by Cecil Beaton
The drink was delicious. We sat on cushions on the floor of the salon, expecting the drug to alter our sense of space and time and to make everything seen incredibly humorous. Still no effect. So we had dinner.
Raymond started to giggle, but I was in no laughing mood. If other people’s amusement is disproportionate, one feels suddenly sobered. After a while I noticed that my hands felt soft and boneless, the skin unusually silken; I could not quite feel the extremities of my body. But that was the only peculiarity in an otherwise disappointing evening — too bad!
We sat in the drawing-room prepared to spend a short while in conversation before retiring for the night. Suddenly my friend, as he sat regarding me with pink blotched face and pearly grin, appeared quite different from any former picture I had of him. Outside, a strange metallic clicking sound was heard. It struck me as comic that it should continue so long, and, imagining it to come from a woodpecker, I remarked upon the bird’s insistence.
I realized that I was mistaken; but my friend’s surprise, and his incredulity as he repeated ‘a bird?’ seemed to me so ludicrous that I laughed until I was unconscious.
The experience was not altogether pleasant; for when I reemerged into semi-consciousness I found I had laughed — and was still laughing — so much that I had a strange constriction in my chest. The sensation was so far beyond my control that I was somewhat apprehensive as to how the evening would end. My companion laughed at my merriment. I tried feebly to tell him that he seemed transformed and now looked like a school friend named Dudley Scholte, of the tailoring firm, but I was tongue-tied. The proportions of the room changed. The distance across the floor suddenly seemed as large as the Atlantic; one’s eyes could scarcely travel to the far end of the music-room. The arches, under which my friend sat, assumed cathedral proportions, though, in fact, they were only a little over six feet high.
For the next two and a half hours we were violently drugged. The hallucination seemed to last an eternity. A reaction that would normally take only a fraction of a second seemed now to continue for ever. One wondered if the other person could read these long deliberations that were going on in one’s mind.
So submerged in intoxication were we that the effort of speaking consecutively was too great: one gave up with a confidential look. Neither did one know if one had voiced a remark, or whether the thought had been so vivid that one merely imagined it to have been spoken. Somehow, one felt that speech would break the spell, and one did not wish to break it. Surely my friend’s brain was acting better than mine? I was able to understand him to say that this drug gave a far greater degree of intoxication than any alcohol. I could not have managed such a sentence. He continued, ‘Already we would have passed out or been sick, with an appalling hangover.’
With tears coursing down my cheeks I muttered, ‘We are beyond speech.’ Once more I was convulsed. Anxious not to forget this experience I kept asking, ‘How much of this will we remember?’
Raymond and his friend Danielou, an authority on Hindu music, had a particularly beautiful and elaborate gramophone, with loudspeaker relayed from the ceiling: we decided to listen to a record. I have never appreciated or understood music so clearly as I did then: each instrument in a large orchestra was heard individually, with extraordinary distinctness. An Indian song was played — some Spanish music — a Russian march — and then some very hackneyed Debussy. I could not concentrate for the entire length of each piece but felt I could follow its construction as never before.
Most of the household had taken a few sips of the potion, and there was laughter behind every door. We watched two house-boys putting up the mosquito-nets over a bed, and they too giggled hysterically.
Even to move about the small sitting-room became a feat for not only was perspective altered, but the stereoscopic values were those of a faulty peepshow. There was a great distance between my host and the table, and another vast jump from the table to the curtain. Raymond’s body appeared flat, as if pasted on cardboard. I noticed, too, that one’s time-sense had broken down with extraordinary results — ten minutes would pass in a moment; a split-second would seem like many hours. One of the reasons for the popularity of this drug is that it gives the sensation of prolonging indefinitely the joys of sexual intercourse, and an orgasm seems to last for an eternity. The journey to my bed seemed to take an aeon and only an innate fear of being out of control of my senses cut short this extremely pleasant evening.
I do not know why I have not become a bhang addict, for the morrow brought no ill after-effects. In fact, my inclination to laugh was roused to the extent that even the sinister sights of the burning ghats along the Ganges struck me as vastly entertaining, and I was able to run up and down the highest towers for panoramic views of the city without the slightest feeling of breathlessness or strain.
