Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Our Teacher Edition on Swami and Friends can help. Swami and Friends Summary A young boy named Swami wakes up on Monday morning in the town of Malgudi in South India. He rushes through his homework at his desk in his father’s room and then goes to the Mission School, where he is bored throughout most of his classes. Swami gets a bad grade on his mathematics homework and then, in his scripture class, gets into an argument with his teacher Mr. Ebenezar, a Christian fanatic. Swami is offended at his teacher’s dismissal of the value of Hinduism and arrives at school the next day carrying a letter from his father to the Mission School Headmaster, in which his father complains to the headmaster that the school does not welcome non-Christian boys. Swami tells his four closest friends about the letter. These boys are Somu, the friendly class monitor; Mani, a powerful but lazy bully; Sankar, “the most brilliant boy of the class”; and a small boy named Samuel, nicknamed “The Pea,” who is not remarkable in any way except that he makes Swami laugh more than anyone else. Later in the day, the headmaster scolds Ebenezar but also tells Swami not to report incidents to his father in the future, saying that the boys should instead turn to the headmaster with any problems.