The passenger steamer was late in arriving from Samaria hat. I was standing on the landing stage watching the passengers disembark and hurry up the ramp to the broad gauge train which I had arranged to detain a few minutes for them. Last to leave the steamer was a thin man with eyes sunk deep in their sockets, wearing a patched suit which in the days of long ago had been white and carrying a small bundle tied up in a coloured handkerchief. By clutching the handrail of the gangway for support, he managed to gain the landing stage, but he turned off at the ramp, walked with slow and feeble steps to the edge of the river and was violently and repeatedly sick. Having stooped to wash his face, he opened his bundle, took it from a sheet, spread it on the bank, and lay down with the Ganges water lapping the soles of his feet. Evidently, he had no intention of catching the train, for when the warning bell rang and the engine whistled, he made no movement. He was lying on his back and when I told him he had missed his train, he opened his sunken eyes to look up at me and said, ' I have no need of trains, Sahib, for I am dying'.
It was the mango season, the hottest time of the year, when cholera is always at its worst. When the man passed me at the foot of the gangway, I suspected he was suffering from cholera and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw him being violently sick. In reply to my questions, he said he was travelling alone and had no friends at Mokameh Ghat. So I helped him to his feet and led him the two hundred yards that separated my bungalow from the Ganges. Then I made him comfortable in my punkah coolie's house which was empty and detached from the servant's quarters.
I had been at Mokameh Ghat ten years employing a large labour force. Some of the people lived under my supervision in houses provided by me and the balance lived in surrounding villages. I had seen enough of cholera among my own people and also among the villagers to make me pray that if I ever contracted the hateful and foul disease, some Good Samaritan would take pity on me and put a bullet through my head, or give me an overdose of opium.
Few will agree with me that the tens of thousands of people reported as having died of cholera each year at least half die not of cholera but of fear. We who live in India, as distinct from those who visit the country for a longer or shorter period are fatalists, believing a man cannot die before his allotted time. This, however, does not mean that we are indifferent to epidemic disease. Cholera is dreaded throughout the land, and when it comes in epidemic form as many die of stark fear as die of the dreaded disease.
There was no question that the man in my Punkah coolie's house was suffering from a bad attack of cholera and if he was to survive, his faith and my crude treatment alone would pull him through; for the only medical aid within miles was a brute of a doctor, as callous as he was inefficient, and whose fat oily throat I am convinced I should have one day had the pleasure of cutting had not a young probationer clerk, who had been sent to me to train, found a less messy way of removing this medico who was hated by the whole staff.
I could not spare much time to nurse the thin man for I already had three cholera patients on my hands. From my servants, I could expect no help for they were of a different caste to the sufferer. There was no justification for exposing them to the risk of infection. However, this did not matter, provided I could still instill sufficient confidence into the man that my treatment was going to make him well. To this end, I made it clear of cremating him but to make him well and that it was only with his cooperation that this could be effected. That first night, I feared that in spite of our joint efforts, he would die, but towards morning he rallied and from then on his condition continued to improve and all the remained to be done was to build up his strength which cholera drains out of the human body more quickly than any other disease.
At the end of a week, he was able to give me his story.
He was a Lala, a merchant and at one time possessed a flourishing grain business, then he made the mistake of taking, as partner a man about whom he knew nothing. For a few years, his business prospered and all went well but one day when he returned from a long journey, he found his shop empty and his partner gone. The little money in his possession was only sufficient to meet his personal debts and bereft of credit, he had to seek employment. This he found with a merchant with whom he had traded and for ten years he had worked on seven rupees a month which was only sufficient to support himself and his son. His wife having died shortly after his partner robbed him. He was on his way from Muzaffarpur to Gaya, on his master's business, when he was taken ill in the train. As he got worse on board the ferry steamer, he had crawled ashore to die on the banks of the sacred Ganges.
Lalajee, I never knew him by any other name stayed with me for about a month, and then one day, he requested permission to continue his journey to Gaya. The request was made as we were walking through the sheds, for Lalajee was strong enough now to accompany me for a short distance each morning when I set out for work and when I asked him what he would do if on arrival at Gaya he found his master had filled his place, he said he would try to find other employment, 'Why not try to get someone to help you to be a merchant again?'
I asked and he replied. The thought of being a merchant again, and able to educate my son, is with me night and day, Sahib, but there is no one in all the world who would trust me a servant on seven rupees a month and without any security to offer, with the Five hundred rupees I should need to give me a new start'.
