4 Chapter 3 An Unwelcome Visitor

Chapter 3 An Unwelcome Visitor Gandhi returned to India. Bombay Harbor greeted him with rough and choppy waters. Gandhi’s older brother Laxmidas greeted him with sad news. Their mother had died while Gandhi was away.

Coming back home was not easy for Gandhi. His caste would not accept him. To please his brother, Gandhi agreed to bathe in the sacred Godavari River to wash away the sins of England.

He was then readmitted to his caste. But his home life was full of arguments with Kasturbai. Gandhi had tried to teach her new English traditions of cooking, eating, and dressing. Gandhi went to find work in Bombay. But he soon found he was still too shy to be a lawyer. As he stood up to present his very first case, “My head was reeling, and I felt as though the whole court was doing likewise.” He set up an office in Rajkot where he could work at his desk instead of in court.

Then Gandhi received some good news. A merchant from Porbandar was living in South Africa. He needed a lawyer for a court case there. The job would last one year. Gandhi decided to give it a try. Although he and his wife had recently welcomed a new baby boy named Manilal into their family, Gandhi left his wife and two young sons under Laxmidas’s care and set out for Durban, South Africa, in April 1893.

A week after he arrived in South Africa, Gandhi traveled to Pretoria for his court case. He had a first-class ticket on the train. During the journey, the train stopped at the Maritzburg Station at about nine in the evening. A European

man entered the car. He did not like seeing an Indian man in first class. The man left and came back with a railway official. The official ordered Gandhi to go back to the third-class car. Gandhi showed them his ticket. He refused