Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/82

 father- in-law and to hear and successfully answer his objections. But then I was taught the old proverb, "Patience and perseverance overcome mountains", too well to give way.

When I had the money and the requisite permission, I said to myself, "How am I to persuade myself to separate from all that is dear and near to me?" In India we fight shy of separation. Even when I had to go for a few days my mother would weep. How, then, was I to witness, without being affected, the heart-rending scene? It is impossible for me to describe the tortures that my mind had to suffer. As the day of leave-taking drew near I nearly broke down. But I was wise enough not to say this, even to my closest friends. I knew that my health was failing. Sleeping, waking, drinking, eating, walking, running, reading, I was dreaming and thinking of England and what I would do on that momentous day. At last the day came. On the one hand, my mother was hiding her eyes, full of tears, in her hands, but the sobbing was clearly heard. On the other, I was placed among a circle of some fifty friends. "If I wept they would think me too weak; perhaps they would not allow me to go to England," soliloquized I; therefore I did not weep, even though my heart was breaking. Last, but not least, came the leave-taking with my wife. It would be contrary to custom for me to see or talk to her in the presence of friends. So I had to see her in a separate room. She, of course, had begun sobbing long before. I went to her and stood like a dumb statue for a moment. I kissed her, and she said, "Don't go". What followed I need not describe. This done, my anxieties were not over. It was but the beginning of the end. The leave-taking was only half done, for I parted with the mother and the wife in Rajkot--where I was educated -- but my brother and friends came to see me off as far as Bombay. The scene that took place there was no less affecting.

The collisions with my caste fellows in Bombay defy description, for Bombay is the place where they chiefly live. In Rajkot I did not meet with any such opposition worthy of the name. It was my misfortune to live in the heart of the city of Bombay, where they most abound, so I was hemmed in on all sides. I could not go out without being pointed and stared at by someone or other. At one time, while I was walking near the Town Hall, I was surrounded and hooted by them, and my poor brother had to look at the scene in silence. The culminating point was reached when a huge meeting of the caste fellows was summoned by the chief representatives. Every member of the caste was called upon to attend the meeting, under pain of forfeiting a fine of five