Page:Masani - Gandhi's story.pdf/11



Sundernagar, which means a beautiful place, is a little village just about ten miles from New Delhi, the capital of India. If you were to walk down the main lane of Sundernagar which winds past the clean mud huts where the villagers live, right past the village well, you would come to Paltoo's little hut. It is even smaller than the other huts for Paltoo is a very poor peasant. His field is tiny, but Paltoo loves and looks after it with great care, and when strangers come to Sundernagar, they always want to know to whom that neat little field belongs.

Paltoo has a grandson named Rama and a grand-daughter named Sita who live with him and help him work in his field and take care of the village cows.

It was eight o'clock on a cold winter's night in January in the year 1948. The hush and silence of deep