Hindoo Holiday

by J. R. Ackerley

  “Huzoor! It was very difficult.”

  When I had inspected them I showed them to Babaji Rao, who was then still with us.

  “What in the world does he think is the good of that?” I asked.

  The holes in the socks had not been drawn together. Instead, with infinite care and patience, the finest cobweb of thread had been laid over them, so that when I pulled the socks over my hand the color of my flesh was plainly visible.

  “He says he has done his best,” interpreted Babaji Rao, “and does not wish to be paid unless you are satisfied.”

  “And if I am satisfied?”

  “As much as you care to give. But your satisfaction is what he will value most.”

  This was altogether too delicate, I thought, for the application of truth, I gave satisfaction and money, and left correction to my successors. And I now observe that such Chhokrapurians as wear socks and stockings do not have them mended. A hole merely serves to remind them that a new pair will soon be needed, and when the hole has so spread that most of the sole and heel are worn away, the new pair is purchased and put on under the old pair to prolong the former’s life. Shoes, too, are never mended. The peasant wears a shoe peculiar to the Province, with an upturned toe and a large leather shield in front to protect him from snakes and scorpions when working in the fields; it is very cheap, and to mend it would cost far more, no doubt, than to buy another pair. But Narayan and Sharma, who are always shod though seldom hosed, would not wear such clogs, of course; they now favor an American shoe, obtainable in Bombay at sixteen shillings a pair, because it has a roomy toe for broad Indian feet. It is styled “Derby,” and these two boys wear their “Derbys” until they are absolute wreckage under their feet, and then they buy another pair.

  Hindoos require no furniture; even the bed (the charpai) is only a luxury for the well-to-do, and can be dispensed with, and its place supplied with straw and a blanket. But chairs, and therefore tables, are rarely used in Chhokrapur, and then uneasily. When a man is tired of standing up he squats on his heels, like Habib in his portrait.

  In this position he can remain for hours, and take his food or write his letters on the floor. It is very economic, and it seems a pity that Europeans have lost this simple use of their legs and burdened themselves instead with property and the class distinctions of property—special seats for special bottoms. Clothes, no doubt, make a difference; but now that trousers are so much baggier, there seems no reason why we should not, with a little practice, reacquire the habit of dropping down upon our heels, which would be very useful when we are waiting in queues or are fatigued in the street; and in course of time, perhaps, we should gradually rid ourselves of much of the property which we now consider indispensable.

  Narayan, when he comes to visit me, sits on a chair at my side, but it is never very long before he grows uncomfortable, and he always ends by drawing up his feet on to the seat of the chair. He did this morning, and I noticed that a piece of common string was twined round each of his big toes.

  “What is that for?” I asked, pointing.

  “I have a pain in my testicle,” he said.

  He explained that his father, who is a physician, had told him that this was a good remedy, since the testicles and the big toes were connected. Apropos of this, he remarked, after a pause:

  “There was semen in your water this morning.”

  “Was there indeed? And how do you know?”

  “The sweeper, she show the pot to Hashim and me before she empty,” he replied gravely.

  “I see,” I said. “And what do you make of that?”

  “They say here that you are a sannyasi.”

  “What is that?”

  “He is a man who give up all worldly things, everything, everything.”

  “Well, I assure you I’m not,” I replied.

  “I think yes,” he said.

  No one would think, to look at them, that squirrels are sacred animals, but they are.

  Krishna loved them, Narayan says, and used to take them from the trees into his arms and stroke them.

  That is why they have four dark lines down their backs from head to tail; for Krishna, as the name implies, was very dark-skinned, and these are the marks of his fingers. His Highness, however, with whom I drove this afternoon, had never heard of this legend and appeared to discredit it. The squirrel was certainly sacred, he said, but because Hanuman, the Monkey-headed, once took on its guise when he went on a journey to rescue Rama’s wife from the demon Ravana.

  “Why has the bulbul got a red bottom?” I asked.

  “They are clerks,” replied His Highness promptly. “They are of the Kayastha or Clerk caste, who are all rogues, and so God cursed them in this way and gave them red bottoms so that all other birds poke fun at them.”

  Narayan had never heard of this legend and appeared to discredit it.

  It was recently full moon, and I used to go every night before sleeping to gaze at the Palace buildings from the Raj Ghat. The serene surface of the lake, still unappreciably diminished when the smaller tanks were drying up, reflected the short line of low white buildings on its opposite shore, with their domes, chhatris and minarets overhung by heavy foliaged trees —but reflected it mistily, as though the sharp contrast between moonlight and shade above had run together in the water below. Everything was so peaceful and so still. The air was heavy with the sweet scent of the sajna trees around me, in the shadows of which cows lay placidly in the dust. Fireflies glimmered above them, frogs and crickets filled the night with small sounds, and only the great radiant moon gave light, overflowing and spilling upon the world. On the gleaming face of the water not a ripple moved to disturb that other city below its brink, hardly less real, it sometimes seemed to me, than the one above.

  “Four days of moonlight—then darkness,” say the Hindoos, sadly contemplating life.

