Since we started getting friendly, Inder Lal’s mother invites me along on some of her jaunts. I’ve been introduced to all her friends, including a sort of leader they have – another widow whom they call “Maji” though she is not that much older than they are. Maji is said to have certain powers, and though I don’t know what they are, she does give me the impression of having something more than other people, even if it is only more vim and vigour. She seems to be positively bursting with those. She lives very simply in a little hut under a tree. It is a lovely spot, in between the lake where the boys go swimming and a lot of old royal tombs. When I was taken to see her, we all crawled inside her hut and sat on the mud floor there. I enjoyed being with all those widows, they were so gay and friendly, and though I couldn’t take much part in their conversation, I did a lot of smiling and nodding; and when they all began to sing hymns – led by Maji, who sang very lustily, throwing herself around in her enthusiasm – I tried to join in, which seemed to please them.
After that Inder Lal’s mother took me to see the suttee shrines. We walked to the end of the bazaar and through the gateway leading out of town, then down a dusty road till we came to a tank or reservoir by the wayside. Here Inder Lal’s mother showed me a cluster of little shrines under some trees: they were not much bigger than mile-stones, though some of them had little domes on top. There were crude figures scratched hair-thin into the stone: presumably the husband with the faithful wife who had burned herself with him. They gave me an eerie feeling, but Inder Lal’s mother devoutly joined her hands before the shrines. She decorated one of them with a little string of roses and marigolds she had brought. She told me that, on certain days of the year, she and her friends come with sweets, milk, and flowers to worship these widows who have made the highest sacrifice. She sounded really respectful and seemed to have the greatest reverence for that ancient custom. She even seemed regretful – this merry widow! – that it had been discontinued (it was outlawed in 1829). She showed me the shrine of the last suttee, which of course I knew about as it had taken place during Olivia’s time. Although this shrine only dates back to 1923, it looks as age-old as the others.
1923
It had happened when Mr. Crawford was away on tour and Douglas on his own in charge of the district. A grain merchant had died and his widow had been forced by her relatives to burn herself with him on his funeral pyre. Although Douglas had rushed to the scene the moment information reached him, he had arrived too late to save the woman. All he could still do was arrest the main instigators who were her sons, brothers-in-law, and a priest. Everyone praised Douglas for the calm and competent way he had handled the situation. Even the Nawab made a point of congratulating him – though Douglas received those congratulations rather coldly. But the Nawab did not notice or, if he did, was not put out.
Olivia had still not told Douglas about the Nawab’s picnic; nor about the Nawab’s subsequent visits – he came almost every second or third day now, usually with all his companions. Not that she didn’t want to tell Douglas – of course she did! – but he was always home so late and then with so many preoccupations of his own, she never seemed to have an opportunity to tell him. However, one day the Nawab lingered on till Douglas’ arrival home. He must have deliberately planned to do so because that day he had left all his young men behind. If Olivia was nervous about this meeting, she need not have been because the Nawab handled it perfectly. He sprang to his feet to receive Douglas and held out his hand in hearty English greeting. It was as if he were the host and this his house in which it was his duty to make Douglas welcome. He said at once that his purpose in driving over that day was to congratulate Douglas on his prompt action. When Douglas, cool and deprecating, said he wished he had been prompt enough to get there before rather than after the event, the Nawab shrugged in commiseration:
“What is to be done, Mr. Rivers. These people will never learn. Whatever we do, they will still cling to their barbaric customs. But, Mr. Rivers, what praise there is for you everywhere! On your conduct of this miserable affair, all speak as one.”
“You are misinformed,” Douglas said. “There’s been a lot of murmuring. It seems my prisoners – the unfortunate woman’s relatives – are in some quarters regarded as martyrs. We even had a bit of trouble outside the jail today.” He gave Olivia a quick, sharp look: “You are not to worry. Nothing we couldn’t easily handle.”
