BLINDED BY CURSE

Hokitika Guardian, 22 March 1933, Page 3

BLINDED BY CURSE

INDIAN’S AMAZING STORY

Somewhere in London there is a young Indian student who became blind while walking along Oxford Street with a’friend. His blindness has baffled the cleverest of Harley street,oeculist-s. All they know is that his sight will never return.

The young student, M. It. She me a native of Bengal, declares that the IO3S of his sight is due to a curse laid on him four years ago by an Indian fakir. “My eyes were perfectly good,” he told a “Sunday Graphic” representative lately. “As I was walking.with a friend 1 along Oxford Street there flashed before my mind’s eye a strange figure of a Moslem fakir whpm I met in the thick jungle of Chittagong.' The next moment darkness came upon me and.here I am a blind man. The curse of this holy man has come true!” Shome tli us related the poignant story of the. fakir and Ins curse: “I was a member of a party who went out hunting in the hilly regions near Chittagong. As we were wandering in the jungle 1 noticed ail old fakir lying 011 a heel of sharp nails'. Near him was a tomb of a Moslem Pir (a saint).

•'i'iie fakir had a thick white beard and his nails were sharp and long like those of a bear. He wore nothin;) save a tiny piece of cloth, and smeared his body with ashes. He asked me for a' rupee, and I did not give, it. He became furious. I saw malignant, hate in his eyes and curses on his lins. He muttered something that J did not understand. Then, sitting in a Yogie posture on- 'the bed of rails, he shouted to me: “You shall turn blind in a foreign country.' ”