XII.

_Contains the History of the Bhumia of Jharwasa, and the Record of

a Visit to the House of Strange Stories. Demonstrates the Felicity

of Loaferdom, which is the veritable Companionship of the Indian

Empire, and proposes a Scheme for the better Officering of two

Departments._

Come away from the monstrous gloom of Chitor and escape northwards. The

place is unclean and terrifying. Let us catch To-day by both hands and

return to the Station-master--who is also booking-parcels and

telegraph-clerk, and who never seems to go to bed--and to the

comfortably wadded bunks of the Rajputana-Malwa line.

While the train is running, be pleased to listen to the perfectly true

story of the _bhumia_ of Jharwasa, which is a story the sequel whereof

has yet to be written. Once upon a time, a Rajput landholder, a

_bhumia_, and a Mahomedan _jaghirdar_, were next-door neighbours in

Ajmir territory. They hated each other thoroughly for many reasons, all

connected with land; and the _jaghirdar_ was the bigger man of the two.

In those days, it was the law that victims of robbery or dacoity should

be reimbursed by the owner of the lands on which the affair had taken

place. The ordinance is now swept away as impracticable. There was a

highway robbery on the _bhumia’s_ holding; and he vowed that it had been

“put up” by the Mahomedan who, he said, was an Ahab. The reive-gelt

payable nearly ruined the Rajput, and he, labouring under a galling

grievance or a groundless suspicion, fired the _jaghirdar’s_ crops, was

detected and brought up before the English Judge who gave him four

years’ imprisonment. To the sentence was appended a recommendation that,

on release, the Rajput should be put on heavy securities for good

behaviour. “Otherwise,” wrote the Judge, who seems to have known the

people he was dealing with, “he will certainly kill the _jaghirdar_.”

Four years passed, and the _jaghirdar_ obtained wealth and

consideration, and was made, let us say, a Khan Bahadur, and an Honorary

Magistrate; but the _bhumia_ remained in gaol and thought over the

highway robbery. When the day of release came, a new Judge hunted up his

predecessor’s finding and recommendation, and would have put the

_bhumia_ on security. “Sahib,” said the _bhumia_, “I have no people. I

have been in gaol. What am I now? And who will find security for me? If

you will send me back to gaol again I can do nothing, and I have no

friends.” So they released him, and he went away into an outlying

village and borrowed a sword from one house, and had it sharpened in

another, for love. Two days later fell the birthday of the Khan Bahadur

and the Honorary Magistrate, and his friends and servants and dependants

made a little durbar and did him honour after the native custom. The

_bhumia_ also attended the levee, but no one knew him, and he was

stopped at the door of the courtyard by the servant. “Say that the

_bhumia_ of Jharwasa has come to pay his salaams,” said he. They let him

in, and in the heart of Ajmir City, in broad daylight, and before all

the _jaghirdar’s_ household, he smote off his enemy’s head so that it

rolled upon the ground. Then he fled, and though they raised the

country-side against him he was never caught, and went into Bikanir.

Five years later, word came to Ajmir that Chimbo Singh, the _bhumia_ of

Jharwasa, had taken service under the Thakur Sahib of Palitana. The case

was an old one, and the chances of identification musty, but the

suspected was caught and brought in, and one of the leading native

barristers of the Bombay Bar was retained to defend him. He said nothing

and continued to say nothing, and the case fell through. He is believed

to be “wanted” now for a fresh murder committed within the last few

months, out Bikanir way.

And now that the train has reached Ajmir, the Crewe of Rajputana,

whither shall a tramp turn his feet? The Englishman set his stick on

end, and it fell with its point North-West as nearly as might be. This

being translated, meant Jodhpur, which is the city of the Hounhnhyms

and, that all may be in keeping, the occasional resting-place of

fugitive Yahoos. If you would enjoy Jodhpur thoroughly, quit at Ajmir

the decent conventionalities of “station” life, and make it your

business to move among gentlemen--gentlemen in the Ordnance of the

Commissariat, or, better still, gentlemen on the Railway. At Ajmir,

gentlemen will tell you what manner of place Jodhpur is, and their

accounts, though flavoured with crisp and curdling oaths, are amusing.

