PROVERBIAL SAYINGS ABOUT INDIA
Inaccurate statements. Village trades dependent on demand.
Platforms for the bird-scarers. Shop lamps of the city.
Supposed ascetics. Uncertainty of the monsoon; how it comes.
Cold in India; how an Indian deals with it; he cannot work
if he is cold. Englishmen and the Indian sun.
There are a number of sayings and statements about India and its
people which are either inaccurate or misleading, but which have
become almost proverbial, and which are copied from book to book, and
conveyed to new-comers by word of mouth, and their often mistaken
impressions of many simple things are partly caused by the erroneous
expressions and descriptions which they have heard or read. It takes
the first several years of a residence in India to gradually unlearn
the things which have been wrongly learnt. The stray visitor does not
stay long enough to get his view straightened out, and when he returns
to write his book about India he repeats the off-told tale.
It is often stated in books that in each village a representative of
every trade which supplies the ordinary wants of the inhabitants is to
be found--such as the barber, carpenter, blacksmith, potter, cobbler,
etc. But there is no rule about this, and it depends, just as it does
in English villages, on the size of the place and the demands of
trade. In many villages there is no resident barber, and the people
depend on the chance visits of one who itinerates. Blacksmiths are,
for the most part, wandering people who come and settle down near a
village for a few weeks or months, and then, when trade grows dull,
move on to a fresh pitch. The potter is now only to be met with here
and there. It is a sign of the increasing prosperity of India that
brass and copper vessels are largely taking the place of the
earthenware cooking-pots. A carpenter is found in almost every
village, because petty repairs to farming implements are an everyday
need. He is a man of some importance, and wears a sacred thread like a
Brahmin.
When travelling in the train from Bombay to Poona for the first time,
I noticed here and there in the corner of many fields a sort of
litter, about the length of a man, raised on rough poles about six
feet high, and on it a mysterious heap of rubbish. I remember vaguely
to have read that the bodies of the dead in the East are exposed to be
devoured by birds, and I jumped to the conclusion that the platforms
were erected for this purpose, and that the heap of rubbish was the
remains of the corpse, and that solitary places in remote fields were
chosen in order that the dead might not be any annoyance to the
living. As a matter of fact, it is only the Parsees who place their
dead on tower-like structures, built for the purpose, to be disposed
of by the vultures.
I learnt in due course that these rural platforms are for the use of
boys who scare away birds and other creatures from the ripening crops,
and I have not unfrequently accepted the hospitable invitation of some
of the village boys to climb up on to the platform and share their
sport. From their post of vantage they can survey the whole field, and
they sling stones with marvellous force and accuracy to whatever
quarter the birds are attacking. They also make a din by beating empty
oil-tins, and use clappers as the country boys at home do. The heap of
rubbish only consists of the leaves and grass which the boys collect
to make their seat on the perch more comfortable, because they often
keep vigil for the whole of a long day.
The visitor having read that to the Hindu everything is permeated with
religion, thinks that everything that he sees has some religious
significance. Someone describing his first drive from the Poona
station to the Mission-house through the native city at night, said
how much moved he was at seeing the little flickering lamps burning
before the "idols" in the shops. But a Hindu does not put his
household gods in his shop, and the flickering lamp was merely his
ordinary shop lamp, which a few years back satisfied his wants. There
are some modern inventions which Indians have taken to very readily,
and amongst these are the new ways of producing brilliant light, and
the old-fashioned flickering lamp is now hardly to be seen in Poona.
Going out in the early morning a day or so after my first arrival in
India, I met three or four men walking silently one behind each other,
and wearing what looked something like a coarse brown habit with a
cowl, which they had drawn over their heads so that their faces were
almost hidden. Having heard so often about Indian ascetics, I looked
at them with some curiosity and respect, as being probably of their
number. But in the course of the morning I met so many others of the
same type, that I began to think I must have made a mistake. The
cowl-like habit turned out to be the coarse native blanket, used for
so many purposes by rustic Indians, and which they wear in this
monastic fashion in the, sometimes chill, early mornings, or when it
is wet. Their walking in single file was not in order to assist them
in the preservation of perpetual silence, but because jungle footpaths
make this mode of progression a necessity, and country folk get so
used to walking in this fashion that when they emerge on to the
high-road they preserve the same order.
The monsoon, or rainy season, I had been led to suppose began almost
invariably on a certain date, and that rain then fell continuously for
three months until another fixed day when it left off, after which no
more rain fell till the appointed date of the next year. The
expression, "the monsoon has burst," which is often seen in the
newspapers, suggests the idea that the advent of the rain is
something akin to a deluge produced by the bursting of a great tank.