The train for Gaya left at 8:00 pm and when that evening I returned to the bungalow a little before that hour, I found Lalajee with freshly washed clothes, and a bundle in his hand, a little bigger than when he had arrived with, waiting in the veranda to say goodbye to me. When I put a ticket for Gaya and five one-hundred rupee notes into his hand he like the man with the coal grimed face was tongue-tied. All he could do was to keep glancing from the notes in his hand to my face, until the bell that warned passengers the train would leave in five minutes rang; the putting his head on my feet, he said: 'within one year your slave will return you this money'.
And so Lalajee left me, taking with him the greater part of my savings. That I would see him, I never doubted, for the poor of India never forget a kindness; but the promise Lalajee has made was, I felt sure, beyond his powers of accomplishment. In this, I was wrong, for returning late one evening, I saw a man dressed in spotless white standing on my veranda. The light from the room behind him was in my eyes, and I did not recognize him until I spoke. It was Lalajee, come a few days before the expiry of time limit, he had set himself. That night as he sat on the floor near my chair he told me of his trading transactions, and the success that had attended them. Starting with few bags of grain and being content with a profit of only four annas per bag , he had gradually and steadily built up his business until he was able to deal in consignments up to thirty tons in weight, on which he was making a profit of three rupees per ton. His son was in a good school, as he could now afford to keep a wife he had married the daughter of a rich merchant in Patna; all this he had accomplished in a little under twelve months. As the time drew near for his train to leave, he laid five one-hundred rupee notes on my knee. Then, he took a bag from his pocket, held it out to me and said. 'This is the interest, calculated at twenty-five per cent, that I owe you on the money that you lent me. I believe I deprived him of half the pleasure he had anticipated from his visit when I told him it was not our custom to accept interest from our friends.
Gokula Anand comments:
There are two types of stories: entertaining ones and those that have moral content for the betterment of society. This beautiful story or real incident will instill good values inside those who read it.
Jim Corbett was a good samaritan and had lot of helping qualities. He had detained the train for few minutes so that the passengers on steamer boat can board the train. He had helped a sick man and that too suffering from cholera. He allowed him in his house and cured him.
He lent five hundred rupees in the period of time when 7 rupees was monthly salary.
He had the ability to judge a man and trust him for five hundred rupees. Lalajee too returned the money. Lalajee trusted a wrong man, made him his partner and lost everything in the beginning.
Even Jim corbett underestimated Lalajee's business skills and says that the promise of returning the money back to him was beyond his powers of accomplishment. Lalajee proved him wrong with amazing success in just one year.
It was the mango season, the hottest time of the year, when cholera is always at its worst. When the man passed me at the foot of the gangway, I suspected he was suffering from cholera and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw him being violently sick. In reply to my questions, he said he was travelling alone and had no friends at Mokameh Ghat. So I helped him to his feet and led him the two hundred yards that separated my bungalow from the Ganges. Then I made him comfortable in my punkah coolie's house which was empty and detached from the servant's quarters.
I had been at Mokameh Ghat ten years employing a large labour force. Some of the people lived under my supervision in houses provided by me and the balance lived in surrounding villages. I had seen enough of cholera among my own people and also among the villagers to make me pray that if I ever contracted the hateful and foul disease, some Good Samaritan would take pity on me and put a bullet through my head, or give me an overdose of opium.
Few will agree with me that the tens of thousands of people reported as having died of cholera each year at least half die not of cholera but of fear. We who live in India, as distinct from those who visit the country for a longer or shorter period are fatalists, believing a man cannot die before his allotted time. This, however, does not mean that we are indifferent to epidemic disease. Cholera is dreaded throughout the land, and when it comes in epidemic form as many die of stark fear as die of the dreaded disease.
There was no question that the man in my Punkah coolie's house was suffering from a bad attack of cholera and if he was to survive, his faith and my crude treatment alone would pull him through; for the only medical aid within miles was a brute of a doctor, as callous as he was inefficient, and whose fat oily throat I am convinced I should have one day had the pleasure of cutting had not a young probationer clerk, who had been sent to me to train, found a less messy way of removing this medico who was hated by the whole staff.
