by Fanny Parkes
[ … ]
May 9th – The Sohobut Melā, or Fair of Kites, was in Alopee Bāgh; I went to see it; hundreds of people, in their gayest dresses, were flying kites in all directions, so happily and eagerly; and under the fine trees in the mango tope, sweetmeats, toys and children’s ornaments were displayed in booths erected for the purpose. It was a pretty sight, that Alopee ke Melā.
The kites are of different shapes, principally square, and have no tails; the strings are covered with mānjhā, a paste mixed with pounded glass and applied to the string to enable it to cut that of another by friction. One man flies his kite against another, and he is the loser whose string it cut. The boys, and the men also, race after the defeated kite, which becomes the prize of the person who first seizes it. It requires some skill to gain the victory; the men are as fond of the sport as the boys.
The string of a kite caught tightly round the tail of my horse Trelawny and threatened to carry away horse and rider tail foremost into midair! The more the kite pulled and danced about, the more danced Trelawny, the more frightened he became, and the tighter he tucked in his tail; the gentleman who was on the horse caught the string, and bit it in two, and a native disengaged it from the tail of the animal. A pleasant bite it must have been, that string covered with pounded glass! Yah! Yah! How very absurd! I wish you had seen the tamāshā. In the evening we dined with Sir Charles Metcalfe; he was residing at Papamhow. He told me he was thinking of cutting down the avenue of neem trees (Melia azadirachta) that led from the house to the river; I begged hard that it might be spared, assuring him that the air around neem trees was reckoned wholesome by the natives, while that around the tamarind was considered very much the contrary. In front of my rooms, in former days at Papamhow, was a garden full of choice plants and a very fine young India-rubber tree; it was pleasant to see the bright green of the large glossy leaves of the caoutchouc tree, which flourished so luxuriantly. In those days, many flowering trees adorned the spot; among which the katchnar (Bauhinia), both white and rose-coloured and variegated, was remarkable for its beauty. Sir Charles had destroyed my garden, without looking to see what trees he was cutting down; he had given the ruthless order. I spoke of and lamented the havoc he had occasioned; to recompense me, he promised to spare the avenue, which, when I revisited it years afterwards, was in excellent preservation.
May 14th – The Bāiza Bāī sent for me in great haste; she was in alarm respecting the Gaja Rājā, who was ill of epidemic fever. Having lost her daughter, the Chimna Bāī, of fever when she was driven out of Gwalior by her rebellious subjects, she was in the utmost distress, lest her only remaining hope and comfort, her young granddaughter, should be taken from her. I urged them to call in European medical advice; they hesitated to do so, as a medical man might neither see the young Princess, nor feel her pulse. I drove off and soon returned with the best native doctress to be procured; but, from what I heard at the consultation, it may be presumed her skill is not very great.
The Nawāb Hakīm Menhdi is very ill; I fear his days are numbered.
The murder of Mr Frazer by the Nawāb Sumshoodeen at Delhi, who bribed a man called Kureem Khān to shoot him, took place when I was at Colonel Gardner’s; no one could believe it when suspicion first fell upon the Nawāb; he had lived on such intimate terms with Mr Frazer, who always treated him like a brother. The Nawāb was tried by Mr Colvin, the judge, condemned and executed. The natives at Allahabad told me they thought it a very unjust act of our Government, the hanging the Nawāb merely for bribing a man to murder another, and said the man who fired the shot ought to have been the only person executed. On Sunday, the 13th March, 1835, Kureem Khān was foiled in his attempt on Mr Frazer’s life, as the latter was returning from a nāch, given by Hindu Rāo, the brother of the Bāiza Bāī. He accomplished his purpose eight days afterwards, on the 22nd of the same month. In the Hon. Miss Eden’s beautiful work The Princes and People of India, there is a sketch of Hindu Rāo on horseback; his being the brother of the Bāiza Bāī is perhaps his most distinguishing mark; I have understood, however, he by no means equals the ex-Queen of Gwalior in talent.
June 7th – Sir Charles Metcalfe gave a ball to the station: in spite of all the thermantidotes and the tattīs it was insufferably hot; but it is remarkable that balls are always given and better attended during the intense heat of the hot winds than at any other time.
June 9th – The Baīza Bāī sent word she wished to see me ere her departure, as it was her intention to quit Allahabad and proceed to the west: a violent rheumatic headache prevented my being able to attend. The next morning she encamped at Pādshāh Bāgh, beyond Allahabad on the Cawnpore road, where I saw her the next evening in a small round tent, entirely formed of tattīs. The day after she quitted the ground and went one march on the Cawnpore road, when the Kotwal of the city was sent out by the magistrate to bring her back to Allahabad, and she was forced to return. Her granddaughter is very ill, exposed to the heat and rains in tents. I fear the poor girl’s life will be sacrificed. Surely she is treated cruelly and unjustly. She who once reigned in Gwalior has now no roof to shelter her: the rains have set in; she is forced to live in tents and is kept here against her will – a state prisoner, in fact.
