UNFINISHED PLANS IN INDIA
Houses begun and never completed. The projected laundry.
Abandoned wells. Shunker sinks a well; he gets tired of it;
failure of his second well; begins again at his first well;
destructive blasting operations; finally gives up the plan.
The marks left of projects begun but never finished is a common and
discouraging sight in India. There is scarcely a village which does
not bear evidence of this. A man prepares to build a new house. You
are astonished at the large blocks of stone, neatly cut and well laid,
with which he commences. If you ask him about it, he will tell you of
the beautiful superstructure which is to come on the top of the plinth
which he is now building. But after a while the work begins to
slacken; the men employed gradually diminish in number. You ask the
cause, and various reasons will be assigned--scarcity of stone, lack
of water, and the like. Finally the work ceases, probably never to be
resumed. The owner has got tired of the project, or, not having
counted the cost, the treasury has run dry. Sometimes after a long
delay, he will build a miserable mud-house on the top of his handsome
stone plinth. But in innumerable villages you will find examples of
unfinished houses which have remained in that condition for
generations.
In Poona City there are conspicuous instances of the same thing.
Nearly all the better-class native houses are very substantially
framed in wood, the spaces within the frames being filled in with
bricks, set in either mud or mortar, according to the quality of the
house. The framework of a two-or three-storied house is often
completed, sometimes including the roof and tiling, before the
brickwork has been commenced. In different parts of the city may be
seen the framework of large and handsome houses which have never
advanced beyond that stage, and have remained for years
melancholy-looking skeletons.
Hindus often have projects which are purely castles in the air, and it
is difficult to know whether the projector is deceiving himself, or
whether it is merely in the spirit of boastfulness, that he speaks of
the great things that he is going to do. A middle-aged Brahmin called
at the Yerandawana Mission bungalow and said that he was going to
start a laundry on a large scale in the village. It was to be
thoroughly up to date. He was going to get the most modern machinery
from America. He would only accept as customers those who sent to the
wash at least a dozen articles a week. The two or three-article man
he should refuse. He had called, he said, to solicit the custom of the
Boys' Home. We were able to give him, readily enough, a qualified
promise of support, and from that day to this we have heard no more of
the modern laundry.
There is no more valuable asset in rural India than a good well. Hence
many landowners begin to sink one. But with the propensity to begin
and not to finish, there are multitudes of unfinished, and therefore
useless, wells. There is a wide stretch of land between the Mission
field at Yerandawana and the low range of hills on which the boys are
so fond of rambling. It is only water which is wanted to make this
tract productive. Dependent as it now is on the uncertain rainfall of
the monsoon, an occasional and ragged crop, which often never comes
into ear, is all that it ever produces. More often than not the
farmers who own the property do not think it worth the labour and
expense of cultivation. Two attempts have been made to sink wells, and
both have been abandoned for years. In the case of one of these wells
at least, water had actually been reached, and if they had gone down a
little deeper there was every probability of an adequate supply. But
abandoned schemes are hardly ever taken up again, and these two wells
will remain unfinished to the end of time.
A near neighbour, whom we will call Shunker, determined to sink a
well. He discoursed to me at great length on the advantage of being
independent of the canal water for the irrigation of his land. He
also described the powerful pump, worked by a windmill, which would
supersede the old-fashioned method of raising water by means of
bullocks.
The sinking of the well commenced with great energy. Shunker remained
on the spot the whole day in order to see that the men did not idle.
Friends and neighbours came and sat around and advised, and speculated
how soon they would reach water. Shunker was confident that a depth of
15 feet would be sufficient. The ground, however, was very hard, and
the men soon reached solid rock and blasting became necessary. Shunker
was full of importance over this, and before an explosion took place
rushed up and down the road in great excitement, warning travellers to
halt. His interest in the well continued until the commencement of the
rainy season obliged him to knock off for a while.
But when the time came to resume operations Shunker's zeal had begun
to flag. The well was already 15 feet deep and there was no sign of
water, except that which had fallen during the monsoon. Shunker was
growing uneasy at the amount of money which he had spent. Work was
resumed, but only languidly. Then there came gaps of several weeks
when no work was done at all, and finally it stopped altogether, and
the scheme was apparently abandoned. Shunker, not knowing what to do
with the piles of stone which had accumulated from his excavation,
erected an immense shed with it in his yard, which he said would give
shelter to his bullocks. But it was piled up unskilfully, and being
without mortar, it soon became a ruin.
Indians do not always profit by experience. It might be supposed that
Shunker would hardly care to risk further experiments concerning
wells. But following the advice of his father, an apparently shrewd
man, he sunk another well in another garden. This time a European firm
took the contract, and the cost was heavy. The spot chosen
necessitated an unusually high platform for the bullocks who raise the
water, which added a good deal to the expense. But a fatal mistake was
made in the spot chosen for the well. It was sunk close to the bank of
a river whose bed was many feet below it, and though they tapped a
spring which would probably have provided a good store of water, it
soon found its way out of the well to the lower level of the river,
and the amount of water which remained was never deep enough to be of
use. So this rather imposing-looking empty well stands as a
conspicuous monument of an ill-advised scheme, involving total loss of
the money that it cost.
Somehow the failure of this second well stimulated Shunker, contrary
to expectations, to recommence work at his first well, and in order
that the job should be done thoroughly, he enlisted the aid of the
sappers and miners to conduct the blasting operations. The result was
that the Mission compound adjoining became like Lady-smith during the
siege. The explosions were terrific, and stones, some of large size,
fell in all parts of the compound. A bit of rock fell on the stable,
smashing a dozen tiles. Another stone travelled an immense distance,
and falling on the Sisters' bungalow, broke three of the large
Mangalore tiles, so famous in India for their rainproof qualities, but
proving themselves unequal to the resistance of bombs. Urgent
remonstrances were for a time unavailing. Shunker called, and in
polite English expressed his great sorrow that his operations should
have caused us annoyance. But the siege continued with unabated
vigour. At last the actual bit of rock which contained the charge rose
out of the well to a great height at the time of the explosion, and
then half buried itself in the ground immediately behind the
schoolmaster's house. If it had chanced to fall on anybody it would
have killed him on the spot. The display of this piece of rock had the
desired effect, and the sappers and miners were withdrawn. The work
was continued in more homely fashion with ordinary blasting powder.
With this the process is slower, but it is effective, and does not
devastate the surrounding neighbourhood.
None, however, of Shunker's efforts to procure water prospered, in
spite of his persevering attempts, which he carried to the extent of
rashness. He went on sinking his well until he had reached a great
depth, but there were no more signs of water at the end than there
were at the beginning, and he finally abandoned the search.