In a recent interview with Mr. Gandhi, Miss Maya Das told him that as a Christian she could not subscribe to the Non-Co-operation Movement, because of the racial hate and bitterness that it engenders; yet just because she was a Christian she could stand for all constructive movements for India in economic and social betterment.  One of Mr. Gandhi’s slogans is “a spinning wheel in every home,” that India may revive its ancient arts and crafts and no longer be clothed by the machine looms of a distant country.  Miss Maya Das told him that she had even anticipated him in this movement, for she and other Christian women of advanced education are following a regular course in spinning and weaving, with the purpose of passing on this skill through the Rural Department of the Y.W.C.A.

Another pet scheme of Miss Maya Das is the newly formed Social Service League of Calcutta.  Into its membership has lately come the niece of a Chairman of the All-India Congress, deciding that the constructive forces of social reform are better to follow than the destructive programme of Non-Co-operation.  Miss Maya Das longs to turn her abounding energy into efforts toward purdah parties and lectures for the shut-in women of the higher classes, believing that in this way the Association can both bring new interests into narrow lives, and can also gain the help and financial support of these bored women of wealth toward work among the poor.

One of Miss Maya Das’s interests is a month’s summer school for rural workers, a prolonged Indian Silver Bay, held at a temperature of 112 in the shade, during the month of May when all schools and colleges are closed for the hot weather vacation.  Last year women came to it from distant places, women who had never been from home before, who had never seen a “movie,” who had never entered a rowboat or an automobile.  Miss Maya Das’s stereopticon lectures carried these women in imagination to war scenes where women helped, to Hampton Institute, to Japan, and suggested practical ways of assisting in tuberculosis campaigns and child welfare.  After four weeks of social enjoyment and Christian teaching they returned again to their scattered branches with the curtain total of their results from 88 in Newark to 355 in Madras.

[Illustration:  PUTTING SPICES IN BABY’S MILK
 Notice Feeding Vessels, Shell and Tin Cup]

What is Dr. Vera Singhe doing about it?  With her two medical assistants, her corps of nurses, and the increasing number of health visitors whom she herself has trained, she has been able to reduce the death rate among the babies in her care during 1920 from the city rate of 280 for that year to 231.

But enough of statistics.  More enlightening than printed reports is a visit to the Triplicane Health Centre, where in the midst of a congested district work is actually going on.  We shall find no up-to-date building with modern equipment, but a middle-class Hindu house, adapted as well as may be to its new purpose.  Among its obvious drawbacks, there is the one advantage, that patients feel themselves at home and realize that what the doctor does in those familiar surroundings they can carry over to their own home life.