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Letter to his
Sister
Baroda
Camp
25th August,
1894
My dear Saro,
I got your letter the day before yesterday. I have been trying hard to
write to you for the last three weeks, but have hitherto failed. Today I am
making a huge effort and hope to put the letter in the post before nightfall. As
I am now invigorated by three days’ leave, I almost think I shall succeed.
It will be, I fear, quite impossible to come to you again so early
as the Puja, though if I only could, I should start tomorrow. Neither my
affairs, nor my finances will admit of it. Indeed it was a great mistake for me
to go at all; for it has made Baroda quite intolerable to me. There is an old
story about Judas Iscariot, which suits me down to the ground. Judas, after
betraying Christ, hanged himself and went to Hell where he was honoured with the
hottest oven in the whole establishment. Here he must burn for ever and ever;
but in his life he had done one kind act and for this they permitted him by
special mercy of God to cool himself for an hour every Christmas on an iceberg
in the North Pole. Now this has always seemed to me not mercy, but a peculiar
refinement of cruelty. For how could Hell fail to be ten times more Hell to the
poor wretch after the delicious coolness of his iceberg? I do not know for what
enormous crime I have been condemned to Baroda, but my case is just parallel.
Since my pleasant sojourn with you at Baidyanath, Baroda seems a hundred times
more Baroda.
I dare say Beno may write to you three or four days before he leaves
England. But you must think yourself lucky if he does as much as that. Most
likely the first you hear of him will be a telegram from’ Calcutta. Certainly he
has not written to me. I never expected and should be afraid to get a letter. It
would be such a shocking surprise that I should certainly be able to do nothing
but roll on the floor and gasp for breath for the next two
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or three hours.
No, the favours of the Gods are too awful
to be coveted.
I dare say he will have energy enough to hand over your letter
to Mano as they must be seeing
each other almost daily.
You must give Mano a little time before he
answers you. He too is Beno’s brother. Please let me have Beno’s address as I
don’t know where to send a letter I have ready for him. Will you also let me
have the name of Bari’s English Composition Book and its compiler? I want such a
book badly, as this will be useful for me not only in Bengalee but in Gujerati.
There are no convenient books like that here.
You say in your letter "all here are quite well"; yet in the
very
next sentence I
read "Bari has an attack of fever". Do you mean
then that Bari is nobody? Poor Bari! That he should be excluded from the list of
human beings is only right and proper, but it is a little hard that he should be
denied existence altogether. I hope it is only a slight attack. I am quite well.
I have brought a fund of health with me from Bengal, which, I hope it will take
me some time to exhaust; but I have just passed my twenty-second milestone,
August 15 last, since my birthday and am
beginning
to get dreadfully old. .
I infer from your letter that you
are making great progress in English. I hope you will learn very quickly; I can
then write to you quite what I want to say and just in the way I want to say it.
I feel some difficulty in doing that now and I don’t know whether you will
understand it.
With love,
Your affectionate brother,
` Auro
P. S. If you want to understand the new orthography of my name, ask uncle.
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