Chapter 11.
A TRIP TO EUROPE continues...

Lala Jagan Nath Aggarwal and I spent about a week in Rome visiting the Catacombs, the various churches of Rome, Saint Peter’s and Saint Paul’s among them, the Vatican and various museums and libraries. We saw the works of famous Italian artists. The Catacombs brought to our memory the cruelties and the hardships which the early Christians had suffered in Rome, now the headquarters of the greatest dignitary of the Church, the Pope.

We had a great desire to pay our respects to the Pope but we could not meet His Holiness because it was essential on seeing him to kneel down before him and my friend, Lala Jagan Nath, with a stiff knee joint, was unable to do the kneeling. We then visited Venice. We spent a day and a night at Lido and enjoyed bathing
in the sea. We saw thousands of men and women bathing in the sea and resting on the sands for a sunbath. People played tennis in their bathing costumes. Men and women went about in a holiday mood and enjoyed a life of fun and amusement.

From Lido we moved on to Vienna, the capital of Austria. Vienna was famous for its surgeons and physicians. Lala Jagan Nath suffered from a stomach complaint. He had been advised by the Indian doctors to take raw vegetables and fruit and not to eat cooked food. We went there to consult a stomach specialist. He was an amiable person. He spent two hours in examining Aggarwal in my presence, after enquiring from him whether he had any objection to my presence. He carried out all the tests himself. After two days he said there was nothing wrong with him. The only thing that he advised was that he should take well minced and well cooked food and should not eat raw vegetables. He said he needed no medicine, though he gave him a prescription, which he said he might use, if he was so inclined.

to be continued....

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