The sickness in our farmyard is great: forty-seven gram-fed sheep and lambs have died of smallpox; much sickness is in the stable, but no horse has been lost in consequence.
June 25th – Remarkably fine grapes are selling at one rupee the ser; i.e. one shilling per pound. The heat is intolerable, and the rains do not fall heavily as they ought to do at this season. The people in the city say the drought is so unaccountable, so great, that some rich merchant, having large stores of grain of which to dispose, must have used magic to keep off the rains, that a famine may ensue and make his fortune!
CHAPTER XLII
TUFĀNS IN THE EAST
JUNE 28TH 1836 – A hurricane has blown ever since gunfire; clouds of dust are borne along upon the rushing wind; not a drop of rain; nothing is to be seen but the whirling clouds of the tufān. The old peepal tree moans and the wind roars in it as if the storm would tear it up by the roots. The pinnace at anchor on the Jumna below the bank rolls and rocks; the river rises in waves, like a little sea. Some of her iron bolts have been forced out by the pressure of the cables, and the sarang says she can scarcely hold to her moorings. I am watching her unsteady masts, expecting the next gust will tear her from the bank and send her off into the rushing and impetuous current. It is well it is not night or she would be wrecked to a certainty. I have not much faith in her weathering such a tufān at all, exposed as she is to the power of the stream and the force of the tempest. High and deep clouds of dust come rushing along the ground which, soaring into the highest heaven, spread darkness with a dull sulphurous tinge, as the red brown clouds of the tufān whirl swiftly on. It would almost be an inducement to go to India, were it only to see a hurricane in all its glory: the might and majesty of wind and dust: just now the fine sand from the banks of the river is passing in such volumes on the air, that the whole landscape has a white hue and objects are indistinct; it drives through every crevice and, although the windows are all shut, fills my eyes and covers the paper. It is a fearful gale. I have been out to see if the pinnace is likely to be driven from her moorings. The waves in the river are rolling high with crests of foam; a miniature sea. So powerful were the gusts, with difficulty I was able to stand against them. Like an Irish hurricane it blew up and down. At last the falling of heavy rain caused the abatement of the wind. The extreme heat passed away, the trees, the earth, all nature, animate and inanimate, exulted in the refreshing rain. Only those who have panted and longed for the fall of rain can appreciate the delight with which we hailed the setting in of the rains after the tufān.
July 3rd – This morning the Bāī sent down two of her ladies, one of whom is a celebrated equestrian, quite an Amazon, nevertheless, in stature small and slight, with a pleasant and feminine countenance. She was dressed in a long p
iece of white muslin, about eighteen yards in length; it was wound round the body and passed over the head, covering the bosom entirely: a part of it was brought up tight between the limbs, so that it had the appearance of full trousers falling to the heels. An embroidered red Benares shawl was bound round her waist; in it was placed a sword and a pistol and a massive silver bangle was on one of her ankles. Her attendants were present with two saddle horses, decked in crimson and gold and ornaments of silver, after the Mahratta fashion. She mounted a large bony grey, astride of course, and taking an extremely long spear in her hand, galloped the horse about in circles, performing the spear exercise in the most beautiful and graceful style at full gallop; her horse rearing and bounding and showing off the excellence of her riding. Dropping her spear, she took her matchlock, performing a sort of mimic fight, turning on her saddle as she retreated at full gallop, and firing over her horse’s tail. She rode beautifully and most gracefully. When the exhibition was over, we retired to my dressing-room: she told me she had just arrived from Jaganāth, and was now en route to Lahore to Runjeet Singh. She was anxious I should try the lance exercise on her steed, which I would have done had I possessed the four walls of a zenāna within which to have made the attempt.
What does Sir Charles Metcalfe intend to do with the poor Bāī? What will be her fate? This wet weather she must be wretched in tents. The Lieutenant-Governor leaves Allahabad for Agra in the course of a day or two.
In the evening I paid my respects to her Highness. I happened to have on a long rosary and cross of black beads; she was pleased with it, and asked me to procure some new rosaries for her that they might adorn the idols, whom they dress up, like the images of the saints in France, with all sorts of finery.
