RK Narayan’s short story for kids: School breaks up

Standing in the veranda, he turned back and looked into the hall and felt slightly uneasy. He would have felt more comfortable if all the boys had given their papers as he had done, twenty minutes before time. With his left shoulder resting against the wall, Sankar was lost to the world. Rajam, sitting under the second ventilator, between two Third-Form boys, had become a writing machine. Mani was still gazing at the rafters, scratching his chin with the pen. The Pea was leaning back in his seat, revising his answers. One supervisor was drowsing in his chair; another was pacing up and down, with an abstracted look in his eyes. The scratchy noise of active nibs, the rustle of papers, and the clearing of the throats, came through the brooding silence of the hall.

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Swaminathan suddenly wished that he had not come out so soon. But how could he have stayed longer in the hall? The Tamil paper was set to go on till five o’clock. He had found himself writing the last line of the last question at four-thirty.

Out of the six questions set, he had answered the first question to his satisfaction, the second was doubtful, the third was satisfactory, the fourth, he knew, was clearly wrong (but then, he did not know the correct answer). The sixth answer was the best of the lot. It took only a minute to answer it. He had read the question at two minutes to four-thirty, started answering a minute later, and finished it at four-thirty. The question was: ‘What moral do you infer from the story of the brahmin and the tiger?’ (A brahmin was passing along the edge of a pond. A tiger hailed him from the other bank and offered him a gold bangle. The brahmin at first declined the offer, but when the tiger protested its innocence and sincerity and insisted upon his taking the bangle, he waded through the water. Before he could hold out his hand for the bangle, he was inside the tiger.) Swaminathan had never thought that this story contained a moral. But now he felt that it must have one since the question paper mentioned it.

He took a minute to decide whether the moral was: ‘We must never accept a gold bangle when it is offered by a tiger’ or ‘Love of gold bangle costs one one’s life’. He saw more logic in the latter and wrote it down. After writing, he looked at the big hall clock. Half an hour more! What had he to do for half an hour? But he felt awkward to be the first to go out. Why could not the others be as quick and precise as he?

He saw a supervisor observing him, and at once pretended to be busy with the answer paper. He thought that while he was about it, he might as well do a little revision. He read a few lines of the first question and was bored. He turned over the leaves and kept gazing at the last answer. He had to pretend that he was revising. He kept gazing at the moral of the tiger story till it lost all its meaning. He set his pen to work. He went on improving the little dash under the last line indicating the end, till it became an elaborate complicated pattern.

He looked at the clock again, thinking that it must be nearly five now. It was only ten minutes past four-thirty. He saw two or three boys giving up their papers and going out, and felt happy. He briskly folded the paper and wrote on the flap the elaborate inscription:

Tamil Tamil

W.S. Swaminathan

1st Form A Section

Albert Mission School

Malgudi

South India

Asia.

The bell rang. In twos and threes boys came out of the hall. It was a thorough contrast to the preceding three hours. There was the din of excited chatter.

‘What have you written for the last question?’ Swaminathan asked a classmate. ‘Which? The moral question? . . . Don’t you remember what the teacher said in the class? . . . “Love of gold cost the brahmin his life.” ‘ ‘Where was gold there?’ Swaminathan objected. ‘There was only a gold bangle. How much have you written for the question?’

‘One page,’ said the classmate.

Swaminathan did not like this answer. He had written only a line. ‘What! You should not have written so much.’

A little later he found Rajam and Sankar. ‘Well, boys, how did you find the paper?’

‘How did you find it?’ Sankar asked.

‘Not bad,’ Swaminathan said.

‘I was afraid only of Tamil,’ said Rajam. ‘Now I think I am safe. I think I may get passing marks.’

‘No. Certainly more. A Class,’ Sankar said.

‘Look here,’ Swaminathan said, ‘some fools have written a page for that moral question.’

‘I wrote only three-quarters of a page,’ Rajam said.

‘And I only a little more than half,’ said Sankar, who was an authority on these matters.

‘I too wrote about that length, about half a page,’ lied Swaminathan as a salve to his conscience, and believed it for the moment.

‘Boys, do you remember that we have no school from tomorrow?’

‘Oh, I forgot all about it,’ Rajam said.

‘Well, what are you going to do with yourselves?’ somebody asked.

‘I am going to use my books as fuel in the kitchen,’ Swaminathan said.

‘My father has bought a lot of books for me to read during the vacation, Sinbad the Sailor, Alibaba, and so on,’ said Sankar.

Mani came throwing up his arms and wailing: ‘Time absolutely insufficient. I could have dashed off the last question.’

The bell rang again fifteen minutes later. The whole school crowded into the hall. There was joy on every face and goodfellowship in every word. Even the teachers tried to be familiar and pleasant. Ebenezar when he saw Mani, asked: ‘Hello, block-head, how are you going to waste your vacation?’

‘I am going to sleep, sir,’ Mani said, winking at his friends.

‘Are you likely to improve your head by the time you return to the school?’

‘How is it possible, sir, unless you cut off Sankar’s head and present it to me?’ A great roar of laughter followed this. There would have been roars of laughter at anything; the mood was such. In sheer joy the Drawing master was bringing down his cane on a row of feet because, he said, he saw some toes growing to an abnormal length.

The Headmaster appeared on the platform, and after waiting for the noise to subside, began a short speech, in which he said that the school would remain closed till the nineteenth of June and open again on the twentieth. He hoped that the boys would not waste their time but read story-books and keep glancing through the books prescribed for their next classes to which, he hoped, most of them were going to be promoted. And now a minute more, there would be a prayer, after which the boys might disperse and go home.

At the end of the prayer the storm burst. With the loudest, lustiest cries, the gathering flooded out of the hall in one body. All through this vigorous confusion and disorder, Swaminathan kept close to Mani. For there was a general belief in the school that enemies stabbed each other on the last day. Swaminathan had no enemy as far as he could remember. But who could say? The school was a bad place.

Mani did some brisk work at the school gate, snatching from all sorts of people ink-bottles and pens, and destroying them. Around him was a crowd seething with excitement and joy. Ecstatic shrieks went up as each article of stationery was destroyed. One or two little boys feebly protested. But Mani wrenched the ink-bottles from their hands, tore their caps, and poured ink over their clothes. He had a small band of assistants, among whom Swaminathan was prominent. Overcome by the mood of the hour, he had spontaneously emptied his ink-bottle over his own head and had drawn frightful dark circles under his eyes with the dripping ink.

A policeman passed by. Mani shouted: ‘Oh, policeman, policeman! Arrest these boys!’ A triumphant cry from a hundred throats rent the air. A few more ink-bottles exploded on the ground and a few more pens were broken. In the midst of it Mani cried: ‘Who will bring me Singaram’s turban? I shall dye it for him.’

Singaram, the school peon, was the only person who was not affected by the spirit of liberty that was aboard, and as soon as the offer to dye his turban reached his ears, he rushed into the crowd with a big stick and dispersed the revellers.

(Excerpted with permission from Malgudi Schooldays-Puffin Classics by RK Narayan, published by Penguin India.)