[As] a South Indian [R. K. Narayan] knew he must come to terms with the power which in his novels he shows shaping Malgudi physically, giving it the plan of streets created by the mythical Sir Frederick Lawley, the schools and colleges, the municipal government, the railways and mills and printing presses, the whole structure of a western city superimposed on a native life that, with its temples and household shrines and vegetarian Brahmin food and astrologers and untouchables and arranged marriages, had remained obstinately unchanged. In Malgudi the two worlds are shown as indissolubly linked—even though no more than three actual Englishmen appear in minor roles during the whole cycle—and linked (Narayan seems to imply) forever, since on the public level India has become as inevitably dominated by twentieth-century progress as on the private level it has remained loyal to the Hindu past, to the traditions that embody the essential genius of India and to which its people return when the world's attractions grow dim.
Swaminathan and his fellow schoolboys in Swami and Friends are unwitting examples of the contradictions Narayan sees entering deeply into the culturally divided lives of twentieth century Indians. They attend a mission school oriented toward preparing them for the college in Malgudi, and in this imitation English grammar-school they become passionately devoted to the alien game of cricket; their heroes are the English cricketers Hobbs and Tate, and their special form of the quest that occurs in all Narayan novels is a comic one, the creation on Malgudi's waste lots of a Marylebone Cricket Club that will rival its English namesake. Yet when nationalist riots take place, Swaminathan participates in them and smashes school windows; and when one of his Christian teachers attacks and derides the Indian deities with a convert's zeal, Swami is moved to defend them.
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