[Picture: Group of people]
NOW it is time to close our inspection and order a march past. I think I
have marshalled the whole force. It may seem a small band to you, if you
have lived in imperial Bengal, for we of Bombay do not generally keep a
special attendant to fill and light our pipe, and our _tatoo_ does not
require a man to cut its grass. Some of us even put on our own clothes.
In short, we have not carried the art of living to such oriental
perfection as prevails on the other side of India, and a man of simple
tastes will find my company of fourteen a sufficient staff. There they
are, _Sub hazir hai_, “they are all present,” the butler says, except one
humble, but necessary officer, who does not like to appear. He is known
familiarly by many names. You may call him Plantagenet, for his emblem
is the lowly broom; but since his modesty keeps him in the background, we
will leave him there. The rest are before you, the faithful corps with
whose help we transact our exile life. You may look at them from many
standpoints, and how much depends on which you take! I suspect the
commonest with us masters is that which regards boy, butler, _mussaul_,
cook, as just so many synonyms for channels by which the hard-earned
rupee, which is our life-blood, flows from us continually. This view
puts enmity between us and them, between our interests and theirs. It
does not come into our minds, that when we submit our claim for an extra
allowance of Rs. 200 under section 1735 of the Code, and the _mussaul_
gets the butler to prefer a humble request for an increase of one rupee a
month to his slender _puggar_, we and the _mussaul_ are made kin by that
one touch of nature. We spurn the request and urge the claim, with equal
wonderment at the effrontery of _mussauls_ and the meanness of
Governments. And “the angels weep.”
Shift your standpoint, and in each cringing menial you will see a black
token of that Asiatic metamorphosis through which we all have passed.
What a picture! Look at yourself as you stand there in purple sublimity,
trailing clouds of darkness from the middle ages whence you come,
planting your imperial foot on all the manly traditions of your own free
country, and pleased with the grovelling adulations of your trembling
serfs. And now it is not the angels who weep, but the Baboo of Bengal.
His pale and earnest brow is furrowed with despair as he turns from you.
For whither shall he turn? When his bosom palpitates with the intense
joy of newborn aspirations for liberty, to whom shall he go if the
Briton, the champion of the world’s freedom, has drunk of Comus’s cup and
become an oriental satrap? Ah! there is still hope. The “large heart of
England” beats still for him. In the land of John Hampden and Labouchere
there are thousands yet untainted by the plague, who keep no servant, who
will listen to the Baboo while he tells them about you, and perhaps
return him to parliament.
There is a third view of the case, fraught with much content to those who
can take it, and, happily, it is the only view possible to the primitive
intelligences over which we exercise domestic lordship. In this view
they are, indeed, as we regard them—so many channels by which the rupee
may flow from us; but what are we, if not great reservoirs, built to feed
those very channels? And so, with that “sweet reasonableness” which is
so pleasant a feature of the Hindoo mind, your boy or butler, being the
main conduit, sets himself to estimate the capacity of the reservoir,
that he may adapt the gauge of each pipe and regulate the flow. And, as
the reservoir grows greater, as the assistant becomes a collector and the
collector a commissioner, the pipes are extended and enlarged, and all
rejoice together. The moral beauty of this view of the situation grows
upon you as you accustom your mind to dwell on it. Is it not pleasant to
think of yourself as a beneficent irrigation work, watering a wide
expanse of green pasture and smiling corn, or as a well in a happy
garden, diffusing life and bloom? Look at the syce’s children. Phil
Robinson says there are nine of them, all about the same age and dressed
in the same nakedness. As they squat together there, indulging “the
first and purest of our instincts” in the mud or dust of the narrow back
road, reflect that their tender roots are nourished by a thin rivulet of
rupees which flows from you. If you dried up, they would droop and
perhaps die. The butler has a bright little boy, who goes to school
every day in a red velvet cap and print jacket, with a small slate in his
hand, and hopes one day to climb higher in the word than his father. His
tendrils are wrapped about your salary. Nay, you may widen the range of
your thoughts: the old hut in the environs of Surat, with its patch of
field and the giant gourds, acknowledges you, and a small stream,
diverted from one of the channels which you supply, is filling a deep
cistern in one of the back streets of Goa. Pardon me if I think that the
untutored Indian’s thought is better even for us than any which we have
framed for ourselves. Imagine yourself as a sportsman, spear in hand,
pursuing the wild V.C. through fire and water, or patiently stalking the
wary K.C.B., or laying snares for the gentle C.I.E.; or else as a humble
industrious dormouse lining a warm nest for the winter of your life in
Bath or Tunbridge Wells; or as a gay butterfly flitting from flower to
flower while the sunshine of your brief day may last; or simply as a
prisoner toiling at the treadmill because you must: the well in the
garden is a pleasanter conception than all these and wholesomer. Foster
it while you may. Now that India has wakened up and begun to spin after
the rest of the great world down the ringing grooves of change, these
tints of dawn will soon fade away, and in the light of noon the
instructed Aryan will learn to see and deplore the monstrous inequalities
in the distribution of wealth. He will come to understand the essential
equality of all men, and the real nature of the contract which subsists
between master and servant. Yes, I am afraid the day is fast drawing
near when you will no longer venture to cut the _hamal’s_ pay for letting
mosquitoes into your bed curtains and he will no longer join his palms
and call you his father and mother for doing so. What a splendid
capacity for obedience there is in this ancient people! And our
relations with them have certainly taught us again how to govern, which
is one of the forgotten arts in the West. Where in the world to-day is
there a land so governed as this Indian Empire?
And now each man wants his “character” before he makes his last _salaam_,
and what shall I say? “The bearer — has been in my service since — and I
have always found him — ” So far good; but what next? Honest?—Yes.
Willing?—Certainly. Careful?—Very. Hardworking?—Well, I have often told
him that he was a lazy scoundrel, and that he might easily take a lesson
in activity from the _bheestee’s_ bullock, and perhaps I spoke the truth.
But, after all, he gets up in the morning an hour before me, and eats his
dinner after I have retired for the night. He gets no Saturday
half-holiday, and my Sabbath is to him as the other days of the week.
And so the hard things I have said of him and to him are forgotten, and
charity triumphs at the last. And when my furlough is over and I return
to these shores, the whole troop will be at the Apollo Bunder, waiting to
welcome back their old master and eat his salt again.
[Picture: A cow]
POSTSCRIPT.
THE GOWLEE, OR DOODWALLAH.
Gopal, the _Gowlee_, haunts me in my dreams, complaining that he has been
left out in the cold. I had classed him with the _borah_ and the baker,
as outsiders with whom I had merely business relations; but Gopal seems
to urge that he is not on the same footing with these. How can he be
compared to a mercenary _borah_? Has he not ministered to my wants,
morning and evening, in wet weather and dry? Have not my children grown
up on his milk? He will not deny that they have eaten the baker’s bread
too; but who is the baker? Does he come into the _saheb’s_ presence in
person as Gopal does? No. He sits in his shop and sends a servant. Not
so Gopal. He is one of my children, and I am his father and mother. And
I am forced to admit there is some truth in this view of the case. The
ill-favoured man who haunts my house of a morning, with a large basket of
loaves poised slantwise on his head, and converses in a strange nasal
brogue with the cook, is not Mr. de Souza, “baker of superior first and
second sort bread, and manufacturer of every kind of biscuit, cake,” &c.,
but a mere underling. My intercourse with the head of the firm is
confined to the first day of each month, when he waits on me in person,
dressed in a smart black jacket, and presents his bill. Also on Good
Friday he sends me a cake and his compliments, but the former, if it is
not intercepted by the butler and applied to his own uses, is generally
too unctuous for my taste. Very different are our relations with the
_Doodwallah_. Our _chota hazree_ waits for him in the morning; our
afternoon tea cannot proceed till he comes; the baby cries if the
_Doodwallah_ is late. And even if you are one of the few who strike for
independence and keep their own cow, I still counsel you to maintain
amicable relations with the _Doodwallah_. One day the cow will kick and
refuse to be milked, and the butler will come to you with a troubled
countenance. It is a grave case and demands professional skill. The
_Doodwallah_ must be sent for to milk the cow. In many other ways, too,
we are made to feel our dependence on him. I believe we rarely die of
cholera, or typhoid fever, without his unobtrusive assistance. And all
his services are performed in person, not through any underling. That
stately man who walks up the garden path morning and evening, erect as a
betel-nut palm, with a tiara of graduated milk-pots on his head, and
driving a snorting buffalo before him, is Gopal himself. Scarcely any
other figure in the compound impresses me in the same way as his. It is
altogether Eastern in its simple dignity, and symbolically it is
eloquent. The buffalo represents absolute milk and the lessening pyramid
of brass _lotas_, from the great two-gallon vessel at the base to the
¼-seer measure at the top, stand for successive degrees of dilution with
that pure element which runs in the roadside ditches after rain. Thus
his insignia interpret themselves to me. Gopal does not acknowledge my
heraldry, but explains that the lowest _lota_ contains butter milk—that
is to say, milk for making butter. The second contains milk which is
excellent for drinking, but will not yield butter; the third a cheaper
quality of milk for puddings, and so on. If you are an anxious mother,
or a fastidious bachelor, and none of these will please you, then he
brings the buffalo to the door and milks it in your presence. I think
the truth which underlies the two ways of putting the thing is the same:
Gopal and I differ in form of words only. However that may be, practice
is more than theory, and I stipulate for milk for all purposes from the
lowest _lota_—that is, milk which is warranted to yield butter. If it
will not stand that test, I reject it. Gopal wonders at my extravagance,
but consents. The milk is good and the butter from it plentiful. But as
time goes on the latter declines both in quantity and quality, so
gradually that suspicion is scarcely awakened. When at last you summon
the butler to a consultation, he suggests that the weather has been too
hot for successful butter making, or too cold. If these reasons do not
satisfy you, he has others; if they fail, he gives his verdict against
the _Doodwallah_. Next morning Gopal is called to superintend the making
of the butter and convicted, convicted but not abashed. He expresses the
greatest regret, but blames the buffalo; its calf is too old. To-morrow
you shall have the produce of another buffalo. So next day you have the
satisfaction of seeing a fine healthy pat of butter swimming in the
butter dish, carved and curled with all the butler’s art, like a
full-blown dahlia. But the milk in your tea does not improve, for Gopal,
after ascertaining how much milk you set aside for butter every day,
finds that the new buffalo yields only that quantity, and so what you
require for other purposes comes from another source. The butler forgot
to tell you this. What bond is there between him and honest Gopal? I
cannot tell. Many are the mysteries of housekeeping in India, and
puzzling its problems. If you could behead your butler when anything
went wrong, I have very little doubt everything would go right, but the
complicated methods of modern justice are no match for the subtleties of
Indian petty wickedness. And yet under this crust of cunning there is a
vein of simple stupidity which constantly crops up where you least expect
it. I remember a gentleman, a bachelor, who set before himself a very
high standard. He would be strictly just and justly strict. He
suspected that his milk was watered, but his faithful boy protested that
this could not be, as the milking was begun and finished in his presence.
So the master provided himself with a lactometer, and the suspicion
became certainty. Summoning his boy into his presence, he explained to
him that that little instrument, which he saw floating in the so-called
milk before him, could neither lie nor be deceived. “It declares,” he
added sternly, “that there is twenty-five per cent. of water in this
milk.” “Your lordship speaks the truth,” answered the faithful man, “but
how could I tell a lie? The milk was drawn in my presence.” “Do you
mean to say you were there the whole time the animal was being milked?”
“The whole time, your lordship. Would I give those rogues the chance of
watering the _saheb’s_ milk?” The master thought for a moment, and asked
again, “Are you sure there was no water in the pail before the milking
began?—these people are very cunning.” “They are as cunning as
_sheitan_, your lordship, but I made the man turn the pail upside down
and shake it.” Again the master turned the matter over in his just mind,
and it occurred to him that the lactometer was of English manufacture and
might be puzzled by the milk of the buffalo. “Is this cow’s milk, or
buffalo’s?” he asked. The boy was beginning to feel his position
uncomfortable and caught at this chance of escape. “Ah! that I cannot
tell. It may be buffalo’s milk.” _Tableau_.
[Picture: The Doodwallahs—Milkmen]
I have spoken of having butter made in the house, but Gopal carries on
all departments of a dairyman’s business, and you may buy butter of him
at two annas a “cope.” Let philologists settle the derivation of the
word. The “cope” is a measure like a small tea-cup, and when Gopal has
filled it, he presses the butter well down with his hand, so that a man
skilled in palmistry may read the honest milkman’s fortune off any cope
of his butter. How he makes it, or of what materials, I dare not say.
Many flavours mingle in it, some familiar enough, some unknown to me.
Its texture varies too. Sometimes it is pasty, sometimes semi-fluid,
sometimes sticky, following the knife. In colour it is bluish-white,
unless dyed. All things considered, I refuse Gopal’s butter, and have
mine made at home. The process is very simple, and no churn is needed.
Every morning the milk for next day’s butter is put into a large flat
dish, to stand for twenty-four hours, at the end of which time, if the
dish is as dirty as it should be, the milk has curdled. Then, with a tin
spoon, Mukkun skims off the cream and puts it into a large pickle bottle,
and squatting on the ground, _more suo_, bumps the bottle upon a pad
until the butter is made. The artistic work of preparing it for
presentation remains. First it is dyed yellow with a certain seed, that
it may please the _saheb’s_ taste, for buffalo butter is quite white, and
you know it is an axiom in India that cow’s milk does not yield butter.
Then Mukkun takes a little bamboo instrument and patiently works the
butter into a “flower” and sends it to breakfast floating in cold water.
Gopal is a man of substance, owning many buffaloes and immensely fat
Guzerat cows, with prodigious humps and large pendent ears. His family,
having been connected for many generations with the sacred animal, he
enjoys a certain consciousness of moral respectability, like a man whose
uncles are deans or canons. In my mind, he is always associated rather
with his buffaloes, those great, unwieldy, hairless, slate-coloured
docile, intelligent antediluvians.
[Picture: Home butter making]