51 pages • 1 hour read
Shyam SelvaduraiFunny Boy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Radha Aunty”
One of Arjie’s female relatives, Radha Aunty, receives a marriage proposal from a man named Rajan Nagendra; the Nagrendras are friends of Arjie’s family. The family approves of the marriage because Rajan is an engineer and his family has no history of mental illness. Arjie reads Janaki’s love comics, which tell the romantic story of Mani-lal and Shakuntala. Arjie imagines Radha Aunty and Rajan Nagendra’s romance will unfold in a similar fashion, and he eagerly looks forward to the wedding festivities like cake, bridesmaids, and fancy saris. Since the last chapter, Ammachi has taken it upon herself to fix what she believes is Arjie’s “devil temperament” (42) by occupying him with household tasks. We learn that Ammachi had beaten Arjie with a cane for his supposed misbehavior.
Meanwhile, Radha Aunty leaves America and returns to Sri Lanka. Arjie is disappointed because she is not as pretty as he imagined and plays the piano poorly, thus ruining his image of the perfect bride. Nevertheless, the cheerful Radha surprises Arjie by standing up for him to Ammachi and not berating him as the other adults do. She decorates Arjie with a pottu (a type of ornamental decoration that many women in Sri Lanka and other South Asian countries wear on the forehead) and applies makeup to his face, saying he would have made a “beautiful girl” (48). Arjie asks Radha Aunty whether she will marry Rajan. Arjie makes plans for Radha Aunty’s wedding while she jokingly entertains his ideas. The two become friends.
Amma signs Arjie up to play a part in The King and I, which is a play about a white English tutor who teaches the children of the King of Siam (in an area now known as Thailand). When Arjie asks his mother whether the English tutor would fall in love with the king, his mother laughs and says no “because most people want to marry their own kind” (53). Radha Aunty is also in the play and joins Arjie for rehearsals. A fair-skinned woman named Aunty Doris runs the play. Anil Jayasinghe—another performer in the play—offers Radha Aunty and Arjie a ride home. Ammachi becomes upset that Radha Aunty is spending time with Anil because Anil is Sinhalese (and their family is Tamil). Radha Aunty calls Ammachi a racist.
Because he has Sinhalese friends, Arjie does not understand why Ammachi dislikes the Sinhalese. Arjie’s father, Appa, explains that there was trouble between Tamils and Sinhalese during the 1950s because the Sinhalese wanted to make Sinhala—spoken by the Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka—the national language. This move upset the Tamil people on the island. It was during this time that Ammachi’s father and many other Tamils were killed by Sinhalese men. Ammachi supports the efforts of the Tamil Tigers, which is a group that seeks to create a separate state, or “Eelam.” After this conversation, Arjie begins to notice the existing tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese in his own life, such as the awkwardness when his predominantly Sinhalese class plays cricket against the Tamil class.
Ammachi goes to Anil’s family’s home to berate Anil for giving Radha Aunty a ride in his car. Embarrassed, Radha Aunty—accompanied by Arjie—apologizes to Anil and his family. Anil’s father does not accept the apology so easily, acknowledging his disdain for Tamils. Anil asks Radha Aunty about the man that has proposed to her, and she says that she is considering his proposal seriously. Anil asks her if she would ever marry a Sinhalese man. Arjie does not think Anil and Radha Aunty look like what a couple in love should look like. At the next rehearsal, the actors decide to go out for lunch. Radha Aunty and Arjie sit by Anil, who says that he likes Radha Aunty and implies that he wants to marry her. Radha Aunty is uncertain as to how she feels. Kanthi Aunty and another relative, Mala Aunty, spot them. When Arjie and Radha Aunty return home, they learn that the two Aunties have told Ammachi about Anil and Radha Aunty.
Ammachi says that she will send Radha Aunty away to another city, Jaffna, for a month to let her feelings calm down. Radha Aunty is upset and realizes that she loves Anil. Mala Aunty says that a relationship will never work out without her family’s approval, especially as tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese continue to escalate. In a rehearsal before she leaves for Jaffna, Radha Aunty has a serious conversation with Aunty Doris. Aunty Doris tells Radha Aunty what it was like for her as a Burgher—a person of Dutch descent in Sri Lanka—to marry a Tamil man. Aunty Doris’s family disowned her; Arjie realizes this is a warning about life will be like for Radha if she marries Anil. Radha sees Anil again in secret during a zoo outing. Radha leaves for Jaffna. Arjie encounters Anil alone at rehearsal.