“Of course you need not at all worry, Mrs. Rivers!” the Nawab likewise assured her. “Where Mr. Rivers is, there is firm control and strong action. As there must be. Otherwise these people cannot be managed at all. All must be grateful to you, Mr. Rivers, for your strong hand,” he said, looking at Douglas man-to-man and not seeming to notice that Douglas did not look back at him that way.
As soon as Mr. Crawford returned from tour, he gave a dinner party at which the main topic of conversation was again the suttee. Douglas came in for much praise. Although embarrassed – he played furiously with his piece of Melba toast – he was also proud, for he highly respected his superiors and set great store by their good opinion of him. Besides Douglas and Olivia, the other guests were the Minnies and Dr. Saunders (Mrs. Saunders not well enough to come): in fact, the same people as usual, there being no other English officers in the district. The meal also was as usual – the bland, soggy food the Crawfords might have eaten at home except that their Indian cook had somehow taken it a soggy stage further. However, the way it was served, by bearers in turbans and cummerbunds, was rather grand. So were the plate and silver: they had been handed down to Mrs. Crawford by her grandmother who had bought them in Calcutta, at an auction of the effects of an English merchant-banker gone bankrupt.
After discussing this particular case of suttee, the diners went on to remember past incidents of the same nature. These were drawn not so much from personal experience as from a rich store-house of memories that went back several generations and was probably interesting to those who shared it. The only person there besides Olivia who did not was Dr. Saunders. He concentrated on his dinner though from time to time he contributed exasperated exclamations. The others, however, told their anecdotes with no moral comment whatsoever, even though they had to recount some hair-raising events. And not only did they keep completely cool, but they even had that little smile of tolerance, of affection, even enjoyment that Olivia was beginning to know well: like good parents, they all loved India whatever mischief she might be up to.
“Mind you,” said Major Minnies, “there have been cases of wives who actually did want to be burned with their husbands.”
“Don’t believe a word of it!” from Dr. Saunders.
“I don’t think your suttee lady was an altogether willing participant,” Mr. Crawford twinkled at Douglas.
“No,” said Douglas, holding in a lot more.
Olivia looked across at him and said “How do you know?” It was like a challenge and she meant it to be. He hadn’t talked to her much about the suttee, wanting to spare her the details (which were indeed very painful – he was to hear that woman’s screams to the end of his days). But Olivia resented being spared. “It’s part of their religion, isn’t it? I thought one wasn’t supposed to meddle with that.” Now she looked down into her Windsor soup and not at all at Douglas; but she went on stubbornly: “And quite apart from religion, it is their culture and who are we to interfere with anyone’s culture, especially an ancient one like theirs.”
“Culture!” cried Dr. Saunders. “You’ve been talking to that bounder Horsham!” Olivia didn’t know it but her words had recalled those of an English member of Parliament who had passed through the district the year before and had put everyone’s back up.
But Dr. Saunders and Douglas were the only ones to be annoyed with Olivia. The others sportingly discussed her point of view as if it were one that could be taken seriously. They spoke of the sanctity of religious practices, even took into account the possibility of voluntary suttee: but came to the conclusion that, when all was said
and done, it was still suicide and in a particularly gruesome form.
“I know,” Olivia said miserably. She had no desire to recommend widow-burning but it was everyone else being so sure – tolerant and smiling but sure – that made her want to take another stand. “But in theory it is really, isn’t it, a noble idea. In theory,” she pleaded. Without daring to glance in Douglas’ direction, she knew him to be sitting very upright with his thin lips held in tight and his eyes cold. She went on rather desperately: “I mean, to want to go with the person you care for most in the world. Not to want to be alive any more if he wasn’t.”
“It’s savagery,” Dr. Saunders declared. “Like everything else in this country, plain savagery and barbarism. I’ve seen some sights in my hospital I wouldn’t like to tell you about, not with ladies present I wouldn’t. Most gruesome and horrible mutilations – and all, mind you, in the name of religion. If this is religion, then by gad!” he said, so loudly and strongly that the old head-bearer with the hennaed beard trembled from head to foot, “I’d be proud to call myself an atheist.”
