Hindoo Holiday (11 page)

“I have to decide which day I will go,” he said.

This was ominous; I felt little doubt that he would choose the remoter of the two days merely because it was the remoter, and the weather was getting appreciably warmer all the time. I pulled out my calendar and looked them up.

“January 31st is a Friday,” I said; “that is a very lucky day.”

“A very
un
lucky day,” he at once replied flatly.

This was discouraging; but I thought the issue worth another attempt.

“In England we consider it a lucky day,” I said, “except when it falls on the 13th of the month.”

“Oh?” he said, raising his brows and inclining his head; but the sound was more polite than interested.

“It will be nice weather, too, for traveling,” I added.

“Won't it be very cold?” he asked.

“Oh no, not a bit. It's getting warmer every day.”

But to-day is unfortunately colder, and he has now definitely decided to go on February 18th.

Sharma paid me a call in the late afternoon. I had not seen him for four days, and asked in Hindi why I had been neglected; but I did not understand his reply. He did not seem in the least nervous of me now, made no attempt to hang the curtain over the door so as to have his friend Narayan in view, and even came and sat by me on the sofa while I traced for him my intended journey on the map.

I looked at him sitting there, all bunched up, his bony hands on his knee, his toes turned in. He had not removed his shoes on entering, I noticed, which I have been told is a very grave discourtesy. They were ordinary black laced shoes, but the laces had been taken out, and since he was not wearing socks or stockings I asked whether he would like me to give him some; but he said he had plenty at home.

“Who is more beautiful than the Gods?” I asked, looking at his wild eyes and childish mouth, and he was pleased and smiled, exposing small, undeveloped teeth discolored with beteljuice. I had never seen him without his turban, and asked him to take it off, which he did; but the result was disappointing and a little shocking, for he showed very large ears and a skull as undeveloped as his teeth, with a low narrow brow towards which his short coarse hairs pointed. I told him to put it on again.

“You are not frightened of me now?” I asked, when he was once more beautiful.

“No.”

“Then we are friends?” He nodded, smiling.

“Then give me a kiss.” Still smiling, he shook his head. Then, after idly turning over the pages of a book on Indian architecture, and pointing, without comment, to some of the illustrations, he got up and, taking another cigarette from the table, shambled off.

“Good . . . bye,” he said in childish English as he left.

A play was performed for me to-day by a party of traveling players (not, however, the company to which Napoleon the Third belongs), assisted by His Highness's Gods. A general invitation to the Guest House had been issued, but I begged the Maharajah to confine it to myself, for I had already attended a play with those two women, and my note-taking had so irritated them both (especially Mrs. Bristow: “What are you writing down all this rubbish for?”) that at last I had been prevented from continuing it, to the deprivation of this journal. He gave in to me, and only Babaji Rao, the Secretary, and his little son Ram Chandra, attended this performance with me. It was not, of course, a private Palace entertainment like the other I had seen, or the women would never have been invited, but took place on a low wooden platform, roughly constructed in the open space near the sundial, just behind the Palace. A canvas screen enclosed it, and a carpet roofed it in. Inside we found everything ready. A white drugget was spread in front of the stage, and down the center of it, from under the drop-curtain, ran a narrow strip of carpet. Red cloths were stretched on strings from both sides of the proscenium to the canvas enclosure; the one on the left concealed the orchestra and its friends, the other formed the actors' dressing-room.

An incandescent light on a stand glared in front of each of these curtains. I took longer to remove my shoes, which were laced, than Babaji Rao and his son took to remove theirs, which were not; so Babaji Rao said I might retain them if I wished, but if I did so I must not point my feet at the actors. In these circumstances I thought it safer to take them off, and we seated ourselves on the low divan, covered with a sheet, which was prepared for us. The drop-curtain represented Vishnu enthroned and attended; it was set between two flat cardboard pillars—pink on a green ground. The orchestra begins to throb, like a quick, irregular pulse—there seems to be a harmonium as well as tom-toms and fiddles—and the curtain rises, disclosing the Manager (
Sutradhar
), who always introduces “orthodox drama.”

