Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Mudnabatti
Unbeknownst to William, at the same time he had been desperately seeking money and support for his family in Calcutta before finally moving to Dechatta, an event had occurred in a dangerous channel of the Hooghly River near Malda, one hundred twenty miles to the north. The event, tragic as it was, would change the course of William’s life in India.
The event was a boating accident in which two English people, Robert Udney and his wife, were drowned. The couple had just moved to Dinadjpur Province to work with Robert’s brother, George. George Udney lived in Malda, where he was commercial resident for the East India Company. This meant that he was the most powerful English person in the area. George Udney was responsible for improving agriculture and industry in the province. He was able to make loans and help start new farming and industrial projects.
George Udney was also a good Christian who knew Dr. Thomas from his previous visit to India. As was the case with many of Dr. Thomas’s friends, George Udney had loaned him money, which Dr. Thomas had never repaid. This had caused a rift in their friendship. However, when Dr. Thomas read of the drownings in the newspaper, he immediately wrote to his “friend” to say how sorry he was to hear of his brother’s death.
Being a forgiving man, when he received the letter from Dr. Thomas, George Udney wrote back and invited him to visit Malda. Dr. Thomas did so, and the two men became friends again. During his visit, Dr. Thomas told how he was not doing well in Calcutta. Yes, he was making good money as a doctor, but the problem was that he and his wife were still spending more than they made. He longed for a simpler life. George Udney had just the answer to his problem. He explained that his dead brother had been given the job of overseer at one of two new indigo-dye factories being built in the province. Now that his brother was dead, George had to find someone else to run the factory and wondered whether Dr. Thomas might be interested in the position. A large house and generous salary came with the job, plus Dr. Thomas would get a small share of any profit the factory made.
Dr. Thomas immediately accepted the position and then asked whether George Udney had anyone in mind to run the second factory. George Udney did not, but Dr. Thomas knew just the man for the job.
“Papa, papa, there is a letter for you,” yelled nine-year-old Felix as he ran up the path to Mr. Short’s house waving an envelope.
William was on the veranda working on the translation of the Book of Genesis that he and Dr. Thomas had begun. He smiled broadly as his son ran up with the envelope. At last, after six months in India, a letter! He was not sure whom he would most like it to be from, his friends on the missionary society committee or his father. It was from neither.
As he took the envelope from Felix and turned it over, William immediately recognized the handwriting—the same handwriting he’d just been reading, that of Dr. Thomas. William tore open the letter and began to read. The more he read, the more excited he became. George Udney, commercial resident for Dinadjpur Province, had offered him a job overseeing an indigo dye factory. And the job came with a house and two hundred fifty pounds a year as salary! The salary alone was five times as much as William had ever earned before. William did some fast math in his head and discovered that his whole family could easily live on a quarter of the amount, leaving over one hundred eighty pounds per year to put toward translating and printing the entire Bible in Bengali. More than that, Dr. Thomas pointed out that George Udney was a godly man who understood that William would want time off to preach to the local people and continue his translation work. As well, if he accepted the job, George Udney would get him a five-year permit to work in India. William would no longer have to worry about being caught and sent to jail in England. It all sounded almost too good to be true.
William thought about all the wonderful opportunities the job would give him. The letter had stated that the factory would employ ninety workers, and William felt sure that he would have the chance to share the gospel message with each worker. It was a thrilling prospect. Of course, he would miss Dechatta, which was already beginning to feel like home. But somehow the job offer seemed to William to be God’s direction for him and his family. “Just think,” he told Dolly, “we won’t have to worry about money for food anymore!” And then he wrote in his journal: “This appears to be a remarkable opening in divine providence, for our comfortable support.”
May 23, 1794, was moving day, but not into the bamboo hut that William had labored to build. Instead, William was headed with his family up the Hooghly River to Malda to meet George Udney and begin work in the indigo dye factory.
Despite the wonderful job that awaited her husband, Dolly Carey was not eager to leave Mr. Short’s house, for good reasons. First, the journey itself was a dangerous one. It involved poling their boat two hundred miles in one-hundred-ten-degree heat in the height of mosquito season. Second, her sister Kitty would not be traveling with them. Kitty and Mr. Short had fallen in love and planned to marry the following year. This meant that Dolly would be in charge of the boys for three or four weeks on a boat no bigger than a full-sized bed.
And what if the job didn’t work out? Dolly asked William this question many times. After all, they had moved back to Calcutta to the job at the botanical gardens only to find it was already taken. What if there were a similar mix-up with this job? If that happened, they would be in a much worse situation than if they had stayed in Dechatta.
William was determined that it was the right thing to do. So, early in the morning, they said farewell to Kitty and Mr. Short and climbed aboard their little boat. It was difficult for the boys to say good-bye. They clung to their Aunt Kitty, who, in many ways, had been more of a mother to them than Dolly had been. But finally, after many tears, they got under way.
The trip to Malda took twenty-two long, hot days. Dolly and Felix were still suffering from the effects of dysentery and spent most of the time lying in the center of the boat under the full shade of the straw canopy that stretched most of the length of the craft. Even in the shade, the temperature hovered around one hundred degrees. It was so hot that the other children, who were not sick, hardly had the energy to sit up. In the evenings, they would tie the boat up beside a village. William and Ram Boshu would spend an hour or so preaching in the village while Dolly and the children did their best to set up camp for the night. The food for the journey consisted mostly of curried vegetables and rice, which they purchased from the many vendors along the well-traveled waterway.
As they traveled, William heard many people speaking in Hindustani, the language of the lower castes, and he immediately began to take notes on how to translate the Bible into it.
Progress on the journey was slow and reminded William of the month when the Kron Princessa Maria had tacked her way up the Bay of Bengal. This time, though, the trip was slow not because of the wind conditions but because of the shape of the rivers they were traveling. The entire Bengal region was a giant alluvial plain, across which the rivers sluggishly meandered, almost doubling back on themselves in places. Sometimes it took William and Ram Boshu two whole days to make four miles in a straight line!
On June 7, the boat reached the town of Bassetpore, where they purchased some square sails and rigged their boat for sailing. This made the rest of the trip much faster, but it also meant that they couldn’t “feel” their way along the bottom as they had been able to when poling the boat. As a result, they were constantly running aground on the many shallow sandbars in the nine-mile-wide river.
On June 15, William Carey wrote in his journal: “I feel now as if released from a prison.” The prison was the boat. They had made it safely to Malda, where they were greeted by George Udney and his mother, who lived with him. The two welcomed the group into their house for a large meal, and then one of their servants supervised the children while Dolly rested and William went over the job contract with George Udney.
Much to his relief, William found that for once Dr. Thomas had not exaggerated. George Udney was a wonderful Christian who cared deeply about the Indian men who worked for him. He told William that as long as everything ran smoothly at the factory, he was free to take as much time as he liked to do his Bible translation work.
That evening, after a delicious supper of venison, William wrote to the missionary society committee. With great joy he told them about the new job. He asked the committee not to send him any more money, although he hadn’t yet received any they might have already sent. Instead, he urged them to send out another missionary with the money they had set aside to support him and his family. Finally, everything was working out the way he had imagined it would.
The Careys stayed with George Udney and his mother for two weeks. It took that much time to coax Dolly back into the boat and for George Udney to answer all William’s questions about the indigo factory and the dye-making process. There was so much to learn, and William did not want to make any mistakes. George Udney patiently explained that it would soon be monsoon season and that was when indigo dye making began. For three months, starting the end of July, Indigofera Tinctoria (indigo) plants that had been planted in March were cut down at the stalk, and the whole plants were bundled up and brought to the factory on bullock carts. There, the indigo plants were soaked in huge vats of water.
While in the water, the plants were beaten to release the blue dye. To do this, the Indian workers stripped naked and waded into the vats, beating the water with huge bamboo paddles. At just the right moment, the water had to be drained from the vats and the leaves strained out, leaving behind the liquid indigo that had settled at the bottom of the vat. The mixture was then left to ferment before the remaining liquid was evaporated off, leaving behind solid cakes of indigo dye. The cakes were then cut into chunks and transported to Calcutta to be sold locally or shipped to Europe. Indigo, William learned, was in high demand because it dyed fabrics such a bright shade of blue. In fact, the blue coats worn by American soldiers during the American Revolution had been made from fabric dyed with indigo.
During his stay in Malda, William was asked to preach at the small church service held each Sunday in George Udney’s home. Just the thought of a church service reminded William of how lonely he had really been for Christian fellowship. On Sunday, sixteen English people, including Dr. Thomas, arrived for the service.
Afterward, William and Dr. Thomas talked privately. William forgave Dr. Thomas for the problems he had caused with the money and agreed that now everything was starting to work out well. The two men also talked about translating the Bible into Bengali. William was determined to keep working on the project during the nine months when there was no indigo dye production.
Finally, after two weeks, it was time for the Carey family and Ram Boshu to climb back into their boat and head thirty-two miles up the River Tangan to Mudnabatti, where the factory William would be overseeing was located. The current was strong, and the journey took three days. The factory Dr. Thomas was overseeing was located at Moypaldiggy, another seventeen miles on up the river past Mudnabatti.
When the Careys finally arrived, they found things much as George Udney had described them. A large two-story brick house with large venetian windows was set back just a little from the riverbank. Several servants dressed in white came scurrying out as soon as the boat tied up at the jetty. Inside, the house was furnished with everything an English family could want. For the first time since leaving England a year before, William Carey breathed a sigh of relief. His family was safe, they had a strong home and plenty to eat, and most important, he had enough money left over to continue his translation and missionary work. Things were beginning to look up.
The three older Carey boys loved their new home. From their upstairs bedroom they could see bright green rice fields stretching for miles in every direction. Spread out among the rice fields were small villages in the shade of huge mango and banyan trees. Unlike the jungle at Dechatta, there weren’t many wild animals prowling near the house, except snakes. They soon learned not to walk too close to thickets of prickly pear bushes. Deadly cobras lived among them, and a cobra’s bite meant certain death, often in less than an hour.
William had been in the new home a month when the monsoon rains began signaling it was time to harvest the indigo plants. He pulled out all the notes he had taken during his conversations with George Udney and prepared to set to work making dye.
The night before the factory was to open, William looked outside his dining room window and saw a group of men he had just hired coming toward the house. They were carrying a struggling baby goat between them. William hurried outside to see what they wanted.
“It is time for the factory to open,” began one of the men in Bengali.
William nodded with a puzzled look on his face, wondering where such a statement was leading.
“Then you must come with us, Sahib, “ the man continued on. “It is time for you to make the sacrifice to Kali. See, we have brought the offering with us.” He pointed in the direction of the young goat.
Now William understood what they wanted. He had seen statues of Kali, a huge, ugly Hindu goddess with four arms, a tongue that stuck out, and a belt draped around her waist with human skulls hanging from it. Kali was the goddess of destruction. William took a deep breath and said, “Kali is your goddess of destruction. You make sacrifices you cannot afford to her because you are scared she will destroy your crops, kill your families, and blow your homes away. I am not scared of these things, because I serve a God who loves me. I will not make sacrifices to a god who destroys things. The Living God gives life; He does not ask for us to take it.”
The Indians nodded quietly as William explained to them more about God and the Bible. William learned the next morning, however, that they sacrificed the goat anyway. When William came down with a bad case of malaria a month later, many of the Indian workers decided that it was Kali paying him back for his lack of respect.
Dolly and Felix continued their slow recovery from dysentery. The sickness had left them both weak and thin. Then in September, just as the last batch of indigo had been crated and put on boats for Calcutta, five-year-old Peter came down with dysentery. His small body was not able to resist the disease, and he died within hours.
William and Dolly were heartbroken, and since they were both ill themselves, they sent Ram Boshu out to find someone to make a coffin for their son. There were several carpenters among the men who worked at the factory, and William felt sure that one of them would be willing to help out, especially since he paid them well. But every one of them refused to help. They were all Hindus and would have nothing to do with a dead white person’s body. This was because of caste, the strict system of rules that forbade different groups of Hindus from doing certain tasks. If they did them, they would be breaking caste and would be thrown out of their families and villages. Handling the dead body of a Christian was against the rules for all Hindu castes. The experience demonstrated for William the strong grip the caste system had over every Hindu. When he recovered, William wrote in his journal: “Perhaps the caste system is one of the strongest chains with which the devil ever bound the children of men. This is my comfort, that God can break it.”
In the meantime, William Carey lay in bed too ill to do anything but pray that someone would have compassion on a family who had just lost one of its members. Because of the heat, it was necessary for Peter’s body to be buried the same day. But who was going to do it? Finally, Ram Boshu found four Moslem men who agreed to make a coffin for Peter and dig a grave in which to bury him.
Peter had been a bright little child, and like his father, he loved to learn new things. He could also speak Bengali like a native. While William grieved for him, his death had a much more devastating effect on Dolly. At other times when she had experienced great tragedy, like the death of her two daughters, she had taken a long time to recover emotionally. But after Peter’s death, she did not recover. Perhaps it was the strain of not having Kitty to help her, or the trauma of knowing people would not help with the funeral, or her own long bout with dysentery. For whatever reason, Dolly sank deeper into sadness and depression.
William, too, was also beginning to feel the effects of depression, but for a different reason. He had been in India for fourteen months now and still had not received one letter from England. He was feeling cut off and lonely.