In their eyes the desert that rings the city has no charms, and they

discuss affairs of the State, as they understand them, in a manner that

would curl the hair on a Political’s august head. Jodhpur has been, but

things are rather better now, a much-favoured camping ground for the

light-cavalry of the road--the loafers with a certain amount of brain

and great assurance. The explanation is simple. There are more than four

hundred horses in His Highness’s city stables alone; and where the

Hounhnhym is, there also will be the Yahoo. This is sad but true.

Besides the Uhlans who come and go on Heaven knows what mysterious

errands, there are bag-men travelling for the big English firms. Jodhpur

is a good customer, and purchases all sorts of things, more or less

useful, for the State or its friends. These are the gentlemen to know,

if you would understand something of matters which are not written in

reports.

The Englishman took a train from Ajmir to Marwar Junction, which is on

the road to Mount Abu, westward from Ajmir, and at five in the morning,

under pale moonlight, was uncarted at the beginning of the Jodhpur State

Railway--one of the quaintest little lines that ever ran a locomotive.

It is the Maharaja’s very own, and pays about ten per cent.; but its

quaintness does not lie in these things. It is worked with rude economy,

and started life by singularly and completely falsifying the Government

estimates for its construction. An intelligent Bureau asserted that it

could not be laid down for less than--but the error shall be glossed

over. It was laid down for a little more than seventeen thousand rupees

a mile, with the help of second-hand rails and sleepers; and it is

currently asserted that the Station-masters are flagmen, pointsmen,

ticket-collectors and everything else, except platforms and lamp-rooms.

As only two trains are run in the twenty-four hours, this economy of

staff does not matter in the least. The State line, with the

comparatively new branch to the Pachbadra salt-pits, pays handsomely,

and is exactly suited to the needs of its users. True, there is a

certain haziness as to the hour of starting, but this allows laggards

more time, and fills the packed carriages to overflowing.

From Marwar Junction to Jodhpur, the train leaves the Aravalis and goes

northwards into “the region of death” that lies beyond the Luni River.

Sand, _ak_ bushes, and sand-hills, varied with occasional patches of

unthrifty cultivation, make up the scenery. Rain has been very scarce in

Marwar this year, and the country, consequently, shows at its worst, for

almost every square mile of the kingdom nearly as large as Scotland is

dependent on the sky for its crops. In a good season, a large village

can pay from seven to nine thousand rupees revenue without blenching.

In a bad one, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” may think

themselves lucky if they raise “rupees fifteen only” from the same

place. The fluctuation is startling.

From a country-side, which to the uninitiated seems about as valuable as

a stretch of West African beach, the State gets a revenue of nearly

forty lakhs; and men who know the country vow that it has not been one

tithe exploited, and that there is more to be made from salt and the

marble and--curious thing in this wilderness--good forest conservancy,

than an open-handed Durbar dreams of. An amiable weakness for

unthinkingly giving away villages where ready cash failed, has somewhat

hampered the revenue in past years; but now--and for this the Maharaja

deserves great credit--Jodhpur has a large and genuine surplus, and a

very compact little scheme of railway extension. Before turning to a

consideration of the City of Jodhpur, hear a true story in connection

with the Hyderabad-Pachbadra project which those interested in the

scheme may lay to heart.

His State line, his “ownest own,” as has been said, very much delighted

the Maharaja who, in one or two points, is not unlike Sir Theodore Hope

of sainted memory. Pleased with the toy, he said effusively, in words

which may or may not have reached the ears of the Hyderabad-Pachbadra

people:--“This is a good business. If the Government will give me

independent jurisdiction, I’ll make and open the line straightaway from

Pachbadra to the end of my dominions, _i.e._, all but to Hyderabad.”

