Though barely eight weeks had passed since the August rains had broken, the previously parched brown landscape had already changed to one of luscious green, with crops of Indian corn (maize) ten feet high, obscuring whole villages. 
As I walked my thoughts returned to the three pilgrims. In their parting greetings I reflected they had been pleasantly broad-minded for Budhists; they might have wished me an early release from the miseries of this and future lives, and hope I would early attain to a happy extinction (Nirvana).  Just at that moment too, armies of blacks ants, crossed my path to their nest under a bodhi tree and I wondered at the wisdom of the Buddhas in meditating under one. 
Next morning, to my surprise, they had not left after all. The tallest had developed an abscess in his right foot from a thorn and was contrite: 
"Had I not been over-anxious to do a double - march two days ago", he said, "this misfortune would not have befallen me. My misery is due to my sin of desire". 
He readily agreed to stay for treatment. 

A Hindu schoolmaster from a neighbouring Government school was sheltering and feeding a Brahmin sadhu (holy mendicant) who had long matted hair, was filthy, and was uneducated.  Thus the Hindu stored up for himself religious merit in heaven.  So did the sadhu by providing the other with the opportunity for doing so.  The act being two-way was mutually satisfactory. 
But the sadhu fell sick, and the schoolmaster grew weary in well-doing, so he sent him to my Hospital, with the following note: 

Bountiful Doctor Sahib, 
I hope you are in cheers. I send you sadhu he is sick. Your honour please to keep him and give him good medicine. And if he die, it is no matter........ 

I returned him cured after a week. 

Not long after, I had a more pleasant visitor in an educated Brahmin priest, who had been to university, and had a good knowledge of english.  I welcomed the opportunity of improving my hazy knowledge of Hindu belief.  He sat on my verandah one afternoon with a New Testament in his hand, which did not surprise me, and many educated Hindus have a passing acquaintance with it. 
He asked me: "That patient in hospital whom you said had been born blind - why was he born blind?" 
This sounded rather like the conundrum recorded in St John's Gospel as having been set to Jesus: "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 
"The ...", I began. 
"I shall tell you" , interrupted the Brahmin , "He was born blind because he sinned in a past life. 
It is what we call his Karma." 
"So God punished him for a sin he does not remember", I ventured. 
"God does not punish", smiled the Brahmin inexorably. "Punishment followed automatically as a consequence.  As a man sows, so shall he reap in a future existence." 
And he went on to explain to me how it was the Hindu's aim to escape a cycle of endless re-births by the Way of Knowledge, the Way of Works, or the Way of Devotion. 
At this point my bearer brought in tea, which I offered to my guest, which he courteously declined, saying: "Personally, I have no objection, but I would be deceiving my community." 

The afternoon was hot, and as we continued an inevitably inconclusive talk, I became conscious of a sighing sound behind my chair, as of a child sleeping. The sound was soothing and hypnotic. When the Brahmin rose to leave, I pushed my chair aside, we were alarmed to find the cause of the sighing - a hooded cobra, erect and motionless. 
I cried "Samp! Samp!" (Snake, snake) and the servants rushed in with sticks and killed it. 
"Lucky it didn't attack me when I sat in the chair", I said to the Brahmin. 
"Not lucky", he corrected me with a smile, "just your good Karma".