Question

describe swaminathans feelingsafter going away from the school

Answer 1

.  Lying in bed, Swami realised with a shudder that it was
Monday morning. It looked as though only a moment ago
it had been the last period on Friday. Already Monday was
here. He hoped that an earthquake would reduce the school
building to dust, but that good building—Albert Mission
School—had withstood similar prayers for over a hundred
years now. At nine o’clock Swaminathan wailed, ‘I have a
headache.’ His mother said, ‘Why don’t you go to school
in a jutka*?’
‘So that I may be completely dead at the other end? Have
you any idea what it means to be jolted in a jutka?’
‘Have you many important lessons today?’
‘Important! That geography teacher has been teaching the
same lesson for over a year now. And we have arithmetic,
which means for a whole period we are going to be beaten
by the teacher… important lessons!’
And Mother generously suggested that Swami might stay
at home.

2.  At 9.30, when he ought to have been shouting in the
school prayer hall, Swami was lying on the bench in
Mother’s room. Father asked him, ‘Have you no school
today?’
‘Headache,’ Swami replied.
‘Nonsense! Dress up and go.’
‘Headache.’
‘Loaf about less on Sundays and you will be without a
headache on Monday.’
Swami  knew  how  stubborn  his  father  could  be  and
changed his tactics. ‘I can’t go so late to the class.’
‘I agree, but you’ll have to; it is your own fault. You should
have asked me before deciding to stay away.’
‘What will the teacher think if I go so late?’
‘Tell him you had a headache and so are late.’
‘He will beat me if I say so.’
‘Will he? Let us see. What is his name?’
‘Samuel.’
‘Does he beat the boys?’
‘He is very violent, especially with boys who come late.
Some days ago a boy was made to stay on his knees for a
whole period in a corner of the class because he came late
and that too after getting six cuts from the cane and having
his ears twisted. I wouldn’t like to go late to Samuel’s class.’
‘If he’s so violent, why not tell your headmaster about it?’
‘They say that even the headmaster is afraid of him. He is
such a violent man.’

3.  And then Swami gave a lurid account of Samuel’s
violence; how when he started caning he would not stop
till he saw blood on the boy’s hand, which he made the
boy press to his forehead like a vermilion marking. Swami
hoped that with this his father would be made to see that
he couldn’t go to his class late. But Father’s behaviour
took an unexpected turn. He became excited. ‘What do
these teachers mean by beating our children? They must
be driven out of service. I will see…’
The result was that he proposed to send Swami late to
his class as a kind of challenge. He was also going to send
a letter with Swami to the headmaster. No amount of
protest from Swami was of any avail.
Swami had to go to school.

4.  By the time he was ready, Father had composed a letter
to the headmaster, put it in an envelope and sealed it.
‘What have you written, Father?’ Swaminathan asked
apprehensively.
‘Nothing for you. Give this to your headmaster and go to
your class.’

‘Have you written anything about our teacher, Samuel?’
‘Plenty of things about him. When your headmaster reads
it, he will probably dismiss Samuel from the school and
hand him over to the police.’
‘What has he done, Father?’
‘Well, there is a full account of everything he has done in
the letter. Give it to your headmaster. You must bring an
acknowledgement from him in the evening.’

Pause and Reflect


5.  Swami went to school feeling that he was the worst
perjurer on earth. His conscience bothered him: he wasn’t
at all sure if he had been accurate in his description of
Samuel. He could not decide how much of what he had
said  was  imagined  and  how  much  of  it  was  real.  He
stopped for a moment on the roadside to make up his
mind about Samuel: he was not such a bad man after all.
Personally he was much more genial than the rest; often
he cracked a joke or two centering around Swami’s
inactions and Swami took it as a mark of Samuel’s
personal regard for him. But there was no doubt that he
treated pupils badly…. His cane skinned pupils’ hands.
Swami cast his mind about for an instance of this. There
was none within his knowledge. Years and years ago he