You can lock your doors, train your guards, and fortify your walls — but the enemy that destroys a ruler usually arrives as a friend. This chapter is not about shunning outcasts or avoiding the poor. It is about the terrifying porosity of the human mind: that intelligence itself is not a fixed possession but a fluid that takes the shape of whatever vessel it pours into. Valluvar builds his argument with the relentlessness of a chemist. Water changes color and taste depending on the soil it flows through — so does your judgment, depending on who sits beside you. What looks like your own thought is actually your circle's thought wearing your face. The chapter moves from fear to contagion to a startling reversal: purity of mind, purity of action, even the fate of your descendants — none of these originate where you think they do. They originate in the company you keep. By the final couplet, Valluvar has reduced all of political wisdom to a single binary: good company is the greatest ally you will ever have; bad company is the worst enemy you will ever face. No fortress can protect you from the people you choose to sit with.