Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/52

32 they sat in rows on little mats along the floor, and ate sweets and vegetables off green plantain leaves, their hostess waiting on them.

This little exchange of religious obligation is all the etiquette, and makes all the social amenities known among orthodox women in India.

It is hard to convey the idea, state the fact as one may, but the Hindu woman acknowledges no claims save those of religion. No social, no communal claims. Her worship of the Gods, of her husband, her children, they are all the same, part of her religion, and they make her life.

Even the ordinary business of the day, bathing, dressing, eating, is a religious act. … To cook her husband’s food an orthodox Hindu wears a special silk garment: the only gardening she ever attempts is to water and tend the sacred basil (Tulsi). If she travels, it is on a pilgrimage to this shrine or that, to bathe in this or that sacred river. Of course she gives dinner parties as did my ten-year-old Bride, on special occasions, or on feasts of Gods and Goddesses through the year, also in memory of the dead; but there is no machinery