Lotus Buds Part 14

The nursery kitchen is a pleasant little place. We hardly ever enter it without remembering and appreciating John Bunyan's pretty thought, for there things in the doing of them seem to cast a smile. Ponnamal, who, as we said, superintends the more delicate food-making work, has trained two of her helpers to carefulness; and these two--one a motherly older woman with a most comfortable face, the other the convert, Joy--look up with such a welcome that you feel it good to be there. Scrubbing away at endless pots and pans and milk vessels is a younger convent-girl, who, when she first came to us, disapproved of such exertion. She liked to sit on the floor with her Bible on her lap and a far-away look of content on her face until the dinner-bell rang. Now she scrubs with a sense of responsibility.

All the younger converts have regular teaching, for they have much to learn, and all, older and younger, have daily cla.s.ses and meetings; above all, it is planned that each has her quiet time undisturbed. But it is early understood that to be happy each must contribute her share to the happiness of the family; and one of the first lessons the young convert has to learn is to honour the "Grey Angel," Drudgery, and not to call her bad names.

The kitchen has an outlook dear to the Tamil heart. A trellis covered with pink antigone surrounds it, but a window is cut in the trellis so that the kitchen may command the bungalow. "While I stirred the milk I saw everything you did on your verandah," remarked one of the workers lately, in tones of appreciation. The opposite outlook is the mountain shown in the photograph; only instead of water we have the kitchen-garden with its tropical-looking plantains and creeping marrows.

"And the warm melon lay like a little sun on the tawny sand," is a line for an Eastern garden when the great marrows ripen suddenly.

The kitchen thus favoured without, is adorned within, according to the taste of its owners, with those very interesting pictures published by the makers of infant foods. "How do you choose them?" we asked one day.

"The truest and the prettiest," was the satisfactory answer. Our Dohnavur text, which hangs in every nursery, looks down upon the workers, and, as they put it, "keeps them sweet in heart": "Love never faileth."

When first we began to cultivate babies we were very ignorant, and we asked advice of all who seemed competent to give it. The advice was most perplexing. Each mother was sure the food that had suited her baby was the best of all foods, and regarded all others as doubtful, if not bad.

One whom we greatly respected told us Indian babies would be sure to get on anyhow, as it was their own land. And one seriously suggested rice-water as a suitable nourishment. Naturally we began with the time-honoured milk and barley-water, and some throve upon it. But we found each baby had to be studied separately. There was no universal (artificial) food. We could write a tractlet on foods, and if we did we would call it "Don't," for the first sentence in it would be, "Don't change the food if you can help it." This tractlet would certainly close with a word of thanks to those kind people, the milk-food manufacturers, who have helped us to build up healthy children; for feelings of personal grat.i.tude come when help of this kind is given.

The nursery kitchen is a room full of reminders of help. "I have commanded the ravens," is a word of strength to us. Once we were very low. A little child had died under trying circ.u.mstances. One of the milk-sellers, instead of using the vessel sent him, poured his milk into an unclean copper vessel, and it was poisoned. He remembered that it would not be taken unless brought in the proper vessel, so at the last moment he corrected his mistake, but the correction was fatal, for there was no warning. The milk was sterilized as usual and given to the child. She was a healthy baby, and her nurse remembers how she smiled and welcomed her bottle, taking it in her little hands in her happy eagerness. A few hours later she was dead.

At such times the heart seems foolishly weak, and things which would not trouble it otherwise have power to make it sore. We were four days'

journey from the nursery at the time, and had the added anxiety about the other babies, to whom we feared the poisoned milk might have been given, and we dreaded what the next post might bring. Just at that moment it was suggested, with kindest intentions, that perhaps we were on the wrong track, the work seemed so difficult and wasteful.

