Summary
Appa announces at dinner that Arjie will be joining Diggy at the Victoria Academy to force him to become a man. Diggy shares with Arjie that Appa is worried Arjie is “funny” but Arjie doesn’t quite understand what Diggy means. Diggy teaches Arjie about the Victoria Academy’s culture, like that you cannot complain and must bear punishments like a man. Black Tie, the principal, is incredibly strict. Black Tie and Mr. Lokubandara, the vice principal, are in a dispute with each other, vying for control of the school. Diggy tells Arjie that since Mr. Lokubandara is a political appointee he has more clout and is a “snake in the grass” (208).
Christmas holidays are ruined for Arjie, as he dreads attending the Victoria Academy. On the first day of school, Diggy helps Arjie find his classroom and they immediately face conflict as Salgado, the school bully, questions why Arjie is in a Sinhalese class. Salgado tells him to go away, but another boy named Soyza (whom Arjie will eventually start calling by his first name, Shehan) stands up for him. Shehan also warns him about the nail in his chair. When Arjie tries to thank Shehan, he is rebuffed, but Shehan helps Arjie again by lending him his protractor. Arjie learns that Shehan has a special status so the bullies don’t seem to bother him. Arjie finds Shehan attractive though delicately built; his body was “well proportioned and lacked the awkwardness of most other boys his age” (212).
A few weeks later, Shehan goes to the bathroom during physical training class and returns after fifteen minutes with his clothes rumpled; he does not know why.
Arjie witnesses Salgado and his friends gang up and beat Cheliah in the bathroom. He discusses it with Shehan, who reveals that Salgado is in high favor with Lokubandara so he cannot get in trouble, and that the overall conflict is Sinhalese-Tamil. Shehan shares that Lokubandara wants the school to be a Buddhist school. Since all Sinhalese are Buddhist, this would imply the school would only welcome Sinhalese people. But Black Tie opposes this idea and wants the school to be open to all. When Arjie sees Lokubandara in person, he finds him unassuming-looking and has difficulty wrapping his mind around the fact that this man contains so much power.
Later that day, Black Tie visits class and catches Shehan’s long hair. Shehan had been hiding his long hair by using clips to adhere to the school policy. Black Tie slaps Shehan in front of the class and drags him out. Arjie waits for Shehan to return to the classroom. When Shehan does return, his hair is cut jaggedly and Shehan tries to joke about it. When Arjie responds earnestly and touches his head, Shehan grows defensive and leaves abruptly.
The next day, Shehan must report for punishment all day, indefinitely at Black Tie’s office. The boys in class are asked to read aloud “The Best School of All,” a poem by Sir Henry Newbolt. Arjie does a good job and is summoned to Black Tie’s office—Arjie thinks he is being called out for punishment but has instead been selected to recite the poem at the Prize Giving ceremony.
Diggy asks Arjie what he was doing with Black Tie and warns him against seeing Shehan. Diggy tells him that Shehan has sex with the Head Prefect during free periods. Arjie does not believe Diggy. That night, Arjie tries to memorize the poems but can’t stop thinking about Diggy’s story. He doesn’t understand how sex between two men would work.
The next day, Arjie blanks when trying to recite the poems to Black Tie. Black Tie accuses him of lying about having memorized the poem and canes him. Afterwards, Shehan and Arjie go to retrieve their things. In anger, Arjie rips up the poems. Shehan says he will go with him to the library to reprint the poems. At the library, they joke around and deepen their friendship. That night, Arjie dreams of Shehan and wakes up with “the familiar wetness on my sarong” (237).
Arjie continues to have difficulty reciting the poems with the threat of the cane on Black Tie’s desk, so he tries to appeal to the drama teacher Mr. Sunderalingam, who agrees that his treatment has been unfair. Mr. Sunderalingam shares that the poems are important because the cabinet minister will be at the Prize Giving Day, and Black Tie hopes to appeal to the minister to keep the school running as is. Mr. Sunderalingam says that as Tamils they must support Black Tie so that the school will stay inclusive. Arjie is not won over and is skeptical of both Lokubandara and Black Tie for their tactics and the violence they condone. Mr. Sunderalingam talks to Black Tie and Black Tie lets Arjie and Shehan leave early.
