AN INTERVIEW

Hokitika Guardian, 25 January 1930, Page 5

AN INTERVIEW

MISS SLADE IN INDIA

[United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.]

(Received this day at 8 a.m.) LONDON, Jan. 24

The “Daily Express” special correspondent in India, C. J. Ketchum, sencls an interview with Miss Slade, kiiown as Mira Bei, cabled yesterday. “I am as happy as any woman in tiie work! can feel. Neither am I a stranger in a strange land. Rather, I leit the night,behind and emerged into nay.”

Ketchum found her in a tiny hutment squatting on the Door spinning a story. He bad been told bow four, and a-lialf years ago a beautilul young English woman had submitted herself to Hindu discipline and took Glnvndi as her master. Mira Bei rises daily at four in the morning and prays till five. Then after a bathe.in the Holy river she toils at the spinning wheel through the heat of the day till seven in the evening, when there is prayer and then sleep. “That’s where I sleep,” pointing to a cot at the’ riverside under the .stars, “and there beyond the' fence, fifteen feet avva, Mahatma Gandhi sleeps. We would both prefer the bare ground, but for snakes and cobras.” Asked if she had forsaken the idea of marriage, she replied that she had taken a double vow, both of mental and physical celebacv for life. Then as they parted with a handshake while a bell rang for evening prayer, she said wistfully, “You won’t say anything unkind about me, will you? You’ll tell the truth.’’