The Tropical Day.
There is a southern proverb that, between the hours of two and four in
the afternoon, only Englishmen and dogs are to be found abroad; and
there is doubtless a good deal of truth in this as regards our
countrymen, though the _dictum_ is perhaps rather hard on the dog.
Whether this impeachment be libellous or not, it is undoubtedly the
universal custom of all races inhabiting sunny lands to devote these
hours to rest, and it is hardly likely that the visitor from northern
Europe is wise in refusing to accommodate himself to new conditions.
From “ten to four” may suit the business conditions of the City of
London excellently, but it does not follow this is equally adapted to
Calcutta, and the attempt to do so doubles the strain on nerve and
constitution. Apart from this, work done under such trying conditions
can never be of the same quality as that which would be accomplished at
more suitable hours. Even in busy modern Rome, which is a good deal to
the northward of any portion of India, it is quite common for commercial
establishments to close during these hours; and it is absurd to reply
that this is a mere evidence of sloth and want of business energy, as in
spite of this interval of rest, the shops open so much earlier and close
so much later that the total of working hours is greater than it is in
London. I believe, then, that English folks settled in the Tropics would
be wise to adopt an arrangement of the working hours which is the
outcome of centuries of experience of life under a vertical sun; and
rest when not only our fellow-men, but all animated nature seeks repose;
for in those hours, beside a few vagabond crows and those objectionable
insects, the flies, a sign of life is hardly to be found abroad to
disturb the stillness of the tropical noon.
Unless rest be taken in the afternoon the tropical resident is apt to
suffer from want of sleep, for even if he goes to bed at ten o’clock he
must needs be astir at five a.m., as exercise can only be comfortably
taken in the very early morning and in the dusk of the evening, and
seven hours’ sleep, even assuming it to be sound and restful, is quite
an inadequate allowance under such trying conditions. Too often however,
the night’s sleep is neither sound nor refreshing, and much of the time
is passed in rolling from side to side in the vain effort to find some
portion of one’s anatomy which the pins and needles of “prickly heat”
will cease to trouble. For certain kinds of work, such as travelling, it
is indeed necessary to “turn the night into day,” and get through the
business during the hours of darkness; for neither men nor horses can
perform any work involving muscular exertion, once the sun is well above
the horizon, without rapid exhaustion.
It is usually the custom to commence the day with a very light meal,
consisting of a cup of tea or coffee and a scrap of toast, which is
usually brought to the bedside; but, if one’s work is of a character to
keep one away from home for the greater part of the morning, it is
better to supplement this with something more substantial, such as an
egg, and to eat this after dressing, instead of before. Those whose work
takes them into the open had best go straight to it, and trust for
morning exercise to the riding and walking that are involved in the
superintendence of the work under their charge; but those whose
occupations are of a sedentary character, will come to them all the
fresher for half an hour’s canter, or a spin on the ever useful “bike.”
Exercise at this time of the day should never, however, be carried to
the extent of producing fatigue, or the quality of the work done after
it will be sure to suffer.
At one time it was a very common custom, on coming in from the morning
ride, to have a plunge in the swimming bath, and the writer has pleasant
memories of the _al fresco_ meal of fruit and hot tea beside the big
station bath, in company with most of the assembled male members of the
post. A very pleasant custom it undoubtedly was, but I suspect we did
ourselves more harm than good, for the first feeling of freshness was
very apt to be succeeded by one of increased fatigue; and I believe this
is generally recognised in India; for the fine old swimming baths are
everywhere going to ruin from disuse, and this would hardly be the case
if they were found as beneficial as they undoubtedly are pleasant. If a
plunge bath be taken at all, the best time of the day is probably after
the evening game of racquets or tennis--not immediately, of course, but
after having given oneself time to cool down somewhat.
If practicable, the backbone of the day’s work should be broken by noon,
and this is the time adopted by probably the majority for a meal, which
is generally, but rather inappropriately, called breakfast; after which
it is a very comforting and, the writer believes, healthy custom to make
up for the short, and perhaps disturbed night, by what sailors call a
“dog’s snooze”[4] of a couple of hours, after which and a bath, a couple
of hours more work can be got in before the sun is low enough to admit
of sallying forth, on exercise and recreation bent. After this perhaps
another bath, dinner, and bed.
[4] The “dog watches” at sea last two hours.
