There was nothing of the modern cult of ashram (sharing with the natives) in my jungle life. It had been rightly decided that apart from health considerations this would only have led to decreased professional efficiency; and since Indian peasants are feudal in their outlook, to a lessening of the respect and obedience commanded. 

The jungle moonlight had a strange other-worldliness, so bright but a cold brightness, that it lit up the countryside for miles around in subdued counterparts of the day's prevailing browns. It had other uses. Such was the torpor of the day's heat that only at night did one become alive again, such the endless succession of monotonous days and nights, that one unconsciously turned back to the primitive way of measuring passage of time by the heavens, rather than by calendars and weeks. Tonight, as I watched the large orange moon rise above the jungle tree-tops, I counted my eighth moon since I had become the 'Eye Maker'. 
On the ground, at one corner of the stone platform flickered a hurricane lantern, so that I might have early warning of a snake.  My portable gramophone was placed at another, and I sat back listening to Chopin's Nocturne in E Flat, which competed with the crickets' treble and the bullfrogs' throaty bass. 
 
 

I was feeling acutely lonely after eight months alone in the jungle, and almost feared to look ahead to many more. I began to talk aloud to myself, arguing both sides of a problem. A Dak country edition of the Calcutta newspaper The Statesman came by post each day, which helped to keep me sane. I sent them an article, which was accepted, and that encouraged me to write for the Manchester Guardian and other papers. I had casual visits from Indian officials on tour, one of whom laughingly likened my circumscribed freedom to Gandhi's? I asked him to bring me a pot of jam from town sixty miles distant, on his next visit. And as always, humour broke through. 

In my isolation and with my white skin, I became a local curiosity. My gramophone encouraged the Santals in my loss of privacy, attracting the curious whenever I turned it on. The most popular record with children was Harry Lauder's 'Stop yer ticklin' Jock' , they roared with laughter with the singer, and never tired of it. 

Then on hospital hat (market) days, when Santals came to barter their homegrown tobacco for spices and oils, bevies of artless Santal maidens, merry and innocently brazen, entered my garden uninvited and decked their hair with scarlet hibiscus blossoms. Becoming bolder they approached my verandah hoping to hive a glimpse of me, and discussing whether they should go further. Here my watchful servant took over, who gave a free conducted tour of the doctor sahib's lounge, dining room, bedroom and bathroom, to the strangeness and apparent grandeur of which they all expressed delight, as if it had been a stately home. The full length mirror in the bedroom was always popular, producing shrieks of delight. 
Only one thing mystified them. They could never find the zenana (women's quarters), and when Sardar my servant disclosed the sad news that I was unmarried, they thought my parents had been very remiss indeed in not arranging it.