Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/181

Rh Vanara-pettah school. A group of boys are conning their lessons. The monitor is writing on an olla-leaf, with his iron style, a lesson for a class. The teacher appears from behind one of the wooden posts which support the roof, and making a low salaam, inquires with oriental politeness after the health of “his reverence” and family. The examination of the classes was not satisfactory, and led us to think that Jair had left the school to the teaching of the monitor, while he was engaged in money-making elsewhere; but excuses abounded, as they always do in the mouth of a Hindu, and a good reason was given for every deficiency. A stranger would have noticed that one boy had his feet fastened by an iron chain to his waist. He had run away from home and played truant, and now his father had padlocked his feet to keep him at home; this is a common punishment. Another little fellow has his hair matted in long filthy locks all over his head. Why is he not shaved like the rest? His parents have made a vow to present his hair as an offering to the god at Tirupathy, and hence it is not cut or combed. At the next annual festival he will ask for leave of absence, to go and present his locks to the god in his temple.