"The exam will come again.

The children of Majuli's eastern villages did not walk to school. They went by boat.

Every morning at seven, Hemanta's father rowed eight of them across the channel to the school on the other bank. It took forty minutes in the dry season and over an hour when the Brahmaputra rose in the rains. The children sat in a row in the narrow boat with their schoolbags on their knees, and Hemanta, who was twelve, sat at the front and watched for floating branches.

One July morning the river was higher and faster than anyone could remember. Hemanta's father stood on the bank for a long time, watching the brown water, and then said there would be no crossing that day.

The younger children cheered. Hemanta did not. His mathematics exam was that morning, and he had studied for it for a month.

His father looked at his face. Then he looked at the river again. "No," he said. "Not today. The exam will come again. You will not."

Hemanta was angry all day. He sat on the bank and watched the water carry whole trees past the village, and in the afternoon he saw part of the far bank slide into the river.

The next week the headmaster held the exam again for the children from across the channel. Hemanta did well. But he never forgot the trees in the brown water, or the way his father had looked at the river before he spoke.