Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/152

 Messrs Thomas Cook & Sons, Hornby Road, Bombay, also are

The source carries no address.

good and well-known bankers. Many Indians have their accounts with them. All these firms get their customer's letters free of charge. It is better, however, to get your letters at your Inn or at your lodging when you have fixed upon one. It would be advisable to keep two or three pounds with you in cash in order to pay for your railway-ticket on landing in London and to pay a few shillings to the steward of your cabin or to pay for boat hires if you land at various stations touched by your boat. Although the estimates supplied are not the lowest possible it is supposed that no one would venture to go to England who could not afford 420, i.e., at the present rate of exchange Rs. 6,720. I have, however, a word to say further. If you have got Rs. 10,000, do not spend all in London, thinking that you would be able to lead a happier life there. I shall just diverge from my main subject. I am going immediately to point out that, from every point of view, the life you would have to lead on 420 would be happier than the life led by many a student in India. And mind, Rs. 10,000 would not supply you with luxuries. They would simply make you pine for more to vie with your luxurious brothers and thus, in fact, make you more miserable. Did you say one room in England would not be sufficient for you? I ask you, then, what have you been having here? Do you not sleep, even though you may be the son of a rich man, two or three in one room, a room without a carpet, without any furniture, surrounded by dirty ditches having hardly a window or two? Have you not in Bombay used the same room for kitchen, bed-room and sitting room? Why, I have seen very rich students spending money like water living in a dirty house not even swept daily. Did you say you could not live on the food provided in the book? Well, if so, you can only be pitied. I am sure that you are having no better food here. Do you always taste, much less eat 1, fruit in India? Do you not subsist on two meals only, in India, with milk only once in the day? Did you say you could not cook your food? Well, if so, it is not absolutely necessary that you should cook in London except for your religion. But, does not many a student, if not you, cook his food in India and in what? In the miserable fire-places, blowing the fire, now and then spoiling the clothes and having the eyes quite red with smoke after the dinner is

The source has `cut', obviously a slip.

cooked. In the place of all this, what do you have in England on one pound per week?