Hindoo Holiday (10 page)

Babaji Rao was explaining this to me, and also talking a little on the subject of Hindoo vegetarianism. His own daily meals are more or less as follows: at 9 A.M. he eats nuts, pistachios and almonds, and drinks milk from his own cow; for lunch at about midday he takes rice,
dal
(pulse), vegetables (probably potatoes), and bread; and in the afternoon he likes fruit, but owing to the difficulty of obtaining it here, he usually contents himself with cream, and sometimes a little porridge. Evening dinner at about 6 P.M. is the big meal and consists of several kinds of vegetables and meal-cakes fried in butter. At 9 P.M. he drinks a glass of milk. He is very fond of sweets, but his doctor has forbidden them.

I have been thinking of buying some little present for Sharma, the barber's son, as a peace-offering, so keeping the question general, I asked Babaji Rao what sort of thing would be acceptable to the poorer classes.

“What about betel-leaves?” I asked.

He smoothed his mouth to hide a smile.

“You cannot give betel-leaves to a Hindoo,” he said. “He would not accept them from you; though he might be tempted, for they are not easily affordable. But cardamom seeds or cloves would be acceptable, or a few pice (small copper coins).”

“Then why not betel? It is all food.”

“But betel-leaves contain water. The others are dry.”

“I see. What about cloth?”

“Yes, that would be very acceptable. To a person like Narayan, the clerk here, for example, a pair of stockings or socks would be a very good thing.”

Abdul Haq came, this afternoon, to give me an hour's lesson, and I told him that, whilst watching a Mohammedan cricket-match on the outskirts of the town, I had met a friend of his named Ali. Abdul was at once very interested.

“When was that?”

“This morning some time.”

“At about what time?”

“At about one, I think.”

“You think? Do you not know?”

I shook my head, amused by his anxiety.

“Did you talk with him?”

“Yes.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Oh, nothing much.”

“Nothing? But you must have talked of something.”

“Never mind, Abdul. I shall not tell you what we talked about.”

“Oh, you will not tell me?”

“No, I won't.”

Keeping his lips compressed, he made a little titter of laughter at the back of his throat, and writhed his hands together in his lap. But how it worried him! He rustled his pages of notes and began to teach me again, asking me questions in Hindi; but soon his questions became purposeful.

“Did you go walking to-day?”

“Yes.”

“No,” he said in English, “you must always give me the full answer in Hindi—the full and truthful answer. ‘Yes, I went walking to-day.' So. Now say it again.” (I said it again.) “So. Did you meet anyone?”

“Yes, I met Ali.”

“Did you speak with him?”

“Yes, I spoke with him.”

“What did you speak about?” Then in English: “And do not forget to make your answer full and truthful.”

But I wouldn't tell him.

Over the main entrance to the Palace, which leads into the marble hall of state or council chamber, there is a board on which the English word “Welcome” is inscribed. They say that when the board was painted there was a slight misunderstanding as to its intended destination, and it was hung originally over the jail; but after a time the mistake was perceived, and it was transferred to its present position.

There is a very beautiful tank on this side lapping the white walls of the old Palace buildings. It is a large circular pool, bordered on one side by an arc of steps which drop steeply down from the dusty path into the depth of the water. For some two hundred yards they curve round; where they end trees begin, enclosing in a feathery fringe the further circumference of the lake. To this tank, as to the others round the town, the people come to wash themselves and their clothes. There is only one dye, of a claret tint, made in Chhokrapur, and I grow a little tired of the uniformity of color of the women's
saris
, the single long cloths in which they drape themselves.

But the scene this morning was very beautiful, with these red garments spread out to dry upon the steps, between the blue of the water and the blue of the sky, against a background of white cupolas and minarets and bright evergreen trees. I stood there for some time in the sunlight, idly contemplating, while the men came up out of the water, their thin brown bodies flashing and sparkling, the wet loincloth shaping their thighs. But what poor physique all of them had.