Shehan kisses Arjie out of excitement, and this catches Arjie off guard. He wants to continue kissing him and senses that Shehan wants him to behave in a certain way. They make a plan to spend time at Shehan’s home and he gives Arjie the address. When Arjie arrives at Shehan’s home in Cinnamon Gardens, a nice neighborhood, Arjie is impressed by the house but soon realizes the interior and upkeep do not match the house’s grandeur. Seeing his house confirms what Arjie suspected about Shehan not having a mother close by.
Arjie senses that Shehan wants him to kiss him, but he cannot muster the courage. Instead he asks Shehan about his mother (who is divorced from his father and lives in England now), which sours the mood between them and Arjie leaves to go home.
When Arjie goes home, his family asks where he’s been and when Arjie mentions Shehan, he sees Diggy’s expression change. When Arjie’s mother suggests he invite Shehan over, Arjie says yes to spite Diggy and because he cannot wait for a potential next kiss. Diggy says Appa will not like Shehan and immediately see that he’s “funny.” Arjie starts to realize that this funniness is something he shares with Shehan and that their friendship holds more possibilities than he realized.
When Shehan arrives, Arjie is more excited than he was during his spend-a-days. The boys are slightly awkward with each other and Arjie is nervous he will ruin it. Arjie decides to play Hide and Go Seek with Sonali and her friends despite how childish the game feels. Arjie and Shehan hide in the garage and Arjie reaches out and touches Shehan. They begin to kiss until they hear Sonali approach. Once Sonali has come to the doorway and left, they resume kissing and their physical interaction escalates. Arjie begins to doubt what they are doing and feels like things are moving too fast. When Shehan ejaculates on Arjie, Arjie feels ashamed and violated. They finally join the family for lunch and Arjie, feeling ashamed, is cold to Shehan. Arjie’s father is also rude to Shehan and Arjie worries that they’ll be found out.
Arjie and Shehan begin to play Scrabble after lunch but soon start fighting. Arjie brings up the rumors of Shehan with the Head Prefect and Shehan calls him jealous and says that unlike Arjie and the Head Prefect, he is not ashamed, and the next day Arjie will come back to him begging. Shehan leaves angrily. That night, Arjie revisits their interaction in his dreams but finds now he is aroused by the memory instead of revolted.
The next day at school, Shehan is back in class and Arjie is still feeling resentment towards Shehan. Black Tie comes to class and scolds Shehan for not coming straight to his office. Shehan tries to argue that Black Tie dismissed him previously and he didn’t realize he was to return, but that causes Black Tie to punish Shehan further and escort him aggressively to his office. Seeing this injustice, Arjie realizes that Shehan was acting out of love and that Arjie scorned him unfairly. He wants to make things right and tries to wait for Shehan or hope that he calls him but Arjie realizes he needs to go to Shehan’s to make things right.
Arjie goes to Shehan’s house and sees that he’s very upset. They make up and Shehan shares how frustrated he is and Arjie sees that Shehan has reached his limit. On his trip home, Arjie rejects the idea that loving Shehan is wrong. He has seen other people like Jegan and Radha Aunty suffer injustice and reflects that only the powerful like Black Tie and his father create the rules but people like himself and Shehan and other minorities do not have any power to write the rules. He wonders if there is any way he can reclaim power.
The next day, Shehan says he will go live with his mother and Arjie supports him even though he knows this is unlikely. Black Tie is very nice to Arjie and Arjie realizes it is because Black Tie is reliant on Arjie doing a good job with the poem to make Black Tie look good. Arjie comes up with a plan to bungle the poem on purpose to make Black Tie look bad in front of the minister and get him kicked out as its head. Now Arjie knows he has the power and is no longer afraid.
On Prize Giving Day, Arjie’s whole family comes; Shehan attends but sits far away. Arjie messes up the poems purposefully and Black Tie scolds him publicly and derides that those sorts of values are what students are growing up with today. However, the crowd already starts laughing and leaving. Arjie and Shehan share a moment in a classroom and Arjie confesses that he did that for Shehan to make up for the abuses he suffered at the hands of Black Tie.
