THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE
"This butter is uneatable, Ramaswamy."
"I wash him, Master."
He takes away the dish of nasty, yellow, tinned butter and presently
returns with it fresh and white, with much of the disagreeable taste and
smell gone. Good! Now we know.
We are sitting on a broad verandah of dark wood with a roof overhead. It
is so wide that it is just like a room, only the outer sides are open.
We look out over a moat filled with water and covered with leaves and
pink flowers. These are the celebrated lotus flowers, or lilies. Behind
rise red walls, with here and there quaint little maroon-coloured
towers, all pinnacles and angles, showing up like fretwork against the
sky. The moat is crossed by bridges of dazzling white. It is nearly
midday, the hottest and stillest time of all the day, and we are
lunching in the Circuit House at Mandalay, the old capital of the kings
of Burma.
Everyone knows Mandalay by name from Kipling's poem, even if they know
nothing of the rest of Burma. We came up here from Rangoon by train,--it
took a night,--and by special permission of His Excellency were allowed
to stay in this house, which is usually reserved for Government
officials, instead of going to the rest-house intended for visitors, and
not nearly so nice.
From where we sit we can look through into the wooden unpapered bedrooms
behind, with the little string beds on which our own bedding lies in
heaps. Ramaswamy has not had time to put it out yet, for he has been
busy cooking our tiffin. In these houses the keeper, or _derwan_, will
do everything for you if you like, and you pay him so much for his
trouble, but if you prefer your own servant to do it you can make that
arrangement and borrow the pots and pans. Ramaswamy has given us already
buttered eggs, some cutlets which tasted goaty, with some excellent
little vegetables called bringals, as well as a dish of mixed curry, and
he has now put some fruit on the table, and is bringing in coffee. He
cooks out there behind in the compound. I saw him just now bending over
a handful of sticks. However he manages to get the things hot I don't
know. These natives have marvellous ways.
We must rest a while this afternoon and have an early tea before
starting out to see the palace which lies inside that brick wall.
The tea is decent, the toast smoky, and the milk very poor. Ramaswamy
says that it is almost impossible to get milk; the Burmans don't drink
it themselves, and he thinks we shall have to fall back upon that
condensed stuff. However, there is excellent jam, and that is a good
thing. Look round this bare wooden room and notice how little furniture
one needs for perfect comfort. A couple of deck-chairs, a couple of
small chairs, a table, a lamp, and a waste-paper basket! What a lot of
superfluous furniture one does accumulate in England!
What are you smiling at? The recollection of the bath? It's a very good
way of bathing, I think. A wooden tub in the middle of a tiny room
without anything else in it. You can splash as much as ever you like,
and even if you spilt the whole bath it wouldn't matter much, because
the water would simply run down through the cracks in the plank floor,
and any one who knows anything here knows enough not to stand underneath
a bathroom which is built out on wooden legs.
We'll start now if you're ready! Hullo! Did you ever see anything so
impudent? A great crow on the tea-table! Frighten him away, he's after
those chocolates wrapped in silver paper that you brought up from
Rangoon. The cheek of it!
When we have passed over the white bridge and got inside the wall of the
palace we see a wide space of green with a few houses scattered here and
there, and in the middle a group of buildings, one of which has a very
tall spire. Inside this wall at one time, the Burman time, was crammed
the whole of Mandalay--six thousand houses, more or less. It _was_ the
town. The British cleared out all the houses, and the town is now
outside in wide streets,--we saw it this morning as we drove up from the
station,--and the palace is left here alone in its glory.
That tall, many-roofed spire is the King's house. Only the King was
allowed to rival the poongyis in the number of his roofs, no other
Burman might do such a thing. It is an empty distinction in two senses,
for, as you know, the roofs don't mean floors, they are hollow. There
is only one floor, for, of course, the King could never risk the
frightful indignity of having anyone's feet above his head. At the top
is a htee, or umbrella, as there is on the pagodas.
The palace is not all one big building, but a number of buildings, or
halls, each only one storey, grouped about with courtyards between. We
wander in and out of them, treading on polished floors and seeing
brilliant bits of colour framed in dark doorways. Some of the pillars
glow a dull red, others are a wonderful gold; some of the doorways are
set in frames of carved wood gilded all over. We see columns encrusted
with little bits of many-coloured looking-glass, like those we saw in
Rangoon. The halls are very dim in contrast with the brilliant light
outside, and there is a kind of tawdriness in the decoration which makes
one feel how different in nature these people must be from the ancient
Egyptians who built so solidly. Here all is gay, but you feel it is
gimcrack--it won't last. Look at that balustrade, gleaming deep green;
examine it--do you see what it is? Nothing in the world but a row of
green glass bottles turned upside down and embedded in cement! This
place isn't old at all. It has not been built sixty years; before that
the capital was elsewhere.
