Class 6 English Chapter 3: Rama to the Rescue

One night in a village

The story opens quietly. A man stretches after a long day and says what a hard one it has been. His wife is sitting nearby, and she says she is feeling sleepy. Nothing in the first two panels suggests anything but an ordinary evening.

She hears something

Then she stops. She is looking at something and will not say what. Ssssh, she tells him. Listen. She has heard it before he has, and she will read what it means before he does too.

Somebody is getting in

There is a scraping noise from the wall. Somebody is trying to get in, the husband says. Then the noise stops, and that is worse.

Why silence is worse

The wife works it out first. He has already got in, she says, because the digging has stopped. The danger is no longer outside the house.

They cannot shout

Here is the problem the whole story is built on. If they call for help, the thief knows he has been seen. He is a few feet away in the dark, and help is not. Any noise they make has to be a noise he can explain to himself.

Lie down, don't look

So the husband tells her to lie down and not look. They must seem to be an ordinary couple going to sleep, which buys them a little time to think.

The plan

What should we do, she asks. I will tell you, he says. Listen. We are not told the plan. The next panels show it working instead. That is a choice the strip makes. We watch it unfold at the same speed the thief does.

A name for a child

They begin a conversation about what they would name a child. If he is a boy, says the husband, we will call him Rama. The wife agrees that Rama is a good name.

Rama is the kotwal

This is the part the thief cannot know. Rama is the name of the village kotwal, the officer whose job is exactly this. To the thief it is simply a name a couple have taken a liking to.

Calling softly

When the boy is in the house, the husband says, I shall call him softly. Rama. Rama. It is said gently, and it means nothing yet. A soft call would not carry past the room, which is exactly why it is safe to start there.

The wife moves him outside

And if he is in the yard, she asks. Then a little louder, he answers. Rama, Rama. Notice who is steering. Every question she asks pushes the boy further off.

The shout

But what if he is not in the house or the yard, she says, but out in the street? Oh, says the husband, then I shall call out very loudly. And he does.

What the thief hears

The thief, crouched by their box, is thoroughly irritated. He wishes they would stop this silly game and talk about their money instead, or at least fall asleep.

What Rama hears

Out in the street, the kotwal hears his own name shouted across the village and runs towards it. He finds the hole dug in the wall and climbs straight through it.

Caught

The thief is still waiting for the chatter to stop when a hand lands on him. You are under arrest. The husband sits up: it is Rama, he heard us.

By their cleverness

The last caption says it plainly. The man and his wife saved themselves from being robbed by their own cleverness, which is what a folktale likes best. Not strength, and not luck. An idea, arrived at quickly, in the dark.

Scenario:

A class is asked who saves the couple. Most answer Rama the kotwal, since he makes the arrest. A few say the husband, because it is his idea to call out a name. Meera says it is the wife. She points out two things. The husband could only say the name once at a normal volume. It was the wife who kept asking what if the boy goes further away. Every question she asked gave him a reason to say the name louder. Without those questions the plan stops at a whisper. A whisper reaches nobody. The teacher asks the class to read the middle of the story again and count who speaks before each rise in volume.

Analysis:

Three answers, and the class had not noticed that two people were building the plan.

Activity:

Act the scene in pairs, and stop at the exact line where the shout first leaves the room.

Title:

Say it three ways

What You Notice:

The word does not simply get louder. It gets longer and usually higher as well, and you take a bigger breath before it. That is why the husband's three calls sound so different from each other, and why a listener in the street can tell at once that the last one was meant to reach a long way.

A kotwal was the officer in charge of a town or village, a post that existed in India for centuries before modern police forces.

This story comes from Tamil Nadu, and the version in your book was drawn for Amar Chitra Katha by Ram Waeerkar, with a script by Luis M. Fernandes.

Thieves in many old Indian tales break in through a wall rather than a door, which is exactly what happens here.

How the plan escalates — HOUSE - YARD - STREET — Three places, three volumes. In the house a soft call will do. In the yard, a little louder. In the street, a shout that carries across the village.

Who hears what — One shout, two meanings — The thief hears a name for a baby. The kotwal hears his own name. The same sound does two entirely different jobs.

