# The Story of My Experiments with Truth/Volume 1/Part 1/Chapter 7

Chapter VII
A Tragedy (Contd.)
So the day came. It is difficult fully to describe my condition. There was, on the one hand, the zeal for ‘reform,’ and the novelty of making a momentous departure in life. There was on the other the shame of hiding like a thief to do this very thing. I cannot say which of the two swayed me the most. We went in search of a lonely spot by the river,. and there I saw for the first time in my life,—meat. There was baker’s bread also. I relished neither. The goat’s meat was as tough as leather. I simply could not eat it. I was sick and had to leave off eating.
​I had a very bad night afterwards. A horrible nightmare haunted me. Every time I dropped off to sleep it would seem as though a live goat were bleating inside me, and I would jump up full of remorse. But then I would remind myself that meat-eating was a duty and so become more cheerful.
My friend was not a man to give in easily. He now began to cook various delicacies with meat, and dress them neatly. And for dining, no longer the secluded spot on the river was chosen, but a state house, with its dining hall, and tables and chairs, about which my friend had made arrangements in collusion with the chief cook there.
This bait had its effect. I got over my dislike for bread, forswore my compassion for the goats, and became a. relisher of meat-dishes, if not of meat itself. This went on for about a year. But not more than half a dozen meat-feasts were enjoyed in all; because the state house was not available every day, and there ​was the obvious difficulty about preparing frequently expensive savoury meat-dishes. I had no money to pay for this ‘reform.’ My friend had therefore always to find the wherewithal. I had no knowledge where he found it. But find it he did, because he was bent on turning me into a meat-eater. But even his means must have been limited, and hence these feasts had necessarily to be few and far between.
Whenever I had occasion to indulge in these surreptitious feasts, dinner at home was out of the question. My mother would naturally ask me to come and take my food and want to know the reason why I did not wish to eat. I would say to her, ‘I have no appetite today; there is something wrong with my digestion.’ It was not without compunction that I devised these pretexts. I knew I was lying, and lying to my mother. I also knew that if my mother and father came to know of my having become a meat-eater they would be deeply shocked. ​This knowledge was gnawing at my heart.
Therefore I said to myself: ‘Though it is essential to eat meat, and also essential to take up food ‘reform’ in the country, yet deceiving and lying to one’s father and mother is worse than abstinence from meat. In their life-time therefore meat-eating must be out of the question. When they are no more and when I have found my freedom, I will eat meat openly, but until that moment arrives I will abstain from it.’
This decision I communicated to my friend, and I have never since gone back to meat. My parents never knew that two of their sons had become meat-eaters.
I abjured meat out of the purity of my desire not to lie to my parents, but I did not abjure the company of my friend. My zeal for reforming him had proved disastrous for me, and all the time I was completely unconscious of the fact.
The same company would have led me into faithlessness to my wife. But I was
​One thing, however, I must mention now, as it pertains to the same period. One of the reasons of my differences with my wife was undoubtedly the company of this friend. I was both a devoted and a jealous husband, and this friend fanned the fame of my suspicions about my wife. I never could doubt his veracity. And I have never forgiven myself the violence of which I have been guilty in often having pained my wife by acting on his information. Only a Hindu wife tolerates these hardships, and that is why I have regarded woman as an incarnation of tolerance. A servant wrongly suspected may throw up his job, a son in the same case may leave his father’s roof, and a friend may put an end to the friendship. The wife, if she suspects her husband, will keep quiet, but if the husband suspects her, she is ruined. Where is she to go? A Hindu wife may not seek divorce in a law-court. Law has no remedy for her. And I can never forget or forgive myself for having driven my wife to that desperation.
​The canker of suspicion was rooted out, only when I understood Ahimsa in all its bearings. I saw then the glory of Brahmacharya and realised that the wife is not the husband’s bondslave, but his companion and his helpmate, and an equal partner in all his joys and sorrows—as free as the husband to choose her own path. Whenever I think of those dark days of doubts and suspicions, I am filled with loathing at my folly and my lustful cruelty, and I deplore my blind devotion to my friend.
* ↑ Ahimsa means literally innocence, not hurting, non-violence.
* ↑ Brahmacharya means literally conduct that leads one to God. Its technical meaning is self-restraint, particularly mastery over the sexual organ.