Then “up and spake an elder knight, sat at the King’s right knee,” who

knew something about the railway map of India, and the Controlling Power

of strategical lines:--“Maharaja Sahib--here is the Indus Valley State

and here is the Bombay-Baroda. Where would you be?” “By Jove,” quoth the

Maharaja, though he swore by quite another god: “I see!” and thus he

abandoned the idea of a Hyderabad line, and turned his attention to an

extension to Nagore, with a branch to the Makrana marble-quarries which

are close to the Sambhar salt lake near Jeypore. And, in the fulness of

time, that extension will be made and perhaps extended to Bahawalpur.

The Englishman came to Jodhpur at mid-day, in a hot, fierce sunshine

that struck back from the sands and the ledges of red-rock, as though it

were May instead of December. The line scorned such a thing as a

regular ordained terminus. The single track gradually melted away into

the sands. Close to the station was a grim stone dak-bungalow, and in

the verandah stood a brisk, bag-and-flask-begirdled individual, cracking

his joints with excess of irritation. He was also snorting like an

impatient horse.

_Nota Bene._--When one is on the road it is above all things necessary

to “pass the time o’day” to fellow-wanderers. Failure to comply with

this law implies that the offender is “too good for his company”; and

this, on the road, is the unpardonable sin. The Englishman “passed the

time o’day” in due and ample form. “Ha! Ha!” said the gentleman with the

bag. “Isn’t this a sweet place? There ain’t no ticca-gharries, and there

ain’t nothing to eat, if you haven’t brought your vittles, an’ they

charge you three-eight for a bottle of whisky. An’ Encore at that! Oh!

It’s a sweet place.” Here he skipped about the verandah and puffed. Then

turning upon the Englishman, he said fiercely:--“What have you come here

for?” Now this was rude, because the ordinary form of salutation on the

road is usually:--“And what are you for?” meaning, “what House do you

represent?” The Englishman answered dolefully that he was travelling for

pleasure, which simple explanation offended the little man with the

courier-bag. He snapped his joints more excruciatingly than ever:--“For

pleasure! My God! For pleasure! Come here an’ wait five weeks for your

money, an’ mark what I’m tellin’ you now, you don’t get it then! But

per’aps your ideas of pleasure is different from most peoples’. For

pleasure! Yah!” He skipped across the sand towards the station, for he

was going back with the down train, and vanished in a whirlwind of

luggage and the fluttering of female skirts: in Jodhpur women are

baggage-coolies. A level, drawling voice spoke from an inner

room:--“’E’s a bit upset. That’s what ’e is! I remember when I was at

Gworlior"--the rest of the story was lost, and the Englishman set to

work to discover the nakedness of the dak-bungalow. For reasons which do

not concern the public, it is made as bitterly uncomfortable as

possible. The food is infamous, and the charges seem to be wilfully

pitched about eighty per cent. above the tariff, so that some portion of

the bill, at least, may be paid without bloodshed, or the unseemly

defilement of walls with the contents of drinking-glasses. This is

short-sighted policy, and it would, perhaps, be better to lower the

prices and hide the tariff, and put a guard about the house to prevent

jackal-molested donkeys from stampeding into the verandahs. But these be

details. Jodhpur dak-bungalow is a merry, merry place, and any writer in

search of new ground to locate a madly improbable story in, could not do

better than study it diligently. In front lies sand, riddled with

innumerable ant-holes, and, beyond the sand, the red sandstone wall of

the city, and the Mahomedan burying-ground that fringes it. Fragments of

sandstone set on end mark the resting places of the faithful who are of

no great account here. Above everything, a mark for miles round, towers

the dun-red piles of the Fort which is also a Palace. This is set upon

sandstone rock whose sharper features have been worn smooth by the wash

of the windblown sand. It is as monstrous as anything in Dore’s

illustrations of the _Contes Drolatiques_ and, wherever it wanders, the

eye comes back at last to its fantastic bulk. There is no greenery on

the rock, nothing but fierce sunlight or black shadow. A line of red

hills forms the background of the city, and this is as bare as the

picked bones of camels that lie bleaching on the sand below.