A mark standing in for letters

Look at the wife's line: I'm feeling so sleepy. Two words have been pushed into one, and something has gone missing in the middle. It happens so often in speech that most people never stop to ask what.

What it's replacing

I'm is I am with the a taken out. It's is it is with the i gone. They're is they are, missing an a. In each case the apostrophe sits exactly where the letters used to be.

The apostrophe is not decoration

That is the whole rule, and it makes spelling these easy. Remove the letters first, then put the mark in the hole they left behind. Do not loses an o and becomes don't. Write the two words, cross out what disappears, and drop the mark into the space it leaves behind.

Some you already use

The story is full of them. What's the matter. I'll tell you. I'd better listen. We'll call him Rama. That's a good name. We're saved. Six of them in a handful of panels, which is roughly how thickly they lie in ordinary speech.

Where they belong

Contractions are a spoken habit. People use them constantly while talking and far less when writing carefully. Neither form is wrong, and the choice tells a reader how formal you are being.

A verb for right now

Now a second job. Somebody is trying to get in, says the husband. That is happening as he says it, and English has a particular way of showing it.

Two parts, always

It takes am, is or are, followed by a verb with -ing on the end. Is trying. Are talking. Am feeling. Neither part works alone.

Picking the right helper

Which helper you need depends on who is acting. I am waiting. He is waiting. They are waiting. The -ing verb never changes, and the little word in front always does.

Why the story needs it

Read the thief's thoughts: they're awake, they're saying something, perhaps they're talking about their money. Every one of them is about this moment, which is exactly why he cannot relax. A man waiting in the dark thinks in the present, because the present is his whole problem.

Words that say how

The third job is smaller and very useful. I'd better listen closely, thinks the thief. Closely tells you how he listens.

The climbing adverbs

The plan itself runs on them. The husband will call softly, then a little louder, then very loudly. Take those words away and the whole trick disappears. The name never changes and the pretend story never changes. Only the adverbs move.

Spotting one

Ask how. If a word answers that question about the action, it is an adverb. He ran quickly. She spoke gently. The kotwal arrived suddenly.

The -ly trap

Most adverbs end in -ly, and this leads people astray twice over. Fast and well are adverbs without it, while friendly and lovely end in -ly and are not adverbs at all.

Three tools from one night

So this story quietly teaches three things. An apostrophe filling a gap, a two-part verb for what is going on now, and a word that says how something was done.

Why they turn up together

That is not an accident. All three belong to ordinary speech, and this chapter is almost entirely people talking to each other in a dark room.

Why one small mark matters

That single symbol does three different jobs on the same page. It stands in for missing letters in a contraction. It shows who owns something in a word like Rama's stick. And in its most confusing moment it does neither, because the owning form of it keeps no mark at all.

Scenario:

Arjun writes a note to his cousin and uses contractions all the way through. He writes its raining here. And theyre coming on Sunday. And Id like you to visit. His teacher marks three errors. Arjun cannot see them, because every word is one he meant to write. She asks one question about each. Which two words were squeezed together, and where did the missing letters sit? On its raining he gets stuck. He finds that its and it's are not the same thing.

Analysis:

Three errors, all the same error, and the rule that finds them is a single question.

Activity:

Write five sentences using contractions, then swap and mark only the apostrophes.

Title:

Hunt the apostrophes

What You Notice:

Most of your ten will be contractions, and the starred ones will be possessives such as Rama's stick. You will probably also find at least one its with no mark at all, doing the owning job. Three different uses of one small symbol, sitting on the same page.

The apostrophe has done this job in English for about five hundred years, and it was borrowed from printers in France and Italy.

Its and it's confuse almost everybody, because for once the apostrophe is not showing ownership. It's always means it is or it has.

Won't is the strangest contraction in English. It comes from an older form, woll not, which is why the o does not match will.

Where the apostrophe goes — The apostrophe fills the hole — Take out the letters first, then put the mark exactly where they were. Do not is missing an o, so it becomes don't with the mark in that spot.

Building a happening-now verb — HELPER + ING — Pick am, is or are to suit the person, then add the verb with -ing. He is running. They are running. I am running. Two parts, never one.