The women were abundantly adorned with cheap jewelry —countless colored glass bangles and rough silver necklaces and anklets; for the poorer people invest their small savings in this way, by converting them into silver ornaments for their womenfolk. They knelt with their red cloths in their hands, beating them with stones. I saw a woman sitting with her child between her knees, catching the lice in its hair and placing them dead on the child's palm, outstretched to receive them. I saw a boy take a handful of dirt, and descending with it to the water's edge, use it to cleanse his face and neck. I saw an old man standing immersed to his waist, facing the sun, making passes across his chest, and lifting handfuls of the water to spill it out again like glittering beads between his fingers. Babaji Rao, whom I questioned later, told me he was offering oblations to the sun, the scattered water representing rice, and the passes across his body meant that he was painting himself with sandal.

Similar oblations are also poured to one's ancestors by the head of any Hindoo house. Apparently, when a person dies the house is considered unclean, and none but the inhabitants will enter it for a period of fourteen days. For seven days after death the male relations of the deceased will not shave; but on the seventh day they shave head and face, and on the fourteenth day, the house being purified by such ritual, a feast is given.

Oblations of water, sesame, or rice are poured, and afterwards white bands will be worn round the arm in sign of mourning, and during a particular fortnight every year the head of the house will not shave. If the deceased had been aged and spent, Babaji Rao reluctantly admitted, the feast might be rather an enjoyable affair. His own father is living, and is therefore responsible for carrying out these duties; but when he dies Babaji Rao himself will be obliged to undertake them.

His Highness and I went in to Rajgarh this afternoon to have tea with the Political Agent. On the way there he told me that Sharma had been very naughty and had had to be punished. He had been poking fun at one of the sentries outside the Palace. So the King had threatened him with a cane.

Well,” said Sharma impertinently, “you have your cane—why do you not strike me with it?”

Perhaps he did not believe that His Highness intended, or was able, to use it; but he was mistaken, and at the first stroke implored mercy.

My hair wants cutting, and I asked whether Sharma, being a barber's son, could do it for me; but the King retorted that the boy was a fool and could do nothing—except look at motors and go to sleep. The clean military cut of the Political Agent's thick graying hair reminded me again later of the state of my own.

“Who cuts your hair, Major?” I asked him.

“A boy named Rahim. He's quite good. He cuts your hair, too, Maharajah, doesn't he?”

“Yes, he cut it the other day,” said His Highness, “but he cut it all off the top. I should like hair like yours, Major Sahib. If you let your hair grow, Major Sahib, would it reach to your shoulders?”

“Good Lord!” said the Major, spilling his tea on his trousers.

Later on I composed, at the Maharajah's request, an answer to the A.G.G.'s letter which His Highness showed me a few days ago. His Highness had already attempted the answer himself, to convey his gratitude for the A.G.G.'s promise, and to keep him up to the mark; but in his anxiety not to say too little or too much he had got muddled, and had given the unfinished letter to me to revise. It was a pathetic document, very ingratiating and “diplomatic,” and strongly spiced with fulsome compliments. About halfway through it, when the main object, the question of the decoration, was reached, the A.G.G. began to be referred to as “Your Honor.” I rewrote the whole thing, cutting out most of the compliments and all the “Your Honors,” and sent it down to the Palace.

This evening when I went up to the Guest House for dinner, Mrs. Bristow, the young wife of one of the Shikaripur officers, was sitting by the fire reading a book.

“What are you chewing?” she asked, looking up at me.

“A clove.”

“Well, for Heaven's sake don't! I can't bear the sight. I suppose you chew gum at home?”

“No, I don't like chewing-gum,” I said.

“Well, do spit that out.”

“But I like cloves.”

“Well, I don't. It's disgusting and irritating. Go on, spit it out!”

“Certainly not.”

“Go on! I'm accustomed to being obeyed.”

“But obedience is a duty,” I said; “and I have no duty towards you—except to see that you, too, are fed.”

For a moment she tried on me the power of her eye (which works, I believe, upon the subalterns of her husband's regiment), but this also failed to move my clove.