He is dressed in white vestments, with a puce hat and “scapulary,” which give him the appearance of a priest, and stands in the left wing in front of another drop-curtain which represents an ornate, pinky street, deserted and uninhabited except for one almost invisible figure, apparently female—and probably a domestic servant, for she stands at the highest window of one of the houses peeping out. As the music works up, the Manager begins to chant and to beat incessantly two small cymbals. He is invoking the blessing of the Gods on this his play. To him, from the opposite wing, comes the clown (
Bidoushak
). He is dressed in rags, and a bundle of thorny branches is bound across his face with a white napkin.

He dances, and when he has finished the Manager remarks:

“I was praying to the Gods for a
blessing
—and look what has come!”

He then addresses himself to the clown.

“What are you wearing over your face?”

“The good deeds of my wife,” answers the clown, removing the bush. “And what might you be doing?”

“I am making a play of the Gods.”

“What! You are making an auction of the Gods?”

This is a poor pun on the Hindoo word involved, and the conversation continues for a time in this strain.

“Do you know English?” asks the Manager.

“Yes,” answers the clown.

“How much?”

“Only ‘Yes.'”

At length the clown is told to go and get the blessing of Ganesh, the Elephant-headed God, who is supplicated at the outset of all undertakings owing to his particular faculty for warding off evil; so he retires with instructions as to where the God may be found, and after the Manager has done a little more chanting, the raising of the street-drop gives him his cue for departure and discloses Ganesh, seated upon his throne before a curtain representing a marble hall with a vista of stumpy pink pillars. He is hideously ugly. He wears a red elephant's head (the symbol of great wisdom) with large human ears, and a gold hat. His right hand is raised, his left extended, in the attitude of bead-counting.

The remainder of his costume is red, and there are cardboard shields upon his shoulders and upper arms. Why has he been invoked? he inquires of the entering clown. The clown explains; Ganesh gives his blessing, and the former returns to convey the glad tidings to the Manager in the deserted street. But Ganesh's protection is not enough. The negative preventive blessing having been obtained, the positive favor of success and fluency for the actors is now required, and for this Saraswati, wife to the Creator, Brahma, and Goddess of the Arts, is invoked. She appears, in a forest scene, riding upon her peacock (which is in two pieces, tacked on to her fore and aft) and executes a slow, joyless dance.

I recognized her at once, by her sullen, spiteful expression, as the young man who had espoused the three Gods at His Highness's private view, and since she does not appear now any better pleased with her peacock than she had been with three husbands, maybe there is no pleasing her at all. When she comes to a standstill, the Manager respectfully requests her to bless his actors with fluency, and she consents, rather ungraciously observing that she can make the mute to speak, let alone actors.

She then says she is going back to Heaven (
Nak
); whereupon the clown exclaims:

“What! she is going up my nose (
Nak
)? Indeed she isn't! I shall hold it.” Which he does.

Upon this the abandoned street is again unrolled, and the Manager returns with his chant and cymbals. He is again visited by the clown, who carries a sword upon his shoulder, and describes how he once caught a lion in a parrot's cage. I forget how this was done, and it doesn't matter; as Babaji Rao said, they were just doing a little gagging until the play was ready. So the clown tells another story of how he went to stay with his father-in-law. He was given a room at the top of the house, and desiring to go downstairs at night to make water (
peshab karna
), and being unused to the house and unable to see in the dark, he tied one end of his turban to his bedrail and took the other end with him so that he might find his way back. Unfortunately a buffalo which happened to be in the house chewed the turban through, and the clown, returning, lost himself and got into bed with his mother-in-law by mistake.

At length the Manager and the clown retire, and their place is taken by a boy dressed as a dancing girl. He raises his hands aloft and stamps slowly and awkwardly round the stage, jingling the bells on his ankles, and much impeded by a very heavy pink skirt and several tawdry yellow veils edged with silver. From time to time he glances anxiously into the wings, and is clearly prepared to go stamping on until fatigue overtakes him or some one tells him to stop; which some one eventually does, and he exits with obvious relief, his dance uncompleted.

This concludes the preamble; in orthodox drama it is invariable in form, though not in dialogue.

