"Oh," she said, "I waited at your door in the evening, while you were at
dinner, and took some food from your plate when it was carried out."
This was a surprise to me, for every one in the village knew that I had
been to Europe, and had eaten with Europeans. I was a vegetarian, no
doubt, but the sanctity of my cook would not bear investigation, and the
orthodox regarded my food as polluted.
The Devotee, noticing my sign of surprise, said: "My God, why should I
come to you at all, if I could not take your food?"
I asked her what her own caste people would say. She told me she had
already spread the news far and wide all over the village. The caste
people had shaken their heads, but agreed that she must go her own way.
I found out that the Devotee came from a good family in the country, and
that her mother was well to-do, and desired to keep her daughter. But
she preferred to be a mendicant. I asked her how she made her living.
She told me that her followers had given her a piece of land, and that
she begged her food from door to door. She said to me: "The food which I
get by begging is divine."
After I had thought over what she said, I understood her meaning. When
we get our food precariously as alms, we remember God the giver. But
when we receive our food regularly at home, as a matter of course, we
are apt to regard it as ours by right.
I had a great desire to ask her about her husband. But as she never
mentioned him even indirectly, I did not question her.
I found out very soon that the Devotee had no respect at all for that
part of the village where the people of the higher castes lived.
"They never give," she said, "a single farthing to God's service; and
yet they have the largest share of God's glebe. But the poor worship and
starve."
I asked her why she did not go and live among these godless people,
and help them towards a better life. "That," I said with some unction,
"would be the highest form of divine worship."
I had heard sermons of this kind from time to time, and I am rather fond
of copying them myself for the public benefit, when the chance comes.
But the Devotee was not at all impressed. She raised her big round eyes,
and looked straight into mine, and said:
"You mean to say that because God is with the sinners, therefore when
you do them any service you do it to God? Is that so?"
"Yes," I replied, "that is my meaning."
"Of course," she answered almost impatiently, "of course, God is with
them: otherwise, how could they go on living at all? But what is that to
me? My God is not there. My God cannot be worshipped among them; because
I do not find Him there. I seek Him where I can find Him."
As she spoke, she made obeisance to me. What she meant to say was really
this. A mere doctrine of God's omnipresence does not help us. That God
is all-pervading,--this truth may be a mere intangible abstraction, and
therefore unreal to ourselves. Where I can see Him, there is His reality
in my soul.
I need not explain that all the while she showered her devotion on me
she did it to me not as an individual. I was simply a vehicle of her
divine worship. It was not for me either to receive it or to refuse it:
for it was not mine, but God's.
When the Devotee came again, she found me once more engaged with my
books and papers.
"What have you been doing," she said, with evident vexation, "that my
God should make you undertake such drudgery? Whenever I come, I find you
reading and writing."
"God keeps his useless people busy," I answered; "otherwise they would
be bound to get into mischief. They have to do all the least necessary
things in life. It keeps them out of trouble."
The Devotee told me that she could not bear the encumbrances, with
which, day by day, I was surrounded. If she wanted to see me, she was
not allowed by the servants to come straight upstairs. If she wanted
to touch my feet in worship, there were my socks always in the way. And
when she wanted to have a simple talk with me, she found my mind lost in
a wilderness of letters.
This time, before she left me, she folded her hands, and said: "My God!
I felt your feet in my breast this morning. Oh, how cool! And they were
bare, not covered. I held them upon my head for a long time in worship.
That filled my very being. Then, after that, pray what was the use of my
coming to you yourself? Why did I come? My Lord, tell me truly,--wasn't
it a mere infatuation?"
There were some flowers in my vase on the table. While she was there,
the gardener brought some new flowers to put in their place. The Devotee
saw him changing them.
"Is that all?" she exclaimed. "Have you done with the flowers? Then give
them to me."
She held the flowers tenderly in the cup of her hands, and began to gaze
at them with bent head. After a few moments' silence she raised her head
again, and said to me: "You never look at these flowers; therefore they
become stale to you. If you would only look into them, then your reading
and writing would go to the winds."
She tied the flowers together in the end of her robe, and placed them,
in an attitude of worship, on the top of her head, saying reverently:
"Let me carry my God with me."
While she did this, I felt that flowers in our rooms do not receive
their due meed of loving care at our hands. When we stick them in vases,
they are more like a row of naughty schoolboys standing on a form to be
punished.
The Devotee came again the same evening, and sat by my feet on the
terrace of the roof.
"I gave away those flowers," she said, "as I went from house to house
this morning, singing God's name. Beni, the head man of our village,
laughed at me for my devotion, and said: 'Why do you waste all
this devotion on Him? Don't you know He is reviled up and down the
countryside?' Is that true, my God? Is it true that they are hard upon
you?"
For a moment I shrank into myself. It was a shock to find that the
stains of printers' ink could reach so far.
The Devotee went on: "Beni imagined that he could blow out the flame
of my devotion at one breath! But this is no mere tiny flame: it is a
burning fire. Why do they abuse you, my God?"
I said: "Because I deserved it. I suppose in my greed I was loitering
about to steal people's hearts in secret."
The Devotee said: "Now you see for yourself how little their hearts are
worth. They are full of poison, and this will cure you of your greed."
"When a man," I answered, "has greed in his heart, he is always on
the verge of being beaten. The greed itself supplies his enemies with
poison."
"Our merciful God," she replied, "beats us with His own hand, and drives
away all the poison. He who endures God's beating to the end is saved."