My husband at last had finished his medical course. He went away from
Calcutta to a small town to practise as a doctor. There in the country I
felt with joy, through all my blindness, that I was restored to the arms
of my mother. I had left my village birthplace for Calcutta when I was
eight years old. Since then ten years had passed away, and in the great
city the memory of my village home had grown dim. As long as I had
eyesight, Calcutta with its busy life screened from view the memory of
my early days. But when I lost my eyesight I knew for the first time
that Calcutta allured only the eyes: it could not fill the mind. And
now, in my blindness, the scenes of my childhood shone out once more,
like stars that appear one by one in the evening sky at the end of the
day.
It was the beginning of November when we left Calcutta for Harsingpur.
The place was new to me, but the scents and sounds of the countryside
pressed round and embraced me. The morning breeze coming fresh from
the newly ploughed land, the sweet and tender smell of the flowering
mustard, the shepherd-boy's flute sounding in the distance, even the
creaking noise of the bullock-cart, as it groaned over the broken
village road, filled my world with delight. The memory of my past life,
with all its ineffable fragrance and sound, became a living present to
me, and my blind eyes could not tell me I was wrong. I went back, and
lived over again my childhood. Only one thing was absent: my mother was
not with me.
I could see my home with the large peepul trees growing along the edge
of the village pool. I could picture in my mind's eye my old grandmother
seated on the ground with her thin wisps of hair untied, warming her
back in the sun as she made the little round lentil balls to be dried
and used for cooking. But somehow I could not recall the songs she used
to croon to herself in her weak and quavering voice. In the evening,
whenever I heard the lowing of cattle, I could almost watch the figure
of my mother going round the sheds with lighted lamp in her hand. The
smell of the wet fodder and the pungent smoke of the straw fire would
enter into my very heart. And in the distance I seemed to hear the
clanging of the temple bell wafted up by the breeze from the river bank.
Calcutta, with all its turmoil and gossip, curdles the heart. There,
all the beautiful duties of life lose their freshness and innocence. I
remember one day, when a friend of mine came in, and said to me: "Kumo,
why don't you feel angry? If I had been treated like you by my husband,
I would never look upon his face again."
She tried to make me indignant, because he had been so long calling in a
doctor.
"My blindness," said I, "was itself a sufficient evil. Why should I make
it worse by allowing hatred to grow up against my husband?"
My friend shook her head in great contempt, when she heard such
old-fashioned talk from the lips of a mere chit of a girl. She went away
in disdain. But whatever might be my answer at the time, such words as
these left their poison; and the venom was never wholly got out of the
soul, when once they had been uttered.
So you see Calcutta, with its never-ending gossip, does harden the
heart. But when I came back to the country all my earlier hopes and
faiths, all that I held true in life during childhood, became fresh and
bright once more. God came to me, and filled my heart and my world. I
bowed to Him, and said:
"It is well that Thou has taken away my eyes. Thou art with me."
Ah! But I said more than was right. It was a presumption to say: "Thou
art with me." All we can say is this: "I must be true to Thee." Even
when nothing is left for us, still we have to go on living.