Wherever the eye falls, it sees a camel or a string of camels--lean,

racer-built _sowarri_ camels, or heavy, black, shag-haired

trading-ships bent on their way to the Railway Station. Through the

night the air is alive with the bubbling and howling of the brutes, who

assuredly must suffer from nightmare. In the morning the chorus round

the station is deafening. A camel has as wide a range of speech as an

elephant. The Englishman found a little one, crooning happily to itself,

all alone on the sands. Its nose-string was smashed. Hence its joy. But

a big man left the station and beat it on the neck with a seven-foot

stick, and it rose up and sobbed.

Knowing what these camels meant, but trusting nevertheless that the road

would not be _very_ bad, the Englishman went into the city, left a

well-kunkered road, turned through a sand-worn, red sandstone gate, and

sunk ankle-deep in fine reddish white sand. This was the main

thoroughfare of the city. Two tame lynxes shared it with a donkey; and

the rest of the population seemed to have gone to bed. In the hot

weather, between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon all

Jodhpur stays at home for fear of death by sunstroke, and it is possible

that the habit extends far into what is officially called the “cold

weather”; or, perhaps, being brought up among sands, men do not care to

tramp them for pleasure. The city internally is a walled and secret

place; each courtyard being hidden from view by a red sandstone wall,

except in a few streets where the shops are poor and mean.

In an old house now used for the storing of tents, Akbar’s mother lay

two months, before the “Guardian of Mankind” was born, drawing breath

for her flight to Umarkot across the desert. Seeing this place, the

Englishman thought of many things not worth the putting down on paper,

and went on till the sand grew deeper and deeper, and a great camel,

heavily laden with stone, came round a corner and nearly stepped on him.

As the evening drew on, the city woke up, and the goats and the camels

and the kine came in by hundreds, and men said that wild pig, which are

strictly preserved by the Princes for their own sport, were in the habit

of wandering about the roads. Now if they do this in the capital, what

damage must they not do to the crops in the district? Men said that they

did a very great deal of damage, and it was hard to keep their noses out

of anything they took a fancy to. On the evening of the Englishman’s

visit, the Maharaja went out, as is his laudable custom, alone and

unattended, to a road actually _in_ the city along which one specially

big pig was in the habit of passing. His Highness got his game with a

single shot behind the shoulder, and in a few days it will be pickled

and sent off to the Maharana of Udaipur, as a love-gift, on account of

the latter’s investiture. There is great friendship between Jodhpur and

Udaipur, and the idea of one King going abroad to shoot game for another

has something very pretty and quaint in it.

Night fell and the Englishman became aware that the conservancy of

Jodhpur might be vastly improved. Strong stenches, say the doctors, are

of no importance; but there came upon every breath of heated air--and in

Jodhpur City the air is warm in mid-winter--the faint, sweet, sickly,

reek that one has always been taught to consider specially deadly. A few

months ago there was an impressive outbreak of cholera in Jodhpur, and

the Residency Doctor, who really hoped that the people would be brought

to see sense, did his best to bring forward a general cleansing-scheme.

But the city fathers would have none of it. Their fathers had been

trying to poison themselves in well-defined ways for an indefinite

number of years; and they were not going to have any of the Sahib’s

“sweeper nonsense.”

To clinch everything, one travelled member of the community rose in his

place and said:--“Why, I’ve been to Simla. Yes, to Simla! And even I

don’t want it!” This compliment should be engrossed in the archives of

the Simla Municipality. Sanitation on English lines is not yet

acceptable to Jodhpur.

When the black dusk had shut down, the Englishman climbed up a little

hill and saw the stars come out and shine over the desert. Very far

away, some camel-drivers had lighted a fire and were singing as they sat

by the side of their beasts. Sound travels as far over sand as over

water, and their voices came into the city wall and beat against it in

multiplied echoes.

