Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay

“ Within a few minutes Nimi had the lunch served for her brother. Jiban had before him milk-white rice, Kalai pea soup, wild figs, curried carp caught from the pond, and milk.
'Nimi, my dear sister,' Jiban remarked. 'Who says that we are going through a famine? Perhaps famine has not touched your village yet! Is it so?'
'Famine has reached here all right. This famine is frightful indeed! But we are only two in the family. Whatever we have we share with others and thus get along. We had rain in our village. ”

“ He interpreted the song and the melody as a command to rush to the aid of a woman lying helpless by the river. Jiban had seen his master in the hands of the British, and he felt that his first duty was to release the Mahatma by any means. But he thought within himself: 'This is not the meaning of the master's message. To obey his orders is much more important than to save his life. This was the first lesson I learnt from him.'
So he walked slowly along the river. At a little distance under a tree he discovered a dead woman and her living child. ”

“ They had cows, goats, a peacock, even a chattering myna bird. They had had a monkey, but it was so difficult to feed that they had to let it go. In the barn there was a rice husker and a lemon tree in the yard. There were also a few jasmine plants but none of them had borne flowers this year. On every verandah of the houses there was a spinning wheel.
Few people were around when Jiban entered the yard with the child in his arms. He walked up to the verandah of one of the houses and rotated a spinning wheel to its whining way. The child had never heard the noise of a charkha before. ”

“ Men, women and children were weak, emaciated and miserable. And, yet, the people of this village had no idea of the worst of the famine. The jungles yielded various kinds of food fit for humans to eat. ”