Swami and Friends

I recently wrote an adaptation of R. K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends as a play. The play was a co-production between Landing Stage and The Madras Players. The first set of shows was performed at Sivagamy Pethachi Auditorium in Chennai last weekend (9, 10 and 11 October) to mark Narayan’s 103rd birth anniversary, which was on 10 October.

Four shows were performed to four full houses. The response has been nothing short of absolutely phenomenal. Droves of people were sent away without tickets everyday - not something I am used to doing! For hours after the show, people waited to meet the cast and crew and share their thoughts. Emails and calls have arrived in hundreds (from perfect strangers!), appreciating the efforts of the director and her team. A set of repeat shows is already being planned.

The idea to do Swami and Friends as a play was not mine. The director, Aruna Ganesh Ram, read the novel for the first time early this year. Four chapters into the novel, she called me and said, ‘I can visualise this as a play already. Let’s do this.’

To be honest, I was doubtful. Swami and Friends is a favourite of mine and has always been. But my immediate objections were three-fold.

Firstly, Narayan’s lilting style is descriptive. His narrative is gorgeous, studded with adjectives and a sense of irony. But it is a style may not lend itself to the stage, I reasoned. How is one to recreate the charm of his prose visually? Like Dickens or Austen, I was convinced that Narayan was meant to be read, not seen or even heard.

Secondly, the novel tends to be episodic, like several novels in the children’s bildungsroman genre. A broken structure that works in a novel can affect the linear and dramatic structure that theatre is endowed with. I was unsure.

Thirdly, Narayan lovers already have Malgudi and Swami in their mind’s eyes – I was not sure how accepting they would be of the Malgudi and Swami of my mind’s eye. Reading Narayan is often a deeply personal and individual experience. I find that it is difficult not to be drawn into his Malgudi. Every reader tends to have a personal map of the town and has mentally trod the path from Ellaman Street to the Sarayu through Nallappa’s grove. Readers have met Narayan’s quirky characters and have ideas about how they look and what they might say. Why would they accept my vision?

When I expressed these reservations to Aruna, she laughed them off. It would work, she said. She was right.

The writing process began. It began with reading the novel again and again and again until I knew it inside out. For me, like for many Narayan-lovers, the whole of Malgudi is a familiar terrain; setting scenes in Malgudi, therefore, was a comforting and intimate process. It was like setting scenes in a place that I grew up in.

My real challenge lay in translating paraphrased narrative to dialogue, for Narayan tends to be minimalist with direct speech. His remarkable characterisation came to my rescue here. Often, I would only have to close my eyes and allow myself to enter his Malgudi. Once there, words flowed freely for me – and though almost all the dialogue in the play is my own, not derived from Narayan, I did not have to struggle to capture the grammar of his characters.

Writing this adaptation sometimes felt like trying to cram as many chocolates as possible into my fist. The novel is so filled with wonderful moments that it was hard to decide what to keep and what not to keep. Often, it was even a question of how faithful to be to the text. I think I’ve struck a gentle sort of compromise with Narayan in this regard. I wrote this adaptation first as a reader, then as a writer.

The man has written a story that simply begs to be told and retold. I hope I have done it justice.

Review in The Hindu: here.