Hindoo Holiday

by J. R. Ackerley

  We drove down in the Dewan’s car, which was greeted with loud cheers and held up by a mob of Hindoos outside the Palace, where the festivities were taking place.

  The three-sided courtyard was crammed with people; boys perched upon the walls and roof, and clung like monkeys to the minarets, and a kind of dance was taking place in the center.

  “Shall we get out?” I asked Babaji Rao, gazing rather nervously through the window at the yelling mob; but the answer came from outside. A Hindoo, whom I recognized with difficulty as the Dewan’s chief accountant, had already pushed his way through the crowd towards us, and opened the door of the car. His face was smeared with red powder, as were all the other faces round us. He was the Master of Ceremonies, I learnt, and was followed by an assistant bearing a brass tray on which were two huge heaps of powder, one bright red and the other silvery, like the scales of a small fish.

  “Come out of the car,” cried the M.C., “or we shall drag you out!”

  It wasn’t difficult to make a choice between these alternatives, and Babaji Rao and I got out. The Dewan remained seated.

  “Come out, Dewan Sahib!” called the M.C., but the Dewan refused to budge.

  “You have two victims,” he said, laughing shrilly, “and that is quite enough.”

  I wasn’t altogether surprised that no one insisted. Although one may not harbor malice for liberties taken at Holi, I doubt whether I should have tried to get equal with the Dewan for one day if I was to be unequal to him for the rest of the year. At any rate nobody molested him, and after a few moments he disappeared. So too, in a manner of speaking, did we. No sooner had we got out than the M.C. stuck his thumb in the red powder, which is called gulal, and pressed it firmly against our foreheads. This was the mark of friendship, and courtesy demanded that we should return the compliment, though there was no room on his face for any more. Other thumbs were dug into the stuff and pressed upon us, and I dug and dabbed wildly in return; then the M.C. took a handful and threw it in my face, and, apparently liking the effect, finally emptied the tray over our heads. The crowd closed in on us after this; daubed, laughing faces were pressed towards me; brown arms embraced me, drew me along, propelled me from behind, and rubbed more powder into my hair and clothes.

  “He is a very good man,” said a voice; “give the Sahib more.”

  Babaji Rao, his spectacles like bright-red saucers, was holding on to my sleeve, and in front of us a thin, naked man with a purple wig, a cod-piece, and bells on his ankles, was dancing and hooting. Remembering the spirit of the occasion, I smiled rather dimly through the red mist of powder, till a handful of water struck me in the face.

  “No, no; no water!” cried Babaji Rao, with an ingratiating snigger; but his voice was lost in cheers and laughter, and when we had been squeezed to the center of the courtyard where a space had been left, a hose of violet-tinted water was turned on us both.

  This made the colors run nicely, and when we were stained and soaked from head to foot and could not be made any wetter, we were abandoned for other victims. We stood for some time and watched them receiving similar treatment; then a rather spiritless game was played, in which a body of men armed with staves attacked a body of women, also armed with staves, who were defending a mysterious bundle hanging from a cross-beam. I intended to ask Babaji Rao whether this had anything to do with the legend of Holikar, and whether gulal represented fire; but my curiosity was a little damped. When we returned to the encampment His Highness was still there examining silks and brocades, and thinking he would be amused to see me, I went in to him before changing and said I too was a piece of brocade and would he care to purchase me.

  He gave a shrill cry of horrified laughter and hid his face in his hands.

  “Go away!” he cried. “Go away! Go away!”

  In the evening Miss Trend told me that she had paid a call on the Maharani. European ladies are permitted to visit Indian ladies, it seems, and are often invited to do so. She said that the Maharani was a charmingly pretty girl, not yet twenty years old, and that it was dreadful to think of the loneliness and monotony of her life, shut up in that Palace with only her women for company, and seldom visited, even by the Maharajah, who in any case could hardly be considered romantic. Her pleasure, after a few moments of shyness, at Miss Trend’s visit had been touchingly childish, and she had brought out all her fine dresses and jewels, which she seldom had a chance to display except to her women.

