[Picture: Hurree] A WARM altercation is going on in the verandah. A
little human animal, with a very large red turban on his little head,
stuck full of pins and threaded needles, stands on all fours over a
garment of an unmentionable kind, which I recognise as belonging to me,
and a piece of cloth lies before him, out of which he has cut a figure
resembling the said garment. The scissors with which the operation was
performed are still lying open upon the ground before him. His head is
thrown so far back that the great turban rests between his shoulder
blades, his brow is corrugated with perplexity, his mouth a little open,
as if his lower jaw could not quite follow the rest of his upturned face.
Hurree cannot know much about toothache. What would I not give for that
set of incisors, regular as the teeth of a saw, and all as red as a fresh
brick! I suppose the current quid of _pan suparee_ is temporarily stowed
away under that swelling in the left cheek, where the fierce black patch
of whisker grows. The survival of a partial cheek pouch in some branches
of the human race is a point that escaped Darwin. But I am digressing
into reflections. To return: a lady is standing over the quadruped and
evidently expressing serious displeasure in some form of that domestic
language which we call Hindoostanee, with variations. The charge she
lays against him seems to be that he has, in disregard of explicit
instructions and defiance of common sense, made a blunder to which her
whole past experience in India furnishes no parallel, and which has
resulted in the total destruction of a whole piece of costly material,
and the wreck of a garment for want of which the _saheb_ (that is myself)
will be put to a degree of inconvenience which cannot be estimated in
rupees, and will most certainly be provoked to an outbreak of indignation
too terrible to be described. So little do we know ourselves! I had no
idea I harboured such a temper. However, Hurree does not tremble, but
pleads that it was necessary to make the garment “leetle silope,” and
though he admits that the slope is too great, he thinks the mistake can
be remedied, and is pulling the cloth to see if it will not stretch to
the required shape. Failing this, he has other remedies of a technical
kind to suggest. I do not understand these matters, and cannot interpret
his argument, but he puts his fingers on the floor and flings himself
lightly to the other side of the cloth, to point out where he proposes to
have a “fals hame,” or some other device. She rejects the proposal with
scorn, and again impresses him with the consequences of his wicked
blunder. At last I am glad to see that a compromise is effected, and the
little man settles himself in the middle of a small carpet and locks his
legs together so that his shins form an X and he sits on his feet. In
this position he will ply his needle for the rest of the day at a rate
inversely proportional to the distance of his mistress. When she retires
for her afternoon _siesta_ the needle will nap too. Then he will take
out a little _Vade Mecum_, which is never absent from his waistband, and
unroll it. It is many-coloured and contains little pockets, one for
fragments of the spicy areca, one for the small tin box which contains
fresh lime, one for cloves, one for cardamoms, and so on. He will put a
little of this and a little of that into his palm, then roll them all up
in a betel leaf out of another pocket, and push the parcel into his
mouth. Thus refreshed he will go to work again, not, however, upon the
garment to which he is now devoted, but upon a roll of coloured stuffs on
which he is at the present moment sitting. You see, times are hard and
Hurree has a large family, so he is obliged to eke out his salary by
contract work for the _mussaul_. His work suffers from other
interruptions. When the carriage of a visitor is heard, he has to awaken
the _chupprassee_ on duty at the door, and on his own account he goes out
to drink water at least as often as the _chupprassee_ himself. As the
day draws near its close, he watches the shadow like a hireling, and when
it touches the foot of the long arm chair, he springs to his feet, rolls
up his rags and threads into a bundle, and trips gaily out. As he does
so you will observe that his legs are bandy, the knees refusing to
approach each other. This is the result of the position in which he
spends his days.
[Picture: A “leelte silope”]
This is how we clothe ourselves in our Indian empire. Our smooth and
comfortable _khakee_ suits, our ample _pyjamas_, the cool white jackets
in which we dine, in this way are they brought about. But you must not
allow yourself to think of the _Dirzee_ simply as an agency for producing
clothes. Life is not made up of such simplicities. The _raison d’être_
of that mango tree lies without doubt in the chalice of nectar, called
“mango fool,” with which Domingo appeases me when he guesses that his
enormities have gone beyond the limits even of my endurance; but I see
that thirty-seven candidates for the place of the _chupprassee_ who went
on leave yesterday have encamped under its shade, that they may watch for
my face in the verandah. The trespassing goat also has browsed on its
leaves, and from the shelter of its branches the Magpie Robin pours that
stream of song which, just before the dawning of the day, in the cloudy
border land between sleeping and waking flows over my soul. But I shall
never really know the place that tree has filled in my life, unless
someone cuts it down and gives me a full view, from my easy chair, of the
dirty brick-burners’ hut, with the poisonous film of blue smoke playing
over the kiln, and the family of pariah puppies below, sporting with the
sun-dried remains of a fowl, which deceased in my yard and was purloined
by their gaunt mother. Now let imagination blot out the _Dirzee_.
Remove him from the verandah. Take up his carpet and sweep away the
litter. What a strange void there is in the place! Eliminate him from a
lady’s day. Let nine o’clock strike, but bring no stealthy footstep to
the door, no muffled voice making respectful application for his _Kam_.
From nine to ten breakfast will fill the breach, and you may allow
another hour for the butler’s account and the godown; but there is still
a yawning chasm of at least two hours between eleven and tiffin. I
cannot bridge it. Imagination strikes work. The joyful sound of the
Borah’s voice brings promise of relief; but no! for what interest can
there be in the Borah if you have no _Dirzee_? In the spirit of fair
play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On
the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is
“rank bosh.” She declares that the _Dirzee_ is the bane of her life,
that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for
five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white
thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening
for the last month he has watched her getting ready for to drive, and
just as her foot was on the carriage step, has reminded her, with a
cough, that his work was finished and he had nothing to do. If she could
only do without him, she would send him about his business and be the
happiest woman in the world, for she could devote the whole day to music
and painting and the improvement of her mind. Of course I assent. That
is a very commendable way of thinking about the matter. But, as an
amateur philosopher, I warn you never to let yourself get under practical
bondage to such notions. I tell you when you betake yourself to music or
painting, carpentry or gardening, as a means of getting through the day,
you are sapping your mental constitution and shortening your life: unless
you are sustained by more than ordinary littleness of mind you will never
see threescore and ten. All these things are good in proportion as you
have difficulty in finding time for them. When you have to rise early in
the morning and work hard to make a little leisure for your favourite
hobby, then you are getting its blessing. Now, the _Dirzee_ is not a
means of killing time. On the contrary, I see that he compels his
mistress to take thought how she may save time alive, if she wishes to
get anything done. He hurries the day along and scatters its hours, so
that _ennui_ cannot find an empty minute to lurk in. I do not deny that
he is the occasion of a few provocations, and the simile of the fly is
just; but are not provocations an element in the interest of every
pursuit, the pepper which flavours all pleasant occupation? I collect
butterflies, and my friends think I am a man to be envied because I have
such a taste. Do they suppose a butterfly catcher has no provocations?
Was it seventeen or seventy times (I forget) in one page that I laid down
my pen, put off my spectacles and caught up my net to rush after that
brute of a _Papilio polymnestor_, who just came to the _duranta_ flowers
to flout me and skip over the wall into the next garden? And does anyone
but a butterfly hunter know how it feels to open your cabinet drawers
just a few hours after the ants have got the news that the camphor is
done? Does anyone but an entomologist know the grub of _Dermestes
intolerabilis_? Why should a collection of butterflies be called an
object of perennial interest and delight, and the _Dirzee_ an unmitigated
provocation? They are both of one family. Nothing is unmitigated in
this world.
Maria Graham tells us that in her time “the _Dirdjees_, or tailors, in
Bombay” were “Hindoos of respectable caste,” but in these days the
Goanese, who has not capacity to be a butler or cook, becomes a _Dirzee_,
and in Bombay I have seen Bunniah _Dirzees_. Hurree can hold his own
against these, I doubt not, but the advancing tide of civilization is
surely crumbling down his foundations. It is not only the “Europe” shop
in Bombay that takes the bread out of his month, but in the smallest and
most remote stations, Narayen, “Tailor, Outfitter, Milliner, and
Dressmaker,” hangs out his sign-board, and under it pale, consumptive
youths of the Shimpee caste bend over their work by lamplight, and sing
the song of the shirt to the whirr-rr-rr of sewing machines. And as
Hurree goes by on his way home, his prophetic soul tells him that his son
will not live the happy and independent life which has fallen to his lot.
But he has a bulwark still in the _dhobie_, for the “Tailor and
Outfitter” will not repair frayed cuffs, and the sewing machine cannot
put on buttons. And Hurree is not ungrateful, for I observe that, when
the _dhobie_ delivers up your clothes in a state which requires the
_Dirzee_, the _Dirzee_ always gives them back in a condition which
demands the _dhobie_.
[Picture: The Dirzee]