Punishment in Kindergarten

10.
Punishment in Kindergarten
Summary
The poem ‘Punishment in Kindergarten’ is a childhood hurt recollection of the poet in the
later years of her life. The poet was deeply hurt by the unkind words of a teacher. It is the
incident when the poet was just a school kid. She had gone on a school picnic with her
teacher and schoolmates. While other kids were playing, the poet stood alone because she
was still new in the school. On seeing her alone, the teacher who had dressed blue- coloured
frock threw harsh words at her. The harsh words deeply wound her heart. This was followed
by one more thing that added more to her pain. The schoolmates who were sipping sugarcane
laughed ridiculously at her when they heard the teacher daunting her. The poet could not bear
this. She felt insulted. This made her hide in the hedge where she smelt the flowers and pain.
With the passage of time, the poet has almost forgotten the painful incident and she is now
satisfied with herself. Time and her adult viewpoint have healed the pain. The years have
reduced the intensity and harshness of the hurtful incident. The angry words and laughing
faces are vague and unclear. The years have gone by very fast. Certain incidents close to the
heart are remembered others are forgotten. Life moves on. The poet is now adult look back
on that painful incident peacefully. There is no need more to remember that childhood
incident with pain.
Thus the poet is tinged with a noble sense of forbearance of ‘adult peace’ after ‘the years
have sped along’. The poet has survived that pain and reached maturity transcending
memory:…
No need to remember
That picnic day when I lay hidden
By a hedge watching the steel-white sun standing lonely in the sky.
The significance of the poem does not lie in ‘punishment’ but in the sense of hurt inflicted on
the child by the harsh words of the teacher and the children’s laughter that only aggravated it.
The ‘adult peace’ the poet because of the healing touch of time. It is the impact of the sadly
moving flux of life that brings about spiritual tranquillity in the poet:
The words are muffled now, the laughing
Faces only a blur. The years have

Sped along, stopping briefly
At beloved halts and moving
Sadly on.
Punishment in Kindergarten | Explanation and Analysis
We carry childhood memories with us into our adult life. Some may be painful, some happy.
You may also remember certain unforgettable incidents from childhood. This poem is
moving through the simple rendering of childhood memory. The poet recalls an incident from
the past which is still very painful. Here we hear the voice of an adult but the hurt the child
felt is recreated. Let us discuss it in detail:
The narrator who is now an adult recalls a painful incident of childhood. The incident
happened in kindergarten on a bright sunny day. All the children were playing together. The
narrator was sitting alone. 0n seeing this the blue-frocked teacher scolded her harshly in the
presence of her classmates. She called her peculiar child for wanting to be alone when all
were playing. In this stanza, the first line speaks of the present from the second line onwards
the past is described
The narrator remembers the details of that painful day. The other schoolmates were sipping
sugarcane juice on the lawn. When they heard the teacher shouting at the narrator. They
turned and laughed in merriment at the narrator’s tears. Unable to bear the shame the child
buried its head in the hedge.
We can very easily identify With the little child, can’t we? Children are hurt by very trivial
things. What seems to be a major tragedy to the child will be to the Adult a silly matter.
Notice the two voices in the poem- an adult voice which is able to talk openly about the
incident that is not painful any more and the child voice which relives the agony of the past.
The adult voice speaks again in the present. The years have reduced the intensity and
harshness of the hurtful incident. Time has healed the pain. The angry words and laughing
faces are vague and unclear. The years have gone by very fast. Certain incidents close to the
heart are remembered others are forgotten. Life moves on. The narrator is now adult look
back on that painful incident peacefully and do not mind it any more. There is no need more
to remember that childhood incident with pain.
PUNISHMENT IN KINDERGARTEN
Punishment in Kindergarten" is a little autobiographical poem by the famous Indo-Anglian
poet Kamala Das. She recalls one of her childhood experiences. When she was in the
kindergarten, one day the children were taken for a picnic. All the children except her were
playing and making merry. But she alone kept away from the company of the children. Their
teacher, a blue-frocked woman, scolded her saying.
"Why don't you join the others, what
A peculiar child you are!"
This heard, all the other children who were sipping sugar cane turned and laughed. The child
felt it very much. She became sad at the words of the teacher. But the laughter by the children
made her sadder. She thought that they should have consoled her rather than laughing and
insulting her. Filled with sorrow and shame she did her face in a hedge and wept. This was
indeed a painful experience to a little child in the nursery school.
Now after many years she has grown into an adult. She has only a faint memory of the blue-
frocked woman and the laughing faces of the children. Now she has learned to have an 'adult
peace' and happiness in her present state as a grown-up person. Now there is no need for her
to be perturbed about that bitter kindergarten experience. With her long experience in life she
has learned that life is a mixture of joy and sorrow. She remembers how she has experienced
both the joy and sorrow of life. The long passage of time has taught her many things. She is
no more a lonely individual as she used to feel when she was a child. The poet comes to a
conclusion that there is no need for her to remember that picnic day, when she hid her face in
the hedge, watching the steel-white sun that was standing lonely in the sky.
The poem is written in three stanzas, each having different number of lines – the first with
seven lines, the second with six and the third with nine. The poem does not follow any
regular rhyme scheme. The subject matter of the poem has two parts, the first of which being
the description of the painful experience of the kindergarten days and the second, the adult's
attitude to the incident at present when she is no more a child.
The poet seems to be nostalgic about her childhood days. There are certain expressions in the
poem that are worth remembering. The poet says that the child buried its face in the hedge
and "smelt the flowers and the pain". "Smelt the flowers can be taken as an ordinary
expression, but "smelt the pain" is something very evocative and expressive. In the first
stanza of the poem, the poet describes the pain caused to the child, "throwing words like pots
and pans". This again is beautiful. The phrase used by the poet to describe the child's teacher,
namely, "blue-frocked woman" can be justified from the child's point of view. But to the poet
who is an adult the use of the phrase looks a little too awkward. On the whole, the poem can
be taken as the poet's interest in remembering her childhood days.

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10.

Faces only a blur. The years have

"Why don't you join the others, what

A peculiar child you are!"

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