I could not spare much time to nurse the thin man for I already had three cholera patients on my hands. From my servants, I could expect no help for they were of a different caste to the sufferer. There was no justification for exposing them to the risk of infection. However, this did not matter, provided I could still instill sufficient confidence into the man that my treatment was going to make him well. To this end, I made it clear of cremating him but to make him well and that it was only with his cooperation that this could be effected. That first night, I feared that in spite of our joint efforts, he would die, but towards morning he rallied and from then on his condition continued to improve and all the remained to be done was to build up his strength which cholera drains out of the human body more quickly than any other disease.
At the end of a week, he was able to give me his story.
He was a Lala, a merchant and at one time possessed a flourishing grain business, then he made the mistake of taking, as partner a man about whom he knew nothing. For a few years, his business prospered and all went well but one day when he returned from a long journey, he found his shop empty and his partner gone. The little money in his possession was only sufficient to meet his personal debts and bereft of credit, he had to seek employment. This he found with a merchant with whom he had traded and for ten years he had worked on seven rupees a month which was only sufficient to support himself and his son. His wife having died shortly after his partner robbed him. He was on his way from Muzaffarpur to Gaya, on his master's business, when he was taken ill in the train. As he got worse on board the ferry steamer, he had crawled ashore to die on the banks of the sacred Ganges.
Lalajee, I never knew him by any other name stayed with me for about a month, and then one day, he requested permission to continue his journey to Gaya. The request was made as we were walking through the sheds, for Lalajee was strong enough now to accompany me for a short distance each morning when I set out for work and when I asked him what he would do if on arrival at Gaya he found his master had filled his place, he said he would try to find other employment, 'Why not try to get someone to help you to be a merchant again?'
I asked and he replied. The thought of being a merchant again, and able to educate my son, is with me night and day, Sahib, but there is no one in all the world who would trust me a servant on seven rupees a month and without any security to offer, with the Five hundred rupees I should need to give me a new start'.
The train for Gaya left at 8:00 pm and when that evening I returned to the bungalow a little before that hour, I found Lalajee with freshly washed clothes, and a bundle in his hand, a little bigger than when he had arrived with, waiting in the veranda to say goodbye to me. When I put a ticket for Gaya and five one-hundred rupee notes into his hand he like the man with the coal grimed face was tongue-tied. All he could do was to keep glancing from the notes in his hand to my face, until the bell that warned passengers the train would leave in five minutes rang; the putting his head on my feet, he said: 'within one year your slave will return you this money'.
And so Lalajee left me, taking with him the greater part of my savings. That I would see him, I never doubted, for the poor of India never forget a kindness; but the promise Lalajee has made was, I felt sure, beyond his powers of accomplishment. In this, I was wrong, for returning late one evening, I saw a man dressed in spotless white standing on my veranda. The light from the room behind him was in my eyes, and I did not recognize him until I spoke. It was Lalajee, come a few days before the expiry of time limit, he had set himself. That night as he sat on the floor near my chair he told me of his trading transactions, and the success that had attended them. Starting with few bags of grain and being content with a profit of only four annas per bag , he had gradually and steadily built up his business until he was able to deal in consignments up to thirty tons in weight, on which he was making a profit of three rupees per ton. His son was in a good school, as he could now afford to keep a wife he had married the daughter of a rich merchant in Patna; all this he had accomplished in a little under twelve months. As the time drew near for his train to leave, he laid five one-hundred rupee notes on my knee. Then, he took a bag from his pocket, held it out to me and said. 'This is the interest, calculated at twenty-five per cent, that I owe you on the money that you lent me. I believe I deprived him of half the pleasure he had anticipated from his visit when I told him it was not our custom to accept interest from our friends.
Gokula Anand comments:
There are two types of stories: entertaining ones and those that have moral content for the betterment of society. This beautiful story or real incident will instill good values inside those who read it.
Jim Corbett was a good samaritan and had lot of helping qualities. He had detained the train for few minutes so that the passengers on steamer boat can board the train. He had helped a sick man and that too suffering from cholera. He allowed him in his house and cured him.
He lent five hundred rupees in the period of time when 7 rupees was monthly salary.
He had the ability to judge a man and trust him for five hundred rupees. Lalajee too returned the money. Lalajee trusted a wrong man, made him his partner and lost everything in the beginning.
Even Jim corbett underestimated Lalajee's business skills and says that the promise of returning the money back to him was beyond his powers of accomplishment. Lalajee proved him wrong with amazing success in just one year.
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