On leaving the Normal School we were sent to the Bengal Academy, a
Eurasian institution. We felt we had gained an access of dignity, that
we had grown up--at least into the first storey of freedom. In point of
fact the only progress we made in that academy was towards freedom. What
we were taught there we never understood, nor did we make any attempt to
learn, nor did it seem to make any difference to anybody that we did
not. The boys here were annoying but not disgusting--which was a great
comfort. They wrote ASS on their palms and slapped it on to our backs
with a cordial "hello!" They gave us a dig in the ribs from behind and
looked innocently another way. They dabbed banana pulp on our heads and
made away unperceived. Nevertheless it was like coming out of slime on
to rock--we were worried but not soiled.

This school had one great advantage for me. No one there cherished the
forlorn hope that boys of our sort could make any advance in learning.
It was a petty institution with an insufficient income, so that we had
one supreme merit in the eyes of its authorities--we paid our fees
regularly. This prevented even the Latin Grammar from proving a
stumbling block, and the most egregious of blunders left our backs
unscathed. Pity for us had nothing to do with it--the school authorities
had spoken to the teachers!

Still, harmless though it was, after all it was a school. The rooms were
cruelly dismal with their walls on guard like policemen. The house was
more like a pigeon-holed box than a human habitation. No decoration, no
pictures, not a touch of colour, not an attempt to attract the boyish
heart. The fact that likes and dislikes form a large part of the child
mind was completely ignored. Naturally our whole being was depressed as
we stepped through its doorway into the narrow quadrangle--and playing
truant became chronic with us.

In this we found an accomplice. My elder brothers had a Persian tutor.
We used to call him Munshi. He was of middle age and all skin and bone,
as though dark parchment had been stretched over his skeleton without
any filling of flesh and blood. He probably knew Persian well, his
knowledge of English was quite fair, but in neither of these directions
lay his ambition. His belief was that his proficiency in singlestick
was matched only by his skill in song. He would stand in the sun in the
middle of our courtyard and go through a wonderful series of antics with
a staff--his own shadow