would be incurring grave risk. I have here taken note of them only to show how far a man can go in certain circumstances and to stress the purity of the Satyagraha struggle. This very purity was a guarantee of its victory. Before launching on such experiments a teacher has to be both father and mother to his pupils and to be prepared for all eventualities whatever, and only the hardest penance can fit him to conduct them.
This act of mine was not without its effect on the entire life of the settlers on the Farm. As we had intended to cut down expenses to the barest minimum, we changed our dress also. In the cities the Indian men including the Satyagrahis put on European dress. Such elaborate clothing was not needed on the Farm. We had all become labourers and therefore put on labourers’ dress but in the European style, viz. workingmen’s trousers and shirts, which were imitated from prisoners’ uniform. We all used cheap trousers and shirts which could be had ready-made out of coarse blue cloth. Most of the ladies were good hands at sewing and took charge of the tailoring department.
As for food we generally had rice, dal, vegetable and rotlis with porridge occasionally superadded. All this was served in a single dish which was not really a dish, but a kind of bowl such as is supplied to prisoners in jail. We had made wooden spoons on the Farm ourselves. There were three meals in the day. We had bread and home-made wheaten ‘coffee’[1] at six o’clock in the morning, rice, dal and vegetable at eleven, and wheat pap and milk, or bread and ‘coffee’ at half past five in the
- ↑ ‘A harmless and nutritious substitute for tea, coffee or cocoa can be prepared as follows. Even connoisseurs of coffee have failed to perceive any difference in taste between coffee and this substitute. Bake well-cleaned wheat on the fire, until it has turned quite red and began to grow dark in colour. Then powder it like coffee. Take a spoonful of this powder in a cup and pour boiling water over it. Preferably keep it over the fire for a minute, and add milk and sugar to taste, but it can be taken without them also’—from the author’s Gujarati booklet on health. Chapter V. Indian Opinion, XI-10, March 8, 1913. V. G. D.