Then he returned to the House of Strange Stories--the Dak-Bungalow--and

passed the time o’day to the genial, light-hearted bagman--a Cockney, in

whose heart there was no thought of India, though he had travelled for

years throughout the length and breadth of the Empire and over New Burma

as well. There was a fort in Jodhpur, but you see that was not in his

line of business exactly, and there were stables, but “you may take my

word for it, them who has much to do with horses is a bad lot. You get

hold of the Maharaja’s coachman and he’ll drive you all round the shop.

I’m only waiting here collecting money.” Jodhpur dak-bungalow seems to

be full of men “waiting here.” They lie in long chairs in the verandah

and tell each other interminable stories, or stare citywards and express

their opinion of some dilatory debtor in language punctuated by free

spitting. They are all waiting for something; and they vary the monotony

of a life they make wilfully dull beyond words, by waging war with the

dak-bungalow khansama. Then they return to their long chairs, or their

couches, and sleep. Some of them, in old days, used to wait as long as

six weeks--six weeks in May, when the sixty miles from Marwar Junction

to Jodhpur was covered in three days by slow-pacing bullock carts! Some

of them are bagmen, able to describe the demerits of every dak-bungalow

from the Peshin to Pagan, and southward to Hyderabad--men of substance

who have “The Trades” at their back. It is a terrible thing to be in

“The Trades,” that great Doomsday Book of Calcutta, in whose pages are

written the names of doubtful debtors. Let light-hearted purchasers take

note.

And the others, who wait and swear and spit and exchange anecdotes--what

are they? Bummers, land-sharks, skirmishers for their bread. It would be

cruel in a fellow-tramp to call them loafers. Their lien upon the State

may have its origin in horses, or anything else; for the State buys

anything vendible, from Abdul Raymon’s most promising importations

to--a patent, self-acting corkscrew. They are a mixed crew, but amusing

and full of strange stories of adventure by land and by sea. And their

ends are as curiously brutal as their lives. A wanderer was once swept

into the great, still backwater that divides the loaferdom of Upper

India--that is to say, Calcutta and Bombay--from the north-going current

of Madras, where Nym and Pistol are highly finished articles with

certificates. This backwater is a dangerous place to break down in, as

the men on the road know well. “You can run Rajputana in a pair o’ sack

breeches an’ an old hat, but go to Central Injia with pice,” says the

wisdom of the road. So the waif died in the bazaar, and the

Barrack-master Sahib gave orders for his burial. It might have been the

bazaar sergeant, or it might have been an hireling who was charged with

the disposal of the body. At any rate, it was an Irishman who said to

the Barrack-master Sahib:--“Fwhat about that loafer?” “Well, what’s the

matter?” “I’m considtherin whether I’m to mash in his thick head, or to

break his long legs. He won’t fit the storecoffin anyways.”

Here the story ends. It may be an old one; but it struck the Englishman

as being rather unsympathetic in its nature; and he has preserved it

for this reason. Were the Englishman a mere Secretary of State instead

of an enviable and unshackled vagabond, he would remodel that

Philanthropic Institution for Teaching Young Subalterns how to

Spell--variously called the Intelligence and the Political

Department--and giving each _omedwar_ the pair of sack breeches and old

hat, above prescribed, would send him out for a twelvemonth on the road.

Not that he might learn to swear Australian oaths (which are superior to

any ones in the market) or to drink bazaar-drinks (which are very bad

indeed), but in order that he might gain an insight into the tertiary

politics of States--things less imposing than succession-cases and less

wearisome than boundary disputes, but--here speaks Ferdinand Count

Fathom, in an Intermediate compartment, very drunk and very

happy--“Worth knowing a little--Oh no! Not at all.”

A small volume might be written of the ways and the tales of Indian

loafers of the more brilliant order--such Chevaliers of the Order of

Industry as would throw their glasses in your face did you call them

loafers. They are a genial, blasphemous, blustering crew, and

pre-eminent even in a land of liars.