THE WAYS OF THE HINDU
It was my good fortune to find employment while in Madras. The job was
the easiest I had yet had, and it brought me three rupees a day. All I
had to do was to sit in street-cars and watch the Hindu conductors poke
the fares paid into the cash-registers they wear around their necks, and
to make sure they did not make a mistake and put some of the coppers
into their pockets instead. For the Hindu makes many mistakes, and is
naturally so careless that he has even been known to forget to collect
fares from his friends on the car.
Thus for merely sitting on different cars all day, and reporting to the
street railway company any conductor who made such mistakes, I was paid
three rupees a day. It gave me an excellent chance to see Madras.
As I was riding through the city I noticed that there were almost no
horses there. Their place was taken by leather-skinned, rice-fed
coolies. These natives were hitched to heavy two-wheeled carts, which
squawked horribly as they were drawn through the streets. Perhaps the
natives did not know that axle-grease would make them run more smoothly.
Yet two of these thin, starved-looking coolies will draw a wagon loaded
with great bales from the ships, or a dozen steel rails, for miles over
hills and hollows, with fewer breathing spells than a truckman would
allow a team of horses.
One day I came upon a sight that surprised me. At a corner where the car
in which I sat swung toward the harbor, a gang of coolies was repairing
a roadway. That in itself was no cause for wonder. But among the
workmen, dressed like the others in a ragged cloth around the hips,
swinging his hammer as dully, gazing as stupidly at the ground as his
companions, was a white man! There could be no doubt of it. Under the
tan of an Indian sun his skin was fiery red, and his eyes were blue! But
a white man doing such work, in company with the most miserable, the
lowest, the most despised of human creatures! To become a _sudra_ and
ram stones in the public streets, dressed in nothing but a clout!
Suppose that I were obliged to come to such an end! A terror came upon
me, a longing to flee while there was yet time from the unfortunate land
in which a man of my own flesh and blood could fall to this.
Again and again my rounds of the city brought me back to that same
corner. The fallen one toiled slowly on, bending hopelessly over his
task, never raising his head to glance at the passers-by. Twice I was
about to get off the car and speak to him, to learn his dreadful story.
But the car had rumbled on before I gathered courage. Leaving the office
as twilight fell, I passed that way again. A _babu_ (educated Hindu)
standing near the edge of the sidewalk began talking to me in English,
and I asked him about the white laborer.
“What! That?” he said, following the direction of my finger. “Why,
that’s a Hindu albino” (colorless Hindu).
One day I decided to have my clothes washed by a Hindu laundryman,
called a _dhoby_. The _dhoby_ is a hard-working man. High above his head
he swings each streaming garment, and slaps it down again and again on
the flat stone at his feet, as if he were determined to split it into
bits. When his strength gives out, he flings down the tog, and jumps up
and down on it as if he had lost his reason. His bare feet tread wildly,
and when he can dance no longer he falls upon the helpless rag, and tugs
and strains and twists and pulls as if determined that it shall come to
be washed no more. Flying buttons fill him with glee. When he can beat
and tramp and tug no longer, he tosses the shreds that are left
scornfully into the stream. Yet he is strictly honest: at nightfall he
takes back to its owner the dirt he carried away and the threads that
hold it together.
The cook of an eating-shop offered, for three _annas_, to wash all that
I owned except my shoes and helmet. In a colder land I should have had
to go to bed until the task was done. But not so in India. The roadsters
gathered in the dining-room of the shop saw nothing strange in my
costume as I sat down to pass the time in writing letters.
From the back yard, for a time, came the shrieks of my maltreated
garments. Then all was silent. In fear and trembling, I stole out to
take a look at the remains. But as a _dhoby_ the cook was a failure.
There were a few tears in the garments hanging in the blazing sunshine,
a button was missing here and there; but that was all. An hour’s work
with a ship’s needle sufficed to heal the wounds, though not the scars,
of battle.
We left Madras on the train early the next morning. Two days later we
were on our way to Puri, the city of the god Juggernaut. Puri lies on
the shores of the Bay of Bengal, about two hundred miles south of
Calcutta. It is here that the car of the god makes its yearly trip from
one temple to another about two miles distant. The car, weighing many
tons, is set up outside the temple, and the god Juggernaut, a
hideous-faced idol is placed on his throne within. Hundreds of natives
rush around the place, screaming and struggling for a chance to pull at
the long ropes attached to the car; and, to the sound of strange prayer
and song, the procession starts. The great road, fully an eighth of a
mile wide, stretches away straight and level to the smaller temple.
There was a time, it is said, when natives threw themselves and their
children under the great car and let it crush them to death, so that
they might win favor with the god; but such events were probably
accidents.
We left the train at Khurda Road, and bought tickets to the sacred city.
The long train that we boarded was so crowded with natives that there
was scarcely room for us.
Night was falling when we stepped off at Puri. The station stood in the
open country, and we started off on a tramp to the city fully two miles
away. Natives, coming upon us in the darkness along the road of
sacrifice, sprang aside in terror and shrieked a long-drawn “Sahib hai!”
to warn others to keep away from us. Nearer the city, a hundred families
who had come from far had pitched their tents at the edge of the great
road.
In the city we were hardly able to buy food. Merchants cried out in
anger when they saw us coming toward their tumble-down shacks, and only
with much coaxing could we draw one of them out into the street to sell
us sweetmeats and fruits. Half the shops sold nothing but _dude_, which
is to say, milk—of bullocks and goats, of course; for the cow is a
sacred animal in India. The Hindu thinks the soul of a human being lives
in the body of the cow.
