secure the greatest possible growth of young shoots, and above the
delicate tea plants a shady hedge of fan palms and taller trees. The
leaves are gathered by day, spread in the evening on hurdles and left
for the night in open sheds. On the morrow they are first thrown into a
sort of bottomless square funnel which revolves on a board; rolled and
broken in this machine they are ready for drying. The tea passes through
twenty grades of increasing temperature, and in drying it gives out the
most delightful aroma--a mixture of sweetbriar, seaweed, and violets,
with a scent of tea too. The leaves are finally sifted, which sorts them
in four sizes into boxes containing the different qualities.
Coolies in white turbans were busy round the machines. They are very
skilful, but work with determined slowness as a mute rebellion against
the humiliating coercion of obeying a thing of wood and iron, and above
all of obeying it without stopping, for the ideal of every Hindoo is to
do nothing. And this rose to positive martyrdom when, in the absence of
our own servants, who were nowhere to be found, one of these craftsmen,
a Brahmin, strictly forbidden by his religion ever to touch the food of
the disbelievers, or even the vessels they use, was obliged to make tea
for us. Looking utterly miserable, the poor fellow weighed out the
leaves, put them into little antique earthenware pots, and poured on the
boiling water. A sand-glass marked how long the infusion was to stand.
He even brought us some pretty little crackle basins that looked as if
they had come out of some old-world convent pharmacy; but the poor man
could not bring himself to pour the tea out--he fled.
Close to a field that had just been reaped four oxen yoked abreast were
threshing out the grain, tramping round and round on a large sheet
spread on the ground. The driver chanted a shrill, slow tune; further
away women in red were gleaning, and a patriarch contemplated his
estate, enthroned on a cart in a halo of sunset gold.
The Ghoorkhas, small men and very active, young too, with Chinese
features, were practising gymnastics. And recruits were being drilled,
two of them barefoot, though wearing their gaiters.
Firmly erect in military attitudes, they moved like one man. All without
exception turn out capital soldiers.
The drill sergeant shouts the word of command in wonderful
English--_lept_, meaning left.
This native regiment, after many victories, was presented by the Empress
Queen with a sort of mace. A little shrine contains two crossed knives,
and is surmounted by three Ghoorkhas bearing a royal crown in silver.
This object is preserved in a case in the ammunition store. An officer
is appointed to guard it, and the soldier who took it out to show me
touched it really as if it had been the Host. And it is a fact that on
high festivals the soldiers come to sacrifice goats before the house
where this fetish is treasured.
After dinner, with the dessert, the head orderly of the mess marched in
with the decanters. He set them on the table, and then stood immovable
at his post behind the colonel's chair, shouldering his gun till
everybody had done, when he carried off the bottles with the same air of
being on parade.
Outside, under a thatched screen, sits the punkah coolie, his legs
crossed, the string in his hand; and as soon as everyone goes into the
room he wakes up, rocks his body to and fro, his arm out in a fixed
position, swaying all of a piece with a mechanical see-saw, utterly
stupid. He will go to sleep lulled by his own rocking, and never wake
unless the cord breaks, or somebody stops him.
HARDWAR
At the bottom of a wide flight of steps flows the Ganges, translucent,
deeply green, spangled with gold. The bathers, holding the little brass
pots that they use for their ablutions, are performing the rites,
surrounded by large yellow fishes spotted with green. Pink and white
stuffs are spread to dry on the steps, flowers are scattered on the
stream, long wreaths are floating down the river, curling and uncurling
at the caprice of the current.
After bathing, during their long prayers to the gods of the river,
almost as sacred here as it is at Benares, the pilgrims threw grain to
the half-tame fish. Steering vigorously with their tails, the creatures
turned and rolled, making eddies of light in the water, and hurrying up
to the falling grain occasionally upset the equilibrium of some old
woman still taking her bath. At the top of the bank, in the blazing
sunshine, two fakirs, squatting in the dusty road, remained unmoved by
all this turmoil, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, absorbed in a fixed
thought which concentrated their gaze on an invisible point. The fall
of an old woman into the Ganges, with all the shouting that such an
incident entails in India, left them quite indifferent; they did not
stir, did not even glance at the river as the woman was taken out
unconscious.