This programme, it will be observed, admits of an eight hours’ working
day, and if anyone is asked to work more than this in a hot climate, the
most appropriate advice that can be given them, of course strictly from
the point of view of hygiene, is--to strike. This arrangement of meal
times is of course very much that obtaining on the Continent, and on
this account many find it difficult to accustom themselves to it, and
retain the nine o’clock English breakfast and early afternoon luncheon,
but this breaks up the morning’s work awkwardly, and makes the number of
substantial meals too large to suit most people under the altered
conditions of life. Comparatively few people find it advisable to
persevere in the use of the cold bath in hot climates, for, strange as
it may appear, but few people find it “agree” with them as well as is
commonly the case in Europe. This is especially so in the case of those
who have suffered much from malarial fever, as most residents of any
standing have; for in such persons any sudden shock is apt to give an
opportunity to the germs of the disease lying latent in the system, and
so to bring about a relapse of fever. Personal experience can of course
alone serve as a guide in such a matter, but those who have recently
suffered from a malarious attack will do well to be cautious.
With regard to the question of light and ventilation of the house; in
places on the coast, where really excessive heat is rarely experienced,
all that is necessary is to get as much air as possible without
admitting the direct rays of the sun. Inland, however, where the
thermometer may stand in or above the nineties for months together, a
certain amount of management is required to keep the heat inside the
house down as much as possible. To effect this, it is above all
essential that every door and opening should be thrown open at night so
that the cooler air may get the best possible chance to reduce the
temperature of the heated walls. Unfortunately, owing to the uniform
peccability of human nature, it is not always practicable to do this, if
one wishes to retain one’s ownership of movable property; as in most
parts of the world, it is scarcely possible to keep all doors and
windows open unless they are protected with bars, a precaution which
lends a very forbidding and prison-like aspect to a house. Fortunately,
as a rule the native burglar is not a very desperate character; and
prefers to work by stealth to attempting to get through any obstacle
that might make a noise in the opening. But for this, and the fact that
a certain awe usually attaches to the person of an European, robberies
could hardly fail to be much more common than they are, for as a rule
the bolts and bars of a tropical villa are contrived with a child-like
simplicity, which would raise a smile on the face of Mr. William Sykes
and his pals.
Here again is another direction in which the adoption of the system of
metallic gauze protection against mosquitoes will tend to make tropical
life more tolerable; for the stuff is much stronger than it looks, and
would form a quite adequate protection against ordinary thieves; besides
which, the gauze, for those troubled with nerves, might be easily
strengthened by supplementing it with a layer of the strong wire netting
used for fowl runs, &c., without making the place look like a jail, or
appreciably diminishing the freedom of ventilation. It would be easy,
too, by attaching to some part of the frames, inaccessible from the
outside, bells hung on springs such as used to be used in houses before
the adoption of the electric mechanism, to render the frames a very
difficult obstacle to open without rousing the inmates, even for
light-fingered gentry much more skilful than those with whom one has
usually to deal. An obstruction that will keep out a mosquito may easily
be modified to exclude men, and only those who have passed a hot weather
in towns where it is dangerous to sleep with open doors, can appreciate
what a benefit it would be to be able to dispense with the use of solid
doors and sashes. Strengthened with wire netting, the gauze would form a
far more formidable obstacle than any ordinary window, for a little
reflection will convince anyone that even the gauze alone would be far
more difficult to dispose of than the simple panes of thin glass on
which we have been accustomed to rely. Usually the house may be kept
open with advantage until eight or nine in the morning; but after this
the thermometer begins to rise rapidly, and it becomes necessary to
close up everything, while in very extreme climates it may be desirable
to supplement the doors by the addition of thick, wadded curtains, but
this should never be carried to the extent of making the rooms difficult
to see in, for a fair amount of light is absolutely essential to health.
Besides this various other expedients may be adopted, a very useful one
being the sprinkling of the verandahs with a watering can as soon as the
heat of the day is over, a process which may be very advantageously
extended to the roof, where this is of the terraced form, always
assuming that cheap labour is available. The coolness produced by the
evaporation of water is also utilised by means of “tatties,” as well as
in a machine known as the thermantidote.
Tatties are thick, loosely-woven mats, made by binding a thatch formed
of short lengths of a scented grass (known as _khaskhas_) to a
frame-work of bamboo, which are constructed to fit the frames of the
windward doors and windows, and are kept constantly wet by a man, who
goes from one to the other throwing water on them. Their efficiency
depends entirely on the amount of wind, and to maintain a good current
it is of course necessary that one or more of the leeward doors should
be also kept open, a fact of which it is often difficult to convince the
ladies, who, in their intense eagerness to shut out the heat at all
costs, not unfrequently succeed in shutting it in instead. Given a
fairly good breeze, and a waterman who does his work well, it is
possible to produce a very marked amelioration of the temperature; and
the free passage of air through the room goes far to neutralise the
dangers of dampness. Of course neither these appliances, nor the
thermantidote, can act except in dry heat, so that their usefulness is
quite confined to the dry months of inland climates.
The thermantidote, in its usual form, is a large wooden drum, within
which revolves a system of fans, one of the upper quadrants of its
circumference being removed and replaced by a horizontal tube, which
projects through an opening in a temporary screen into the room to be
cooled. The sides of the drum, through which the axle projects, are
replaced, in the middle, by small tatties, and the effect of driving the
fans (which work like those of a paddle boat, and not on the principle
of the screw) is to draw air through these small wet mats and drive it
into the room. Some of the more elaborate sort are provided with a
miniature pump, which delivers water on to the mats from a trough below,
the pump being driven from the same multiplying wheel as the fan. In
thoroughly dry weather, it is quite possible to reduce the temperature
of a room by fully ten degrees by means of these machines, but they are
treacherous arrangements, especially for those who allow themselves to
be tempted to sit in the full force of the current, and are responsible
for a great number of chills and rheumatic twinges of all sorts, so that
I believe it is better to endure the heat without them. The labour of
driving them, too, is rather severe, so that relays of strong young
coolies must be entertained if they are to be worked efficiently;
whereas in the case of the punkah a certain knack is required, rather
than mere brute strength and stupidity, so that the work is very
suitable for men who are past their prime. The best punkah wallah I ever
had was an old blind man, and the work seems particularly suitable for
the blind, as sight is in no way required, but, in the East, these
unfortunates generally prefer to resort to their traditional employment
of mendicancy. The little art of pulling a punkah lies in never checking
it as it swings away from you; and in making the pull just as it begins
to lose way on its return; but simple as this may appear, the men often
require a good deal of training before they do it well. The original
punkah is said to have been invented by a bored clerk in a Calcutta
office, over whose head, it happened, the spare leaf of a table had been
hung to keep it out of the way of the white ants. In an idle moment he
began to make the suspended plank swing to and fro, and finding the
resulting breeze very comforting, proceeded to make fast a cord, and set
a coolie to pull it. The contrivance, at any rate, dates only from the
English occupation of India, and the original flat plank has never been
improved on, as the less unsightly pole punkah and frill is in every way
inferior to it. The broad, flat punkah of course is usually also fitted
with a frill, but a light, single cloth, about the substance of a bath
towel, really acts far better than the usual heavy frill, as it gives a
peculiar flick at the top of its stroke which is extremely effectual.
It is a not uncommon misapprehension to imagine that a punkah cools the
air within a room, though this, of course, is an obvious impossibility,
but the current of air produced by it promotes the rapid evaporation of
the moisture of the skin, and the body is thereby cooled, which for
practical purposes is much the same thing.
Ladies who make up their minds to face the hot weather do well to
strive to compass a certain amount of exercise in the open air, for
their occupations tend to keep them in the house more than their worse
halves. It is a great mistake to picture the Anglo-Indian lady as
passing her time in sloth and idleness. Civilisation has not reached the
same pitch in the Tropics that it has in temperate climates, and those
who migrate there must be prepared to live two centuries behind Europe;
with the result that a multitude of the details of household economy
have to be done in the house which, at home, would be managed by the
tradesman. On this account, the _memsahib_ finds herself back in the
days of domestic dairies and still rooms, and must busy herself with the
superintending of a score of details undreamt of in a modern English
housewife’s philosophy. To realise how much she has to do and how well
she does it, one has only to put up for a few days in a bachelor’s
_ménage_, and reflect how much better the “singly blessed” fare west of
Suez.
Whether ladies really suffer more from the strain of hot climates than
persons of the male persuasion, is very difficult to say, as it is
probably mainly the more robust who elect to share the burden and heat
of the day in the plains with the mere man; but it is probably more a
question of will power than of physical strength that determines the
question; for as often as not it is the big Du Maurier type of girl that
leads the rout to the hills, while some fragile-looking piece of bottled
energy remains to be the life of the parching station below. Those who
do stay, as a rule, do not appear to suffer any more than their
husbands; but no one is any the better for a hot weather in the plains,
and whether the strain of such surroundings is well or ill borne, is
probably more a question of individual temperament than of either sex or
physical strength.
The writer has met with ladies who had passed many consecutive years in
the plains of India with apparently no very noticeable bad effects, but
these have been mainly such as, owing either to inclination or the
nature of their occupation, were a good deal out and about, in spite of
the heat, and so got a fair amount of exercise, and did not shut
themselves up for all the daylight hours in stifling and depressing
semi-darkness.