Bholi: Class 10 English · Chapter 8

8.1 Before you read

Think of a nickname that began as a joke. It might be Chhotu for the smallest boy in the lane, Professor for a girl who always carries a book, or Silent for a boy who rarely talks. Some nicknames are affectionate. Others turn into a cage, because after a while even the person who carries the name starts to believe it.

This story is about a girl trapped inside such a label. Her family has decided she is good for nothing, and the village agrees with them. As you read, keep three questions in mind. Why is she pushed aside at home? What makes one teacher care about her? And does she prove that teacher right?

In the India of this story, a girl at school was far from normal. At the first census after Independence, in 1951, fewer than one woman in ten could read and write. In villages the figure was closer to one in twenty. Fig. 8.1 shows how slowly the gap between men and women has closed since then. Keep these numbers in mind when a new girls' school opens in Bholi's village.

8.2 Reading the story

The story spans many years, from Bholi's babyhood to her wedding day. Your textbook breaks it into three parts, each opened by Read and Find Out questions, and the notes below follow the same parts. Fig. 8.2 shows how the tension builds slowly for years and then explodes in a single moment, the climax. Read each part in your textbook first, then use these notes to check your understanding.

8.2.1 Part I: A burden at home

The first Read and Find Out questions ask what worries Bholi's father. They also ask why the girl ends up in school, for reasons that have little to do with learning.

Bholi is the youngest of Ramlal's seven children, and the only one people pity. Bad luck struck early and often. As a baby she fell from a cot, perhaps injuring her brain, and she grew up slow to learn. Smallpox at two left deep scars all over a body that had been pretty at birth. Words came only at five, and then haltingly, with a stammer; the other children's teasing taught her that silence was safer. Before long nobody used her given name, Sulekha. To the whole village she was Bholi, the simpleton.

Her father is the village numberdar and a well-off farmer, and his household shows clearly who gets what. The three sons have gone to the city for school and then college. The daughters are married off in turn: the eldest is already a wife, the second one's wedding has been fixed, and the third will be next. Being pretty and healthy, they are easy to settle. Bholi, plain and thought to be dull, is the one daughter Ramlal has no idea how to marry off, and that is his worry (Fig. 8.3).

When Bholi is seven, a girls' primary school opens in the village. The Tehsildar, a senior revenue officer, comes to open it. He tells Ramlal plainly that the government's man in the village must set an example by sending his own daughters. Ramlal's wife is horrified: in her view, an educated girl will never find a husband. Ramlal dares not refuse the officer, so the couple look for a way out. They will send Bholi, the daughter they have already given up on. Her mother's logic is cold. The girl is unlikely to marry anyway, so school might as well take her off their hands.

8.2.2 Part II: A first day that changes everything

The second set of Read and Find Out questions is about how the first school day feels to Bholi, and how her teacher compares with her family. Watch her feelings swing as you read (Fig. 8.4).

When Ramlal takes her hand and announces that he is taking her to school, Bholi screams and tears herself free. The word school means nothing to her, but being led away does: only days earlier the family's old cow, Lakshmi, was led off and sold to someone else. Then something strange happens. For once she is washed, her tangled hair is oiled, and she is put into a clean frock, a shrunken hand-me-down from her sister Champa. Ramlal's reason is his own pride, since he does not want the school to think badly of his family. To Bholi, though, this unfamiliar care is the first hint that wherever she is going might be kinder than home.

At school, fear slowly gives way to interest. The room is full of girls of roughly her age, and Bholi dares to hope she might make a friend. The lesson is a blur, but the coloured animal pictures on the wall are not: each one matches a creature from her own village, and one cow could be Lakshmi's twin. Then the teacher asks her name. Bholi gets no further than its first sound, and the tears come. Convinced that the whole class is laughing at her, she keeps her head down, and when the bell empties the room she is still sobbing in her corner.

Alone with her now, the teacher says her name so softly that Bholi, who has only ever heard it barked, is deeply moved. Even being told to stand up sounds friendly in that voice. Bholi trusts her enough to risk her stammer again. Her name comes out in pieces, and the teacher cheers each piece until the whole word arrives. Fear, the teacher explains, is what ties her tongue; let it go and the words will come. Asked to answer aloud instead of nodding, Bholi even manages a shaky yes. Then comes a picture book, and with it a promise: learning, step by step, will one day make Bholi someone the village listens to instead of laughing at. She walks home with her heart full of new hope.

8.2.3 Part III: The wedding that never happened

The last Read and Find Out questions ask why her parents accept Bishamber's offer, and why the wedding falls through. The story now jumps ahead several years. The village has grown into a small town: the mail train now stops there, a cotton mill and a tin-roofed cinema have appeared, and the girls' primary school has become a high school. Only at the end do we find out how much Bholi has gained in these years.

One night Ramlal and his wife talk over a proposal from Bishamber Nath, a well-off grocer from another village. To her he is a catch: he wants no dowry, and he owns a big shop and a house and has savings. Ramlal hesitates. The man limps, his children from an earlier marriage are adults, and he is nearly as old as Ramlal himself. His wife has an answer for everything. In a man, she says, forty-five or fifty is no age at all. The real luck is that he lives elsewhere and has never heard about Bholi's face or her supposed dullness. Turn him down, and the girl may never marry at all. When Ramlal wonders what Bholi will think, she dismisses the girl as having no more opinion than a cow. Lying awake across the courtyard, Bholi hears every word.

The wedding is grander than Ramlal ever hoped: a long procession, a brass band and the groom on a decorated horse. Even Bholi's sisters are jealous. Then, at the sacred fire, the bride's veil is lifted, Bishamber sees the pockmarks, and the garland stops in mid-air. Now he wants ₹5,000 before he will go on. Ramlal humbles himself completely. He takes off his turban, the mark of a man's honour, sets it before the groom and pleads to pay ₹2,000 instead. Bishamber will not bend: the full amount, or the wedding party leaves. Weeping, Ramlal fetches the money and pays.

