The date of the narrator’s first journal entry is February 2nd. She had just arrived in Bombay, which was totally different from what she had imagined. She spent her first night in a missionary hostel, in a room with seven other women. One woman, her neighbour, gives her the advices to always boil her water, never eat any of “their” food, which she hates, and be careful with her possessions. Besides she tells her, that she had been in India for 30 years, where she had seen everything you could imagine and that she lives totally in God’s will. To demonstrate her point of view of India, she urges the narrator to look outside their dormitory window, where she sees some people sleep on the sidewalk, several crippled children and some people who look into the gutters to find something to eat.Out of another window she sees the A’s Hotel, from which she had heard about before arriving. She looks and sees no Indians but a derelict lot of Europeans. The neighbour finishes her speech with the conclusion that no one can live in India without Jesus, because nothing human, means anything in India.