  MARCH 26TH

  We were due to leave here to-day. His Highness was to have departed very early in the morning, during the only auspicious hour, but a postponement had to be made and we are to stay on for another four or five days.

  I am not very pleased about this, for it is getting uncomfortably hot for canvas, and in the dining-marquee, which has only a single roof, I have to wear my hat during lunch.

  The reason for the postponement is that the young Prince has smallpox.

  At least, that is what the Dewan told me yesterday afternoon. But in the evening His Highness contradicted it.

  “It is measles,” he said.

  “Oh, well, that’s better, isn’t it?” I said.

  “They say it is the same thing,” he replied fretfully. “It is a great nuisance, for after this evening I shall not be able to see you for some days.”

  “Because of infection?” I asked.

  He began to shake with amusement.

  “No, no,” he said. “But I must not shave, or put on my hat or shoes.”

  This is ritual, apparently; for smallpox, of which there are said to be three kinds, is presided over by a Goddess named Devi who has a thousand arms. The remedy for the disease lies in her thousand hands. Certain ignorant country-people believe that she causes the disease; others think that she actually is the disease, and will not allow the bodies of those who succumb to it to be burnt in case Devi is burnt too, though this would seem, in the circumstances, to be the very best thing for her; but more enlightened people, such as those that surround His Highness, are of the opinion that her power is purely remedial. For this reason doctors are not allowed to touch the patient, for that would be a declaration of skepticism as well, perhaps, as a breach of professional etiquette. It would also be sacrilegious; for the body of the patient is considered holy, a house ready for the Goddess to enter; so only the mother and nurses may touch the patient, preparing it for the divine visitation, while the father, bareheaded, unshaved and unshod, makes pilgrimages to all the Goddess’s temples in the neighborhood to entreat her assistance.

  I was sitting by myself on a chair in the Palace courtyard this afternoon, waiting for Babaji Rao who had gone in on some business, when the stout Hindoo doctor came waddling out of the Queen’s apartments.

  “How is the child?” I asked, as he came over to me.

  “Much better,” he said. “It is only a heat-rash and there is no fever.”

  “How do you know there is no fever?” I asked slyly.

  “I do it this way,” he explained. “I make the nurse place her hand on the child’s body and keep it there; then I feel the nurse’s hand and so discover how much heat has been transmitted by the patient.”

  Later in the afternoon the Political Agent arrived in Garha, and the Dewan made excuses for the Maharajah’s absence, saying that the little Prince had smallpox and so His Highness could not, on that account, personally receive his guest.

  “It is thought to be measles, not smallpox,” said Babaji Rao.

  “Smallpox,” repeated the Dewan firmly.

  “It is a heat-rash,” piped the stout doctor from the background.

  “Anyway,” observed the Dewan with finality, “we are taking it to be smallpox, and Their Highnesses are observing the rites.”

  An Englishman who sat at my hotel table in Delhi, I remember, told me that he had contracted smallpox within twenty-four hours of arriving in India, from dirty sheets in the ———Hotel, Bombay. I expressed surprise at his unblemished appearance, and he said he shared my surpr
ise; he had expected to look like a gruyère cheese for the rest of his life.

  I visited the ———Hotel myself on a number of occasions when I was in Bombay, but without ill consequences. The only note I have about it is of an Indian soldier, in khaki, wearing puttees but no boots or socks, whom I noticed one day chatting to the clerk at the reception desk. His slight claim upon my interest was that he dropped a pencil on the floor, but instead of bending down to pick it up, he merely glanced at it, seized it deftly between his toes and, without interrupting his conversation or altering the indolent attitude in which he leant against the desk, lifted his foot and restored the pencil to his dangling hand.

