Hindoo Holiday (32 page)

“How can I do respect?” asked Narayan rather unhappily; and I said that just to be where I was was pleasure enough for me. We talked a little about the things in the room, and then Narayan said:

“When I go to the lavatory I do like this,” and, laughing, he twisted the sacred thread, which was round his neck, over one of his ears. But it was a very short thread and had to be strained to get it over the ear.

“Why do you do that?” I asked.

“I do not know,” he said.

“Aha!” I exclaimed, “I thought not.”

At this they both burst out laughing together, and Narayan clapped his hands.

“When you do that, then you make me happy,” he said.

“When I do what?” I asked, mystified.

“Aha!” he mimicked, and they both laughed merrily again and touched each other and tried the sound over and over again in their own throats. My facial expressions and the sounds I sometimes make have always been a source of interest and amusement to them, and Sharma, who understands nothing that is being said, sits and watches me with round eyes, ready to laugh at any moment should Narayan lead the way.

When they had got over that, I told Narayan that the reason why a Hindoo hung his sacred thread over his ear when going to the lavatory was to prevent it from touching and being defiled by the unholy parts of his body as he squatted down; but that since his own thread was so short that it obviously could not possibly hang down that far, it was entirely unnecessary to go on taking that precaution.

“But I cannot make water if I do not do it,” he said.

He asked to be allowed to accompany me back to the Guest House, and as we were leaving, a slight, pretty girl came out of the house and stood on the verandah with her face uncovered watching us pass. Narayan said that she was one of his sisters, and that she was a widow.

“Does she always go out uncovered?” I asked.

“She does not go out at all,” he said, without interest, and then added that she cooked for him and brought him his meals. I asked for more information about her, and learnt that she was twenty-one years old, and had been a widow, childless, for four years. She could not, of course, marry again, but divided her life between the houses of her father and her father-in-law, doing a little work in each. This rule against remarriage was only among high castes, he said; lower castes could and did remarry as often as they pleased.

I asked whether he was not sorry for his sister, and did not think the rule cruel that forbade her another mate, and he agreed that it was a very bad rule indeed and particularly hard when the widow was so young.

“What would happen to your sister if she married again?” I asked.

“No man will speak to her any more,” he said.

“And you?”

“I will send her away. I will not speak to her.”

“Do you love her?”

“Very much.”

“Yet you would send her away?”

“Indian rule,” he said. “If she lay down with any man and have a baby in her belly—just the same. Every man will send her away. And if any man give her shelter all will hate him.”

“But if there was no baby in her belly, and only you knew that she had had a lover? What then?”

“If I know she lay down with any man I send her away. But worse if she have a baby, for then every man know.”

He could not do otherwise, he said; his father, his relatives, and spiritual leader would treat him in the same way if he gave her sympathy in such circumstances; and so strong was his fear of being outcaste that he would let his sister kill herself sooner than stretch out a hand to her in her disgrace. Of his father, he said, he was very frightened indeed; so frightened that he never even dared to raise his eyes to the old man's face (unless he was looking another way) nor to eat in front of him; but remained always with lowered gaze, very timid and abashed.

If his father knew, for instance that he smoked, he would be very angry and would probably slap him—a thing he had not done for years.

“What would you do if your father slapped you?” I asked.

“I will cry. But many boys beat their fathers if their fathers beat them, and give anger for anger. Very bad boys.”

Very bad boys, I agreed, and expressed the hope that there were a lot of them about, since I could not see how anything was ever to move in India unless very good fathers were constantly slapped by very bad sons—a remark which Narayan received with silent disapproval.

The difference between marriage and concubinage is money, says Babaji Rao. That is why it is considered more seemly that the bridegroom should go empty-handed to the house of the bride on his wedding-day; any gift from him to the bride's father might be misconstrued. The feeling about this is so strong that until recently it was most compromising and unwise for the bride's father to enter the bridegroom's village, and even now one does not stay in the house of one's married daughter or sister, for this would be to accept something from her husband. So Babaji Rao's father has never stayed with his daughter, and Babaji Rao himself, when visiting her, used to put up with friends in the village; but he did not find the cuisine to his taste, and was at last compelled to transfer to the house of his sister, who understood from experience his gastronomic peculiarities.

But he is always considered as a paying guest in her house, and leaves behind him a nominal sum of four or five rupees at the end of each visit.

Younger brothers may stay with their married sisters without fear of comment, for they never had the right to dispose of them.

He explained this as I accompanied him to the hospital today. He was not feeling very well, and wanted to have his throat painted. The hospital is a dingy one-storied building, with a colonnaded verandah, forming three sides of a square. It is a hundred years old, Babaji Rao told me, but I do not know whether it was civic pride or astonishment that prompted this information. In the center of the court was a short black lamppost, rather like a stage “prop,” stuck on a white stone platform, and just behind this a small
jaman
tree was growing.

The tree had begun to collapse, I noticed as we passed; it was supported by a piece of stick, and a coil of torn and soiled surgical bandage.

I told the doctor I was pleased to see that the trees also received medical attention; but he did not seem to find amusement in this little joke, and merely remarked that the
jaman
tree produces a pleasant fruit, like a plum, which is good for constipation.

The doctor is a Bengali from Calcutta, and he eats meat. But meat is said to be eaten generally in Bengal, even by Brahmans. He is a very stout man with protuberant pale green eyes. Once he had eight percent of diabetes, but he has reduced it. His children, on the other hand, have been allowed to accumulate; he now has eight sons and one daughter. While Babaji Rao was having his throat painted in the dispensary, the doctor showed me his operating theater. It was a small dark room containing two cases of instruments, a tin washstand, and a blood-stained table. On the wall was a snake-bite chart, giving diagrams of the physical characteristics of the various poisonous snakes, and information of what to do when bitten by each. I have seen these charts before, but have always refrained from studying them, feeling that I should certainly get it all wrong if I ever had need to remember it, and that a quick death would be preferable to the awful dual anxiety of trying to recognize one's snake and recall its particular antidote.