Telling what happened to you

Imagine the man in the story meeting his neighbour the next morning. The neighbour asks what all that shouting was about. What he gives back is a recount. Not a story he invented, but an account of a night he actually sat through.

Five questions

A recount answers five things between its first sentence and its last. When it happened. Where. What happened. How it happened. And why. Miss one of the five and a listener will usually stop you to ask for it.

When and where come first

Those two set the scene. Last night, in our house. Without them a listener spends the whole account trying to work out which night and whose house, instead of following the story.

What carries the events

Then the events themselves, in the order they came. We were going to sleep. My wife heard a noise. The noise stopped. We knew he was inside. Short sentences, in the order they happened, with nothing shuffled for effect.

How explains the way

How is where this particular story gets interesting. We called the kotwal without letting the thief know, by pretending to choose a name for a child.

And why closes it

Why we did it that way. Because shouting for help would have told him he was seen, and he was standing closer to us than any help was.

Telling it from your own side

A recount uses I and we, because you were there. That is also an honest limit. The man can say what the thief did. He cannot say what the thief was thinking. Nobody told him that, and inventing it would make the rest of his account harder to trust.

Keeping to the past

It stays in the past, because it is finished. We heard. We called. He came. Slipping into the present makes a listener think you are describing something still going on.

From telling to advising

Now a different kind of talking. Suppose the neighbour asks what he should do about his own house. That calls for a suggestion, not a recount.

A suggestion is not an order

An order tells somebody what to do. A suggestion offers an idea and leaves them free to refuse it. The difference lives in a handful of small words.

The gentle openings

How about fixing the back window. You could keep a lamp by the door. It might be better to ask the kotwal to walk this way at night. None of those commands anybody. Each one puts the decision back where it belongs, with the person who owns the house.

Three strengths

Could is gentle. Should is firmer advice. Must leaves almost no room at all. Choosing between them is choosing how much freedom to give the person listening.

Reasons are a separate job

A reason is not a suggestion. I think it matters because a house with a weak wall invites trouble is a reason. Fixing the wall is the suggestion. Good advice usually carries both.

Who would you call

The last piece is practical. Different trouble needs different help. A fire, an injured person, a hurt animal, somebody lost, somebody suspicious near the houses.

Knowing before you need it

The couple in the story knew exactly who could help them and exactly what he was called. That is why a plan existed at all, and it is worth knowing in advance rather than working out in the dark. A number learned on a quiet afternoon is worth a great deal more than one you have to look up in the middle of the trouble itself.

Scenario:

A Class 6 group in Kanpur was asked to write a safety notice for the younger children. Aarti wanted to begin with the exciting part, the night a monkey got into the school kitchen. Her teacher made her start again with when and where, and the notice suddenly made sense to a reader who had not been there. The group then argued about wording. Imran wrote: you must shut the kitchen door. Sara said the juniors would ignore an order from another pupil, and changed it to: how about shutting the door behind you, since an open one is an invitation. They added a line naming who to tell, and pinned the notice up by the stairs.

Analysis:

One short notice needed all three skills at once: a recount in order, a suggestion rather than an order, and a reason to make it stick.

Activity:

Write a five-line safety notice for your own classroom, starting with when and where, and making every instruction a suggestion with a reason.

Title:

Tell it, then find the hole

What You Notice:

The missing one is almost always where, and the second time is usually shorter rather than longer. Both of those are worth noticing. A speaker already knows where they were standing, so it never occurs to them to say it, and a listener who is missing it spends the whole account building a place instead of following the story. Once the scene is set in two seconds at the start, the rest stops needing repairs.

India's emergency number 112 now reaches police, fire and ambulance together, so one number covers what used to need three.

Police officers are trained to ask where before anything else, because an address lets help start moving while the rest of the story is still being told.

Courts take written recounts seriously for the same reason teachers do: an account in the right order, with times and places, is far easier to check.

What a recount must answer — WHEN - WHERE - WHAT - HOW - WHY — Five questions in a fixed order. Walk down them and you will never leave a listener wondering which night it was or whose house they are standing in.

How strong to be — could, should, must — Three steps from gentle to firm. Could offers, should advises, must insists. Pick by how much room the other person deserves.