Shiv Dás, unlike his more ignorant wife, had little faith in the holiness of the Ganges. He foresaw great trouble and expense, and possible danger, from attending the melá, Hurdwan being at a great distance from his home.
But Lachmi gave her husband no peace till she had wrung from him an unwilling consent. Shiv Dás had to leave his situation and spend all his savings to gratify the wish of his superstitious and pleasure-seeking wife. He took Lachmi and her little one, both adorned in jewels, in a covered bullock-gari to the great melá, at which many hundreds of thousands of Hindus assembled.
That time Shiv Dás could never remember without horror. At first he was dazzled by the show and the glitter, the banners, the music, and the processions, which seemed to be endless. Then Shiv Dás saw things from which his soul revolted, even though he had been brought up as a Hindu.
"Can even the Ganges wash away such sins as I see around me?" he said to himself.
Soon followed what was to Shiv Dás a grievous misfortune. He had gone a short distance to buy some sweets for his child, and a pair of gugurus (anklets, with bells) for her slender feet. What was the father's grief, on his return, to find his little one missing! Perhaps she had been lost in the crowd; perhaps murdered for the sake of her jewels!
In vain, during the rest of that miserable day and the whole of that following night, poor Shiv Dás searched for his lost one amidst that surging mass of human beings. In vain, he made offerings to idols. He never saw his darling again.
More misery was to follow. Lachmi, who felt the loss of her child far less than did her husband, pursued her design of bathing in the holy river. But the rush of thousands and thousands of pilgrims, all bent on the same object, was so terrific, that in spite of the efforts of the police, hundreds were pushed by their companions over a ravine, and miserably perished. Amongst this number was Lachmi; she had had her heart's desire, and it had cost her her life.
Shiv Dás, desolate and almost beggared, attempted to return to his home. But the frightful crowding together of multitudes of pilgrims had produced its natural effect. Disease broke out among the crowds; cholera spread. Shiv Dás, on his homeward way, was attacked by agonising pains, happily near a town, or he would have died, as so many do, uncared for and untended. Being in an hospital, and possessed of a strong constitution, Shiv struggled through the disease, and so was not numbered among the numerous victims to attendance at the great melá.
From that time Shiv Dás altogether lost all faith in the Hindu creed. "The religion which leads men to believe that bathing in a river can remove sin, and so leads to an appalling amount of disease, misery, and vice, cannot be from a good God, but from some wicked spirit, enemy of man!" he exclaimed.
A few years afterwards, as we have seen, Shiv Dás, the Hindu, became Isa Dás, the Christian.