In reality there is, at times, almost as much uncertainty about
weather in India as there is in England. The most that can be said is
that there are several months in which rain, though possible, is
extremely unlikely, and outdoor festivities can be arranged for
without those anxious watchings of the heavens which is the lot of the
organiser of garden fetes in England.
But the date of the monsoon, its duration, and its quality, are most
uncertain factors and subjects of anxious speculation, and generally
of singularly incorrect prophecy. The country also is so large, and
its characteristics are so varied, that the monsoon not only does not
occur at the same time all over India, but the amount of rainfall
varies enormously in localities not far removed from each other. There
are parts of India where rain hardly ever falls, and there are other
parts where the total rainfall reaches an almost incredible figure.
But it would be possible for a skilful wanderer so to travel about
India that he would never come under the influence of the monsoon at
all.
Nor is its "bursting" otherwise than a rather gradual process. Clouds
slowly gather, rumblings of thunder are heard, lightning flashes about
the mountain tops with great brilliancy, the air is close and
oppressive, there is often violent wind, and dust sweeps into the
bungalow in clouds, a few drops of rain fall, and people hope that
the monsoon has begun. But these symptoms are often prolonged for a
week or two before the real rain comes, and sometimes the clouds
disperse and brilliant sunshine returns for a time. Now and then the
monsoon is almost a complete failure in certain areas, and that means
famine, proportionate to the area which lacks rain. Even when the
monsoon begins in earnest, there is still room for speculation and
anxiety. In some years it ceases prematurely, and then the grain
either does not come into ear, or else the ears are small and parched.
When a good monsoon commences in sober earnest there is often a
combination of high wind and heavy rain which few roofs are proof
against, and a good deal of discomfort indoors is the result. After
the first day or two the wind generally drops, and a steady
perpendicular downpour follows, continuous and heavy according to the
locality, and the character of the monsoon in each year. In Poona and
its neighbourhood the rain rarely continues for many days in
succession, and there come breaks of delightfully bright sunshine. In
some years the rainy season is only spread over about two months, but
in other years it lasts on and off much longer.
Indians are naturally sensitive to cold. In Western India the
thermometer rarely falls very low. Nevertheless the difference between
the day and night temperature is so great in some parts, and the fall
in temperature in the small hours of the morning is so rapid, that it
gives the impression of a sharp frost, even although the thermometer
may have scarcely fallen below 50 deg.. But in the middle of the afternoon
of the previous day it may have registered 90 deg. in the shade, and a
drop of 40 deg. is keenly felt. In January 1911, without any warning, the
temperature one night actually dropped to below freezing, and a film
of ice was found in a plate which had been left out all night, to the
great astonishment of the boys, and much damage was done to fruit
blossom and crops.
The Indian deals with cold in quite a different way to those who have
been brought up in northern countries. If you give him a comforter,
very little of it goes round his neck, but he wraps his head up in it
so that only his eyes and nose are visible, and if his head is warm he
does not seem to mind much about the rest of his frame, especially his
legs, which are generally bare. But instead of trying to counteract
cold by exertion, he delivers himself up to the miseries of the
situation. Clad in his scanty linen garments he crouches, and mopes,
and shivers, and waits for the sun to rise and warm him. Masons and
carpenters and labourers may be seen sitting round about the house
which they are building, waiting to get warm, and until that process
has been satisfactorily completed they will not touch a tool, however
late it may be.
You ask Felix, the boy who sweeps the bungalow, why he has not done
it, and he replies, "I was cold." You say, "You will sweep it as soon
as you are warm?" He says, "Of course." And there is nothing more to
be said, because it is an understood thing that a cold Indian cannot
work. His delight in a fire is intense. People collect leaves and
rubbish and make fires by the roadside, or even in the streets, and
crowds gather round and sit almost into the blaze, so that it is a
wonder that they are not scorched. Their only regret is that the
materials for the bonfire are generally so insufficient.
The joy of sitting in the sun to get warm, which the Indian can do
with impunity, is denied to the Englishman. He must treat the sun with
respect from the time it rises till the time it sets, and even on a
cloudy day the same caution is necessary. This does not mean that it
is unsafe to go out in the sun. It only means that no one should step
out, even for a few moments, without first putting on his sun-hat.
This is a complete safeguard if it is made of real pith of sufficient
thickness, and with a brim wide enough to protect the forehead and the
back of the head and neck. This kind of sun-tope is very light, but in
other respects it is a cumbersome and inconvenient sort of headgear,
and people, especially ladies, are tempted rashly to discard it. Many
ailments, and sometimes serious illnesses, quite apart from actual
sunstroke, may be traced to careless exposure to the sun's rays.