Radha Aunty returns from Jaffna, but her train is attacked by Sinhalese who want to hurt Tamils. Radha Aunty’s face and head are wounded. Anil gives Arjie a ride home when no one shows up to pick him up from rehearsal. Anil wants to see Radha Aunty, but the family lies and says she is not home. Radha Aunty cries. Anil speaks with Radha Aunty at the rehearsals, but Radha Aunty doesn’t wish to be with him anymore. Arjie realizes that Radha Aunty is no longer the cheerful person that she once was, and that her relationship with Anil is over. Radha Aunty quits the play and marries Rajendra. Arjie is upset at the wedding, as he realizes that love is not enough to overcome all obstacles.
Chapter 2 Analysis
In this chapter, the backdrop of the complex ethnic relations in Sri Lanka becomes clear to both Arjie and the reader. Radha loves Anil, who is Sinhalese—a member of the ethnic majority group on Sri Lanka that speaks Sinhala and is predominantly Buddhist. However, Radha, Arjie and their extended family is Tamil, which is an ethnic minority group on Sri Lanka that has its origins in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Tamils speak Tamil and are largely comprised of Hinduism and Christianity. Tensions have been simmering between the two groups for decades and are reaching a boiling point, which culminates in Radha Aunty being attacked by Sinhalese for being Tamil.
These ethnic tensions also complicate Arjie’s—and to some degree, Anil’s—simplistic notions that love can transcend all obstacles. Marriages among Sinhalese and Tamils are complicated by biases in society. Anil’s father dislikes Tamils, as we see when he tells Radha Aunty: “We Sinhalese are losing patience with you Tamils and your arrogance” (65). Likewise, Ammachi—due to her father’s killing—is also strongly biased against Sinhalese, and thus he forbids Radha Aunty from seeing Anil. In light of such discrimination, we better understand why Amma tells Arjie that “most people want to marry their own kind” (53), which is ironic given that Arjie will never be able to marry a man, one of his “own kind.”
Sadly, these tensions even affect Radha Aunty, who starts out the chapter having been westernized by her stay in America. She is the only adult in the novel who supports Arjie’s sexuality, and she believes that there is no reason to hate every Sinhalese person for the actions of a few. However, she grows to accept her current socio-political climate when she is attacked by Sinhalese; she forms a coldness toward her once-lover, Anil, because he is also Sinhalese. Personal discrimination takes on a chilling political tone in this chapter. However, not all Tamils think alike, either. Although Ammachi hates Sinhalese, Appa is more practical and decides that they should seek to assimilate themselves into Sinhalese society, which is why he enrolls his son in Sinhalese classes. Another irony will arise later in the book when Arjie is not able to understand his own Tamil language but can instead only understand Sinhalese. Arjie is therefore barred from living authentically as a gay man and unable to live authentically as a Tamil man.
Arjie’s growth into a less idealistic individual can be seen when Radha Aunty gives up on Anil and settles for Rajendra. Arjie’s fanciful, childish dreams about love and marriage are shattered: “I thought of bride-bride and all those elaborate ceremonies I had invented, how I had thought that weddings could not be anything but magical occasions. How distant that world seemed, a world I had left far behind” (96). Love and family are often at odds with one another. As Mala Aunty says, “Ultimately, you have to live in the real world. And without your family, you are nothing” (76). Love cannot always overcome the harsh realities of familial expectations and discrimination, especially in the midst of a civil war. Arjie’s more mature understanding of the world signifies that he is starting to grow up.
We also see the overt role that beauty plays in society, and we learn how biases shape our expectations of who is beautiful and who is not. Due to colorism and biases against people with dark skin, Arjie imagines that Radha Aunty will have fair skin, because beautiful people are fair in his imagination. Thus, he is disappointed to find out that she has dark skin. Doris Aunty and Radha Aunty also remark on Arjie’s beauty. In Arjie’s case, it is a complicated compliment, because it implies that he is beautiful because he is feminine, which, as we learn in the previous chapter, is not a value that patriarchal society views as a positive for boys.