The Indian climate can play havoc with the brain. I had telephoned to Natarajan[35] and said, ‘I want you to do three things for me.’ I enumerated the requests. Natarajan replied, ‘I must put those down now before I forget — one, yes — two, yes — now what was the third thing you wanted?’ Neither he nor I were able to remember.
HYDERABAD
Monday, March 13th
Although the heat is almost unbearable we are told to economize on electricity, so the use of the fan is frowned upon. Birds treat this house as an aviary: at night insects create a fog around the electric lights: bats rush around the matted ceiling. One gets accustomed to ants hurrying over everything, but this evening I was startled to find two frogs in the bath. Yet, all considered, this is a comfortable house.
This afternoon, while choosing, with my guide, material for an Indian dressing-gown, sirens went off shrilly and the air was rent with whistling. A few unknowing motorists continued on their way until the police cars caught up with them. With yells and curses the police cleared the road. A few seconds later the Nizam of Hyderabad sped past at high speed in a small motor-car. (He has been patriotic about saving petrol.) His appearance strikes one as oddly lacking in native character. Today, unshaven and untidy, he looked like one of the porters who hang about the orange crates in any market throughout the European world.
The main thoroughfare had not for long resumed its normal clamour when, again, whistles blew to pierce the eardrums. Another motorcade came into sight, then halted. A huge yellow limousine was backing in curves from the centre of the street, and came at last to rest by the curb nearby, and I returned to the peaceful pressure of shopping. Within a few moments I heard an avalanche of oaths and curses. The shop assistant shot surreptitious but frightened glances into the street, but none would answer my inquiries as to the cause of the noise. The street was empty now but for a small crowd standing at a respectful distance opposite. ‘What is all this?’ I asked. My guide continued to look at silk for me as if nothing untoward had happened. From his desk a young cashier quietly answered me, ‘It’s Her Highness.’
Out of the elephant’s breath limousine stepped an old hag. She wore her long, matted hair square at the ends, and the effect was as if she were wearing a string of loofahs. Her blue dress, with a muslin apron of pale green, was creased and messy. Her Highness stood in gold shoes with feet wide apart, hands on hips, then staggered backwards into the neighbouring shop where silver ornaments are sold. The shouting and screaming that followed was as terrifying as if knives were being drawn, and at least half a dozen fishwives were fighting to the death. But no one joined the fray. This was a solo performance by Her Highness.
Later, looking more dishevelled than ever, she reappeared and, arms akimbo, stood peering myopically into our shop. The aquiline nose, the pointed, pouting lips, the large, lean cheekbones and fierce bird-like eyes were enormously impressive in the manner of primitive sculpture. The wild appearance, though startling, even terrifying, was nevertheless on a grand scale. Magnificent, too, were the enormous drop pearl earrings and her many rows of large pearls. The grey-haired woman stood in the doorway of the shop and pointed at a blue scarf. Then s
he started shouting with renewed force. The young shop assistants in the tailor’s shop behaved with extraordinary calm and politeness. A young boy produced the scarf for Her Highness’s thorough inspection. Judging by the shrieks that followed, the young assistant’s life was being threatened. Suddenly the wild woman pointed at me. I stood to attention. But the cashier whispered that I must go and talk to Her Highness, who became silent as I walked forward and bowed. As I went down the steps farther forward towards the royal lady, the screaming started again with renewed force. I had gone too near the presence. Everyone looked pained. After a scuffle the poor mad woman, for so I gathered her to be, returned to her limousine. Screaming at me from the windows, with the volume of forty dustmen, she was carried back home.
The reverence with which these shop people treated this pitiful lady demonstrated another proof of how highly civilized and dignified they are in so many ways. Everyone in the State knows that it gives Her Highness pleasure to go on elaborate shopping expeditions. Her requests are treated with tactful acquiescence. All the purchases she has ordered to be sent to the palace are delivered, but it is known that two days later they will be returned intact.