From a cabinet in the wall the doctor brought out two large yellowish lumps of chalky material to show me. They were gall-stones, he said, which he himself had removed. But he had not removed a gall-stone for some considerable time; he followed a different system now, he crushed the stones inside the bladder. I diverted him from this painful topic by asking him what he thought of the Indian system of medicine, and he said it was very good, indeed many men had returned to it after qualifying in the European system. What were his views as a doctor, I asked, on the medicinal value of cow's urine, internally administered? Also of the semen of the bear, which I had seen advertised in a Delhi newspaper named
The Rajasthan
?

“In olden days,” the advertisement had run, “these Rajbansi pills were used by many Badushas of Delhi who owned many wives. This is prepared according to the old Urdu Sastras with very great cost, risk, and valuable ingredients and herbs, along with the
essence of the well-grown generative organs of the male bears as to cure impotency
. The above pills have to be taken in . . . This is a heavenly nectar for impotent. A trial will give you conviction to its effect. . . . All correspondence treated as confidential.”

After a moment's thought the doctor replied that semen contained albumen like an egg and was therefore strengthening; but the Dewan, who is seldom far from the doctor and joined us at this moment, pooh-poohed the efficacy of this remedy. We then passed on to artificial insemination, and the Dewan remarked that if a man were impotent and heirless he would be quite justified in purchasing the semen of a friend—so long, of course, as the friend were a Brahman or of the purchaser's caste.

“Urine,” said the doctor, “contains bile, which is good for constipation and lassitude.”

He added that of course I knew of the veneration in which Hindoos held the cow.

“We look upon it as our mother,” he said, “because it gives us milk.”

In the evening after dinner I went for a walk in the city, and since it was very dark, took the punkah-wallah, a poor, thin boy of about sixteen, to light me down the hill. He lives in the town, and not wishing to drag him all the way back, I took the lamp from him at the city gate and gave him fourpence. He dropped down on his knees before me and laid his forehead on my feet.

I had a letter from His Highness this morning, my first direct news of him for several days. It ran:

However, like the termination of his letter, he looked sprightly enough when he arrived, dressed in a new coat of French brocaded silk—small gold flowers upon a dark-blue ground. But I, on the other hand, was not feeling at all well, or inclined for this drive in the hot sun.

“How are you, Prince?” I asked gloomily, as I clambered into the car and sat down beside him.

“A
little
better. A
little
better,” he replied, without conviction; and since I knew that he would never inquire after
my
state of health, I informed him of it.

“I'm not feeling at all well myself,” I said.

He clapped his hands together once.

“So!” he exclaimed bitterly. “Here is another! Since Garha
every one
is ill. My secretary, my wife, my son, my servants—every one, every one. And they are all very angry with me. They say it is all my fault. They say I should have gone on my pilgrimage, and that I have angered the Gods. They are all very angry indeed.”

I felt too crushed by this to say anything, and after a few moments of somber silence, he asked rather crossly:

“What is the matter with you?”

“Oh, nothing much,” I said hurriedly, sorry now that I had mentioned it; “only a slight headache and general feeling of slackness. I dare say it's the heat.”

“But, my dear sir, this is not heat! Have you been to the doctor?”

“Oh no,” I said, “I'm not bad enough for that. Besides, if it's the wrath of God it's not much use consulting a doctor, is it?”

But he was taking now, when it was no longer welcome, a serious interest in my health, and was not to be diverted.

“But you must do so, Mr. Ackerley.”

“Very well,” I said feebly. “If I'm not better to-morrow I'll go and call on him.”

After that we drove along for some time in silence through the torrid atmosphere, and then he said he wanted my advice and began a long rambling story about an American lady named Murdock who wishes to set up here a discreet dispensary for timid Indian ladies—too timid to visit the hospital where there is insufficient protection for the sensibilities of their sex and caste.

Nearly a year ago Miss Murdock introduced her philanthropic scheme to His Highness: she would build the dispensary with her own money if His Highness would give her a site; she would also procure the services of an American lady doctor to take charge. His Highness, always childishly pleased with any new idea, shared her enthusiasm without her practicalness.

He loves Miss Murdock. She shall have her dispensary. They will build at once: She must choose her site and secure the lady doctor without delay. She does so. There is an ideal site—the site of a demolished building—just outside the walls of the city; it has a well of its own, and more important still, a natural gully at the back which, with very little trouble, can be converted into a private passage down which timid Indian ladies will be able to steal unperceived from the city to the dispensary.

Miss Murdock thinks of everything. She has been thirty years in the Province. She knows it stone by stone. But apparently she does not know His Highness. He approves the site; he expects it will be all right, but he must consult with his ministers. He has the power to decide, but prefers not to do so. No doubt he has already consulted with his ministers and found them suspicious and unfavorable; and no doubt he does not care whether there is a dispensary for timid Indian ladies or not; but he loves Miss Murdock and cannot bear to take the blame for disappointing her. Others must shoulder that. His Ministers must shoulder that. They do not like the idea of the dispensary. Undeniably it is necessary, undeniably it would be nice to have one without paying for it, without taxing for it, without reducing the laborers' wage from tuppence-ha'penny to tuppence again—but they are suspicious of it; it is the thin end of the wedge; a European dispensary for timid Indian ladies invariably turns into a kindergarten, and a kindergarten into a mission-house.