Children -- India; India -- Social life and customs; Missions -- India
For there you see Suhinie in her true sphere. Give her a poor, puny
babe, who will never, if she can help it, let her Accal have an
undisturbed hour; give her the most impossible, most troublesome baby in
the nursery, and then you will see Suhinie's best. We discovered this
when Ponnamal was in charge of the Neyoor nursery. Ponnamal had one
small infant so cross that nobody wanted her. She would cry half the
night, a snarly, snappy cry, that would not stop unless she was rocked,
and began again as soon as the rocking was stopped. Ponnamal gave her to
Suhinie.
"Night after night till two in the morning she would sing to that
fractious child"--this was Ponnamal's story to me when next I went to
Neyoor. "She never seemed to tire; hymn after hymn she would sing, on
and on and on. I never saw her impatient with it; she just loved it from
the first." And a curious thing began to happen: the baby grew like her
Accal. This likeness was not caught in the photograph, but is
nevertheless so observable that visitors have often asked if the little
one were her own child.
This baby, Sununda by name, is greatly attached to Suhinie. As she is
over two years old now, she has been promoted to the Taraha, and being
an extremely wilful little person, she sometimes gets into trouble. One
day I was called to remonstrate, and a little "morning glory" was
required, and I put her in a corner to think about it. Another sinner
had to be dealt with, and when I returned Sununda was nowhere to be
found. I searched all over the Taraha and in the garden, and finally
found her in the Premalia cuddled close to Suhinie. "She has told me all
about it," said Suhinie, who was nursing another edition of difficult
infancy; and she looked down on the curly head with eyes of brooding
affection, like a tender turtle-dove upon her nestling. Then the roguish
brown eyes smiled up at me with an expression of perfect confidence that
I would understand and sympathise with the desire to share the troubles
of this strange, sad life with so beloved an Accal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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