As for myself, I believe I had somewhat of an escape, for it seems Her Highness has quite an eye for young men, and she might have ordered me to be sent up to the palace where I might not have remained intact.
CALCUTTA
Its climate, perhaps the most unhealthy of any town in India, may be responsible for the weakness, indolence and apathy of so many of Calcutta’s inhabitants, who seem resigned to the fact that they are doomed to disaster, famine or epidemic. The second largest city of the Empire, and the former capital of India, Calcutta is a city full of paradoxes of grandeur and poverty. There are many splendid parks, squares adorned with Edwardian statues, some elegant eighteenth-century buildings and florid commercial edifices; but only fifteen paces from the grand European hotels ragged groups on the pavement cluster around the fires, frying heavily-spiced food and bits of fish, while hordes of rats scurry about and scavenger dogs and enormous crows greedily explore the refuse bins.
European ladies in evening dress take themselves to the Philharmonic concerts on Sunday evenings. A few hundred yards away, at the Kalighat, the most primitive scenes of worship in all India take place.
But wartime Calcutta, recently recovered from famine, is thriving. Fortunes are being made. Directors of firms are ‘reserved’ from the army, and in the end, no doubt, receive knighthoods. (Calcutta is known as the city of ‘dreadful knights’.) Moreover, it has become a sort of oriental Clapham Junction. Air commodores, generals and celebrities of every kind and race spend the night at one of the over-crowded hotels or at Government House. Men on leave from the Fourteenth Army, in their bush-hats and shorts, crowd out the hostels, canteens, air-conditioned cinemas, cafés, milk-bars and the sleazy ‘attractions’ along Chowringhee. They say it is wonderful, after years in jungle fox-holes, merely to walk along stone pavements, to gaze up at tall jostling buildings and to sleep all night in a solidly constructed edifice. After listening to the whispers of the jungle, the violent noises of the town come as a relief. Calcutta provides plenty of noise: the tick-ticking and thunder-rolling of the trams, the honking of taxis — for Sikhs always drive with the horn — the bells of the rickshaws and the incessant caw-cawing of the crows circling above.
Poles wander in search of distraction; American sailors, with cigars at an insolent angle, buy silk kimonos embroidered with dragons; at the bookstalls British Tommies rather clumsily finger the pages of The Seven Pillars of Foolishness, Gone with the Monsoon, or Erotic Edna.
In Bow Bazaar one shopkeeper advertises himself as ‘Specialist in wet dreams’. All the oriental junk that Birmingham produces is here in the vast market: carved ivory by the ton, engraved metal and elaborate enamelling. Rare animals of the jungle are brought together under this glass roof: caged birds of all colours and sizes and, in crates, pathetic, black, long-haired monkeys with eyes like wallflowers and the dignity of saints. A young boy, holding a bird-cage, pauses a moment to rearrange his coloured girdle; another is sitting upon a trestle, sharing it with a goat and many vegetables; a young Hercules saunters by, balancing an enormous wardrobe on his turbaned head. One forgets how beautiful the human body can be until one sees it with the draperies so enticingly arranged.
Having given up all wordly possessions, the holy men, the Sadhus, satisfy their frugal wants by begging, and cover themselves with an ash that contains a sulphur which makes their naked bodies impervious to changes of heat or cold. They practise Yogi, and each morning go down to the Hooghly to bathe and do their muscular exercises, using the river water to irrigate their bowels. Under the influence of hemp and hashish, they laugh mischievously, peep and leer around corners, but their smoking does not affect their physique; the bodies of even the older men are remarkably lithe and energetic. The young men with their long bleached hair hanging below their shoulders, scarlet jockstrap and skin powdered half-elephant, half-circus performer, look more like devils than holy men. One naked young man, with his wild hair flowing behind him, comes charging down to the water astride a great bull. The head Sadhu, an old man with one eye and one tooth, reads from the Holy Book and tells us that twenty of his group have recently left for Nepal. They have gone begging their way on foot, and it will take a whole year to reach their destination. A nine-year-old boy, with grey powdered face and hair, in scarlet draperies, looks like an angel painted by Signorelli as he sits in the Lotus position, playing an enormous musical zither twice his size. The atmosphere is faintly vicious and sinister, though maybe it is only the rather uncanny laughter that gives one that impression.
