Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Let Me Stay in the Light
There was a village near Pannaivilai called Great Lake. The village had a Christian mission school where local boys, and even a few girls, were educated. Not one of the parents or children attending the school was a Christian, which had been true for the past sixty years. The villagers knew that the school was run by Christians, but they didn’t worry in the slightest about their children’s being influenced by Christianity. Even the youngest child knew better than to break caste. That was, until 1895, the same year Amy arrived in India. One of the girls in the school, who was thirteen years old at the time, was given a Bible by the school principal’s wife. She read the Bible and became a secret Christian. Very secret. She didn’t tell a single person about it, and she continued with all the family’s Hindu practices. She went so far as to allow her brother to smear Siva’s ashes on her forehead every morning. These ashes were worn by devout Hindus to show others their devotion to Hindu gods.
Three years later, the girl had finished school and was being kept at home, which was normal in Indian culture. In fact, she hadn’t been outside the house once in two years. But as she spent many hours by herself doing household chores, she thought about what she had read in the Bible. Slowly she began to realize she didn’t want to be a secret Christian anymore. Instead, she wanted to become an open believer. She wanted to pray with other Christians and go to Bible studies and share her faith with her family. She was also aware that confessing her belief in Christianity could cost her her life. Yet despite that possibility, she could no longer stand to live her faith in secret. She had heard her father and brother talking about the Starry Cluster, and even though they talked about the group in insulting terms, she felt strangely attracted to it.
One night, after everyone was asleep, the girl woke up. Shivers ran up and down her spine. Somehow she knew she had to escape. She had to get to the Starry Cluster. But what if someone saw her? She would be brought home in disgrace and beaten for sure, maybe even found dead at the bottom of a well shaft in the morning. But her desire to escape was too strong to worry about any potential consequences.
Slowly and carefully she stepped over her sleeping mother and tiptoed to the door. She turned the lock and pulled the door open. For the first time in two years, she smelled the fresh air of the garden. Keeping in the shadows with her ear attuned to every sound, she crept out of the village, along the rutted path, and over the bridge into Pannaivilai. Once there, she had no idea where to go next. She sneaked around Pannaivilai until she came to a large two-story house with a veranda around it. A banner over the front door told her she had come to the home of Christians. Suddenly, instead of being as quiet as possible, she had to make noise, and lots of it. She banged on the door and yelled, “Refuge! Refuge!” A sleepy Amy opened the door and let her in.
By the next morning, the village of Great Lake was in an uproar. The girl’s father had discovered that his daughter was missing. That was bad enough, but to find she had run to Christians for refuge was too much to bear. It was an insult to the entire goldsmithing caste to which her family belonged. Her father would rather see her dead than have her break caste and stay with Christians. He mounted a campaign to get her back. But the girl, whom Amy named Jewel of Victory, stood her ground. She went to the village constable and gave a sworn statement to say she was sixteen years of age and was living with the Starry Cluster of her own free choice. Once that was done, there was nothing her father could do—legally, that is. Unfortunately, there were a lot of other things he and the other men of the village could and did do. First, they burned down the school. This meant that none of the other children in the village would receive an education, but her father didn’t seem to care. It was more important that the terrible thing his daughter had done would never happen again. Next they burned down the school principal’s house and drove the school workers out of Great Lake village.
Jewel of Victory was safe with the Starry Cluster, but many people paid the price for her conversion. And the Starry Cluster would not be welcome again in Great Lake village. That was for certain! Indeed, until the turmoil died down, the women of the Starry Cluster decided they should work in the villages to the north of Pannaivilai. But they ran headlong into another crisis there. They were preaching in the streets of a village called Uncrowned King when an eleven-year-old girl named Arulai came by. Arulai was fetching water for her family at the same time the women were holding their meeting, and she stopped to listen to what the women had to say. Arulai had a bad temper, which she’d tried to control without much success. As she listened to the Starry Cluster, she watched Amy very closely. There was something about the Englishwoman in the simple, white cotton sari that fascinated her. When the meeting closed, Arulai overheard one of the women in the Starry Cluster say, “I was a lion, and God turned me into a lamb.”
As she carried the water jar home, Arulai thought about what she’d overheard. A lion turned into a lamb, she said over and over to herself. There was nothing more wild and out of control than a lion or anything more gentle and sweet than a lamb. If God could turn a lion into a lamb, then maybe, just maybe, He could also control her temper. As the days went by, Arulai became more and more sure that He could. Finally one day, she announced to her parents that she wanted to go and live with the Englishwoman in the white cotton sari. Her family was convinced that Amy had sprinkled some magic powder on their daughter to make her want to leave home. Amy was quickly earning a new name in the area—”child-snatching Amma.” (Amma is the Tamil word for mother.)
Arulai kept talking about going to live with Amy until her whole family were so sick of listening to her they sent her off for a long visit at her uncle’s house. That was a big mistake. Arulai’s family didn’t realize that her uncle lived in the next village to Pannaivilai, and it was only a short walk for Arulai to slip away and visit Amy. And that is what she did. She made so many visits that in the end, her uncle said she could stay for Bible studies as well. As Arulai learned more and more about the Christian God, she became convinced He was the true God, and she became a convert. She began to speak out boldly about her growing faith. Of course, this really upset her family, and they soon whisked her away from her uncle’s house.
Months passed, and Amy heard no news of her new friend. She prayed for her every day and hoped she would somehow be able to find a way to come back one day. Meanwhile, more trouble followed the Starry Cluster.
Children, it seemed, were the most drawn to Amy and her message. Unfortunately, horrible things sometimes happened to children whose parents thought they had been listening for too long to the bewitching child stealer. One girl was drugged by her family when she started to question Hindu ways. Her brain was affected by the drug, and she was never the same again. Other children were beaten or whipped or had hot peppers ground into their eyes. Arul Dasan, who turned out to be Arulai’s cousin, was kept tied to a pillar in his house for days on end in the hope he would lose interest in Christianity. Every time Amy heard one of these stories, she thought of Arulai and prayed harder that God would bring her back to visit.
Finally in November, eight months after she’d last been seen by anyone in the Starry Cluster, Arulai appeared again. She arrived on the doorstep one morning, and Amy rushed out to greet her. It was a wonderful reunion, except for one thing. Arulai was sick and getting sicker by the minute. Amy helped her inside and laid her on the couch. Arulai did not know what was wrong with her; she just knew that she felt very weak and had an incredible headache. Finally, Amy put Arulai into her bed and stayed by her side day and night. Sometimes she prayed for a miracle because she was sure a miracle was the only thing that could save Arulai’s life.
As Arulai lay in Amy’s bed close to death, a strange thing happened. Her father came to take her home, but when he saw how sick she was, he realized she could not be moved. Instead, he kept coming back regularly to see whether his daughter was well enough to take home. On those trips, he began to see how Amy cared for his daughter. He hated to admit it, but his daughter was getting more love and care with Amy and the Starry Cluster than she would get in her own home. Ever so slowly, his resolve to force Arulai to come home as soon as possible began to crumble. And ever so slowly, Arulai began to gather strength. Sometimes Amy would overhear her desperate prayers. “Please don’t make me go back to the darkness, God. I am living in the light here. Let me stay in the light.”
By the time Arulai was completely well again, her father had given up the demand that his now twelve-year-old daughter come home, and Arulai was allowed to stay on with the group in Pannaivilai.
Amy was always doing two or three things at once, and while she was nursing Arulai she was also writing a manuscript. Five years after she had sailed for India, the Keswick Convention still supported her. Fueled by the interest generated by From Sunrise Land, her book of letters from Japan, the Keswick Convention had asked Amy to write a book about India. It took many months of writing and rewriting, but finally Amy felt happy with the result. Then the question came, what to title the manuscript? Amy didn’t want anything too grand or too flowery. She wanted something that was simple and to the point. Finally, she settled on the title Things As They Are. That said it all for Amy. It wasn’t about things as she might want them to be in India, or things the way people in England imagined they might be. No, it was about things as they are.
Amy sent the manuscript off to the Keswick committee in England. She got it back from them much sooner than she’d expected. Inside with the manuscript was a note thanking her for all her hard work but suggesting she make a few changes. It seemed they felt her manuscript was a bit depressing to read. Perhaps, the editor suggested, it needed a lighter touch, more happy stories, and fewer stories about young children and women in unreachable situations. Again Amy was confronted with the desire of Christians in England for “happy missionary, happy ending” stories. She shook her head. If only the committee could have spent a few days with her, they would have quickly seen that for every Arulai, there were a thousand girls who were temple prostitutes or household slaves. Their lives did not have happy endings, and Amy would not pretend they did. She stuffed the manuscript in the bottom drawer of her desk.
Other mail came from England, and it was upsetting, too. Robert Wilson’s sons wrote letter after letter begging Amy to come home to Broughton Grange. Their father asked for her every day; their father was getting weaker; their father had had another stroke. But Amy couldn’t go back to England, especially now that she had Arulai to look after. Besides, she knew that God had called her to India, and she would not leave unless she was certain He was calling her elsewhere. Still, Amy did get homesick. She longed for someone from England to come and visit her. She wanted to show them the way things were and get a firsthand account of the state of Robert Wilson’s health.
Her longing was rewarded toward the end of 1900. Two of her close friends from Manchester, Ella Crossley and Mary Hatch, announced that they had bought tickets and were on their way to see her. Amy was so glad to see them again. Of course, the first questions she wanted answered were, Had they seen Robert Wilson before they left, and How was he doing? Ella and Mary had visited him right before they left, and better yet, they had a letter for Amy that Robert Wilson had dictated to Ella. Amy ripped the envelope open and read what he had to say. One sentence particularly caught her attention: “I hope you will not let my sickness change any of your plans.” Amy was grateful for his reassurance that she was doing the right thing staying in India.
Ella and Mary wanted to experience everything Amy had described to them in her letters. They were eager to climb aboard the bandy and travel the countryside with the Starry Cluster. Amy told them the story of Jewel of Victory and Arulai, who were now both a part of the cluster. The two women got to see a a side of India few Englishwomen ever saw.
One day the three of them entered a home where a child lay crying in a hammock. Amy picked up the child and held him tightly. She guessed he was about three years old. He continuously rubbed his eyes, which were red and nearly swollen shut. “How long has he been like this?” Amy asked his mother.
“About three months,” the mother replied, “but he does not cry as loudly as he used to.”
“What does the doctor say?” Amy asked in Tamil, while interpreting the conversation into English for Ella and Mary.
The mother looked down. “We will not take him to the doctor,” she said hesitantly, and then added, “it would be breaking caste.”
Amy hugged the little boy closer. Surely there could be an exception. The child was well on his way to blindness, if not death. How could it be against caste to get him medical help? She begged and pleaded with the mother to let her take the child to the nearest hospital. But the mother would not budge. Nothing mattered more to her than keeping caste, not even the possible death of her own little boy. Keeping caste was more important than keeping his life.
Ella and Mary emerged from the hut into the bright sunlight with tears streaming down their cheeks. Although they had been reading Amy’s letters for years, the reality of experiencing firsthand what she had described was almost more than they could bear.
They asked Amy why she didn’t write a book about conditions in India so that Christians in England and other places could pray for her and her workers. Amy shrugged her shoulders. Over the next several weeks, they asked the same question again and again. Finally, Amy opened the bottom drawer of her desk and took out the manuscript for Things As They Are. She handed it to Ella and Mary, who took turns reading it aloud to each other. When they finished, they were sure it had to be published. Christians needed to know the truth about India, the so-called jewel in the empire’s crown.
Amy then showed them the letter from the Keswick committee about the manuscript. Ella and Mary shook their heads in disbelief. If only the committee could see what they had seen, then they would understand. Things As They Are was indeed a true picture of life in India and Amy’s work there. Eventually the two women persuaded Amy to give them the manuscript to take back to England. They must have been two forceful women, because soon after their return to England, Things As They Are was published, complete with photos Ella had taken during her visit.
Meanwhile, back in India, Amy and the Starry Cluster were busier than ever going from village to village sharing the gospel message.