1.02.13. Book 2: Ch 13. Tiger Pugs

CHAPTER XIII

SOME years ago, when we were very needy indeed, an English girl who had read of the temple children of India offered to come to us. She seemed keen and loving, and arrangements were made for her training with a view to her coming out if she proved to be truly called to us.

She was not, and therefore never came. Part of her training was of a sort she thought too ordinary and humdrum for anyone going to be a missionary. When she was asked what she supposed we wanted her for, she said she expected to skirmish round with me and raid temple houses, and carry the children off to Dohnavur. A fine life it sounded, most exciting, a sort of border-foray existence only unfor­tunately not in the very least ours. Government would have something to say to it, if it were.

It is true that many a time we have been tempted to wish things were a little so. It is hard to see the dear little children playing about in the temple house courts, or swinging in their hammocks from the rafters of the inner rooms in the temple houses, without wishing, but wishing is too cool a word, without just burning to carry them off that very minute and set them playing in our far happier gardens or swinging in other hammocks in the big open porches which are the healthful delight of the Dohnavur nurseries. But to do anything of the sort would not be right, and that settles it. That it would not be possible is another and lesser matter; and yet sometimes it has happened that we have done what if told in a certain way might sound extremely like it, though there was always a difference which made it possible and right.

Only, and here the English girl was quite out of her reckoning, it is never we white people who do these things, that would be to defeat our own pur­pose; we are far too conspicuous in daylight at any rate to be any good at raids. No; to us belongs the humbler part of inspiring others to do.

Such a raid once fell to the Brownie’s lot, to her mingled fear and joy.

Six miles from Dohnavur is a temple town; that town is given up to idolatry, feasts and festivals are frequent, the people seem to live to gad about, to use an expressive old word. So of course the temple houses are well supported, and the brightest of children are there. Over and over again we had tried to get some of those children, but never up to the date of this chapter had got one.

Truly our God does often seem to choose things that are not to bring to nought things that are. The things that are in that temple could not be plainly told. A private document in connection with it was once brought to me, and I read in it of little girls known to us who had been sold to people known to us, our own near neighbours; men no wickeder than most, but utterly infamous and con­scienceless where those little girls were concerned. To be a temple child means cruelty. It means a worse thing, even the turning of that child’s mind from all that is good to all that is bad: it means killing the soul. And of all killings in the whole world, that is the worst.

We had been trying to get a little girl before this killing process was completed. She was only thirteen; but she was ready to run all the six miles alone at night (for of course she could not come by day), if only she could get to us.

Legally, we could not have kept her if she had; but we would have tried; we would have fought for her, whatever happened; we could not have given her up if she had dared so much to reach us. But first, there would almost certainly have been a riot in that town as an I.C.S. friend told me very seriously; and secondly, a lawsuit, with no human chance of winning; for we could have proved nothing against those who would have called them­selves the child’s own relatives and had any number of witnesses to "prove" their new-made facts. Back of it all would have been the age-old system of this ancient land; and back of that the devil. These are some of the things that are. The things that are not? But they are too small to talk about. The child did not escape, her plan was discovered and she disappeared. We never knew what became of her and probably never shall. This, which had happened just before the day Ponnammal and the Brownie went to that town, made everything a little more difficult. The reason they went was that we had heard of a young child there whose mother was willing to give it to us. Such a thing is rare and we knew all manner of influences would be brought to bear upon her to make her change her mind. But we hoped. The interruptions to a forest book are almost as many as to a book in the plains. But somehow they do not seem to disturb. They fit into it, slip into it, become part of it. Tara and her set have departed. Bala and hers have arrived, and at this moment comes Bala, with a large leaf-ful of something care­fully laid thereon, a tiger’s pug, unmistakable, every toe clear. Early this morning she and Jullanie went down the wood and came across the spoor, and to their delight were able to scoop up the slab unbroken to bring up to show to me.

