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Mrs. Moore was happy on her arrival in India. She found India good. She watched the water flow into the tank of the Mosque or the Ganges. She enjoyed the sight of the moon surrounded by a cluster of twinkling stars in the darkness of night. It all seemed beautiful. She came into contact with a religion which appeared in a way adequate to meet her spiritual needs. She had a double vision. She believed that there were Heaven, Hell and Annihilation in the form of stars, fires and black air. The horror of the universe and its smallness were visible. The twilight of double vision, envisaged a world of spiritual muddled where one could never act nor refrain from Infinity. On the one hand she was busy in unraveling the mystery of the universe, on the other hand she had a duty to perform. This was her double vision. She was engaged in finding out answer to eternal questions. She had also to see that her children were well settled in marriage as well as in life. Everything was shattered by 'Bourn'. The darkness of the cave engulfed the generosity in her. The emptiness of the cave made her life drained off. Due to her shocking experience she lost her interest in life and became indifferent to everything.
She went alone to Bombay. Ronny could not go with her as he had some pressing pre-occupation which forced him to stick to his gun at Chandrapore. Even the servant Antony could not go with her. No one went with her who could remind her of her past. The journey was unpleasant as it was awfully hot. At the time of her departure, Chandrapore had a beautiful night. The moon shone over the Ganges and touched its shrinking channels with threads of silver. She traveled in a swift mail train rushing through the baked and bleached landscape of central India. From Chandrapore to Bombay, she kept watching the indestructible life of man and his changing faces, and the houses which he had built for himself and God, and they all appeared not affected by her own trouble. She passed through Asirigarh at sunset and saw from the train a huge fortress hidden among the wooded hills. She had not heard of this fort before and it had enormous bastions and to the right was a mosque. Ten minutes later, circling round Asirigarh the train came to the left side of the bastion. She knew nothing about it. The fort appeared before her twice and seemed to say: "I do not vanish". She slept and the train continued its course, through the Western cliff. She woke up in the middle of the night with a start. She could now see the moonlit pinnacles like the fringes of a sea, a small tract of plain land, and then the real sea."
As her journey was about to be completed, crossing through the downs of Bombay, she exclaimed that she had not seen the whole of India: "I have not seen the right places". Probably she would never see them again. She would never be able to go to Delhi, Agra, Rajasthan, Kashmir and other beautiful places.
She could not see the marriage of Adela with Ronny. She could not see that Azia was exonerated honorably from the heinous charge leveled at him. She could not accomplish the task of cementing the bonds of friendship between the Englishmen and the Indians. Rather she had to witness the escalation of strangeness between them. All that was full of anguish, and she wanted to avoid it.
In her hurry to go to England, she could not even get a passage to England. She had to share the accommodation reserved for Lady Mallenby. She had no room of her own to stand or to sit.
Whatever may be the circumstances of her journey, it provided her with a sense of relief. She escaped all that was agonizing and disconsolate. She left with a sense of incompleteness and unfulfilled desires. She had a hope of fulfillment amongst her children living in England. Can it not be said that her departure was really pathetic?
UNIVERSITY QUESTION
"The departure of Mrs. Moore from India after the tragic incident in the cave is pathetic, though for her it is a relief" Discuss.