All at once Ramaswamy, who has been following noiselessly, pushes you
aside with a cry of "Scorpion, Master." There, on the ground, difficult
to see in this dim light, is a round black thing about as big as the
palm of your hand, with a tail sticking out from it. It is the shape of
a tadpole. In another minute you would have trodden on him, and if he
had got in above your shoe, well--it would have been unpleasant in any
case, and might have meant death!
He lies quite still, not attempting to run away until Ramaswamy's shout
brings one of the guardians, a tall man in a dark blue uniform and red
sash. He rushes to find a big stone. We won't stop to see it. Poor
beggar! Doubtless they'll "larn him to be a scorpion!"
When King Theebaw reigned here he thought himself invincible; the
many-roofed spire was "the centre of the universe." He imagined he could
treat as he liked not only his own subjects but that white-faced race
who had had the audacity to settle down in southern Burma. He soon
learnt his mistake.
Leaving the palace we go on to see a very curious thing not far off
outside the walls, this is the Kutho-daw, the Royal Merit-House. We
enter by an elaborate white gateway and find ourselves in a perfect
forest of pagodas. They are planted in rows and are all exactly alike
and not very large. They are glittering white, and each one has a slate
slab inside. The Kutho-daw was built by Theebaw's uncle, who acquired
much merit thereby, and he deserved it, for there are no less than seven
hundred and twenty-nine pagodas. On the slate inside each is inscribed
some part of the Buddhist Scriptures. It was a grand idea thus to
preserve indelibly on stone the whole Burmese Bible. Here it is for all
time. Peep inside one and you will see the funny-looking Burmese
writing, which all runs on without being divided up into words, and
looks consequently so incomprehensible to us.
What? How you jump! What is it? Another beast? Yes, I see him, that is a
tarantula crouching in the darkest corner and looking at us out of
wicked little eyes that shine like diamond points. He is a monster
spider, isn't he? All hairy too, and his body striped with yellow bands
like a wasp's. He sits still, but he is very much alive and ready to
jump at a minute's notice. They are venomous brutes. Not quite so bad as
a scorpion, but still the bite from one of these fellows is a very
unpleasant thing. We will leave him, he can't do much harm here.
Now we will drive round the town and see how the people live.
Here is a happy family seated on a wooden platform stretching out in
front of their house. The dust around and over them and in the roadway
is almost as bad as Egypt, but here there is nearly always a tree or
shrub of some sort to bring in a flash of green. The huts too are built
of wood and mats and are raised several feet from the ground; they do
not look so hopelessly crooked as the Egyptian mud houses. In the space
underneath huge black pigs, like great boars, wander, and there are
black goats too, and skinny hens and pariah dogs. Do you see that
mother-dog lying in the roadway, too lazy to move, with six yellow
puppies sprawling over her? Poor brute, she is a mass of mange and so
skinny that her ribs stick out! The people here are taught by their
religion not to take life of any kind; some of the priests strain their
water through a sieve lest they should inadvertently swallow an insect!
So no one kills, even in mercy. All these miserable puppies are allowed
to grow up to a starved wretched existence, a misery to themselves and
everyone else.
Look at those two elephants stalking down the road; they move
majestically, and when they reach the pariah dog the driver, or _oozie_,
seated on the first one's neck, pricks him with a point to make him look
where he is going, so that he avoids the dog. You will see plenty of
elephants here, for elephants are to Burma what camels are to Egypt, the
regular beasts of burden. They carry the kit and camp paraphernalia for
the men who go into the jungle sometimes for months. They move the logs
and trunks of the timber which is cut in the forests in large
quantities. You remember the dark wood of the Circuit House and the
poongyi choung? That is all teak, the best known wood in the country,
corresponding to our oak. There are forests of it, and large companies
exist simply for getting it out. There are still herds of wild elephants
in the little disturbed parts of Burma, and every now and again
Government catches them in _keddahs_ in great quantities. I wish we had
the luck to go with a hunting-party.
[Illustration: ELEPHANTS, BURMA.]
The family which owns that hut is seated on the edge of the platform and
are watching us with as much interest as we watch them. Two bright-eyed
little girls in jackets play beside a smiling woman. You will notice
here the girls and women have quite as good a time as the boys and men;
no veiling of faces or hiding away for them. The Burman knows better,
and he would get on badly without the active help and advice of his
comrade and wife.