![]() ![]() The Gandhi-Irwin pact, signed in March, made promises for granting India ‘dominion status’, paving the way for the 1931 Round Table Conferences (the second of which Gandhi participated in) leading, eventually, to the signing of the Poona Pact the following year.ġ931 was also the year Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were hanged by the British government. That news places the first episode to be set in the early months of 1931 (Willingdon succeeded Lord Irwin officially in April).ġ931, of course, was a year of enormous political upheaval. ![]() ![]() Infact, we know the exact month and year 10 minutes into the first episode, through a newspaper Swami finds on the ground near the school (which he subsequently converts into a paper boat): The series establishes, and reinforces, a sense of time and place very early, and very effectively. The attention to detail is quite excellent. The actors playing Swami and Mani nailed their parts perfectly (though some of Mani’s flourishes are a bit too theatric), and the initially cold, son-of-an-important-person Rajam, while a little stiff in the early episodes, settles into his part fairly competently. I was quite curious to see how it would translate into a serial. But Narayan’s books (particularly Swami and Friends) were deeply influential in my early years of reading books, and I’ve kept a copy of it with me for nearly a decade now. In a way, I’m glad that I have no particular nostalgia for the series (even the apparently legendary theme song): I was much too young when it aired, and I didn’t catch any of its subsequent runs on TV. I finished the ‘ Swami and Friends‘ story arc in one marathon stretch, and I’m saving the rest of the episodes for the next few days (There are 39 in total). This weekend I sat and watched the first volume of Malgudi Days, the much fondly-remembered Doordarshan TV serial from the late 80s. ![]()
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