It was mail-day. The mail as usual brought a pile of letters, and the top envelope contained a bill for foods ordered from England some weeks before. It came to more than I had expected, in spite of the kindness of several firms in giving a liberal discount; and for a moment the rice-water talk (to give it a name which covers all that type of talk) came back to me with hurt in it: "To what purpose is this waste?" But with it came another word: "Take this child away (away from the terrible Temple) and nurse it for Me." And with the pile of letters before me, and the bill for food in my hand, I asked that enough might be found in those letters to pay it. It did not occur to me at the moment that the prayer was rather illogical. I only knew it would be comforting, and like a little word of peace, if such an a.s.surance might even then come that we were not off the lines.

Letter after letter was empty. Not empty of kindness, but quite empty of cheques. The last envelope looked thin and not at all hopeful.

Cheques are usually inside reliable-looking covers. I opened it. There was nothing but a piece of unknown writing. But the writing was to ask if we happened to have a need which a sum named in the letter would meet. This sum exactly covered the bill for the foods. When the cheque eventually reached me it was for more than the letter had mentioned, and covered all carriage and duty expenses, which were unknown to me at the time the first letter came, and to which of course I had not referred in my reply. Thus almost visibly and audibly has the Lord, from whose hands we received this charge to keep, confirmed His word to us, strengthening us when we were weak, and comforting us when we were sad with that innermost sense of His tenderness which braces while it soothes.

Surely we who know Him thus should love the Lord because He hath heard our voice and our supplication. Every advertis.e.m.e.nt on the walls of the little nursery kitchen is like an illuminated text with a story hidden away in it:--

When Thou dost favour any action, It runs, it flies; All things concur to give it a perfection.

The nursery kitchen, we were amused to discover, has a sphere of influence all its own. Our discovery was on this wise:--

One wet evening we were caught in a downpour as we were crossing from the Taraha nursery to the bungalow, and we took shelter in the kindergarten room, which reverts to the Lola-and-Leela tribe when the kindergarten babies depart. The tribe do not often possess their Sittie and their Ammal both together and all to themselves, now that the juniors are so numerous, and they welcomed us with acclamations. "Finish spreading your mats," we said to them, as they seemed inclined to let our advent interrupt the order of the evening; and we watched them unroll their mats, which hung round the wall in neat rolls swung by cords from the roof, and spread them in rows along the wall. Beside each mat was what looked like a mummy, and beside each mummy was a matchbox and a small bundle of rags.

Presently the mummies were unswathed, and proved to be dolls in more or less good condition. Each was carefully laid upon a morsel of sheet, and covered with another sheet folded over in the neatest fashion. "If we teach them to be particular when they are young, they will be tidy when they are old," we were informed. It was pleasant to hear our own remarks so accurately repeated.

The matchboxes were next unpacked; each contained a bit of match, a small pointed sh.e.l.l, a pebble (preferably black), and a couple of minute c.o.c.kles. "I suppose you don't know what all these are?" said Lola, affably. "That," pointing to the match, "is a spoon; and this," taking the pointed sh.e.l.l up carefully, "is a bottle. This is the 'rubber,' of course," and the black pebble was indicated; "and these" (setting the c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls on a piece of white paper on the floor) "are bowls of water, one for the bottle and the other for the rubber." We suggested one bowl of water would hold both bottle and rubber; but Lola's entirely mischievous eyes looked quite shocked and reproving. "Two bowls are better," was the serious reply; "it is very important to be clean."

"What does your child have?" we inquired respectfully. "Barley-water and milk, two-and-a-half ounces every two hours--that's five tablespoonfuls, you know." "And Leela's?" "Oh, Leela's child is delicate. She has to have Benger. Two ounces every two hours; and it has to be a long time digested." "Do all your children have their food every two hours?" Lola looked surprised, and Leela giggled: how very ignorant we seemed to be!

"No, only the tiny ones; our babies are very young. After they get older they have more at a time and not so often. That child there," pointing to another mat, "has Condensed, as we haven't enough cow's milk for them all. It suits her very well. She has six ounces at a time; once before she goes to sleep, and then none till she wakens in the morning. She's a very healthy child." "How do you know the time?" we asked, prepared for anything now. "Oh, we have watches. This is mine," and a toy from a Christmas cracker was produced; "Leela's watch is different" (it was indeed different--a mere figment of the imagination), "but she can look at mine when she wants to." "Why does your child sleep with Leela's?"

