CHAPTER X.

OTIUM CUM DIGNITATE.

Some events of his private life, which took place during the 16 years of his Pudukota administration, must first find a record here. In April 1879 his only remaining brother died. Truly, as one of his friends, Dewan Bahadur Venkaswami Rao, writes to him on that occasion, no one has such tender affection for his relatives and no one has been put to so much affliction by deaths among them.' His heart has as often bled for the afflictions of his friends and he has felt them as his own. Could a letter show it, this one may :—

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"Could it be true? It came upon us like a thunderbolt on a fine summer's day. Was this her doom ?-She who was the best beloved and only child of our beloved brother? How cruel and heartless of you-Ye Fates? Is it to drink such bitter cups that life is prolonged? Our poor sister-in-law! Her life was miserable enough without this crowning-piece. That misery and repentance were mercy compared with what has now befallen. There is no consolation in such a case. We must bow down-bow down to the very dust-in all humility and resignation-before the awfully absolute Power of the great Almighty who keeps in his own hands the secret of Life and Death and orders our affairs in ways beyond our

comprehension. Convey my sympathy to our poor sisterin-law and take courage yourself. As to unfortunate-my tongue is almost cold."

The house he began to build for himself on the banks of the Kâveri, at Kumbakonam, took about three years in building and was completed about the close of 1881. It is a fine mansion. It cost him three-fourths of a lac and in its early days when the memory of the sums spent on it was fresh he used to call it his Folly. Writing after retirement to his early teacher, Mr. E. B. Powell, he says of it :—

"It was no doubt a folly to spend so much as lac on a house. But I had seen the Taj and palaces on the banks of the Jumna and I was fired with ambition and burned my fingers. But it is really a comfortable house-people call it a palace. I am glad to say God has spared me to live in it the last years of my life."

In the year, 1882, a great calamity befell Sashiah Sastri. His wife, who had been his loyal help-mate for nearly half a century, sickened and died in June 1882. She had, like him, set her heart on building the house. She had the satisfaction of seeing it completed, of living in it, celebrating in it the perpetuation of the family by the adoption of the motherless boy whom she had herself reared with motherly love, of daily bathing in the invigorating waters of the sacred

stream which flows past her house. Although she had been ailing for some time, there was nothing alarming till one night the sickness took a sudden turn for the worse and she died peacefully in her husband's arms. "The happiness of home is blighted for ever" is the wail that then burst from the lips of the bereaved husband. That short sentence, more pregnantly than volumes, gives expression to the chill that had fallen on his heart.

But time takes the sting out of many a grief and if it takes away those that are near and dear it also brings some blessings in its turn, which reconcile one to the loss in a manner. The home whose happiness, Sashiah Sastri thought in the bitter pang of bereavement, had been blighted for ever, has once more grown for him in the family of his adopted son-A. Subrahmanya Sastri, the virtuous son of a virtuous father, blessed with a sweetly-endowed wife whose gentle presence with that of her lovely children sheds round the hearth all the grace of sweet home. And the old grandfather's heart has twined round the little boys and many an hour is sweetened by the winsome sportiveness of his grandsons, of one of whom he writes, in one of his many letters of this kind, to his

cousin, A. Krishnaswami Aiyar, retired Deputy Collector, now at Kumbhakonam :—

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"I wonder that you don't come to make his acquaintance and bless him in propria persona. He was giving me a very pleasant and happy hour this morning, his great grandmother having brought him upstairs to show how he looks with his tiny gold bangles and chain on. He is getting very fond of me already. I believe he finds a very broad cushion on his grandfather's extensive bodily domains."

He had planned a suite of rooms abutting into the Kâveri. This idea he wished to see realised though his partner, who would have enjoyed it even more, was no more to share the joy. As he quaintly puts it :—

"I have not lost all yet and much that is dear to life still is left to me by the mercy of God. Among the rest is vanity and it is that which, upon analysis I find, impels me to build my follies to their completion."

Two rooms projecting into the river were built over high arches, under which the stream flows, and flank a broad flight of granite steps which form a private bathing ghaut. The rooms are paved with polished marble slabs and command, from the windows, during the flood, a subtly soothing scenery which reminds one of the sonnet of Wordsworth beginning with

"Earth has not anything to show more fair."

To this house he retired after leaving Pudukota;

his pension of Rs. 500 a month from Travancore added to his Pudukota pension of Rs. 400 has placed him in comfortable circumstances.

It was at first a severe wrench for him to leave Pudukota to which he had, in a manner, become rooted. Not that he ever cared for the money or the dignity of his office. The Pudukota of to-day is almost entirely of his making. He had sown the seeds of many beneficent reforms, he had carefully tended their germination and growth; he had seen most of them grow and bear fruit, he loved them all, his tanks and his roads and everything else, as the children of his bosom and when the time came for him to leave them in the care of others, his heart was still with them behind. A few extracts from his letters after retirement may illustrate his solicitude:

"For the last three days I observed indications of rain in the direction of Pudukota. I hope these have not been deceptive."

“I was very pleased to read your brief but graphic account of what is being done for the Town tanks and for village roads."

"Six feet of water does not satisfy me and I long to hear of 15 ft. in the big tank. Then my heart will rejoice."

"You must remember that the Pudukota State has acquired a reputation for roads and that that reputation must be