There are temples all along the shore, poor little structures for the
most part. On the walls gaudy borders of crude colour serve to frame
chromo-lithographs representing the principal events of the Vedas. There
are but one or two sanctuaries built of marble, and very rarely have the
idols any precious jewels.
Beyond the temples is the merchants' quarter: a few very modest shops,
the goods covered with dust; and in the middle of this bazaar, a cord
stretched across cut off a part of the town where cholera was raging.
In the plain, beyond shady avenues of tamarind and _terminalia_ trees,
Hardwar begins again, a second town of large buildings, buried in the
greenery of banyans and bamboos. Here again was the ghost of a bazaar,
where all seemed dead under the bleaching sun--a bazaar bereft of
sellers, no one in the booths, and no buyers in the deserted streets.
At every street-corner there were blocks of salt, which the cows and
goats licked as they went past.
On our way back through the temple-quarter a sudden wild excitement
possessed the worshippers and priests; out of a side street rushed a
large troop of monkeys, grey, with black faces. They galloped past in a
close pack and fled to the trees, shrieking shrilly. One, however,
lagged behind, bent on stealing some rice that had been brought as an
offering to a plaster image of Vishnu. A Brahmin stood watching the
monkey, and tried to scare it away with a display of threatening arms,
but he dared not hit the beast sacred to Hanuman, the god of the green
face. The creature, never stirring from the spot, yelled aloud, bringing
the rest of the pack back on to the roof of the neighbouring pagodas.
Then the ringleader, with a subdued, sleepy, innocent gait, stole gently
up to the tray of offerings. He was on the point of reaching it when the
priest raised his arm. This was a signal for the whole tribe to scream
and dance with terror, but without retreating. The performance seemed
likely to last; the bazaar and the temples were in a hubbub of
excitement; the doors of the shops and the sanctuaries were hastily
shut, till, at the mere sight of a man who came out with a long bamboo
in his hand, the whole pack made off and appeared no more, and Hardwar
relapsed into its somnolent sanctity.
DELHI
In the train to Delhi the windows were screened with cuscus mats
constantly sprinkled with water, and so long as the train was in motion
the air came in cool, fragrant, and breathable. But whenever we stopped
in the desert which this country becomes just before the monsoon, melted
lead seemed to scorch up the atmosphere and shut the train in between
walls of fire.
Delhi appeared in the blinding light like an unsubstantial vision, white
against a bleached sky; and as we got nearer the city half vanished like
a mirage, blotted out and dim through a shifting cloud of dust.
Every house in the town was shuttered, not a soul was to be seen in the
baked streets; only here and there in a shady corner a beggar might be
seen asleep. A _chigram_ only was slowly moving along at the slow pace
of two draught oxen, carrying the women of a zenana, and their constant
chatter within the curtains of the clumsy vehicle sounded formidably
loud and discordant in the silence, the death-like exhaustion of noon. A
foxy smell came up from everything that the sun was baking, and towards
the end of the day it had become intolerable, corpse-like. It died away,
however, after sunset.
Then, in the magic of the evening, the air was saturated with fragrance;
invisible gardenias, amaryllis, and lemon-flowers perfumed the cool
night. On every side we could hear the quavering guzla, the sound of
tom-toms and tambourines. The streets were brightly lighted up and
crowded.
A dancing-girl went by, wrapped in white muslin as thin as air, hardly
veiling the exquisite grace of her shape. Close to us, in front of two
musicians playing on the vina and the tom-tom, she began to dance,
jingling the rattles and bells on her anklets: a mysterious dance with
slow movements and long bows alternating with sudden leaps, her hands
crossed on her heart, in a lightning flash of silver necklets and
bangles. Every now and then a shadow passed between the nautch-girl and
the lights that fell on her while she was dancing, and then she could
scarcely be seen to touch the ground, she seemed to float in her
fluttering drapery; and presently, before the musicians had ceased
playing, she vanished in the gloom of a side alley. She had asked for
nothing, had danced simply for the pleasure of displaying her grace.
On our way back to the hotel, in a park through which we had to pass, we
suddenly heard overhead a shrill outcry proceeding from a banyan tree to
which a number of vampires had hung themselves up. Clinging together
side by side, like black rags, and hardly visible in the thick foliage,
the creatures formed a sort of living bunch, creeping, swaying, and all
uttering the same harsh, monotonous, incessant cry.
