[Picture: A dog boy] IN Bombay it is not enough to fit yourself with a
Boy: your dog requires a Boy too. I have always felt an interest in the
smart little race of Bombay dog-boys. As a corps, they go on with little
change from year to year, but individually they are of short duration,
and the question naturally arises, What becomes of them all when they
outgrow their dog-boyhood? From such observations as I have been able to
make, I believe the dog-boy is not a species by himself, but represents
the early, or larva, stage of several varieties of domestic servants.
The clean little man, in neat print jacket and red velveteen cap, is the
young of a butler; while another, whom nothing can induce to keep himself
clean, would probably, if you reared him, turn into a _ghorawalla_.
There are others, in appearance intermediate, who are the offspring of
_hamals_ and _mussals_. These at a later stage become _coolies_, going
to market in the morning, fetching ice and soda-water, and so on, until
they mature into _hamals_ and _mussals_ themselves. Like all larvæ,
dog-boys eat voraciously and grow rapidly. You engage a little fellow
about a cubit high, and for a time he does not seem to change at all;
then one morning you notice that his legs have come out half a yard or
more from his pantaloons, and soon your bright little page is a gawky,
long-limbed lout, who comes to ask for leave that he may go to his
country and get married. If you do not give it he will take it, and no
doubt you are well rid of him, for the intellect in these people ripens
about the age of fourteen or fifteen, and after that the faculty of
learning anything new stops, and general intelligence declines. At any
rate, when once your boy begins to grow long and weedy, his days as a
dog-boy are ended. He will pass through a chrysalis stage in his
country, or somewhere else, and after a time emerge in his mature form,
in which he will still remember you, and _salaam_ to you when he meets
you on the road. If he left your service in disgrace, he is so much the
more punctilious in observing this ceremony, which is not an expression
of gratitude, but merely an assertion of his right to public recognition
at your hands, as one who had the honour of eating your salt. I am
certain an Oriental _salaam_ is essentially a claim rather than a
tribute. For this reason your peons, as they stand in line to receive
you at your office door, are very careful not to _salaam_ all at once,
lest you might think one promiscuous recognition sufficient for all. The
havildar, or naik, as is his right, salutes first, and then the rest
follow with sufficient interval to allow you to recognise each one
separately. I have met some men with such lordly souls that they would
not condescend to acknowledge the salutations of menials; but you gain
nothing by this kind of pride in India. They only conclude that you are
not an _asl_, or born, _saheb_, and rejoice that at any rate you cannot
take away their right to do obeisance to you. And you cannot. Your very
_bhunghie_ does you a pompous salutation in public places, and you have
no redress.
The dog-boy’s primary duties are to feed, tend and wash his charge, and
to take it for a walk morning and evening; but he is active and very
acute, and many other duties fall naturally to him. It seems hard that
he should come under the yoke so early, but we must not approach such
subjects with Western ideas. The exuberant spirits of boyhood are not
indigenous to this country, and the dog-boy has none of them. He never
does mischief for mischief’s sake; he robs no bird’s nest; he feels no
impulse to trifle with the policeman. Marbles are his principal pastime.
He puts the thumb of his left hand to the ground and discharges his taw
from the point of his second finger, bending it back till it touches the
back of the hand and then letting it off like a steel spring. Then he
follows up on all fours, with the action of a monsoon frog in pursuit of
a fugitive ant. But liberty and the pride of an independent position
amply compensate any high-souled dog-boy for the loss of his few
amusements.
