Hindoo Holiday (16 page)

For five or six days he had procrastinated, hoping that the boy's condition would improve naturally, without such desperate remedies; but at length the doctor had told him that unless his instructions were carried out he could not answer for the child's life. And then Babaji Rao had yielded. But still he could not find the courage to take the first step himself; it was the Prime Minister who had bought the horrid stuff, opened the tin, and introduced into Ram Chandra's mouth the first spoonfuls. After that Babaji Rao and his wife had carried on the treatment, until about nine or ten tins were consumed. Indeed Brand's Essence seemed more remotely related to the chicken than was the Prime Minister's egg; but this was small comfort, and the moment the little boy was pronounced to be out of danger, though still terribly weak and tormented, Babaji Rao stopped the treatment, in spite of the doctor's advice to continue it.

However, the child had picked up gradually; but it was nearly three months from the day of the disaster before he was sufficiently restored to enable Babaji Rao, who had been sharing the watch with his wife, to obtain a complete night's rest.

He told me this story with great shame and discomfort and then added:

“I did not tell my father till afterwards, and he was very angry with me and said I had done wrong.”

“And what about the little boy?” I asked. “Does he know?”

“Yes, he knows,” said Babaji Rao, fixing his gaze on the wall, “and when he thinks of it, he thinks of it with shame. He wishes that I had not made him eat it, and I often think now that, on his account, perhaps I was not justified. But we did not tell him at the time, so that he did not know what he was doing; and I wish I had not been told myself, but that it had been done without my knowledge.”

“But supposing you
had
told him at the time—told him that unless he ate it he would surely die?”

“He would not have taken it,” said Babaji Rao.

I think my denial of intimacy with the Political Agent has disheartened Abdul, for he seems to have lost interest in that quarter and is now worrying me to try to get him advancement through the Maharajah instead. I promised nothing; but Abdul does not need positive encouragement; his requests supply their own promises, extracting them, it seems, from any reaction which cannot be called definitely opposed; so that, before long, he was reproaching me with my unreliability. However, an opportunity occurred to-day for speaking a word on his behalf, and I took it.

“How are you getting on with your tutor?” asked His Highness.

“Quite well,” I said. “If I did as much work for him as he does for me I should be getting on
very
well. He has aptitude for teaching, I think, and it seems a pity that his talent should be wasted on a poorly paid clerkship. Only the other day he was saying how disappointed he had been not to get the position of Lecturer in Persian and Urdu in your school when it fell vacant. Is there, perhaps, room for another lecturer? Can any thing be done for him, Prince?”

“What is he getting? Fifteen rupees?”

“No, twelve; and he says he finds it difficult to support himself and his family on that.”

“But he must send in a petition,” said His Highness gravely. “Why has he not done so? Tell him to write one and give it to you, and you can give it to me, and I will give it to the Dewan.”

In the afternoon, when Abdul appeared to teach me, I was feeling a little tired, so I did not wait as usual to watch him work carefully round in his own way to the subject foremost in his mind, but told him at once that I had spoken to the Maharajah about him. Immediately he was in a twitter.

“And I am to be moved to that post in the school? When? To-morrow? Tell me it is so. If it is not so, do not tell me anything. Is it so?”

I shook my head.

“Then it is bad news!” he moaned. “I do not want to hear. Do not tell me anything! O my Lord! You have failed. You have not done your best for me. You have not said what I told you. You have not
pestered
him. O my Lord! It is bad news! Then do not tell me anything! I do not want to hear!” He began rapidly to turn the pages of his dictionary; then, without raising his eyes, he started to moan again. “O my Lord! What is to be done now? In a short time you will go, and I will stay—and you have not done your best for me. O my Lord! But come, tell me, what passed between you?”

I gave him the conversation.

“But it is good!” he cried, his face brightening. “A petition? Then it is done! I will get the post! He will give it me! That is
good
news! Why did you say it was
bad
news?”

He was greatly excited, pressing his face towards me into the air; but something—the amusement in my eyes, perhaps—made him suddenly self-conscious, and abruptly he withdrew, became decorous and tutorial, and began to teach. But as soon as the hour had elapsed, during which he had displayed unusual absentmindedness and impatience with my slowness, he asked me if I would do him the favor of drafting his petition for him “in the best English and manner possible,” and with some reluctance I produced this:

I read it through to him, and he nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the paper. I was surprised at his silence, which he maintained while I copied the letter out—until I came to the word “appropriate”: then he held out a lean, detaining hand.

“Please add there—‘For this gracious act of great kindness, I will pray every day for Your Highness, and for Your Highness's son, the Rajah Bahadur, and for.. .'”

“No, Abdul,” I said firmly. “If you want anything added you must add it yourself.”

“What harm there is?”

“It isn't necessary.”

“But he is Hindoo. He will like.”

“Nobody cares tuppence,” I said, “whether you pray for him or not.”

But of course he was right. I realized that afterwards, when my irritation had subsided. He was only treating His Highness in the same manner as His Highness had treated the A.G.G. It was customary; it was acceptable; and the irritation that it started in me was stupid and bad.

When Babaji Rao drove up to see me in the evening, his tongawallah grinned at me even more radiantly than usual; but I was too astonished to respond. The boy was quite clean.

“What has happened to your tonga-wallah?” I asked. “Has he fallen into one of the tanks?”

Babaji Rao smiled.

“I noticed his neck myself yesterday,” he answered, “and I said to him ‘Do you ever wash yourself?' Then I gave him two pice; but I also was a little surprised to find him as clean as this to-day.”

Two pice is equal to a halfpenny.