An hour went by in a trance visiting the Jain temple, which could be described as of crystallized fruit, Turkish delight architecture. The wiry pagodas are painted white or pale blue, and a series of cone-topped pavilions are inlaid with coloured glass, semi precious stones or mirror. Glaring white European statues and monstrous garden chairs are dotted everywhere and so many surprising and preposterous objects are on display that the whole effect, while of an ingenuous lack of taste, is gay and like a setting for an opéra bouffe.
In the Science School of Calcutta University, the students seemed to be doing extremely exciting things: drawing coloured water into their mouths, giving pressure to liquids, making experiments that ended in explosions, etc.
Three surgeons and two matrons came for dinner. Old Sir Henry Holland is the only man in India who can perform the cataract operation, and during the year is said to bring back sight to 2,000 people. He is now training a fleet of Americans who will doubtless be able to continue the work.
The two matrons present were the ‘salt of the earth’: huge, over-size women who have been looking after Indians and teaching the women to nurse. In England there is one nurse for every 200 people: here one in every 30,000. They complained about the lack of funds the provincial governments allow for their work. They are here for a three-day conference to thrash out their difficulties and to try to get better conditions, not for themselves, but for the people for whom they have given up so unselfishly the best years of their lives. The more opulently proportioned of the two matrons told me how anti-British the Indians in the north are: in her hospital there is always an undercurrent of opposition, and she is continually finding notes on her chair or desk with the message ‘Quit India’. Yet they are operating solely on Indians, are in charge of hundreds of Indians and their operation theatres are peopled with Indian anaesthetists, surgeons and nurses. The matrons sighed that existence is made so much harder, not only by lack of gratitude, but by sabotage. If a prize-giving has been arranged, she will doubtless find that another attraction has been fixed by the Indians for the same day. When a Christmas party is planned for the children, it is discovered, at the last minute, that their parents have taken them off on some other expedition. Whenever Matron challenges anyone, and suggests it would be easier if all play together in the compound, there is
a slinking avoidance of the issue.
These noble nurses are paid only a pittance. One of them described her great pleasure in going to look at the Asia Crafts Shop. ‘The painted bowls are so full of colour, and they don’t mind at all if you don’t buy — if you just look around. Occasionally I do buy something, but that is for wedding presents.’ These two women, with their genteel manners and social giggles, are real heroines.
In a neighbourhood of cheap modernistic apartment-houses, of honeycomb tenement-buildings that seem so unsuitable for the climate of India, lives an Indian poet, in an atmosphere of an extraordinary sweetness and purity. Transparent dhotis and white saris, freshly laundered, are hanging from the landings and balcony, as emblems of cleanliness; the golden ewers sparkle in the washroom: the stark, almost empty bedroom, with the poet’s children asleep, is innocent of all the unnecessary and stuffy impediments of a humble room in the Western world. Here are no cluttered drawers, here are the essentials alone; and yet, when I want, of all things, a tripod for my camera, the poet is able to produce it.
WITH THE ADC’S
John Erwin, nervous, miserable and anti-social, acted out of character by giving a cocktail party. Mrs Wilson, idly sipping, told me of a letter she had just received from her husband in the jungle. He had spent a night in a fox-hole playing ‘deception’ records (discs of people marching along, twigs being broken, etc.) when he realized he was encircled by the Japs. Nothing to do but remain silent, trusting for the best, but realizing there was little chance of escape. He listened at early dawn to the Punjabis going in to attack the Japs with bayonets and blood-curdling war-cries. During his greatest terror, when he felt convinced he was done for, his moments of waiting were spent graphically imagining himself going into all the best restaurants in London, and visualizing the meals he would order, course after course. His ordeal ended happily, for the Japs were unable to locate him, and the ground had been recovered by daylight.
