point of losing his temper, when he heard a familiar voice calling him. He ran to the door.

'Hallo! Hallo! Rajam,' he cried, 'why didn't you tell me you were coming?'

'What is the thing in your hand?' Rajam asked.

'Oh,' Swaminathan said, blushing.

'Come, come, let us have a look at it.'

'Oh, it is nothing,' Swaminathan said, giving him the box.

As Rajam kept gazing at the world through the hole in the cardboard box, Swaminathan said, 'Akbar Ali of our class has made a marvellous camera.'

'Has he? What does he do with it?'

'He has taken a lot of photos with it.'

'Indeed! Photos of what?'

'He hasn't yet shown them to me, but they are probably photos of houses, people, and trees.'

Rajam sat down on the door-step and asked, 'And who is this Akbar Ali?'

'He is a nice Mohammedan, belongs to our class.'

'In the Board High School?' There was just a suspicion of a sneer in his tone. Swaminathan preferred to ignore this question and continued, 'He has a bicycle.

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