Children of India

by Janet Harvey Kelman

But when they laid him down, it seemed to everyone there too late, and they said that he was dead already. One man alone thought there was time still. He was the doctor, who sternly bade the eager crowd be silent while he fought for the life of the boy. And he won. In half an hour Timmaya opened his eyes and asked, “Where am I,” and in two days he walked back across the valley to the village where the death wail had arisen for him.

There is another sad time at which many Hindu boys catch their first glimpses of the King and His followers. It is the time of famine. One night a little boy lay awake, gazing out at the sky through an opening in the house. He watched the heavy clouds break and scatter, and as the stars shone out, they brought sadness to him, not joy, for they meant that the clouds had broken and gone, and that one more night must pass without rain. As he lay he heard the sound of the priests chanting the prayer for rain at the temple, and every now and then the chant was broken by the clanging of bells that rang out on the still air. The boy thought of his father, who was spending the night there at the temple praying for rain. Then he thought of the long days of famine, and of how old his father looked; and he remembered how little that father had eaten during those days of famine, and how much he had always tried to leave to his mother and his brothers and sisters. And so the boy passed a restless night, and wondered what could come to change these awful days of famine.

Then in the early morning he heard his father’s step, and as it came to the door a wail sounded from his mother within. His brother was dead. The long misery of famine had been too much, and the eldest son in the little home had died. The next days passed in a dream to the boy. He knew that his father could no longer bear the pain of watching his children die, one by one, and he heard him say that he had made up his mind to seek the nearest relief camp. He remembered that he was lifted into a passing bullock cart along with his mother and three other children, and that his father trudged beside them. The driver of the bullock cart had been a wealthy man, but his servants were gone, and he was leading the ox to a patch of prickly pear, the only green thing that was left in the whole famine land. But the bullock was as weak as the men, and the sun was high ere they reached the patch of prickly pear. They all ate the leaves greedily, and would scarcely wait to pluck out the thorns. Then he remembered lying under the bullock cart with his mother and the other children, and watching his father and the bullock driver disappear in the distance, and he remembered no more until he lay in the clean white shed that had been quickly built to be a hospital for the famine children. His sisters and brothers were there with him, but help had come too late to save the lives of his father and mother.

RESCUED FAMINE CHILDREN

In these and countless other ways, the new kingdom of love is seen in India, and can be judged even by those who do not own Christ as King. But there are many who do own Him, and find how much He has to give besides the healing of bodily ills. You remember Chikka, who broke the serpent idol? He was one of the first who learned to serve Christ, though he had to wait a long time before he heard of Him. Chikka’s family was poor, so he could not go to school, nor learn to read or write, and for many years he had no one to tell him of any god other than the idols he despised. He was nearly forty years old before he heard of Jesus Christ, and after he had learned about Him, he saw that He could do for him all that the gods of stone could never do. Soon he and the missionaries urged the people of his village to give up worshipping idols. The villagers had seen that no harm had come to Chikka, and they began to think that perhaps it was really true, as the missionaries said, that it was the worshippers that kept the god Runga safe in his temple, and not the idol that kept them safe. They left the god alone to see if he could take care of himself. They brought him no fresh flowers, nor did they see that there was oil in the lamp that burned before him. Very soon the garlands withered, and the lamp went out. The temple became dirty and untidy, and worst of all, the roof fell in just over the god’s head. But though the villagers gave up the worship of the idol, that did not mean that they were willing to become Christians. At Chikka’s baptism, they took sudden fright lest drops of water should fall on them by mistake, and make them Christians against their will, and they rushed out of the church till they blocked up the door, and some of them had to climb out by the window.

CHAPTER XI
ANANTA THE SEEKER

There have often been learned Hindu men who have lost their faith in idols, and the story of one of these has so much to do with the lives of many children in India to-day, that we must not miss it out.

Ananta Shastri was a seeker for the King of India, though he did not know it; and his daughter Ramabai is now helping hundreds of little girls to find Him.

Many Hindus think that no woman ought to be allowed to learn to read or to write, or to study the sacred books. Even if a husband is a learned man, he cannot talk much to his wife about the things that interest him, because she would not know what he meant.