Page:Fischer - A Week with Gandhi.pdf/32

 and wore a tight blue homespun bodice around her breasts and shoulders, leaving a strip bare to the waist. From the waist down to her feet she wore a sari, the train of which she held under one arm and wrapped around her neck and head. The sari was of bright yellow with a broad, bright-red border, so that every time she passed, I, with my eyes on the typewriter, had the impression of a flame. She carried on her head a large red earthen jar filled with water, and supported it with one arm, which was bare except for a bright metal bracelet at the wrist. When she returned a moment later, after having poured the water into a barrel outside the house opposite, the jar was lying on its side, nestling in a round, rag cup on the top of her head. Hour after hour, in the blazing sun, she did this difficult chore. A short pipe would have relieved her of all this hard work.

I wrote until I was exhausted from the heat, and then chatted with Kurshed. Dinner was at five, announced by a soft gong. The meal started with the usual prayer. A member of the ashram whosat near Gandhi and talked with him in Hindustani used an English word. I said that reminded me of the open-air Congress mass meeting I had attended in New Delhi the day after I arrived in India. The main speaker had been Mrs. Asaf Ali (Hindu wife of Dr. Asaf Ali, a Moslem member of the Congress Working Committee). She too had spoken Hin-