But Major Minnies – perhaps out of gallantry – rallied to Olivia’s side with an anecdote that partly bore out her point of view. It was not something that had happened to him personally but a hundred years earlier and to Colonel Sleeman when in charge of the district of Jabalpore. Sleeman had tried to prevent a widow from committing suttee but had been defeated by her determination to perish together with her husband’s corpse.
“That really was a voluntary suttee,” Major Minnies told Olivia. “Her sons and the rest of her family joined Colonel Sleeman in attempting to prevent her, but it was no use. She was determined. She sat for four days on a rock in the river and said that if she wasn’t allowed to burn herself then she’d starve herself to death. In any case she wasn’t going to be left behind. In the end Sleeman had to give way – yes he lost that round but I’ll tell you something – he speaks of the old lady with respect. She wasn’t a fanatic, she wasn’t even very dramatic about it, she just sat there quietly and waited and said no, she wanted to go with her husband. There was something noble there,” said the Major – and now he wasn’t being tolerant and amused, not in the least.
“Too noble for me, I fear,” said Beth Crawford – as hostess, she probably felt it was time to change the tone. “Fond as I am of you, dear man,” she told her husband across the table, “I don’t really think I could –”
“Oh I could!” cried Olivia, and with such feeling that everyone was silent and looked at her. Douglas also looked – and this time she dared raise her eyes to his: even if he was angry with her. “I’d want to. I mean, I just wouldn’t want to go on living. I’d be grateful for such a custom.”
Their eyes met across the table. She saw his hard look melt away into tenderness. And she felt the same way towards him. Her feelings became so strong that she could not go on looking into his eyes. She looked down at her plate, meekly began to cut the hard piece of chicken in floury sauce that had replaced the hard piece of fried fish of the preceding course: and thought that really everything was quite easy to bear and overcome just as long as she and Douglas felt the way they did for each other.
30 March. I had to go to the post office so afterwards I waited as usual to go home with Inder Lal. We had got as far as the royal tombs – near the lake and Maji’s hut – when we heard some strange sounds coming out of one of them. They seemed like groans. Inder Lal said “It is better to go home.” But when we reached the next tomb – there is a whole cluster of them, all of one 14th century royal family – we again heard the same sound coming from behind us. It was a groan. Despite Inder Lal’s protests, I turned back to investigate. I ascended the steps; although these tombs have no side-walls but are closed in by arches and lattices, they are very dark inside. At first all I could make out was the vague mass of the sarcophagi in the centre: but when the groaning noise was repeated, I noticed that it came from another shape huddled in one corner. This was human and dressed in something orange. I went up close – Inder Lal gave a warning shout from outside – and got down to peer at the groaner. I recognised him as the white sadhu, Chid, whom I had once met outside the travellers’ rest-house.
He had all his possessions with him – a bundle, an umbrella, prayer-beads, and a begging bowl – and they were scattered around him where he lay propped against a latticed arch. There were also some bits of dried bun on a newspaper. He said he didn’t know how long he had been lying here – sometimes it was dark and sometimes it was darker, he said. He had been thrown out of the travellers’ rest-house when his two companions had moved on. He had then tried to continue his pilgrimage, but feeling very ill on the road, had dragged himself back to Satipur. He said he was still very ill. He had been lying here alone, and no one had bothered him because no one had found him except once a pariah dog had sniffed at him and gone away again.
Inder Lal, standing inside an arch at a cautious distance, warned me “Be careful.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s someone I know.” I felt Chid’s forehead and found it to be hot.
He groaned: “I’m thirsty . . . and hungry,” he added, patting his stomach hard like an Indian beggar so one could hear the hollow sound.