“It's a miracle,” I said. “How do you suppose he did it?”

“He bought a piece of soap.”

“And what did that cost him?”

“Two pice.”

I thought it good of the boy to have spent the two pice on a piece of soap, for his wages, which the State supplies, are only one rupee (about IS. 4d.) a week, and Babaji Rao, who is himself badly paid, adds little to this—as will already have been remarked.

To-night I started him off on Hindoo marriage customs, and he spoke at great length on this subject.

A Hindoo marriage, he said, is divided into three ceremonies—Betrothal, Marriage, and Consummation; and the first of these takes place when the boy is about five years old. At about that time his father begins to look about for a wife for him, and this is sometimes done by means of a messenger—a professional matchmaker—who visits the district in search of a baby girl of suitable rank—that is to say, of at least equal caste.

This is the most important consideration. Usually, I suppose, the two families are neighbors, well known to each other, and already perhaps in agreement on this question, so that the employment of a messenger is either unnecessary or a mere formality; but when there is no such familiarity, some inquiry is necessary.

Either this inquiry is considered sufficiently answered by information brought by the messenger, or sometimes an actual inspection of the would-be bride is thought desirable; at any rate Romance can obviously have no part in the transaction, and when the boy's family have ascertained that, besides being of the right caste, the girl is a strong and serviceable article, sound in wind and limb, and in possession of her faculties, then they have learned about her all that they have any wish to know. But, as Babaji Rao observed, it is now different in his more advanced society; a photograph is usually required, and, if this is not forthcoming, some
serious
member of the family—the father, or the elder brother (the younger brother is not considered serious)—will visit the young lady and report upon her appearance. After this, if the reports from both sides are satisfactory, her father will wish to examine the horoscope of the prospective bridegroom to see whether it is favorable and agrees with that of his daughter; and if there is anything wrong, if the boy's horoscope predicts for him an early grave, or if, however unexceptionable it may be in itself, in conjunction with the girl's equally good horoscope it prognosticates a barren or unhappy union, the marriage is off. All Hindoo children have a horoscope taken at birth, except the lowest castes, sweepers and cobblers, who usually cannot afford the services of a pundit, and are therefore obliged to go through life without knowing, from day to day, what is about to happen to them.

But if the two horoscopes are harmonious the marriage is arranged, the actual proposal always coming from the girl's side, and the betrothal ceremony takes place. Later on they are married. The marriageable age varies all over India, but in Chhokrapur the boy should be ten or more, the girl seven or more.

“But,” said Babaji Rao, “in my society, where we consider ourselves more advanced, the bride should be not less than fourteen.”

On the day fixed for this second ceremony the bridegroom goes with his parents and a great company to the house of the bride's father. But he does not enter it in company. At some distance from it the party halts, and he goes on alone and empty-handed, for it is the custom that he should seem to arrive a beggar and that the girl should be given to him for charity's sake. And it is scarcely to be wondered at that many of these children when they reach the age of puberty and are better able to appreciate these charitable gifts, the uses of which at the time of giving they did not understand, should begin to doubt the infallibility of horoscopes, and hold, for the remainder of their lives, on the subject of charity, views unlikely to be found in any of the Vedas. Narayan, for instance, does not love his wife; “she is much ugly,” he complains; but the Prime Minister, speaking the other day about human physical beauty, said that he set no store by it; it was a thing of no account; there was, in fact, a common saying in India—“A beautiful wife is a man's worst enemy.” Nevertheless he admitted that when he had been married by his parents he had resented, for a year or two, the plainness of his wife: “But I made the best of a bad job, and now I find that it was not a bad job at all, but a good job, for she is an excellent housewife to me, and we are very happy together.”

“Also she does not honeycomb me,” he added; but after a moment's consideration he corrected this to “henpeck.”

But to return. In the bride's house a great company meet the bridegroom, and another house is allotted to him and his friends, since he will have to stay and feast for some days. This is usually in the spring, the most propitious time for marriages.

The actual ceremony is rather complicated, but as far as I remember, the couple sit on the floor and a sacred fire is lighted between them by the officiating pundit. They then rise and unite—that is to say, their vestments are tied together by a piece of consecrated cloth beneath which their hands are joined—and walk three times round the sacred fire, each time in seven steps, repeating prayers and Vedic hymns. This concludes the ceremony; they are now man and wife, and he takes her with him back to his home, where she stays for a couple of days in order to meet his relations. The marriage is not, of course, consummated; this is another business altogether, and happens one year, three years, or five years later, at the discretion of the parents. If it is a lower-class marriage the wife has complete freedom and may go where she likes (though she will probably veil her face before any strange and undue interest in the streets); but if she is of the upper classes she disappears, after the consummation ceremony, into
purdah
, and save by her husband, her near relations, and female friends, is never seen again.

“And, provided there is no fundamental incompatibility, nor any physical repulsion on either side, love,” said Babaji Rao complacently, “comes of its own accord.”

There is no divorce in India for the rearrangement of lives to which love does not come; though Hindoos may, if they wish, have more than one wife. But, owing to the great costliness of marriages, on which frequently the savings of a lifetime are spent, polygamy is usually impracticable, and, as in the Prime Minister's case, bad jobs are made the best of. Whether courage and diligent usage generally bring, as in his case again, their own reward, and familiarity breeds content, I do not know, for, says Babaji Rao, Hindoos are averse to discussing their domestic affairs, especially when they are disharmonious; so it is difficult to say whether, on the whole, the Hindoo marriage system produces as much unhappiness as our own, by which a man usually selects his own wife himself and seldom attempts to make the best of a bad job if the divorce laws can be bent to his deliverance.