Crime and Punishment
by R. K. Narayan
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This humorous story by R. K. Narayan turns the ideas of 'crime' and 'punishment' upside down. A private tutor, trying to make a spoilt little boy score fifty and win a double-promotion, loses his temper when the boy repeatedly gives the wrong answer to '16 × 3' and slaps him, the 'crime'. Instantly regretting it, he is horrified when the boy threatens to tell his parents, whose child-psychology theories forbid any 'contrariness or repression' in the child's mind. The teacher, who privately thinks he is 'in charge of a little gorilla', desperately tries to pacify the sobbing boy, and this begins his real 'punishment'. The clever boy blackmails him: he forces the teacher to abandon the lesson, to become a 'station master' in his train game, to try (and fail) to repair the engine, and to tell endless stories, chasing him round the garden until the exhausted teacher collapses. When the parents suddenly appear and ask about the boy's arithmetic, the boy silently begs the teacher not to betray him; the teacher, now dependent on the boy's silence about the slap, covers for him, praising his progress and pretending they had merely finished early and were 'keeping up his spirits'. Thus the 'punishment' for the teacher's small crime is his complete surrender to the whims of the spoilt child, a gentle satire on over-indulgent, over-theorising parenting.
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'Crime and Punishment' by R. K. Narayan is a humorous story in which the 'crime' is a teacher's slap and the 'punishment' is his comic subjection to a spoilt child. The irony of the grand title lies in this trivial reversal.
The crime
A private tutor is coaching a spoilt little boy to score fifty and win a double-promotion. When the boy repeatedly answers '16 × 3' as 'twenty-four', seemingly to fool him, the teacher loses his temper and slaps him. He instantly regrets it and begs the boy not to cry, but the boy threatens: 'I will tell my mother.'
The over-theorising parents
The boy is the pampered only child of parents who have studied child psychology and lecture the teacher daily that he must never set up any 'contrariness or repression' in the child's mind, or he will 'damage him for life'. The teacher privately disagrees, feeling he is really 'in charge of a little gorilla' who needs 'an anna's worth of cane', but he must pretend to agree, for the thirty rupees they pay him.
The punishment
Fear of the parents lets the boy blackmail the teacher, this is the real 'punishment'. To keep the boy quiet about the slap, the teacher must abandon the lesson, become the 'station master' in the boy's train game, try in vain to repair the toy engine, and tell endless stories of bisons, tigers and Ali Baba. The boy makes him run around the garden three times until, exhausted and gasping, the teacher collapses on the portico step.
The comic surrender
Just then the parents emerge and ask about the boy's arithmetic. The boy slinks behind them and silently, desperately appeals to the teacher not to betray him about the slap. Now dependent on the boy's silence, the teacher covers for him: he praises the boy, 'He will pull through', and, to explain the running in the garden, says smoothly, 'We finished our lessons early, and I was just playing about with the child... something to keep up his spirits.'
The story ends with the teacher fully surrendered to the spoilt child's whims, a gentle satire on over-indulgent, over-theorising 'over-parenting' that produces tyrannical children.