into her braid.
When we got close, Mrs. Welles reached out as if to take Kamala from me, but I shook my head and walked past her into the courtyard. I marched with Kamala’s body in my arms to her little hut and set her down carefully onto the floor.
“Kamala,” I said, patting the ground beside her. “Home. We are home.”
Her eyes opened. She looked up at me, a long steady gaze, directly into my eyes.
“Mmmmmdas,” she said, then closed her eyes again. It was the last word she ever spoke.
ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
L IFE WENT ON AT the home but Kamala was no longer any real part of it. She played and ate with the dogs again and adopted a particularly nasty bantam rooster as her special friend. She pounced on lizards and mice, ate dirt and pebbles after each meal, rolled in dead wood pigeons, and buried their bones near her hut. Yet she seemed, somehow, content. At night there were no more howls or moans except on the full of the moon, though she often took to prowling the compound until dawn, as restless as a jungle beast in a zoo.
Word of her got out, first through the village men, then by Dr. Singh’s recitation at a dinner party. The newspapers printed stories, mostly inaccurate, about her discovery and her life at The Home. Mr. Welles’ report to the Diocese did little to dam the rising tide of gossip. An enterprising photographer, turned down in his request for pictures, scaled the compound wall one night. Kamala bit him on the leg, and he lost his camera while making his escape. But still the papers continued to seek her out, and as a consequence of stories in the Calcutta Statesman and the popular London daily the Westminster Gazette , she received several proposals of marriage, a number of suggestions for cures (including one from a gentleman from Bombay who advocated hanging her upside down to “improve her brain faculties”), and a long letter offering her a chance to star in a film. From the Psychological Society in New York came an invitation for a tour. Mr. Welles saved the letters, but did not trouble to answer them, except one from King George V, which he had framed and hung in his study.
What happened the rest of the year I do not know firsthand, for I was sent off to school in England, to Sandhurst, Mr. Welles’ old alma mater, on a scholarship arranged by him. I was more homesick there for the smell of jasmine and sewlee than I ever could have imagined, and I was treated like some sort of strange dark animal by the boys and the masters.
When I came home briefly for a holiday, paid for by the Diocesan Council because my grades had been the highest in my form, Kamala was dead of a parasite picked up from one of the pigeons she had eaten. She had been buried next to Amala under a large banyan tree in the church cemetery. I put flowers on her grave, flowers that I picked deep in the sal. I wrapped their stems with a bright red string. Only I really mourned her; the others scarcely seemed to notice she was gone.
Then I returned to England, where I stayed until my schooling was complete.
I became a writer, a lover of words, and took a first in the study of languages at Oxford. But until this book I never once wrote about Kamala, for over the years I learned that what is true and what is real are sometimes difficult to distinguish and that memory blurs the line even more. Still, I lived with the wolf-girl in a time and in a place that is the stuff of memory and of dream, and because I had the words to tell of it I—at least—have never forgotten.
WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT THIS BOOK
O N OCTOBER 9, 1920 , the reverend J. A. L. Singh, an Indian missionary and rector of The Orphanage in Midnapore India, led a party of hunters into the sal jungle. Their express purpose was to discover what was haunting the Santal village of Godamuri, for the Reverend Mr. Singh, known as a mighty hunter, had been asked by one of the village leaders, a man named Chunarem, to help.
The Singh party found two children in a
When we got close, Mrs. Welles reached out as if to take Kamala from me, but I shook my head and walked past her into the courtyard. I marched with Kamala’s body in my arms to her little hut and set her down carefully onto the floor.
“Kamala,” I said, patting the ground beside her. “Home. We are home.”
Her eyes opened. She looked up at me, a long steady gaze, directly into my eyes.
“Mmmmmdas,” she said, then closed her eyes again. It was the last word she ever spoke.
ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
L IFE WENT ON AT the home but Kamala was no longer any real part of it. She played and ate with the dogs again and adopted a particularly nasty bantam rooster as her special friend. She pounced on lizards and mice, ate dirt and pebbles after each meal, rolled in dead wood pigeons, and buried their bones near her hut. Yet she seemed, somehow, content. At night there were no more howls or moans except on the full of the moon, though she often took to prowling the compound until dawn, as restless as a jungle beast in a zoo.
Word of her got out, first through the village men, then by Dr. Singh’s recitation at a dinner party. The newspapers printed stories, mostly inaccurate, about her discovery and her life at The Home. Mr. Welles’ report to the Diocese did little to dam the rising tide of gossip. An enterprising photographer, turned down in his request for pictures, scaled the compound wall one night. Kamala bit him on the leg, and he lost his camera while making his escape. But still the papers continued to seek her out, and as a consequence of stories in the Calcutta Statesman and the popular London daily the Westminster Gazette , she received several proposals of marriage, a number of suggestions for cures (including one from a gentleman from Bombay who advocated hanging her upside down to “improve her brain faculties”), and a long letter offering her a chance to star in a film. From the Psychological Society in New York came an invitation for a tour. Mr. Welles saved the letters, but did not trouble to answer them, except one from King George V, which he had framed and hung in his study.
What happened the rest of the year I do not know firsthand, for I was sent off to school in England, to Sandhurst, Mr. Welles’ old alma mater, on a scholarship arranged by him. I was more homesick there for the smell of jasmine and sewlee than I ever could have imagined, and I was treated like some sort of strange dark animal by the boys and the masters.
When I came home briefly for a holiday, paid for by the Diocesan Council because my grades had been the highest in my form, Kamala was dead of a parasite picked up from one of the pigeons she had eaten. She had been buried next to Amala under a large banyan tree in the church cemetery. I put flowers on her grave, flowers that I picked deep in the sal. I wrapped their stems with a bright red string. Only I really mourned her; the others scarcely seemed to notice she was gone.
Then I returned to England, where I stayed until my schooling was complete.
I became a writer, a lover of words, and took a first in the study of languages at Oxford. But until this book I never once wrote about Kamala, for over the years I learned that what is true and what is real are sometimes difficult to distinguish and that memory blurs the line even more. Still, I lived with the wolf-girl in a time and in a place that is the stuff of memory and of dream, and because I had the words to tell of it I—at least—have never forgotten.
WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT THIS BOOK
O N OCTOBER 9, 1920 , the reverend J. A. L. Singh, an Indian missionary and rector of The Orphanage in Midnapore India, led a party of hunters into the sal jungle. Their express purpose was to discover what was haunting the Santal village of Godamuri, for the Reverend Mr. Singh, known as a mighty hunter, had been asked by one of the village leaders, a man named Chunarem, to help.
The Singh party found two children in a
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