Bai’s son has flunked his 9th standard. Yet again. Bai slogs at 5 homes, an endless round of “top work” chores, stretches her limited salary and pushes her sons to an English medium school and tuitions. The vagabonds skip classes and play marbles or whatever is the equivalent thereof. Her eldest, a driver with some travel agency, took his boss’s car on a midnight spin with his coterie, crashed the car, and the lady slogged to repair and return the car to its owner to avoid a police case. For a calamity, any of the memsahibs would have helped, but who wants to throw money at a lost cause, the boy is a scoundrel? Of course it is not the son’s fault, he is good, his friends made him do it. Why does she not make the 9th class–in-limbo a wireman or an electrician or plumber instead? No, he must clear his tenth boards and he must go to college come what may.



One can take a horse to the water but one cannot make him drink, as Baba used to say.