Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/329

A STUDY OF BENARES 275 as we have seen, to live in the streets. And when illness overtakes such there is none to aid, for there is none even to know. The chhattras are certainly a wonderful institution, showing the unexpected power of this ancient city to meet the needs of her own children. But the chhattras cannot offer home and hospital. And these also are sometimes needed.

And finally there is the case of the widowed gentlewomen who come to Benares to pray for their dead. As with others, so here also there is in many cases but slender provision. And yet nowadays they cannot come to friends, but must needs hire a room and pay rent to a landlord. Nor can we venture to pass too harsh a verdict on the capitalist who evicts his tenant — though a woman and delicately nurtured — when the rent has fallen too long into arrears. For he probably has to deal with the fact on such a scale that the course is forced upon him, if he will save himself from ruin. More striking even than this is that fear of the police, which we find everywhere amongst the helpless, and which drives the keeper of the apartment-house to dismiss its penniless inmates when near to death, lest he should afterwards be arraigned in court for having stolen their provision!

Prostrate, then, under the disintegrating touch of the Modern Era, lies at this moment the most perfect of mediaeval cities. Is she to become a memory to her children after four thousand or