(All the other infants had separate sleeping arrangements.) Lola looked shy, and Leela looked shyer. These little matters of affection were not intended for public discussion.

By this time the rain had cleared, so we prepared to depart, and the further entertainments provided for us by the cheerful tribe that evening do not belong to this story. We escaped finally, damp with much laughter in a humid atmosphere. "Come every evening!" shouted the tribe, as at last we disappeared, and we felt much inclined to accept the invitation.

The kitchen is a busy place in the morning, and again in the evening, when the fresh milk is carried to it in shining aluminium vessels to be sterilized or otherwise dealt with. But even in the busiest hours there is almost sure to be a baby set in an upturned stool, in which she sits holding on to the front legs in proud consciousness of being able to sit up. Or an older one will be clinging to the garments of the busy workers, or perched beside them on a stool. Once we found Tara and Evu seated on the window-sill. Ponnamal was making foods at the table under the window, and the little bare feet were tucked in between bowls and jugs of milk. "But, indeed, they are quite clean," explained Ponnamal, without waiting for remark from us, for she knew what we were thinking of her table decorations. "We dusted the sand off their little feet before we lifted them up." The babies said nothing, but looked doubtfully up at us, as if not very sure of our intentions. But Ponnamal's eyes were so appealing, and the little buff things in blue with a trellis of pink flowers for background made such a pretty picture, that we had not the heart to spoil it. Then the little faces smiled gratefully upon us, and everybody smiled. The kitchen is a happy place of innocent surprises.

CHAPTER XXVII

The Secret Traffic

"Sir, to leave things out of a book because they will not be believed, is meanness."--DR. JOHNSON.

WHEN first, upon March 7, 1901, we heard from the lips of a little child the story of her life in a Temple house, we were startled and distressed, and penetrated with the conviction that such a story ought to be impossible in a land ruled by a Christian Power. The subject was new to us; we knew nothing of the magnitude of what may be called "The Secret Traffic of India"--a traffic in little children, mere infants oftentimes, for wrong purposes; and we did not appreciate, as we do now, the delicacy and difficulty of the position from a Government point of view, or the quiet might of the forces upon the other side. And though with added knowledge comes an added sense of responsibility, and a fear of all careless appeal to those whose burden is already so heavy, yet with every fresh discovery the conviction deepens that something should be done--and done, if possible, soon--to save at least this generation of children, or some of them, from destruction.

"It is useless to move without a body of evidence at your back," said a friend in the Civil Service to us at the close of a long conversation.

"If you can get the children, of course they themselves will furnish the best evidence; but, anyhow, collect facts." And this was the beginning of a Note-book, into which we entered whatever we could learn about the Temple children, and in which we kept letters relating to them.

By Temple children throughout this book we mean children dedicated to G.o.ds, or in danger of being so dedicated. Dedication to G.o.ds implies a form of marriage which makes ordinary marriage impossible. The child is regarded as belonging to the G.o.ds. In Southern India, where religious feeling runs strong, and the great Temples are the centres of Hindu influence, this that I have called "The Traffic" is worked upon religious lines; and so in trying to save the children we have to contend with the perverted religious sense. Something of the same kind exists in other parts of India, and the traffic under another name is common in provinces where Temple service as we have it in the South is unknown. Again, in areas where, owing to the action of the native Government, Temple service, as such, is not recognised, so that children in danger of wrong cannot, strictly speaking, be called Temple children, there is yet need of legislation which shall touch all houses where little children are being brought up for the same purpose; so that the subject is immense and involved, and the thought of it suggests a net thrown over millions of square miles of territory, so finely woven as to be almost invisible, but so strong in its mesh that in no place yet has it ever given way. And the net is alive: it can feel and it can hold.

But all through this book we have kept to the South--to the area where the evil is distinctly and recognisably religious. Others elsewhere have told their own story; ours, though in touch with theirs (in that its whole motive is to save the little children), is yet different in manner, in that it is avowedly Christian. India is a land where generalisations are deceptive. So we have kept to the South.

We ourselves became only very gradually aware of what was happening about us. As fact after fact came to light, we were forced to certain conclusions which we could not doubt were correct. But at first we were almost alone in these conclusions, because it was impossible to take others with us in our tedious underground hunt after facts. So the question was often asked: "But do the children really exist?"

I have said we were almost alone, not quite. Members of the Indian Civil Service, who are much among the people, knew something of the custom of child-dedication, but found themselves unable to touch it. Hindu Reformers, of course, knew; and two or three veteran missionaries had come into contact with it and had grieved over their helplessness to do anything. One of these had written a pamphlet on the subject twenty years before our Nursery work began. He sent it to me with a sorrowful word written across it, "Result? Nil." But we do not often meet our civilian friends, for they are busy, and so are we; and the few missionaries whose inspiring sympathy helped us through those earlier years were in places far from us, and so were all the Reformers. So perhaps it was not wonderful that, beset by doubting letters from home and a certain amount of not unnatural incredulity in India, we sometimes almost wondered if we ourselves were dreaming. "Well, if they do exist, I hope you will be able to find them!"--varied by, "Well, if you do find them, they will be a proof of their own existence!"--were two of the most encouraging remarks of those early days.

From the beginning of this work, as stated before, we have tried to collect facts about the traffic and the customs connected with it. Notes were kept of conversations with Hindus and others, and these notes were compared with what evidence we were able to gather from trustworthy sources. These brief notes of various kinds we offer in their simplicity. We have made no attempt to tabulate or put into shape the information thus acquired, believing that the notes of conversations taken down at the time, and the quotations from letters copied as they stand, will do their work more directly than anything more elaborate would. Where there is a difference of detail it is because the customs differ slightly in different places. No names are given, for obvious reasons; but the letters were written by men of standing, living in widely scattered districts in the South. The evidence contained in them was carefully sifted, and in many cases corroborated by personal investigation, before being considered evidence: so that we believe these chapters may be accepted as fact. Dated quotations from the _Madras Mail_ are sufficient to prove that we are not writing ancient history:--

_January 2, 1909._--"The following resolution was put from the chair and carried unanimously: 'The Conference (consisting of Hindu Social Reformers) cordially supports the movement started to better the condition of unprotected children in general, and appreciates particularly the agitation started to protect girls and young women from being dedicated to Temples.'"

_May 8, 1909._--"Once more we have an ill.u.s.tration from Mysore of the fact that the Government of a Native State are able to tread boldly on ground which the British Government in India are unable to approach. At various times, in these columns and elsewhere, has the cry raised against the employment of servants of the G.o.ds in Hindu Temples been uttered; but, as far as the Government are concerned, it has fallen, if not on deaf ears, on ears stopped to appeals of this kind, which demand action that can be interpreted as a breach of that religious neutrality which is one of the cardinal principles of British rule in India. The agitation against it is not the agitation of the European whose susceptibility is offended at a state of things that he finds hard to reconcile with the reverence and purity of Divine worship; but it is the outcry of the reverent Hindu against one of the corrupt and degrading practices that, in the course of centuries, have crept into his religion. In this particular instance the Mysore Government cannot be accused of acting hastily. As long ago as February, 1892, they issued a circular order describing the legitimate services to be performed in Temples by Temple women. In 1899, the Muzrai Superintendent, Rai Bahadur A. Sreenivasa Charlu, directed that the Temple women borne on the Nanjangud Temple establishment should not be allowed to perform _tafe_ (or dancing) service in the Temple; but that the allowances payable to them should be continued for their lifetime, and that at their death the vacancies should not be filled up. Against this order the Temple women concerned memorialised H.H. the Maharajah as long ago as 1905, and the order disposing of it has only just been issued. In the course of the latter the Government say:--

"'From the Shastraic authorities quoted by the two Agamiks employed in the Muzrai Secretariat, it is observed that the services to be performed by Temple women form part and parcel of the worship of the G.o.d in Hindu Temples, and that singing and dancing in the presence of the deity are also prescribed. It is, however, observed that in the case of Temple women personal purity and rect.i.tude of conduct and a vow of celibacy were considered essential. But the high ideals entertained in ancient days have now degenerated. . . . The Government now observe that whatever may have been the original object of the inst.i.tution of Temple women in Temples, the state in which these Temple servants are now found fully justifies the action taken by them in excluding the Temple women from every kind of service in sacred inst.i.tutions like Temples. Further, the absence of the services of these women in certain important Temples in the State has become established for nearly fifteen years past, and the public have become accustomed to the idea of doing without such services.'

"The exclusion of Temple women from Temple services obtains in Mysore in the case of a few large Temples whose _Tasdik Pattis_ have been revised.

But the time has come, the Government think, for its general application, and they therefore direct that the policy enunciated in the abstract given above should be extended to all Muzrai Temples in the State. It is to be hoped that the good example thus set will bear fruit elsewhere, where the Temple women evil is more notorious than it was in Temples of Mysore."

A copy of the Government doc.u.ment to which this cutting relates lies before me. It is bravely and clearly worded, and its intention is evident. The high-minded Hindu--and there are such, let it not be forgotten--revolts from the degradation and pollution of this travesty of religion, and will abolish it where he can. _But let it be remembered that, good as this law is, it does not and it cannot touch the great Secret Traffic itself. That will go on behind the law, and behind the next that is made, and the next, unless measures are devised to ensure its being thoroughly enforced._

Cuttings from newspapers, quotations, evidence--it is not interesting reading, and yet we look to our friends to go through to the end with us. Let us pause for a moment here and remember the purpose of it all; and may the thought of some little, loved child make an atmosphere for these chapters!

CHAPTER XXVIII

Blue Book Evidence

"The precipitous sides of difficult questions."--E. B. B.

OUR first evidence consists of abridged extracts from the Census Report for 1901. After explaining the different names by which Temple women are known in different parts of the Madras Presidency, the Report continues: "The servants of the G.o.ds, who subsist by dancing and music and the practice of 'the oldest profession in the world,' are partly recruited by admissions and even purchases from other cla.s.ses. . . . The rise of the Caste and its euphemistic name seem to date from the ninth and tenth centuries, during which much activity prevailed in South India in the matter of building Temples and elaborating the services held in them. . . . The duties then, as now, were to fan the idol with Tibetan ox-tails, to carry the sacred light, and to sing and dance before the G.o.d when he is carried in procession. Inscriptions show that in A.D.

1004 the great Temple of the Chola king at Tanjore had attached to it four hundred women of the Temple, who lived in free quarters in the four streets round it, and were allowed tax-free land out of its endowments.

Other Temples had similar arrangements. . . . At the present day they form a regular Caste, having its own laws of inheritance, its own customs and rules of etiquette, and its own councils to see that all these are followed, and they hold a position which is perhaps without a parallel in any other country. . . .

"The daughters of the Caste who are brought up to follow the Caste profession are carefully taught dancing and singing, the art of dressing well, . . . and their success in keeping up their clientele is largely due to the contrast which they thus present to the ordinary Hindu housewife, whose ideas are bounded by the day's dinners and babies."

Closely allied to this Caste is that formed by the Temple musicians, who with the Temple woman are "now practically the sole repository of Indian music, the system of which is probably one of the oldest in the world."

In certain districts the Report states that a custom obtains among certain castes, under which a family which has no sons must dedicate one of its daughters to Temple service. The daughter selected is taken to a Temple and married there to a G.o.d, the marriage symbol being put on her as in a real marriage. Henceforth she belongs to the G.o.d.

Writing in 1904, a member of the Indian Civil Service says: "I heard of a case of dedication (three girls) at A. at the beginning of this year, but I could not get any evidence. The cases very rarely indeed come up officially, as nearly every Hindu is interested in keeping them dark."