Page:Anandamath, The Abbey of Bliss - Chatterjee.djvu/141

Rh her home. Where children smiled in their innocence like the jasmine of the evening and laughed their hearty laughs, there wild elephants roamed about in companies and rent asunder the trunks of trees. In the buildings where the Pujas used to be held, the jackal made his home ; the owl haunted the swinging throne of Krishna's image and venomous snakes hunted frogs in broad daylight on the floor of what had been a canopied yard. Crops grew, but there were not men enough to eat them ; merchandise were produced but there were scarcely any buyers for them. Peasants tilled the land but got no money and could pay no rents to the landlord ; the landlords also could not pay their revenue to the State. The State confiscated the property of the zemindars and reduced them to poverty. The land grew richly fertile but wealth did not come to the people and no one had money in hand. Most people lived by depredations, and robbers grew plentiful. All good people retired into seclusion for fear of being molested by the bad ones. The community ot The Ckildre?i meanwhile daily worshipped the image of Vishnu with tulsi leaves, smeared in sandal paste and armed with guns pilfered from wherever they could be found. Bhavananda had once told them : " Comrades, if you find on one side piles of jewels and diamonds and a broken matchlock on the other, get this matchlock and leave the treasures behind." Then they began to send emissaries to the villages. These went to the villages and wherever they found 20 or 25 Hindus, fell on Mussulman villages and