A small Tamil village named ‘Kritam’, ‘probably the tiniest of the seven hundred thousand villages dotting the map of India’ is ‘indicated in the district survey map by a microscopic dot’. 
 
So, the small dot that is hardly visible in open eyes is the mark of a village on the map. Kritam is actually an imaginary village created by the author. The very name means ‘coronet’ or ‘crown’ in Tamil. The village consisted of less than thirty houses, only one of them built with brick and cement. The author has portrayed a picture of rural life in his story.