“Look here,” she said, “let me give you a word of advice: don't go Indian!”

Mrs. Bristow apologized to me this evening.

“I'm sorry for what I said yesterday,” she began; “please forgive me. You must have thought me awful; but I'm not, really. I'm very nice when you get to know me.”

I said I had taken no offense and hoped I had given none. Then she asked if I had a sister, and whether she was beautiful. I said I had, and she was.

“I supposed she was. You're rather beautiful, you know. You do know, don't you?” she asked. I said I did.

“Not that I like it in a man,” she concluded. “I hate beauty in a man.”

Anyway, it was a very handsome apology.

In my lesson this morning Abdul asked me, in Hindi:

“What did you think when you saw Ali and me sitting on the steps of that house yesterday?” Then, in English: “Now give me your answer, and let it be the truthful answer.”

Laboriously I pieced out a sentence which I hoped would be understood to mean, “I wondered whose house it was”; but I wasn't surprised when Abdul pulled me up.

“No, that is not good.”

“It's the best I can do,” I returned.

“Try again,” he said encouragingly.

I started off once more, but he interrupted me almost immediately with a movement of impatience.

“What are you trying to say?”

“I'm trying to say that I wondered whose house it was, whether it was yours or Ali's.”

“But that is the first answer you made,” said Abdul. “I want the right answer.”

“The right answer?” I said, mystified. “You asked me what I thought when I saw you and Ali sitting together on the steps of a house yesterday?”

“Yes?” Abdul leant a little forward.

“Well, that is what I thought.”

“But I asked for the right and truthful answer,” said he. “You should have said, ‘I wondered what you were both saying about me.' You see? In this way.”

“Such a thought never entered my head,” I said indignantly.

But he scarcely believed me.

“No?” he said. “That is what I or any man would have thought.”

I stared at him speechlessly, which caused him to titter self-consciously and twist his hands in his lap. It was only after he had gone that it occurred to me that this was probably another attempt to induce me to answer his question of the other day, for had I been the reasonable-minded person he expected, I would have been consumed with curiosity to know what Ali and he had been saying about me, and he would not have satisfied my curiosity until I had satisfied his as to what Ali and I had been saying—of course about him.

In the bazaar to-day I noticed a shop-keeper sitting cross-legged on the platform of his shop making up his ledger. A common sight—and yet there was something wrong, I could not at first see what. Then I understood: what was his heavy ledger resting on? It was lying open before him, on his stomach, but unsupported by his free hand, not resting against his knees. What on earth was propping it up?

The problem teased my mind so much that I had to retrace my steps for another look. There he still was, comfortably scribbling away in the large ledger, which was standing up, apparently unsupported, in his lap. Then, as I stared, he closed it and got to his feet—and the mystery was explained. He had elephantiasis of the scrotum, and had been utilizing this huge football of tissue as a book-rest.

I asked His Highness some time ago whether he would allow me to take a short holiday so that I might travel a little and visit such places as Delhi, Agra and Benares. He agreed at once to my request, saying that I must certainly see more of India than just Chhokrapur during my stay, for that would help me to make up my mind to return and live here. Much encouraged by this generous response to a request I felt I had little right to make, I further asked that I might be allowed to go as soon as possible so that I could make my tour in the comfort of the cool weather, which lasts until about the end of February or the beginning of March. This, too, he agreed to, saying that he himself was making a religious pilgrimage of a month's duration at the end of this month, and that we would synchronize our separate tours. He said this in such a business-like and decisive manner, as though the entire pilgrimage were already mapped out and fixed in time as immutably as a season of the year, that I was quite contented, although I had heard that he feared and disliked traveling, and never left Chhokrapur, and had, on one pretext or another, been putting off this very important pilgrimage for some years. And, indeed, yesterday the first complication arose, for when I asked him whether his day of departure had been selected, he told me that the pundits, without whose advice I doubt whether he would even leave his Palace, had informed him that the only two days propitious for starting were January 31st and February 18th.