ONE
Our family came originally from Dapoli Taluka of the Ratnagiri District of the Bombay Presidency. From the very commencement of the rule of the East India Company my fore-fathers had left their hereditary occupation for service in the Army of the Company. My father also followed the family tradition and sought service in the Army. He rose to the rank of an officer and was a Subhedar when he retired. On his retirement my father took the family to Dapoli with a view to settling down’ there. But for some reasons my father changed his mind. The family left Dapoli for Satara where we lived till 1904. The first incident which I am recording as well as I can remember, occured in about 1901 when we were at Satara. My mother was then dead. My father was away on service as a cashier at a place called Koregaon in Khatav Taluka in the Satara District, where the Government of Bombay had started the work of excavating a Tank for giving employment to famine stricken people who were dying by thousands. When my father went to Koregaon he left me, my brother who was older than myself and two sons of my eldest sister who was dead, in charge of my aunt and some kind neighbours. My aunt was the kindest soul I know, but she was of no help to us. She was somewhat of a dwarf and had some trouble with her legs which made it very difficult for her to move about without the aid of somebody. Often times she had to be lifted. I had sisters. They were married and were away living with their families. Cooking our food became a problem with us especially as our aunty could not on account of her helplessness, manage the job. We four children went to school and we also cooked our food. We could not prepare bread. So we lived on Pulav which we found to be the easiest dish to prepare, requiring nothing more than mixing rice and mutton.
Being a cashier my father could not leave his station to come to Satara to see us, therefore he wrote to us to come to Koregaon and spend our summer vacation with him. We children were thoroughly excited over the prospect especially as none of us had up to that time seen a railway train.