When Arjie sees his mother outside of the gallery, he realizes “What had happened between Shehan and me over the last few days had changed my relationship with her forever. I was no longer a part of my family in the same way. I now inhabited a world they didn’t understand and into which they couldn’t follow me” (279).
Analysis
This chapter reaches the climax of Arije’s journey with his sexuality. Through his friendship with Shehan, Arjie finally realizes the ways in which he is “funny”—he is attracted to men. Arjie has his first sexual encounter with Shehan when his schoolmate comes over to the house. Significantly, Arjie crosses the threshold towards adulthood and has his sexual awakening while hiding during a children’s game. He has to grapple with how this marks the end of his innocence, and how much he should “hide” in the future. Throughout the next few days, Arjie moves on from feeling guilt and shame to acceptance.
As Arjie comes to terms with who he is, he reflects on an important theme: questioning authority. Arjie questions the power structures behind the rules and status quo in society, like the idea that homosexuality is wrong. Arjie is frustrated that people like himself, Shehan, and Radha Aunty lack power while others like his father are afforded with so much privilege to determine what is right and wrong for everyone else. This continues in the struggle between Black Tie and Lokubandara. This struggle also highlights the theme of the personal versus political. Whereas in previous chapters, political circumstances overpowered personal relationships—Radha ultimately chooses Rajan Nagandra, Amma stops pursuing Daryl Uncle’s murder, and Appa fires Jegan—Arjie chooses his personal relationship over political maneuvering. As a Tamil, Arjie should support Black Tie and his policies. But his friendship and loyalty to Shehan causes him to prioritize his friendship. Unlike the rest of the adults in his life, Arjie shows his independence and autonomy in how he handles this decision.
It is not easy for Arjie to be true to himself and to support Shehan. The Victoria Academy is a harsh place, and Arjie, like most of the boys, is terrified of Black Tie. There is also a prominent strain of homophobia in the conservative, strict institution, and Arjie is in danger just for being who he is. Harry Thomas explains that “The Queen Victoria Academy serves as a symbol for colonial, aristocratic, and middle class male privilege. This is the tradition Arjie is expected to be a part of. To be gay would, for Arjie, mean failing in the eyes of his Father and the larger world of middle class Tamil patriarchy in which he lives. Indeed, Arjie’s father tells him that the academy ‘will force you to become a man,’ clearly indicating that the school is to indoctrinate Arjie in the ways of middle class male privilege.” Here Arjie is supposed to be “cured” of his funniness, but ironically he finds Shehan instead.
Greg Mullins identifies the fact that there is certainly homosexual behavior at the Victoria Academy, but that it is “twisted by the sadism of the institution.” It “provides an excellent preparation for life as a male citizen under a repressive government. Black Tie and his prefects mirror the power of the state the boys will encounter once they graduate into adult society. In addition, ethnic politics at the school mirror those of society at large.” There is a divide between the Tamil and Sinhalese students, as well as between the school’s principal and vice principal on matters of the ethnic and religious makeup of the matriculating students—the same divide Arjie has been coming to terms with outside the walls of the school.
Arjie’s mangling of the poems, British works that glorify the colonial culture and education system, has received a lot of critical attention. He does it for Shehan, having realized he loves him and does not want him to suffer, but there is more at stake: Arjie is visibly protecting a queer boy, is trying to unseat a leader who is a vestige of the colonial era, and is wading into Tamil-Sinhalese politics. Sandeep Bakshi says of the poem-reading, “Arjie’s refusal to articulate the poems on which Black Tie’s career depends becomes a critique of a former public-school system that can no longer wield the pressures of ethnic divisions in the modern postcolonial nation. By intentionally muddling the sentences of the English-language poems, which pay a tribute to the colonial situation, Arjie not only complicates the relation between the past and the present, the old and the new, but undermines the continuation of colonial public schools in modern Sri Lanka as well.”
