At this point, Vaidehi's younger brother (named Sankara - a play on Adi Sankaracarya, the founder of Advaita Vedanta), who is devoutly studying the Vedas and passing through the student phase of his Brahmin life, is left an orphan. Being considered inauspicious, since his mother, father, and sister are all dead, no one from the Brahmin community wants to take care of him. He thus wanders the streets begging for food. Balu Thevar is bothered by this, and having lost his own son, he takes him home to raise him as his own son. They give up eating meat, so as not to offend the boy. However, since the boy has been eating in a lower caste home, he is rejected by his community from learning the Vedas. Balu's wife Sarita is enraged, and promises to educate the boy instead in an English medium school. Balu Thevar makes fun of the boy telling him that it is not important to learn Vedas and worry about caste. At this point, the boy points out Balu Thevar's hypocrisy, at his preference for using his caste name (Thevar), while at the same time professing against the caste system. Balu sees the merit in this argument, and immediately after this abandons all his weapons, symbols of his Thevar status, by immersing them in a river, and stops referring to himself by his caste name, going only by "Balu".