His mother hits rock-bottom and he is sent to live with his adopted grand parents, but the severity and frequency of corporal punishment he experiences at the hands of teachers at his new school sees him developing a phobia for school and playing truant. With his adopted mother’s living standard plummeting from middle class to just above poverty, his biological parents are forced to take him back to the village of his birth. But here too he suffers very harsh punishment on his very first day at the new school. In spite of this he does well and expresses a desire to go to secondary school, but he is deliberately left out of a group from his class to take the entrance exam.