It is difficult for a stranger to India, especially when paying only a
brief visit, to lose the impression that he is at an exhibition--in a
section of a World's Fair. How long it takes for this delusion to wear
off I cannot say. All I can say is that seven weeks are not enough.
And never does one feel it more than in the bazaar, where movement is
incessant and humanity is so packed and costumes are so diverse, and
where the suggestion of the exhibition is of course heightened by the
merchants and the stalls. What one misses is any vantage point--anything
resembling a chair at the Café de la Paix in Paris, for instance--where
one may sit at ease and watch the wonderful changing spectacle going
past. There are in Indian cities no such places. To observe the life of
the bazaar closely and be unobserved is almost impossible.
It would be extraordinarily interesting to sit there, beside some
well-informed Anglo-Indian or Indo-Anglian, and learn all the minutiæ of
caste and be told who and what everybody was: what the different ochre
marks signified on the Hindu foreheads; what this man did for a living,
and that; and so forth. Even without such an informant I was never tired
of drifting about the native quarters in whatever city I found myself
and watching the curiously leisurely and detached commercial methods
of the dealers--the money lenders reclining on their couches; the pearl
merchants with their palms full of the little desirable jewels; the
silversmiths hammering; the tailors cross-legged; the whole Arabian
Nights pageant. All the shops seem to be overstaffed, unless an element
of detached inquisitiveness is essential to business in the East. No
transaction is complete without a few watchful spectators, usually
youths, who apparently are employed by the establishment for the sole
purpose of exhibiting curiosity.
I picked up a few odds and ends of information, by degrees, but only the
more obvious: such as that the slight shaving of the Mohammedan's upper
lip is to remove any impediment to the utterance of the name of Allah;
that the red-dyed beards are a record that their wearers have made the
pilgrimage to Mecca; that the respirator often worn by the Jains is to
prevent the death of even a fly in inhalation. I was shown a Jain woman
carefully emptying a piece of wood with holes in it into the road, each
hole containing a louse which had crawled there during the night but
must not be killed. The Jains adore every living creature; the Hindus
chiefly the cow. As for this divinity, she drifts about the cities as
though they were built for her, and one sees the passers-by touching
her, hoping for sanctity or a blessing. A certain sex inequality is,
however, only too noticeable, and particularly in and about Bombay,
where the bullock cart is so common--the bullock receiving little but
blows and execration from his drivers.
The sacred pigeon is also happy in Bombay, being fed copiously all day
long; and I visited there a Hindu sanctuary, called the Pingheripole,
for every kind of animal--a Home of Rest or Asylum--where even pariah
dogs are fed and protected.
I was told early of certain things one must not do: such as saluting
with the left hand, which is the dishonourable one of the pair, and
refraining carefully, when in a temple or mosque, from touching anything
at all, because for an unbeliever to touch is to desecrate. I was told
also that a Mohammedan grave always gives one the points of the compass,
because the body is buried north and south with the head at the north,
turned towards Mecca. The Hindus have no graves.
In India the Occidental, especially if coming from France as I did,
is struck by the absence of any out-of-door communion between men and
women. In the street men are with men, women with women. Most women
lower their eyes as a man approaches, although when the woman is a
Mohammedan and young one is often conscious of a bright black glance
through the veil. There is no public fondling, nothing like the familiar
demonstrations of affection that we are accustomed to in Paris and
London (more so during the War and since) and in New York. Nothing so
offends and surprises the Indian as this want of restraint and shame
on our part, and in Japan I learned that the Japanese share the Indian
view.
It seemed to me that the chewing of the betel-nut is more prevalent in
Bombay than elsewhere. One sees it all over India; everywhere are moving
jaws with red juice trickling; but in Bombay there are more vendors of
the rolled-up leaves and more crimson splashes on pavement and wall. It
is an unpleasant habit, but there is no doubt that teeth are ultimately
the whiter for it. Even though I was instructed in the art of betel-nut
chewing by an Indian gentleman of world-wide fame in the cricket field,
from whom I would willingly learn anything, I could not endure the
experience.
Most nations, I suppose, look upon the dances of other nations with a
certain perplexity. Such glimpses, for example, as I had in America
of the movement known as the Shimmie Shake filled me with alarm, while
Orientals have been known to display boredom at the Russian Ballet.
Personally I adore the Russian Ballet, but I found the Nautch very
fatiguing. It is at once too long and too monotonous, but I dare
say that if one could follow the words of the accompanying songs, or
cantillations, the result might be more entertaining. That would not,
however, improve the actual dancing, in which I was disappointed. In
Japan, on the other hand, I succumbed completely to the odd, hypnotic
mechanism of the Geisha, the accompaniments to which are more varied,
or more acceptable to my ear, than the Indian music. But I shall
always remember the sounds of the distant, approaching or receding,
snake-charmers' piping, heard through the heat, as it so often is on
Sundays in Calcutta. To my inward ear that is India's typical melody;
and it has relationship to the Punch and Judy allurement of our
childhood.
It was in Bombay that I saw my first fakir, and in Harrison Road,
Calcutta, my last. There had been so long a series in between that I was
able to confirm my first impression. I can now, therefore, generalise
safely when saying that all these strange creatures resemble a blend of
Tolstoi and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Imagine such a hybrid, naked save for a
loin cloth, and smeared all over with dust, and you have a holy man
in the East. The Harrison Road fakir, who passed on his way along the
crowded pavement unconcerned and practically unobserved, was white with
ashes and was beating a piece of iron as a wayward child might be doing.
He was followed by a boy, but no effort was made to collect alms. It is
true philosophy to be prepared to live in such a state of simplicity.
Most of the problems of life would dissolve and vanish if one could
reduce one's needs to the frugality of a fakir. I have thought often of
him since I returned, in London, to all the arrears of work and duty and
the liabilities that accumulate during a long holiday; but never more so
than when confronted by a Peace-time tailor's bill.