‘I….I….couldn’t come,’ stammered Swaminathan.
‘Is that so?’ asked the headmaster, and turning to a boy said, ‘Bring the peon.’
Swaminathan thought: ‘What, is he going to ask the peon to thrash me? If he does any such thing, I will bite everybody dead.’ The peon came. The headmaster said to him, ‘Now say what you know about this rascal on the desk.’
The peon eyed Swaminathan with a sinister look, grunted, and demanded, ‘Didn’t I see you break the panes? . . .’

‘Of the ventilators in my room?’ added the headmaster with zest.
Here there was no chance of escape. Swaminathan kept staring foolishly till he received another whack on the back. The headmaster demanded what the young brigand had to say about it. The brigand had nothing to say. It was a fact that he had broken the panes. They had seen it. There was nothing more to it. He had unconsciously become defiant and did not care to deny the charge. When another whack came on his back, he ejaculated, ‘Don’t beat me, sir. It pains.’ This was an invitation to the headmaster to bring down the cane four times again. He said, ‘Keep standing here, on this desk, staring like an idiot, till I announce your dismissal.’
Every pore in Swaminathan’s body burnt with the touch of the cane. He had a sudden flood of courage, the courage that comes of desperation. He restrained the tears that were threatening to rush out, jumped down, and grasping his books, rushed out muttering, ‘I don’t care for your dirty school.’

- R. K. Narayan