he could not take his F.A. (First Arts) public examination as he could not pay the twenty rupees examination fee. After dropping out of formal studies, he spent much of his time interacting with friends, acting in plays, and in playing sports and games. He wrote several of his famous works during this period. And then he stopped writing: "But I soon gave up the habit as useless, and almost forgot in the long years that followed that I could even write a sentence in my boyhood." On wife's death, Matilal left the house of his in-laws and moved the family to a mud house in Bhagalpur. Sometime later, Sarat Chandra left home in the guise of a sannyasin (monk) and wandered from place to place. Little is known about what he did during this period. On getting the news of his father's death, Sarat Chandra did his shraddha (memorial service), deposited his family with a friend and relatives, and went to Calcutta (today's Kolkata) to try out his luck. Life in Calcutta and Burma In Calcutta, Sarat Chandra worked for six months translating Hindi paper books into English for an advocate. In January 1903, he went to Burma. He held sundry jobs in Rangoon and Pegu. He eventually found work in Burma Public Works Accounts Office in Rangoon. Most of his stay in Rangoon was in a neighbourhood where mistris (manual workers, mechanics, craftsmen, artisans) lived. He freely mixed with them. He wrote their job applications, mediated conflicts, gave them homeopathic medicine for free, even gave monetary help. The mistris had great respect for him. Sarat Chandra’s neighbour downstairs was a Bengali mistri who had arranged his daughter’s marriage to an alcoholic. The daughter Shanti Chakrabarty begged him to rescue her. Sarat Chandra married her and they had a child. He was devastated when his wife and one-year old son passed away from plague in Rangoon. Sometime later, a Bengali mistri friend Krishna Das Adhikari, requested him to marry his teenage daughter. Sarat Chandra eventually agreed. He renamed his wife Hironmoyee and taught her to read and write. She outlived him by 23 years. They did not have any children. During his stay in Rangoon, Sarat Chandra read widely, painted, and was into music. And he resumed writing after a gap of about eighteen years: "Some of my old acquaintances started a little magazine, but no one of note