I have said that the dog-boy never does mischief for its own sake. He
would as soon do his duty for its own sake. The motive is not
sufficient. You shall not find him refusing to do any mischief which
tends to his own advantage. I grieve to say it, for I have leanings
towards the dog-boy, but there is in him a vein of unsophisticated
depravity, which issues from the rock of his nature like a clear spring
that no stirrings of conscience or shame have rendered turbid. His face,
it is simple and childlike, and he has the most innocent eye, but he
tells any lie which the occasion demands with a freedom from
embarrassment which at a later age will be impossible to him. He stands
his ground, too, under any fire of cross-examination. The rattan would
dislodge him, but unfortunately his guileless countenance too often
shields him from this searching and wholesome instrument. When he is
sent for a hack buggy and returns after half-an-hour, with a perplexed
face, saying that there is not one to be had anywhere, who would suspect
that he has been holding an auction at the nearest stand, dwelling on the
liberality and wealth of his master and the distance to which his
business that morning will take him, and that, when he found no one would
bid up to his reserve, he remained firm and came away. Perhaps I seem
hard on the dog-boy, but my experience has not been a happy one. My
first seemed to be an average specimen, moderately clean and
well-behaved; but he was not satisfied with his wages. He assured me
that they did not suffice to fill his stomach. I told him that I thought
it would be his father’s duty for some years yet to feed and clothe him,
but his young face grew very sad and he answered softly, “I have no
father.” So I took pity on him and raised his pay, at the same time
assuring him that, if he behaved himself, I would take care of him. His
principal duty was to take the faithful Hubshee for a walk morning and
evening, and when he returned he would tell me where he had gone and how
he had avoided consorting with other dog-boys and their dogs. When
matters had gone on in this satisfactory way for some time, I happened to
take an unusual walk one evening, and I came suddenly on a company of
very lively little boys engaged in a most exciting game. Their shouts
and laughter mingled with the doleful howls of a dozen dogs which were
closely chained in a long row to a railing, and among them I had no
difficulty in recognising my Hubshee. Suffice it to say that my dog-boy
returned next day to his father, who proved to be in service next door.
He was succeeded by a smart little fellow, well-dressed and scrupulously
clean, but quite above his profession. It seemed absurd to expect him to
wash a dog, so, on the demise of his grandmother, or some other suitable
occasion, he left me to find more congenial service elsewhere as a
dressing-boy. My next was a charity boy, the son of an ancient
_ghorawalla_. His father had been a faithful servant, and as regards
domestic discipline, no one could say he spared the rod and spoiled the
child. On the contrary, as Shelley, I think, expresses it,
“He spoilt the rod and did not spare the child.”
But if my last Boy had been above his work, this one proved to be below
it. You could not easily have disinfected any dog which he had been
allowed to handle. I tried to cure him, but nothing short of boiling in
dilute carbolic acid would have purified him, and even then the effect
would, I feel sure, have been only temporary. So he returned to his
stable litter and I engaged another. This was a sturdy little man, with
a fine, honest-looking face. He had a dash of Negro blood in him, and
wore a most picturesque head-dress. In fact I felt that, æsthetically,
he raised the tone of my house. He was hardworking, too, and would do
anything he was told, so that I seemed to have nothing to wish for now
but that he might not grow old too soon. But, alas! I started on an
excursion one night, leaving him in charge of my birds. He promised to
attend to them faithfully, and having seen me off, started on an
excursion of his own, from which he did not get back till three o’clock
next day. I arrived at the same moment and he saw me. Quick as thought
he raced upstairs, flung the windows open and began to pull the covers
off the bird-cages; but I came in before the operation could be finished.
In the interests of common morality I thought it best to eject him from
the premises before he had time to frame a lie. About a week after this
I received a petition, signed with his mark, recounting his faithful
services, expressing his surprise and regret at the sudden and unprovoked
manner in which I had dismissed him, and insinuating that some enemy or
rival had poisoned my benevolent mind against him. He concluded by
demanding satisfaction. I wonder what has become of him since.
I have said that there is a vein of depravity in the dog-boy, but there
must be a compensating vein of worth of some kind, an Ormuzd which in the
end often triumphs over Ahriman. The influences among which he developes
do little for him. At home he is certainly subject to a certain rugged
discipline; his mother throws stones at him when she is angry, and his
father, when he can catch him, gives him a cudgeling to be remembered.
But when he leaves the parental roof he passes from all this and is left
to himself. Some masters treat him in a parental spirit and chastise him
when he deserves it, and the Boy tyrannizes over him and twists his ear,
but on the whole he grows as a tree grows. And yet how often he matures
into a most respectable and trustworthy man!
[Picture: Dog-boys]