  Captain Daly and Miss Trend have gone, and as the Dewan did not make his usual visit to the encampment, where I now reign alone, I went down to his house in the evening to call on him. He was not in, but I soon espied him a little distance away, perched on a high wooden platform. The platform was reached by steps, and a large canvas umbrella shaded the Dewan from the heat of the sun. In front of him was a rough table bearing a black tin box, some books and papers.

  But he was not reading or writing; he was sitting quite motionless with a string of beads in his hands. Directly he saw me, however, he heaved his enormous bulk out of the chair and came waddling to the top of the steps to welcome me.

  “Come up, Mr. Ackerley, come up! How kind of you! Very pleased!”

  He seemed delighted. We talked a little of the Prince’s illness, and the Dewan said that Devi was his family Goddess, but that his private God was Mahadeo (the Great God) or Siva.

  Siva has numerous forms, but is chiefly worshipped in one shape, the phallic symbol of generative and creative power—plain upright stones called lingams which are scattered all over India. But the Dewan said he did not worship the lingam, because he did not believe in Mahadeo or in any God, only in an idea of Duty and doing good to others. He saw me looking at his beads on the table and said yes, that might appear to be an inconsistency, but that when he told them, as he frequently did when he was worried or had nothing to do, he was not thinking of God, but repeating a familiar formula which he found soothing and tranquillizing. His Highness, he said, also carried beads which he told, usually when he was returning from a journey, and it displeased him to be interrupted whilst doing so. We passed from that to talk of friendship, which, he thought, was essentially a youthful affair. There had to be passion in friendship—though not necessarily sexual: and only boys were capable of that passion and enthusiasm. He himself had had that passion in his youth, and the friend he had then made was a staunch friend still.

  “I was quite attractive when I was a boy,” he said, “but no one could find anything attractive in me now.”

  But his greatest alliance was and always had been with his brother.

  “We are as one,” he said, “and if he dies I do not care to live.”

  But he was slow now to make friends, slow and shy. He had wanted to be friends with me, but had perceived a similar reserve in myself. That was why we had not got on well together, and perhaps never would.

  I said I feared that there had been other reasons that had kept us apart—that he had looked upon me as an intruder and a busybody; and he agreed that he had been afraid that I would interfere, but that it was clear now that I had no inclination to do so, and he thanked me for that.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Ackerley? I am anxious to do something for you, here or in Chhokrapur.”

  He was glad that we were now friends. He had always felt that we should be; that he had more in common with me than with Captain Daly, but:

  “I am like a maiden,” he said shyly, “I have to be wooed.”

  MARCH 28TH

  It is getting appreciably warmer every day. After returning at about eight o’clock from my morning’s ride I seldom go out again until five in the afternoon, but sit in my tent and write or read in a state of continual perspiration. Yesterday the sky became heavily overcast, and a strong warm wind began to blow. It has been blowing ever since, and brings with it occasional tornadoes, miniature no doubt, but of a very exasperating disposition. While I sit and sweat, a sudden boisterous swishing is heard in the surrounding jungle, and like a wild thing, a whirling funnel of wind arrives in the encampment and gyrates furiously in front of my tent.

  It does this in order to suck into itself all the dust and dead leaves in the vicinity, and when it has got as much as it can hold, it makes a dash for my tent and whirls explosively through it, taking all my personal belongings out through the opposite flap and leaving all its dust and dead leaves behind. Wishing that I had a thousand arms like the Goddess Devi, I snatch at my vanishing possessions, trying to save something out of the wreck.

  This has happened three times in the last few hours, and I am beginning to read purpose into the way in which these whirlwinds make again and again for my tent, and find myself agreeing with the villagers, who believe them to be devils and stand in great awe of them.

  Yesterday evening I saw as much of the Queen as I suppose I shall ever see. She was on her way, in procession and on foot, to one of the temples to pray for her son’s recovery. But she was not visible, of course. She was walking within a canopy of red curtains, carried on poles on the shoulders of four men, preceded by musicians and followed by her women attendants.