Sure that he has won, Bishamber calls for the garland. But when the veil comes back, the bride's eyes meet his directly, full of icy scorn rather than fear. In one swift movement the garland is in the fire and the veil is off. Then, to everyone's astonishment, Bholi speaks loudly and fluently: her father should keep his money, because she refuses this groom. The guests mutter that she has no shame, and Ramlal begs her to think of the family's izzat. Bholi's answer is sharp. Out of respect for that very izzat she had agreed to an old, lame husband; a greedy coward who bargains over a wife is another matter. An old woman sneers that they had all taken her for a harmless, dumb creature. Bholi turns the insult back on the whole gathering: the creature they meant to hand over can speak, and she has more to say.

The groom's party leaves, and the confused band even plays a cheerful farewell. Ramlal is left with his shame and one question: who will marry her now? At this point the story calls her Sulekha again. Her calm answer settles her future. She will care for her parents as they grow old and become a teacher at her own old school. She looks to her teacher, a silent witness all evening, who approves at once. The writer compares the teacher's quiet pride to an artist's joy over her finest finished work.

8.3 Thinking about the text

Board answers on this story are marked on evidence. When you name a quality, back it with something the character does or says, then explain what it shows. The notes below gather that evidence and the ideas behind the Think about It questions.

8.3.1 Bholi: from simpleton to Sulekha

Bholi is the protagonist, and no other character changes as much as she does. At the start she is silent, scared and sure of her own worthlessness, because that is what everyone has told her. By the end she is educated, clear-spoken and braver than any adult around her. The change is not magic: years of school, and one teacher's faith, made it possible. The table pairs each trait with evidence you can use.

8.3.2 The teacher and the other adults

The adults show two ways of treating a child who is different. Ramlal and his wife judge Bholi by her looks and her chances of marriage. They are not cruel in a dramatic way; they simply expect nothing of her, and say so within her hearing. Bishamber sees her only as a deal. The Tehsildar, who never meets her, is the one outsider who pushes for girls' schooling, although he talks of it mainly as setting an example.

The teacher is the only adult who looks at Bholi and sees a person. She does not pity her or lecture her. She encourages, praises small steps and promises that learning will bring respect. Her quiet look of satisfaction at the end tells us how much of Bholi's change she has shaped (Fig. 8.6).

8.3.3 Finding a voice: the stammer and the two names

Bholi's stammer is more than a speech problem in this story. It stands for her powerlessness: a girl nobody listens to cannot speak up. Notice when she stammers. It is worst when she is frightened or mocked, and it starts to ease the moment someone is patient with her. At the wedding, when she has something that truly must be said, her voice is clear and strong. Losing the stammer is a symbol of the confidence and self-respect that education has given her (Fig. 8.7).11In real life a stammer has nothing to do with intelligence. Patient listeners and speech therapy help far more than teasing or scolding.

Her names tell the same story. Bholi, the simple one, is a label the village pinned on her, and the narrator uses it for as long as others see her that way. Only near the end, when she speaks calmly about her future, does the story call her Sulekha again. The real name returns because the real person has come out. She is no longer the simpleton of other people's talk, but a thoughtful young woman who decides her own life. The name even fits her new self, since lekh is the Hindi word for writing, and she is now a reader who plans to teach.

8.3.4 Themes, symbols and irony

A theme is a big idea that a story explores. Bholi is short, but it carries several themes at once.

• Neglect of the girl child. Sons are educated, daughters are married off, and a daughter without good looks is treated as a burden. The story questions all of it.
• Education as power. School gives Bholi knowledge, but above all confidence and a voice. Learning makes her independent.
• Dowry and greed. Bishamber treats marriage as trade and pounces the moment he sees a weakness. The story shows dowry for what it is: a price put on a woman.
• Kindness changes lives. One patient teacher undoes years of neglect.
• Self-respect. Bholi accepts a poor match out of duty but refuses to be humiliated. Dignity matters more to her than marriage.

Symbols. The cow Lakshmi stands for the way Bholi expects to be treated: kept for a while, then disposed of. The family's view of her as a dumb cow sums up how they see her, as a creature with no voice. The garland flung into the fire is her rejection of a marriage built on money. Ramlal's turban at Bishamber's feet is his honour in the dust, and the teacher's masterpiece is Bholi herself.

Irony. The girl everyone called a simpleton turns out to be the wisest person at the wedding. Her parents send her to school because they think she is worthless, and school is exactly what makes her strong. The groom who asked for no dowry demands one at the last moment, and the guests call Bholi shameless when the real shame belongs to Bishamber.

8.4 A poster on saving the girl child

Bholi's story ends well because one school and one teacher stepped in. Many girls in India still meet the attitudes she faced. Sons are thought to matter more, a girl's schooling is seen as wasted, and dowry makes a daughter a cost. The fifth Think about It task asks you to research a government scheme aimed at these attitudes. Your group then designs a poster on it.

A poster has to work in a few seconds, from across a corridor. Plan it in four parts, as in Fig. 8.8: a short headline, one strong picture or symbol, two or three facts, and a clear call to action. Use your own drawings and words, and do not copy the scheme's official logo.

8.5 Talk about it

The three Talk about It questions carry the story into your own life. Discuss them in groups, but prepare your points first. Good discussion means listening, building on what others say and disagreeing politely, with reasons.

8.6 Board exam practice

Practise all three kinds of question here: extract-based questions, short answers of about 40–50 words and long answers of about 100–120 words, often on character, theme or values. Read each extract in your textbook first, then answer. Every model answer ends with the key points an examiner looks for.