The Mahatma ate CHAPATIS, boiled beets, some raw vegetables, and oranges. On the side of his plate was a large lump of very bitter NEEM leaves, a notable blood cleanser. With his spoon he separated a portion and placed it on my dish. I bolted it down with water, remembering childhood days when Mother had forced me to swallow the disagreeable dose. Gandhi, however, bit by bit was eating the NEEM paste with as much relish as if it had been a delicious sweetmeat. In this trifling incident I noted the Mahatma’s ability to detach his mind from the senses at will. I recalled the famous appendectomy performed on him some years ago. Refusing anesthetics, the saint had chatted cheerfully with his disciples throughout the operation, his infectious smile revealing his unawareness of pain. The afternoon brought an opportunity for a chat with Gandhi’s noted disciple, daughter of an English admiral, Miss Madeleine Slade, now called Mirabai. {FN44-3} Her strong, calm face lit with enthusiasm as she told me, in flawless Hindi, of her daily activities. “Rural reconstruction work is rewarding! A group of us go every morning at five o’clock to serve the near-by villagers and teach them simple hygiene. We make it a point to clean their latrines and their mud-thatched huts. The villagers are illiterate; they cannot be educated except by example!” She laughed gaily. I looked in admiration at this highborn Englishwoman whose true Christian humility enables her to do the scavengering work usually performed only by “untouchables.” “I came to India in 1925,” she told me. “In this land I feel that I have ‘come back home.’ Now I would never be willing to return to my old life and old interests.” We discussed America for awhile. “I am always pleased and amazed,” she said, “to see the deep interest in spiritual subjects exhibited by the many Americans who visit India.” {FN44-4} Mirabai’s hands were soon busy at the CHARKA (spinning wheel), omnipresent in all the ashram rooms and, indeed, due to the Mahatma, omnipresent throughout rural India. Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery, trains, automobiles, the telegraph have played important parts in his own colossal life! Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily with practical details and harsh realities in the political world, have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle.