and suffered imprisonment as well. So I advanced the loan assuming that this consent was enough.
In two or three months’ time I came to know that the amount would not be recovered. I could ill afford to sustain such a loss. There were many other purposes to which I could have applied this amount. The loan was never repaid. But how could trusting Badri be allowed to suffer? He had known me only. I made good the loss.
A client friend to whom I spoke about this transaction sweetly chid me for my folly.
“Bhai”—I had fortunately not yet become “Mahatma,” nor even “Bapu” (father); friends used to call me by the loving name of “Bhai” (brother)—said he, “this was not for you to do. We depend upon you in so many things. You are not going to get back this amount. I know you will never allow Badri to come to grief, for you will pay him out of your pocket, but if you go on helping your reform schemes by operating on your clients’ money, the poor fellows will be ruined, and you will soon become a beggar. But you are our trustee and must know that, if you become a beggar, all our public work will come to a stop.”
The friend, I am thankful to say, is still alive. I have not yet come across a purer man than he, in South Africa or anywhere else. I have known him to apologize to people and to cleanse himself, when, having happened to suspect them, he had found his suspicion to be unfounded.
I saw that he had rightly warned me. For though I made good Badri’s loss, I should not have been able to meet any similar loss and should have been driven to incur debt—a thing I have never done in my life and always abhorred. I realized that even a man’s reforming zeal ought not to make him exceed his limits. I also saw that in thus lending trust-money I had disobeyed the cardinal teaching of the Gita, viz. the duty of a man of equipoise to act without desire for the fruit. The error became for me a beaconlight of warning.