  If a temple has been desecrated one may enter it without taking off one’s shoes. But the Dewan says he never removes his shoes whether temples have been desecrated or not. He says, “My good fellow, if you wish me to take off my shoes, I shall not enter your temple.” Then they admit him, for they like having their temples visited. But of course if a temple is actually being used, he added, he does not try to enter it at all.

  I told Narayan that I did not think his mustache suited him very well, and that he should cut it off; but he said that it was an Indian rule that a Hindoo boy must not shave his upper lip until after his father’s death.

  This afternoon I was again sitting outside the Palace waiting for Babaji Rao, who had gone in to speak to the Dewan. He eventually reappeared, accompanied by the Dewan, the doctor, and an aged priest.

  “Has the Raja been given his medicine and a bath?” I heard the Dewan ask the doctor.

  “No,” said the doctor.

  “Why not?”

  “Her Highness and the priests did not wish these things to be done.”

  “But they must be done!” cried the Dewan. “I told you to do them. Let them be done at once!” He then turned to the priest. “The child has not got smallpox.” The old man shook his head mournfully. “I say it has not got smallpox. We have taken it to be smallpox for the sake of convenience, but it has not got smallpox and it must be given medicine and a bath!”

  He threatened the doctor with mock severity with his stick.

  “If you do not obey my orders I shall beat you!” he said.

  “Does your authority extend even to the medical department, Dewan Sahib?” I asked, amused.

  “It extends everywhere,” he replied briefly.

  Continuing about himself, as he accompanied Babaji Rao and me towards the officers’ quarters, the Dewan said that he has a great ability to dismiss things from his mind. He can give an order and, turning to other business, forget all about it until the moment for its operation arrives. Then he remembers it. Even personal troubles can be treated in this way.

  “If they can be solved, then solve them and forget about them; but if they cannot be solved, then—forget about them.”

  So at the end of a day he puts everything out of his mind and plays bridge. He loves bridge and never misses his evening’s rubber—with the doctor as partner, of course.

  “On only one occasion have I missed my game, and that was when twelve prisoners escaped from the jail. I did not play cards that evening. I wanted to play, but I thought it was my duty not to at such a serious moment.”

  So he pulls along very well with himself. And he pulls along very well with His Highness too.

  B
efore doing the smallest thing he always asks His Highness’s permission, and His Highness always gives it.

  “My orders are seldom interfered with; but if His Highness says to me: ‘I am thinking of upsetting this order of yours, Dewan. What do you think?’ Then I look at the order and say, ‘Of course, upset it by all means.’”

  He said that His Highness was a very clever man; that he set great store on truth and frankness, so that one must always speak one’s mind to him and never carry tales to him about other people, for he had an uncomfortable habit of confronting one with the subject of one’s story. I thought this statement difficult to reconcile with the treatment of Narayan; but I did not say so.

  “He often makes himself appear to be a fool,” concluded the Dewan; “it is a policy of his; but do not be taken in by it. He knows everything that happens. You may be sure, for instance, that he knows very well that you are walking with Babaji Rao and me at this moment.” I was amused at his self-confidence, for His Highness has recently been considering his dismissal from the Dewanship and has been discussing the matter with me.

  It appears that the Dewan is demanding an increase in salary, and His Highness is put out over it and wants to be rid of him.

  “He talks too much,” observed the little man peevishly.

  But almost as though he perceived what was passing through my mind, the Dewan began himself to discuss this very question. He said he was not a rich man; that besides his salary of a thousand rupees a month, he had a private income of only four thousand rupees a year; but that it was, nevertheless, more money than he needed.

  “I have so much money that I do not know what to do with it. What to do? What to do? I do not know. Yet I want more and more.”

  He likened himself, unconvincingly I thought, to the mendicant who did not rise to his feet when Alexander the Great rode past.

  “Why do you not rise when the Emperor passes?” asked Alexander, more amused than angry.