Loss of sight in one eye

The loss of sight in one eye is disclosed during the smallpox tragedy in Williams Lane, when a hospital attendant tells the boys that patient number thirty-two has lost his sight. Their alarm rests on a misunderstanding: the patient is not blind, but has lost vision in one eye while the other has been saved. The correction arrives only after the boys’ fear has become entangled with Jane Grey’s final hours.

The Report and Its Correction

The attendant first reports that the doctor has seen patient number thirty-two and that the patient has lost his sight. The boys take this to mean that he will never see again. In tears, they consider collecting enough money to take him to a specialist whose consultation costs eight rupees, an offer that shows both their limited means and their impulse to help a neighbour.

The priest later challenges the report as nonsense: the patient has lost vision in only one eye, while the other has been miraculously spared. The distinction is decisive—the patient is not wholly blind—but it reaches the boys after they have already responded to the frightening version of the news.

The News Amid Jane Grey’s Crisis

The boys initially do not want to tell Jane Grey what they have heard. When she asks how the patient is, they try to conceal the news, but their tears give them away; one boy breaks down, and Jane faints. They carry her to the priest’s house, where she gives birth prematurely that night. She dies before the night is over, while the bar at Hotel Shahjahan remains open and its customers continue calling for whisky and soda.

The priest’s correction about the patient comes after Jane’s body has been covered with a white sheet. The passage places the more limited injury beside a death that cannot be undone: the patient has retained sight in one eye, but Jane has died before the truth can be clarified to her. The boys’ offer to serve as pallbearers turns their earlier helpless concern into an act of care for the dead.