SCHOOL BREAK UP

WITH dry lips, parched throat, and ink-stained fingers, and exhaustion on one side
and exaltation on the other, Swaminathan strode out of the examination hall, on the
last day.
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.
Swaminathan suddenly wished that he had not come out so soon. But how
could he have stayed in the hall longer?
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 he story of the Brahmin and lie 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 cost one one's life'. He saw more logic in
the latter and wrote it down. After writing, he had 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 had found it hard to kill time. Why wasn't the paper set for two and a
half hours instead of three? He had looked wistfully at the veranda outside. If only
he could pluck up enough courage to hand in the paper and go out--he would have
no more examinations for a long time to come--he could do what he pleased--roam
about the town in the evenings and afternoons and morning--throw away the
books--command granny to tell endless tales.
He had seen a supervisor observing him, and had 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 had 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 I st 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 class-
mate.
'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 class-mate.
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 to-morrow?'
'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 Pea appeared from somewhere with a huge streak of ink on his left
cheek. 'Hallo Sankar, first class?'
'No. May hardly get thirty-five.'
'You rascal, you are lying. If you get a first class, may I cut off your tuft?'
Mani asked.
The bell rang again fifteen minutes later. The whole school crowded into
the hall. There was joy in every face and good-fellowship in every word. Even the
teachers tried to be familiar and pleasant. Ebenezar, when he saw Mani, asked:
'Hallo, 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 Head Master 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 storybooks 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 in the road. 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 abroad, 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.