The play itself now begins. The curtain rises discovering another woodland scene, more elaborate than the last, in which Siva, the Dissolver and Reproducer, is squatting with his wife, Parwati. Siva wears a red cloak and the River Ganges on his head in the form of a rag doll, for he is said to have intercepted this stream as it flowed out of the foot of Vishnu, so that the earth should not be swamped by the rush of water. He looks very silly and gaga in his unconvincing gray beard, and is indeed recognized as being the simplest of the Hindoo Gods; but his consort, Parwati, is a handsome young man and has a ring in his nose. It seems that Siva has called a council of the Gods to discuss some problem, and soon they arrive, heralded by the clown; first Indra, the Rain God and Hindoo “Zeus”; then Brahma, the Creator, who has four faces so that he can see all round; and finally Vishnu, the Preserver, carrying his bow. Each is accompanied by his wife; they all kneel to Siva and seat themselves on either side of him in a semicircle, and when the party is complete Siva bids Parwati take the ladies for a walk and show them the beauties of Mount Kylash. Rid of their wives, the Gods now get to business. Apparently the trouble is that Siva has sent one of his demon devotees to bring him some ashes from a funeral pyre, and he has not yet returned. What can have happened? But scarcely has the question been put when flames and smoke spurt from the right wing, and, uttering fierce cries, the demon rushes on with a drawn sword and executes a wild dance.

His aspect is truly terrifying. Black and unkempt are his wig and mustache; across his forehead streaks of red paint have been drawn; dark rings encircle his eyes, and from his upper jaw two small tusks protrude. His costume is less impressive. It begins all right at the top with shoulder-guards and a monstrous silver helmet decorated with peacocks' feathers; but below this there is a muddle of yellow chiffon swathed about his torso and spreading forth, beneath a metal belt, like a ballet dancer's skirt, and below this again are red stockings, so that his general appearance resembles that of the comic pirate in a Christmas pantomime.

“Why are you so late in bringing me my ashes from the funeral pyre?” asks Siva testily.

“To-day no one has died,” replies the Demon. “You cannot have a funeral pyre without a dead man. Grant me a boon that I may be able to destroy any one upon whose head I lay my hand, so that there will be none of this delay in future.”

Any one else would have given this request a few moments' consideration, but Siva is a simple God and merely says:

“Very well, have your wish; but see you use it carefully, and only when you cannot get hold of ashes in any other way, mind!”

The other Gods, however, are rather dismayed; they think that Siva has been foolishly rash, and, when the Demon has retired looking eminently untrustworthy, they do not scruple to tell him so; but Siva merely remarks that he always finds it difficult to refuse a request. After this no one seems to have anything more to say; a sheepish exeunt takes place, and two men in black enter and dance together on the empty stage. They look like executioners in a melodrama, and in fact they are the Demon's attendants; and it is not long before he himself returns, still uttering ominous cries, and joins the dance. And now we learn, what we have already been inclined to suspect, that he is a thorough bad lot. He got his annihilating power, he tells his satellites, by a trick, for he never made any attempt whatever to find a corpse, and intends now to use it upon the Gods themselves and make himself master of the world. The curtain falls upon him hurrying off upon his fell work, and rises again upon Indra enthroned.

To Indra comes Bidoushak the clown, with word that the Demon's two attendants have called and are waiting outside. They are admitted, and, without delay, curtly inform Indra that he must immediately abdicate his throne as the Demon wants it. Indra refuses haughtily, and descending on to the drugget in front of the proscenium, dances a battle-dance with each of them in turn; but while the issue is still undecided the Demon himself irrupts, and Indra, to evade the destructive touch, flees incontinently into the wings. The curtain falls.

The next scene is the same, but now it is Brǎhma who is seated on the throne. He is visited by the perturbed Indra, who explains the mischief afoot and what a narrow squeak he himself has just had; but even while they are discussing it and saying they told Siva so, in come the two attendants unannounced. Now it is Brǎhma who dances with them; but again, while the result is in the balance, the Demon appears and drives both the Gods before him. Vishnu's turn comes next, and we have a repetition of the preceding action; he also is put to flight. Then the scene changes, and we are back again in the wood. Here is Siva, seated beneath a tree. He welcomes his Demon with cordial speech, which the latter rudely interrupts, and the old man is at last brought to his senses.