Inder Lal had now come up cautiously and stood looking down at Chid: “Why is he dressed like that?” he asked.
“He is a sadhu,” I explained.
“How can he be sadhu?”
“He’s studied Hindu religion.”
It was horrible inside the tomb – there was an acrid smell of bat droppings and also I think Chid must have been disrespectful enough to use the place as a lavatory. I wondered what to do with him: he couldn’t be left, but where should I take him?
“What has he studied?” Inder Lal asked; he was now keenly interested. “What have you studied?” he probed. “Do you know the Puranas? What about the Brahmanas?”
Chid did not hear these questions; he was looking at me with pleading, fevered eyes. “Do you live near?” he asked me. “I could walk if it’s very near.”
I was reluctant, but Inder Lal seemed to fancy the idea of taking Chid home with us.
10 April. Although Chid recovered from his fever after a few days, he has given no indication of leaving. I suppose it is restful for him in my room after all his travelling across India. It is not very restful for me though. I have had to lock up all my papers – Olivia’s letters and this journal – not because I mind his reading them (I don’t think he’d be very interested anyway) but because of the way he ruffled through them and left them scattered about with dirty finger-marks on them. These finger-marks are on everything in my room now. He makes no secret of going through my possessions and taking whatever he needs: in fact, he has explained to me that he doesn’t believe in possessions and thinks it is bad for people to be attached to them. He is not very demanding, actually – he eats the food I prepare and is satisfied with everything he is given. He spends a lot of time walking around town and has become a familiar figure so that even the children have got tired of running after him. Some of the shopkeepers allow him to sit in their stalls with them and occasionally he collects quite a crowd as he sits there cross-legged and expounds his philosophy.
Everyone considers it a privilege for me to have him in my room. It seems I have been presented with an excellent opportunity to acquire merit by serving a holy man in charity. The question as to whether Chid is holy may remain open, but as far as the town is concerned, he has made a promising first step in shaving his head and throwing away his clothes. For this they seem ready to give him the benefit of many doubts. I’ve seen them do the same with Indian holy men who often pass through the town with their ochre robes and beads and begging bowls. On the whole they look a sturdy set of rascals to me – some of them heavily drugged, others randy as can be, all it seems to me with shrewd and greedy faces. But as they pass through the streets, some half naked, some fully so, rapping their pilgrim staffs and shouting out the name of God as pedd
lers shout their wares, people come running out of their houses to lay offerings into the ready begging bowls. Chid also has a begging bowl and often people put something in it – a banana or a guava – which he eats by himself in a corner of my room, afterwards leaving the peel on the floor. When I tell him to pick it up, he does so quite meekly.
Inder Lal is much impressed with Chid. As soon as he comes home from the office, he climbs up to my room and sits there for hours listening to Chid. Chid tells him about the centres of energy within the body and the methods to be employed in order to release them. He points now to his skull and now contorts himself so as to dig himself in the base of his spine; and then he weaves his hands about in the air as if drawing down spiritual forces to be found there. I get very bored with all this. It seems to me that Chid has picked up scraps of spiritual and religious lore here and there, and as he is neither an intelligent nor very educated boy, it has all sort of fermented inside him and makes him sound a bit mad at times. Perhaps he is a bit mad.
I still don’t know anything about him. Sometimes he gives me accounts of himself, but they are always different and it is impossible to reconcile one with another. Anyway, as they deal mostly with the development of his spiritual life, they are abstract rather than personal. Inder Lal tells me this is quite all right because Chid has no personal past. When someone becomes a Hindu ascetic, all his former life – indeed, his former lives – everything he has ever thought or done or been is burned up: literally burned up, for a funeral pyre is lit and the aspirant’s clothes and shaved hair consumed in it in a symbolic cremation. Chid has undergone this ceremony, so that now, according to Inder Lal, he is nothing but the Hindu sadhu we see before us. However, he has retained his flat Midlands accent which makes everything he says even more weird.
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