d caught
a glimpse of our sleep-tormented condition, we would get let off for the
rest of the evening. It did not take our drowsiness another moment to
get completely cured.

(8) _My First Outing_

Once, when the dengue fever was raging in Calcutta, some portion of our
extensive family had to take shelter in Chhatu Babu's river-side villa.
We were among them.

This was my first outing. The bank of the Ganges welcomed me into its
lap like a friend of a former birth. There, in front of the servants'
quarters, was a grove of guava trees; and, sitting in the verandah under
the shade of these, gazing at the flowing current through the gaps
between their trunks, my days would pass. Every morning, as I awoke, I
somehow felt the day coming to me like a new gilt-edged letter, with
some unheard-of news awaiting me on the opening of the envelope. And,
lest I should lose any fragment of it, I would hurry through my toilet
to my chair outside. Every day there was the ebb and flow of the tide on
the Ganges; the various gait of so many different boats; the shifting of
the shadows of the trees from west to east; and, over the fringe of
shade-patches of the woods on the opposite bank, the gush of golden
life-blood through the pierced breast of the evening sky. Some days
would be cloudy from early morning; the opposite woods black; black
shadows moving over the river. Then with a rush would come the
vociferous rain, blotting out the horizon; the dim line of the other
bank taking its leave in tears: the river swelling with suppressed
heavings; and the moist wind making free with the foliage of the trees
overhead.

I felt that out of the bowels of wall, beam and rafter, I had a new
birth into the outside. In making fresh acquaintance with things, the
dingy covering of petty habits seemed to drop off the world. I am sure
that the sugar-cane molasses, which I had with cold _luchis_ for my
breakfast, could not have tasted different from the ambrosia which
_Indra_[15] quaffs in his heaven; for, the immortality is not in the
nectar but in the taster, and thus is missed by those who seek it.

Behind the house was a walled-in enclosure with a tank and a flight of
steps leading into the water from a bathing platform. On one side of the
platform was an immense Jambolan tree, and all round were various fruit
trees, growing in thick clusters, in the shade of which the tank nestled
in its privacy. The veiled beauty of this retired little