Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/588

Rh On his return from Benares, Vidyasagar had taken his lodgings in a rented house by the riverside at Kasipore, a little north to Calcutta, when the sad intelligence reached him. The news came upon him like a thunder-bolt. How shall we describe the intensity of his grief? Words are too inadequate to express the sufferings of his heart. He was quite disconsolate, and wept bitterly like a child. The reader is aware how devotedly attached he was to his mother. Alas! that mother, to obey whose word he had encountered the perils of a long pedestrian journey amidst thunder-storms and rains, and had plunged into the impassable stream of the terrific Damodar, was no more! Oh! the pangs of his heart—the more so, as he had not been able to attend to her death-bed and to have a last look of her face!

He performed the Sraddha ceremonials on the shores of the Bhagirathi at Kasipore; after which he led a secluded life for several months together, during which time his main business was to shed incessant tears at his dear mother's memory. He observed the mourning rites in accordance with the tenets of the Sastras for one complete year. These twelve months he led the rigidly ascetic life of a true Hindu; he gave up fish and meat; he ate only one meal a day, and that composed of only rice and vegetables and cooked with his own hands, permitting nobody to help him in preparing the food save his wife, Dinamayi Devi, and