The headmaster entered the class with a slightly flushed face and a hard ominous look in his eyes. Swaminathan wished that he had been anywhere but there at that moment. The headmaster surveyed the class for a few minutes and asked, ‘Are you not ashamed of coming and sitting there after what you did yesterday?’ Just as a special honour to them, he read out the names of a dozen students or so that had attended the class. After that he read out the names of those that had kept away, and asked them to stand on their benches. He felt that punishment was not enough and asked them to stand on their desks. Swaminathan was among them and felt humiliated at that eminence. Then they were lectured. When it was over, they were asked to offer explanations one by one. One said that he had an attack of a headache and therefore could not come to school. He was asked to bring a medical certificate.

The second said that while he had been coming to school on the previous day, someone had told him that there would be no school, and he had gone back home. The headmaster replied that if he was going to listen to every loafer who said there would be no school, he deserved to be flogged. Anyway, why did he not come to school and verify? No answer. The punishment was pronounced: ten days’ attendance cancelled, two rupees fine, and the whole day to be spent on the desk. The third said that he had an attack of a headache. The fourth said that he had stomach ache. The fifth said that his grandmother died suddenly just as he was starting for school. The headmaster asked him if he could bring a letter from his father. No. He had no father. Then, who was his guardian? His grandmother. But the grandmother was dead, was she not? No. It was another grandmother. The headmaster asked how many grandmothers a person could have. No answer. Could he bring a letter from his neighbours? No, he could not. None of his neighbours could read or write, because he lived in a very illiterate part of Ellaman Street. Then the headmaster offered to send a teacher to this illiterate locality to ascertain from the boy’s neighbours if the death of the grandmother was a fact. A pause, some perspiration, and then the answer that the neighbours could not possibly know anything about it, since the grandmother died in the village. The headmaster hit him on the knuckles with his cane, called him a street dog, and pronounced the punishment: fifteen days suspension.