Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/88

68 suspected of collusion with Khande Rao Peishwa, and a guard of soldiers was stationed round her cell and Temple. When the country settled down, she wandered to the different places of pilgrimage all over India, meditating and buying merit. Everywhere had she been, everywhere that is holy, and as an old woman, eyes dim with prayer, throat drawn with fasting, she has settled in Bengal and devotes herself to the religious education of her community. “I have spent a lifetime in prayer: now I am ready to work,” she explains. But the praying is not over.

From 5 to 9 of a morning, she shuts herself away in her House of Gods, and no one dare disturb her. Here in India, where shrines are many, and there is no false shame about entering and praying—doors wide—nay, where the Godling sits by the wayside, and where it is a common thing to see a woman stand on a highway, head against some outer wall of a Temple—the moment’s contact a prayer, or bowing to the Earth on some crowded pavement—it is curious that not one of her devotees or friends has any knowledge of what is within her House of Gods—whether it is empty or