Here it lies beside me on the stone which serves as table, the surface of the large pad of the foot is clear, no little earth-castes tell of the work of small worms in the night, so that it is probably an early morning footprint. Also, no leaves lay on it when they found it, Bala says, though they were thick all round it. The tiger then must have passed through our wood not very long ago. Interesting all this, and pleasantly exciting in broad daylight. But in the grey dawn or at night? And it is always night where human tigers be.

Under suave smiles they were hiding now, as Ponnammal and the Brownie entered their town. They had heard of the proposed visit and its purpose, and had determined to come between us and that little child, their lawful possession; for the child had been all but dedicated, and they were of the priestly caste.

Ponnammal and Suhinie reached the house, they hoped unobserved; not so; they were watched. The house stood in a back street, quiet and unre­markable, with its bare walls turned to the road, and opening inside upon a courtyard. In the verandah hung the white hammock with the baby asleep in it; the Brownie pushed the white stuff aside and looked in. Is there anything more heart­-drawing than a sleeping baby? The thought of all that lay before it, if they failed, now swept over them and every string of purpose in them was tuned to one deep note of longing to save that child. But they found the mother had been tampered with. She had previously vowed the little one to the temple by way of expiation for the death of her husband, and then she had come in touch with one of our friends who had persuaded her out of this; but to take back a child once all but dedicated and keep it herself was against the feeling of her kind; moreover, it might be unsafe, provoking the wrath of the god. If we had the baby, she would be safer, for then that wrath might be expected to fall on us; this at least is the curious reasoning one gets at if one goes deep enough. So that the mother had come to be almost eager to give her child to us, and Ponnammal and the Brownie had gone full of hope, though we know well there is many a slip between a hope and its fulfilment in India. But now the mother was cold. In the house next hers, was at that moment a pleasant-faced, grand­motherly-looking old dame, head of the chief temple house in the town; she was waiting for the child. And she purred to herself as she waited like a cat sure of its mouse. The two houses com­municated with each other by way of an inner courtyard. Ponnammal did not know this till afterwards. At last the mother yielded to Ponnammal, realis­ing afresh some little of what lay behind the specious promises on which she had been fed; and instantly by unseen means word was sent to the men.

Presently they came, not apparently the least concerned, or come on purpose, but just friends drifting in, by pleasant accident. They were sur­prised to find Ponnammal there, and very much pleased, having heard of our "good works, doubt­less much reward will accrue."

While they talked the cat purred. The mother, though not a word was said to her or any notice taken of her, drew back; the long, long tussle began allover again. And all this time the little Brownie prayed. That was her one work. She was Ponnammal’s aide-de­camp, with only one thing to do, and she did it faithfully. Ponnammal told us afterwards she could feel the Brownie’s prayers, feel them working. At last the mother inclined to Ponnammal; the men had sauntered in and out all this time, there was no way of getting rid of them: now seeing the prey slipping from them they showed their claws, turned on the meek inoffensive Brownie, and ordered her off, poured torrents of wrath on Ponnammal, and scathing denunciations on the mother, snarled at her, Ponnammal said, hissed at her, utterly confounded her. But Ponnammal and the Brownie had resources of which they knew nothing, and they fought their battle far out of sight of the angry men. What happens round about us and above us when such fights are fought? If we could see, what should we see? Gradually there was a sense of rest in turmoil, the men drew off, the mother overwhelmed at first, suddenly pulled herself together, all but flung the baby to Ponnammal, and said, "Take her. Preserve her from evil."

Then did Ponnammal and Suhinie fly. In two minutes they were in the bullock-cart, and off. For weeks it was uncertain what would happen. Men of that type count among life’s sweetest joys a case in the law courts. We had to risk that for the baby’s sake, not for the first time or the last, and there were moments when the thought of the innocent, easily mystified Brownie in the witness box, as chief witness against Ponnammal and me, had terrors. But she was spared that, and so were we. We named the baby after her. Suhina has the same meaning as Suhinie, and though it was by no means an Unlovable, she took it to her chest. A Woman or Some Such Thing But . . . they are Thine, 0 Lord, Thou lover of souls.- Wis 11:26.