  MAY 1ST

  “What does it mean?” asked His Highness gloomily, throwing a long envelope on to my knees.

  The letter I found inside was headed “The Universal Astrological & Statistical Bureau of Indore,” and professed to be His Highness’s health chart up to the end of his present (fifty-eighth) year, with forecasts up to the end of his sixty-first year. It was a remarkable document, illiterate and badly typed, in blue and red inks, on a special trade paper with advertisements down the margin.

  “May it please your Gracious Highness . . .” it started, and then proceeded in a manner which was scarcely likely to do any such thing.

  From the beginning of the Maharajah’s fifty-eighth year he was to suffer a gradual decline in health and strength, which would continue unabated for some years and culminate, probably in death, at the end of his sixty-first year. At that time, observed the prognosticator, there would be such a “choking up,” from one cause or another, of all his organs—heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, brain, etc.—as to render them functionless. Much might be done to postpone the fatal date by dieting, by propitiating evil spirits, and by keeping the system clear “with the help of a purge or enema.”

  But, said the writer, during his fifty-eighth year he need not alarm himself—which, since His Highness is already nearly fifty-nine, was small comfort to him.

  During it he would be afflicted indeed with sundry minor ailments, such as slight fevers, coughs, colds, and boils; but these were only the first symptoms of the great decline; nothing grave would happen to him in his fifty-eighth year.

  And so that he might know when to expect these boils and chills, the writer had approximately dated them, dividing up into periods of sickness and health the whole of His Highness’s fifty-eighth year, from last August.

  Thus he would ail between August 12th and September 27th; enjoy health between September 27th and October 9th; ail again between October 9th and November 6th, and so on. Most of the periods of health were short, I noticed—one comprising only four days; and by a rapid arithmetical calculation we discovered that he was condemned to sickness for eight months in the year
.

  “How much did you pay for this information?” I asked.

  “Three hundred rupees (£20),” he said bitterly. “And I had to pay it before they would send the letter. What does it all mean?”

  I explained it to him. He had, of course, already read it numerous times and had underlined the word “boils”; but he wanted to be comforted. So we went carefully through it and found that in only one case—the recent boil—could the writer be said to have hit the bull’s-eye.

  Of course His Highness would not admit to having enjoyed really good health at any time in his fifty-eighth year; but there had been little specific.

  “What do they mean?” he exclaimed vexedly. “In the last letter they sent me they said that I must have three months’ serious illness in my fifty-eighth year, and I thought that that was this boil of mine I had just now—but it only lasted a fortnight. And now they make no mention of that illness at all! Also they said that if I recovered from my serious illness at the end of my sixty-first year, I should live on till my sixty-eighth or seventieth—but they make no mention of that here either! What does it mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “It’s just rubbish.”

  “You are quite right,” he replied. “They are all rogues—rogues and rascals!”

  Narayan did not come to see me this morning because he had a pooja, a religious ceremony. His father had had trouble he said, and had prayed successfully for relief; he had therefore been obliged to hold a thanksgiving feast. It was the custom. Twenty-five Brahmans had attended, and the cost of the entertainment had been thirty-seven rupees.

  He and Sharma walked with me in the evening, and on the whitewashed wall of a house we saw some figures roughly designed in wet cow-dung round the doorway. On the right side were two suns, on the left a very crude peacock, and above it a pattern of lines which, Narayan told me, represented a stool for the God to sit on. These designs meant, he said, that a child had just been born there, and any one seeing them would understand their glad import and keep clear of the house. I thought they were the work of uneducated peasants, but he said that the custom was quite general, and that if his own wife had a child these same designs would be scratched on the walls of his house. While we were looking at these things the barber who cuts my hair passed by. He smiled at me and salaamed, and then held out his hand towards me, palm down, with the fingers extended upwards. This was all done on the move.

  “He asks after your health,” said Narayan.

  So I nodded my head reassuringly. There were many other provincial signs, Narayan told me, used instead of speech when one was in a hurry or for some other reason did not wish to stop. He showed me some more—mostly obvious—while Sharma, finding this a huge joke, imitated him like a monkey. A cupped hand under the lower lip meant “I am thirsty and going to drink”; joined finger-tips popped in and out of the mouth, “I am hungry and going to eat”; the head rested against the right forearm, “I am tired and going to bed.” To make imaginary rings with a finger round the right ear meant “I am going to make water,” and there were also definite signals for “Go on” and “Come on,” but these were such slight movements of the hand that it is difficult to describe them.

  We went on into His Highness’s private garden to look at the trees and plants, and saw the lemon with its young fruit like small jade marbles, and the sweet lemon, the leaves of which smell so nice when crushed.

  The chandan or sandalwood tree was there, from which is extracted the white paste used in so many religious ceremonies; and the hari shringar (God’s adornment) with its small aromatic pink flower.

  The mahwa tree has a large pale leaf, and a yellow flower and berry from which the peasants brew an intoxicating drink. Bears, too, are partial to its juice. They clamber up the tree after its flowers and, it is said, sometimes fall out of its branches completely sozzled—and perhaps it is whilst they are in this predicament that the manufacturers of the Rajbansi Pill take liberties with them. The banana, too, was there, but stunted and unproductive; and the pomegranate, most boring of fruits. The gardener presented me with two buds of double-jasmine—beautiful little things that looked more like exquisitely carved ivory than living flowers, and we argued for a little over the pretty, poisonous oleander. His Highness had once told me that there were only two true varieties of this shrub, one bearing pink and the other white blossoms. But the gardener showed me five varieties, including the two already familiar, and maintained that they were all true. Of the remaining three flowers, one was ruby, another yellow and bell-shaped, and the last like the English pink wild-rose. The leaves of all of them certainly had a very strong family resemblance; so eventually I sent him to His Highness with the five flowers, and a note to say that since the honorable gardener asserted that each of these blossoms was the true oleander, perhaps the best way of settling the dispute would be to feed him with them.

  MAY 6TH

  At about eight o’clock last night, while I was sitting in a long chair in the dining-room reading a newspaper before climbing up to my bed on the roof, Abdul appeared in the doorway.

  “Good evening, Mr. Ackerley. May I come in?”

  “Why don’t you have yourself announced in the proper way?”

  “Ah, sorry, sorry: I did not know. Are you displeased with me, Mr. Ackerley? I will know another time. I will not do it again. Please accept my apologies—for this time. May I come in now, Mr. Ackerley?”

  “Yes, yes,” I said feebly. “Come in.”

  He stayed half an hour, and spoke throughout, with very little assistance from me, in subdued, mournful tones, his hands clasped in his lap, his eyes downcast, his head a little sideways, and his chin drawn in.

  The entire interview was, no doubt, already planned in his head. I always had from him, on every occasion, this impression of previous rehearsal; point by point he had considered it and worked it out, arranging it so that all his requests were nicely graduated and all the transitions carefully oiled. Here and there in his monologue he broke off to make polite inquiry:

  “Is that your newspaper you are holding, or are you engaged in important work? I do not want to bore upon your time. A newspaper? Then I shall remain a little longer and converse with you. Ahem. May I remain a little longer?”

  And with such diplomatic interruptions breaking the sequence of his petitions neatly up, he brought every card he had into play.

  The Deogarh Collector had written to say that the post was no longer vacant, so he was just as badly off as before, a poor struggling man, preyed upon by his enemies. He was now trying to get a job in Africa as a stationmaster. Then the requests began and, with the production of each, he looked full at me and sniggered, his lips tightly compressed. He looked very horrid, I thought, with the rag of a beard he had just begun to grow for his religious festival, and his squat tarbush, very greasy round the edge, pushed down to his ears.

  Once more, he said, he wished to request me to honor his feast—it was to-morrow—even for only a few minutes. His mother had renewed her invitation. She had been rendered disconsolate by my former refusal, and begged me to reconsider my decision. Had I the heart to disappoint her? I said I had.

  “Send along some food as you did before.”

  “Very well, Mr. Ackerley. I shall send you some sweetmeats—very good sweetmeats.”

  The head sank down again, with a faint smile on its lips, while he connected his next move.

  “You know, Mr. Ackerley,” he tittered, “I told my friends you had promised to honor my feast. I shall be much ashamed before them.” He paused expectantly. I had nothing to say. “They will laugh at me—and mock me. What can I do? I was a fool. But how could I know you would refuse me?” There was another pause. Another silence. “I also told to them that you were paying me twenty-five rupees a month—for your lessons.”

  He watched alertly the effect of this.

  “And why did you do that?” I asked.

  “All Europeans pay so much for their lessons—th
irty, forty, fifty rupees a month. Never less than twenty-five. Every man knows this. So I said so. I said you were paying me twenty-five, though you only paid me ten, for I was much ashamed before them. I was a fool!”

  “You were indeed,” I said.

  Again the spinster-like titter and the effect of sinking, of disappearance, of abrupt withdrawal down into his own mind to select and reappear with a new card up his sleeve, blandly, as though confident that no one could have missed him. It was like an elaborate conjuring trick.

  “Oh, Mr. Ackerley—I have a request to make of you. Can you—will you be so kind as to grant me a little black polish? Only a small piece. I shall be very grateful.”

  He fished a Nugget Boot Polish tin out of his pocket.

  “Blacking?” I said, astonished. “Whatever for?”

  “For my shoes. To-morrow we must all have clean shoes for the festival, and I have no blacking in my house and cannot afford to buy some. But I only want very little. Just enough for one shoe.”

  Concealing my amusement, I told him that Hashim would no doubt supply him with what he wanted.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ackerley, thank you very much.”

  The tin was restored to the pocket, and again, so to speak, he sank, but for so long this time that I felt that he must be played out, that he had got to the end of the suit, that nothing, except perhaps the ace, remained. Eventually he came up with it, and in spite of my dislike for him I could not help feeling a certain admiration for his perseverance. Having failed to get what he wanted by putting me under a new obligation or playing for my pity, he now asked for it direct.

  “Mr. Ackerley, if I make a request will you grant it?”

  “No.”

  He sniggered.

  “Oh! You will not? You say ‘No’ before you have heard me speak.”