Then one day, the newly appointed teacher organised a meeting with all community members and explained to them something called 'Right to Education'. Basically, this meant that your parents decided you should go to school. No one asked you. Your father only said, 'Now work is more regular here, we can manage.' So off to school you were dispatched. Being alone with a hundred cattle in the nearby jungle (with the possibility of that nasty jackal) seemed so much less fearful than entering that stark building, all yellow and white with blue things written on it here and there.
What are the children in there going to say? Your mother made you have your bath and put on the other pair of clothes, so no one would say you smell -- but the beloved odour of cows isn't going away from you and your clothes anytime soon. There are some green-painted metal play things on small play ground. The smell of food being cooked mingles with the smell of something else (it's paper and chalk and sweat, though you don't know it yet). Your heart is in your mouth as you step onto the ramp climbing up to the school. The teacher comes out and is looking at you -- and you're doing your best not to run away. Away, back to the beloved forest, with the hundred cattle who know you so well.