We stopped at one shack to buy some of this _dude_. A wicked-looking
youth took our coin cautiously and filled two dishes that looked like
flower-pots. I drank the liquid in mine, and stepped forward to put it
back on the worm-eaten board that served as counter. The youth sprang at
me with a scream of rage and fear; but before the pot had touched the
counter Marten knocked it out of my hand and shattered it to pieces on
the cobblestones, then smashed his own beside it.
There was not a native hut in Puri that we could enter, and we had
nowhere to spend the night. We returned to the station, and asked the
agent if we could sit in the two wicker chairs in the waiting-room. He
would not let us, but told us of an empty car near the station. We
stumbled off through the railway yards, and came upon a first-class
coach on a side-track. It was the best “hotel” of our Indian trip—a
parlor car containing great couches covered with the softest leather.
There were bright copper lamps that we could light after the heavy
curtains had been drawn, large mirrors, and running water. No wonder we
slept late the next morning.
We were not allowed to go inside the great temple built to house the god
Juggernaut, but much could be seen from without. The temple rises in
seven domes one above another like the terraced vineyards of the Alps.
The steps that wind up and around these domes are half hidden by the
horrible-looking statues of gods and misshapen animals. Above them
towers the Juggernaut’s throne-room, looking like a cucumber standing on
end. Perhaps the builder, when his task was completed, was doomed to
lose his hands, like so many successful architects of Asia, so that he
could not build anything more wonderful for others.
While we were walking around the temple we came upon one of the sacred
bulls starting out on his morning walk past the straw-roofed shops of
Puri. He was a sleek, plump beast, with short, stumpy horns and a hump.
He seemed as harmless as a child’s pet poodle. We kept him company.
Starting for the nearest shop, he walked proudly along, shouldering his
way through the crowd, pushing aside all who stood in his path, not
rudely, but firmly. Natives threw themselves flat on the ground before
him; street peddlers stepped aside with muttered prayers; scores of
women fell on their knees and elbows in crowded streets, bowed their
heads low in the dust, and ran to kiss his flanks.
Marching boldly up to the first booth, the bull chose a morsel of green
stuff from the stand, and, chewing it daintily, strolled on to the next
stall. He selected something from each of the long rows of shops,
stopping longest where the supplies were freshest. The keepers did not
like this, but they did not say much against it. For how may a Hindu
know that the soul of his grandfather does not look out through those
calm eyes? At any rate, he is just so much more sure of heaven for every
leaf and stalk that he loses. Now and again Marten told me what the
storekeeper was saying.
“Hast thou not always had they fill, O holy one!” prayed one native,
rocking his body back and forth in time to his prayer. “I would
willingly feed thee. Hast thou not always found welcome at my shop? But
I am a poor man, O king of sacred beasts. I pray thee, therefore, take
of the goods of my neighbor, who has great wealth. For I am very poor,
and if thou dost not cease to-morrow I may not be here to feed thee.”
As if in answer to the prayer, the animal moved on to the booth of the
neighbor, who showed no sign of the great wealth that had been charged
against him. His stock was fresh, however, and the bull ate generously
in spite of the keeper’s prayer. A second and a third time the keeper
begged him to stop, but he would not. Then the Hindu, picking up a
bamboo stick, murmured the prayer into it.
“Thou canst not hear the prayer of a poor man, O sacred one, through
thine ears,” wailed the merchant. “Listen then to this.” And, rising in
his place, he struck the animal sharply over the nose with the bamboo
stick. The bull turned to gaze on the sinner, looked reproachfully at
him for a moment through half-closed eyelids, and strolled slowly away.
We saw many widows among the swarming thousands of Puri. There was a
time when, on the death of her husband, the Hindu woman had to mount the
funeral pyre and be burned with his dead body. But since the British
have taken possession of India they have made a law against such
cruelties. Now, on the death of her husband, the Hindu woman must merely
shave her head and dress in a snow-white sheet, and she must never marry
again.
There were other women in the crowd. Most of them wore jewelry. We met
some who wore rings on every finger and toe and bracelets on both arms
from wrists to elbows. It was not unusual to meet a woman with rings in
the top, side, and fleshy part of each ear, or women wearing three
nose-rings, one of which pierces the left nostril and swings back and
forth against the cheek of the wearer.
That afternoon we left by train for Calcutta. The express rumbled into
Khurda Road soon after we reached the main line. To rest our bones we
strolled along the platform, stepped into another car—and fell back in
astonishment. Swinging from a peg near the ceiling was a helmet we had
seen before. It was none other than Haywood’s. And beneath it, lying at
full length on a bench, was Haywood himself. He had been released from
prison, and had lost no time in taking the north-bound express—to
overtake us, very likely.
His joy at meeting us once more was greater than ours. We were unable to
look pleased, and Marten grumbled under his breath at the luck that kept
us in such harmful company.
In the early morning the train stopped at Howrah, a suburb of Calcutta,
and Haywood alighted with us at the station. We crossed the Hoogly River
on a floating bridge that connects Howrah with Calcutta, meeting crowds
of coolies tramping to a day of toil in the city. The Hoogly was alive
with natives sporting in the muddy waters. Below the bridge scores of
ships lay at anchor; native barges darted here and there among them;
from the docks came the rattle of machinery and the shrill chatter of
men loading freight on the boats. Here, at last, was a real city, with
all its familiar uproar. My companions started off to visit some
missionary, and I plunged aimlessly into the stream of people that
surged through the dusty streets.