Things as they are : $b Mission work in Southern IndiaCarmichael, Amy
Religion
Things as they are : $b Mission work in Southern India
Carmichael, Amy
India -- Social life and customs; Missions -- India
"If ten of you had cholera, and I brought you cholera medicine, would
you say, 'I won't take it unless nine others take it too'?" I replied.
She laughs and the others laugh, but a little uneasily. They hardly like
this reference to the dreaded cholera; death of the body is so much more
tremendous in prospect than death of the soul. "You would take it, and
then the others, seeing it do you good, would perhaps take it too"; and
we try to press home the point of the illustration. But a point pricks,
and pricking is uncomfortable.
The three men begin to shuffle their feet and talk about other things;
the old mother-in-law proposes betel all round, and hands us some
grimy-looking leaves with a pressing invitation to partake. The various
onlookers make remarks, and the girl devotes herself to her baby. But
she is thinking; one can see old memories are stirred. At last with a
sigh she gets up, looks round the little indifferent group, goes over to
the fireplace, and blows up the fire. This means we had better say
salaam; so we say it and they say it, adding the usual "Go and come."
It will be easier to help these people out of their low levels than it
will be to help their masters of the higher walks of life. But to do
anything genuine or radical among either set of people is never really
easy.
"=It takes the Ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off the Dust of the
Actual.="
It takes more. It takes =God=. It takes =God= to do anything anywhere.
Yesterday we were visiting in one of the Caste villages, and one old
lady, who really seems to care for us, said she would greatly like to
take my hand in hers; "but," she explained, "this morning one of the
children of the place leaned over the edge of the tank to drink, and he
fell in and was drowned; so I have been to condole with his people, and
I have now returned from bathing, and do not feel equal to bathing
again." If she touched me she would have to bathe to get rid of the
defilement. Of course I assured her I quite understood, but as she sat
there within two inches of me, yet so carefully preserving inviolate
those two inches of clear space, I felt what a small thing this
caste-created distance was, the merest "Dust of the Actual" on the
surface of the system of her life; and yet, "to blow a hair's-breadth
of it off, nothing less is needed than the breath of the power of God."
"Come, O Breath, and breathe!" we cry. Nothing else will do.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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