SIR PRATAP SINGH
"His Highness has sent a carriage for you." This was a two-horsed,
two-wheeled vehicle in which I was speedily whirled away from the
railway station of Idar Road, four hours' journey from Ahmadabad,
along a very rough road. The Highness in question was Sir Pratap
Singh, now the Maharajah of the little State of Idar.
The town of Idar itself was eighteen miles away, but close at hand
beyond yellow ruined walls I could see the city of Ahmednagar at the
palace of which Sir Pratap was in residence. Presently, leaving the
road, we rumbled and bumped and lurched over a tract of sand covered
with coarse, low bushes to the State guest-house which looked like a
very ordinary dak bungalow. It was built on a square plan with doors
in such positions as ensured a through draught. A large lizard
scampered over the wire of the outer gate as I walked in over the
matting of the verandah. Outer gates were placed on all four sides
to permit the four pairs of inner double doors to be left wide open.
"I shall inform the Resident of your honour's {310} arrival and he
will arrange for your honour to pay his respects to His Highness at
four o'clock." This fluent English proceeded from the man who had
"met" me at the railway station.
I walked into the central room of the house which had eight double
doors opening into it. All the walls and the ceilings were washed
over with very pale blue. Great bees were booming and buzzing in and
out over the bedsteads of which there was a large variety from the
native charpoy to an iron double four-poster with brass ornaments and
painted with flower garlands. In addition to the beds the furniture
consisted of square wooden cane-seated chairs of ugly pattern covered
with brown varnish--what is commonly known as a "nursery" table--with
turned and varnished legs and no cloth, and part of a dressing-table
by way of writing desk in one corner with pen, ink and paper.
In front of the bungalow, planted in the sand but quite out of the
perpendicular, two square-sectioned blue wooden posts supported
crookedly set lamp glasses in the blinding glare of noon sunlight.
There was no punkah in spite of the intense heat, but I counted no
less than nineteen large iron rings in the ceiling. If these were
not intended for punkahs perhaps they were to dissuade intending
suicides by the difficulty of choosing which one to hang by!
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The man who had driven me had disappeared with a promise that tiffin
would come immediately, and while I was noticing the above-mentioned
details I sat on one of the cane-seated chairs and Tambusami waited
with an eye on the outer sand. A long time seemed to have gone by
with no sound breaking the intense hush except the noise of the bees
when Tambusami said: "One basket coming I see: one man coming I see,"
and from a blue palace beyond the tawny sandstone walls over the sand
and out of the heat at last came--breakfast.
The one man carried a series of pans, fitted into one another like a
tall cylinder in a frame, as well as the basket, and was accompanied
by several little black Sambos carrying chatties of water on their
heads. And now there were placed on the table a tea-cup with a
hare-lip and the motto "Remember me," some marmalade in another
tea-cup with blue cornflowers on it, and in gold the words "Think of
me," and a third cup with the same motto containing some butter which
looked like thin melted white lard, but when the contents of the
cylinder of pans were put before me I forgot to notice what they were
in my eagerness to consume them.
When four o'clock came and no one had called for me I started out
alone with umbrella spread leaving Tambusami to watch our baggage at
the bungalow. The heat was intense as I ploughed {312} through the
sand and scrub towards the arch in the broken wall which extended for
a long distance on either side. It must at one time have been
magnificent, being built of very large blocks of stone cut and
squared with towers at intervals, and the gateway, with its deep but
simple Gothic arch, was an imposing structure with handsome square
pillars in the corners having brackets as in Jain work. As I passed
through this archway I saw about forty yards ahead of me a line of
houses, several storeys high, the lower part of which had evidently
been built of stones from the dismantled wall. They were roofed with
the half-tube tiles lipped over and under exactly like those of
houses in the Pyrenees, and as I entered a street I was reminded of
an old home of the former Dukes of Montmorency near Carcassonne by
the carved woodwork of a house front.
Asking my way--by what must have seemed to native ears uncouth sounds
and weird signs--I gradually reached what I supposed was the palace,
and approaching a kind of guard-room with a number of soldiers
lounging about, I asked to be directed to the Vakil. Another
building was pointed out to me a little below where I was standing
and thither I next turned my steps. It was a curious structure
without any pretence at design, an iron spiral outside staircase in
one portion and a long verandah in another upon a {313} raised
platform. I passed a few rose-bushes and walked up on to the
verandah and found a long series of doors, and between them on wall
and sideboards, rifles, polo-sticks, horse-trappings, bits, shields,
revolvers, field-glasses, and one much dented cricket bat.
I knocked at one door after another pausing at each in hope of some
response, and at the fifth door this was forthcoming and I found
myself quite suddenly in the presence of His Highness the Maharajah
Dhiraj Major-General Sir Pratap Singh.
Beyond the door was a vast apartment which seemed in semi-darkness as
I entered from the outer glare. A young native gentleman in riding
breeches and a khaki shirt came towards me and asked if I was the
gentleman who had arrived that morning. It appeared there had been a
misunderstanding about sending over for me, and I was at once led up
to a _charpoy_ with a white quilt on it upon which was reclining a
strong-looking little man with a grizzled bullet head, kindly brown
eyes and a grey moustache. He wore just a white cotton shirt and a
thin pair of riding-breeches and had his well-shaped feet bare.
Rising into a sitting posture, Sir Pratap--for it was he--shook
hands, and as soon as a chair had been brought for me we were
chatting comfortably. It seemed that he had had fever badly {314}
two days before through the sudden and untimely heat and was only
just recovering. Another native gentleman sitting at some distance
was Sir Pratap's doctor.
Close by stood a man swinging a large fan punkah rhythmically with
both hands, and outside the three window openings nearest to us
bheesties (water-carriers) kept constantly pouring water upon the
grass tatties or blinds.
His Highness spoke English well and was quick to understand and we
talked for more than an hour on many subjects. He said he had fought
plague successfully at Ahmednagar in what he believed was the only
practicable way--namely by building two small cities of detached
houses at some distance away and compensating the poorer people for
turning out of their old dwellings. In this way he had made a clean
sweep of the dirtier part of the town.
Sir Pratap expressed a great affection for our royal family and
reverence for the memory of Queen Victoria, whose portrait he showed
me with pride within two little folding doors of a shrine of
elaborately-worked metal about two feet high and one and a half feet
deep.
Spare and wiry in figure, simple and unaffected in dress, quick and
alert in manner, there seemed little that was Oriental in this man,
and in spite of the tatties and the fan very little suggestion of
luxury in his surroundings. He {315} said he had travelled a great
deal but liked his own part of India better than any other place in
the world.
"One difficult question for India," he said, "is the increasing
consumption of cows' flesh and the consequent recent large increase
in the slaughter of cattle. I do not believe it is good for our
people in this hot climate to take to the eating of flesh. It is
quite a different thing in Europe where the colder climate makes it
practically a necessity. Here the price is already three times what
it was a few years ago, which alone shows the diminution of cattle,
and their continued slaughter for an agricultural people must produce
harm. In any case we lose great numbers of cattle in our famine
times which are more frequent of late, and even this year, though we
shall not lose human lives through the famine, numbers of cattle must
starve. Also I do not think our grain should be sent out of the
country. This is no doubt good for the traders, but they are few and
the continued export of grain is disastrous for the agricultural
population."
Two trays of tea were brought in, one for each of us, and we poured
out for each other, His Highness taking saccharine tabloids instead
of sugar, and the motto "forget-me-not" upon my tea-cup suggested
near relations to my breakfast furniture.
"The chief trouble of all in India," continued {316} Sir Pratap, "is
that the Mussulman will not be friends with the Hindoo. The
Mussulman says the Hindoo is a bad man, and the Hindoo says the
Mussulman is a bad man, and these, together with people in your
English Parliament who call out and make a great noise, are all bad
for India."
It was about five years since Sir Pratap moved to Ahmednagar from
Idar, eighteen miles away, and his house is practically in a jungle
as he delights it to be. Both carriages and motorcars he dislikes as
enervating things, and roads he is not fond of, preferring his Arabs
and Walers and a life in rough country half spent in the saddle.
I was introduced to His Highness's son, Dolat Singh, and also to his
grandson, Himat Singh, a healthy-looking lad in shirt and
riding-breeches, with a pearl in each ear, and the next day was
granted a sitting by Sir Pratap for a painting, when he appeared in
military uniform, with top boots and a grand array of stars and
medals and a turban with a beautiful aigrette. He sat very
patiently, sought in every way to make my task as easy as possible,
and behaved throughout with a charming courtesy.
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