As we passed the sacred tanks, where a smell of decay filled the air
that still rang with the cries of the bats, our horses suddenly shied
and refused to go forward, terror-stricken by some invisible danger
suggested to them by that reiterated shriek or the corpse-like smell. A
very long minute passed as we sat in the carriage, a minute of dread
that left us quite excited by this mysterious peril of which we had
somehow felt the awe. Nor was it till we had left the great trees by the
tanks behind us that the impression wore off under the comforting light
of the stars.
With day came the grip of fire, the overwhelming mastery of the heat.
The sunshine pierced through every crack in the shutters and blinds,
intolerably vivid. In feverish exhaustion, helpless to withstand the
glow and light, we could but lie under the waving punkah and await the
blessed return of night.
BOMBAY
A tea-party in the afternoon at the yacht club. The ladies in smart
dresses, the talk all of fashionable gossip--how far away from all I had
been seeing. An European atmosphere, where a touch of local colour was
only suggested by the native servants. The plague, the ruling terror
when I was last in Bombay, was forgotten; the only subject now was the
Jubilee, and the latest news from England arrived by that day's mail.
In the evening, on my way to dine with a friend by Malabar Hill, I could
hardly recognize some parts of the town: houses, a camp of little huts
and tents, a whole district had been swept away.
A wide open space covered with rubbish heaps was to be seen where the
sepoys' barracks had been, and where from the first the men had died of
the plague by hundreds. In one garden, a bungalow where a man had just
died was being burnt down--still burning. A party of police were
encouraging the fire, and a cordon of native soldiers kept everybody
else off.
A heavy, rusty-red cloud hung over the field of Hindoo funeral fires.
Tambourines and bells could be heard in the distance, and as we went
nearer the noise grew louder in the foul air, stifling and stagnant;
till when we got close to the place the noise and singing were frantic
and the smell of burning was acrid, sickening.
But at Byculla, in Grant Road, the street of gambling-houses, there was
a glare of lights; gaudy lanterns were displayed at the windows where
spangles and tinsel trinkets glittered. And then, between two brightly
illuminated houses where every window was wide open, there was the dark
gap of a closed house, in front of it a pan of sulphur burning. The
green and purple flame flickered grimly on the faces of the passers-by,
making their dhotis look like shrouds wrapping spectres.
In the side streets the natives lay sleeping on the bare earth in the
coolness of night. On every house were the spots of red paint that told
how many of the inhabitants had died of the plague; and the smaller the
house the closer were the dabs of paint, almost framing the door with a
chain of red spots.
A funeral came pushing past me in the silence of this sleeping district:
the body, wrapped in red, hung from a bamboo that rested on the bearers'
shoulders. No one followed him, and the group disappeared at once in the
deep gloom of the narrow alley.
I turned back into Grant Road, where bands of tom-toms and harmoniums
were hard at it, where the gamblers were stifling each other round the
roulette-boards in a frenzy of amusement and high spirits, eager for
enjoyment before hovering death should swoop down on them.
In a quiet, darkened corner a girl was lying on a bier, a girl of the
Brahmin caste, all in white, veiled by a transparent saree. By her side
an old man, a bearded patriarch, seemed to wait for someone. Then
another Brahmin came out from a little house, carrying the fire
wherewith to light the funeral pile in a little pot hanging from his
girdle. The two old men took up their burthen--so light that even to
them, tottering already towards their end, it seemed to be no weight.
They made their way cautiously, so as not to tread on the sleeping
figures strewn about the street, going very slowly in devious zigzags. A
dog woke and howled at them; and then, as silence fell, I could hear
again the dying sounds of harmoniums and tom-toms, and the clatter of
the games.
AT SEA
Bombay, towering above the sea in a golden glory--the tall towers and
minarets standing out in sharp outline against the sky, splendid in
colour and glow. Far away Malabar Hill and a white speck--the Towers of
Silence; Elephanta, like a transparent gem, reflected in the
aqua-marine-coloured water.
A rosy light flooded the whole scene with fiery radiance, and then
suddenly, with no twilight, darkness blotted out the shape of things,
drowning all in purple haze; and there, where India had vanished, a
white mist rose from the ocean that mirrored the stars.
THE END.
PLYMOUTH:
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON,
PRINTERS.
End of Project Gutenberg's Enchanted India, by Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch