I certainly feel I can relate to this novel. Swami's desire to excel at cricket is equivalent to my childhood desires to be like "the rest of the kids in my school." I fondly remember telling my mother those very words growing up. I think similar to Swami, minorities (and I speak for myself) relate internally in which they want to be mainstreamed in order to be considered a part of what's considered their "superior majority."
Swami's desire to excel at cricket is an indication of him wanting to be more like the British. The metaphor of Swami and his friends' immersion in cricket is that of internalizing values and cultures of the British. If you understand the rules of cricket, you are that much more British. Therefore, if you play cricket you are so-called British and you support its justices. Choosing cricket over school primarily shows Swami's dependency on imitation - being more like Rajam, Mani, his father, or the headmaster, or all of them, perhaps. Swami is very imitative by nature, so his power of imitation has a huge affect on his development and/or maturity. Also, it simply reflects the quality and reality of adolescence, where life hasn't fully developed yet for a young boy who dreams of being accepted by all that is superior to him.
Our young protagonist chooses running away as a refusal to oppression by authority. Though the case, he is still attracted to authority because it leaves him with a promise of continued stability, security, and relationship. Swami struggled with the evolution of the "self" but was finally able to accept that he was essentially Indian before he was anything else - a refusal of "Englishness" (suggested by Swami's parting of friendship with Rajam). I think these two scenes, his return and Rajam's departure, is so poignant because it ultimately suggests an ending of childhood for Swami. His return is a departure of his innocent and easily influenced personality for his newfound ability to combine attentiveness to the realities of life and a consciousness to unrevealed intentions of human motive.
I can agree as children no one wants to be the odd ball in the social circle at school. I feel that when you are immersing yourself in a different society, you will seek the things that appeal in that society. For example, the claim is America's sport is baseball, well if I were coming from another country and a friend introduced me to the sport I would gladly take the sport up as a hobby. Influence from peers plays a big part in the growth of children for we begin to find admiration in someone like swami did in Rajam. But as a child we are still learning between wrong and right, what boundaries we can cross, and how we can get out of situations. Swami definitely represents how we as humans think on matters.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your observation and can equally relate to Swami’s experience in similar ways that you probably did growing and trying to “fit in” with the majority. One thing I’m reminded of when I think about Swami, Raja, and the other boys’ passion for the British sport of cricket, is the divide that exists in my own community when it comes to the sports we play. The divisions become especially interesting when it comes to soccer. I grew up in a pretty segregated school on the south side of San Antonio and I was in the majority. I would modestly estimate that there were maybe 35 out of 1,500 students that weren’t Hispanic. The soccer team, which consisted entirely of Spanish speaking, 1st generation or foreign-born students, was especially segregated. I felt that for a lot of the Hispanic athletes that were more assimilated, soccer was disregarded as a sport far too “Mexican”. Of course this isn’t a fair assessment of soccer since it is the without doubt the most universal sport in the world. The prejudice against the sport that I witnessed in my high school experience was directly related to the fact that the team was made up of all Spanish-speaking students. For the more assimilated athletes playing football, basketball, and baseball, being on the soccer would team would mean compromising their identity. So as far it relates to Swami’s experience, this instance is a bit of a reversal. Cricket is a “British” sport played by the most popular and maybe richest boy in school for Swami. Soccer at my high school was a “Mexican” sport played by the more underprivileged and unpopular kids in the school. So, needless to say, if you wanted to hang with the cool kids than you probably didn’t play soccer. As a passionate observer of the sports world, I must admit that my love for soccer was born late in my life and not until I was outside of my high school where in the process of forging my own cultural identity at the time, I was persuaded that soccer was not American enough not and so not cool enough for me to take interest in.
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