She showed me a necklace of gold coins which appeared to be Venetian: the gold of these coins is reckoned the purest of all, and they sell at a high price. The natives assert they come from the eastward, and declare that to the East is a miraculous well into which, if copper coins be thrown, they come out after a time the very purest of gold.
[ … ]
The necklace, which was a wedding present to the bride, consisted of three rows of silken cords as thickly studded with these coins as it was possible to put them on, the longest string reaching to the knees: it was very heavy and must have been valuable. Another Mahratta lady wore a necklace of the same description, but it consisted of a single row which reached from her neck to her feet: people less opulent wear merely one, two, or three putlīs around the neck.
An old Muhammadan darzī of the Shīā sect asked me one morning to be allowed to go to the bazaar to purchase a putlī (a doll) to bind upon his forehead, to take away a violent pain in his head. This request of his puzzled me greatly: at the time I was ignorant that putlī was also the name of the charmed coin, as well as that of a doll. He told me he had recovered from severe headache before in consequence of this application, and believed the remedy infallible. The Bāī mentioned that she struck mohurs and half mohurs at Gwalior, in her days of prosperity. I showed her some new rupees struck by the East India Company with the king’s head upon them which, having examined, she said, ‘These rupees are very paltry, there is so little pure silver in them.’
[ … ]
July 8th – Sir Charles quitted this station for Agra, leaving Allahabad to return to its usual routine of quietness. The thermantidotes have been stopped, rain has fallen plentifully, the trees have put on their freshest of greens and the grass is springing up in every direction. How agreeable, how pleasant to the eye is all this luxuriant verdure!
The report in the bazaar is, that a native of much wealth and consideration went into his zenāna tents, in which he found two of his wives and a man; the latter escaped; he killed both the women. A zenāna is a delightful place for private murder, and the manner in which justice is distributed between the sexes is so impartial! A man may have as many wives as he pleases and mistresses without number – it only adds to his dignity! If a woman take a lover, she is murdered and cast like a dog into a ditch. It is the same all the world over; the women, being the weaker, are the playthings, the drudges or the victims of the men; a woman is a slave from her birth; and the more I see of life, the more I pity the condition of the women. As for the manner in which the natives strive to keep them virtuous, it is absurd; a girl is affianced at three or four years old, married without having seen the man, at eleven, shut up and guarded and suspected of a wish to intrigue which, perhaps, first puts it into her head; and she amuses herself with outwitting those who have no dependence upon her, although, if discovered, her death generally ends the story.
[ … ]
July 23rd – During the night it began to blow most furiously, accompanied by heavy rain and utter darkness; so fierce a tufān I never witnessed before. It blew without cessation, raining heavily at intervals; and the trees were torn up by their roots. At four o’clock the storm became so violent, it wrecked twenty large native salt boats just below our house; the river roared and foamed, rising in high waves from the opposition of the wind and stream. Our beautiful pinnace broke from her moorings, was carried down the stream a short distance, driven against the broken bastions of the old city of Prāg which have fallen into the river, and totally wrecked just off the Fort; she went down with all her furniture, china, books, wine, etc., on board, and has never been seen or heard of since; scarcely a vestige has been discovered. Alas! my beautiful Seagull; she has folded her wings for ever and has sunk to rest! We can only rejoice no lives were lost and that we were not on board; the sarang and khalāsīs (sailors) swam for their lives; they were carried some distance down the stream, below the Fort, and drifted on a sandbank. The headless image of the satī that graced the cabin had brought rather too much wind. When the sarang lamented her loss, I could only repeat, as on the day he carried off the lady, ‘Chorī ke mal nāīch hazm hota’ – stolen food cannot be digested: i.e. ill deeds never thrive.
The cook-boat was swamped. On the going down of the river, although she was in the mud with her back broken, she was sold, and brought the sum we originally gave for her when new – such was the want of boats occasioned by the numbers that were lost in the storm! The next morning, three of the Venetians and the companion-ladder of the pinnace were washed ashore below the Fort, and brought to us by a fisherman. We were sorry for the fate of Seagull; she was a beautifully built vessel, but not to be trusted, the white ants had got into her. The mischief those white ants do is incalculable; they pierce the centre of the masts and beams working on in the dark, seldom showing marks of their progress outside, unless during the rains. Sometimes a mast, to all appearance sound, will snap asunder, when it will be discovered the centre had been hollowed by the white ants, and the outside is a mere wooden shell. Almost all the trees in the garden were blow down by the gale.
[ … ]
August 7th – Some friends anchored under our garden on their way to Calcutta; the sight of their little fleet revived all my roaming propensities and, as I wished to consult a medical man at the Residency in whom I had great faith, I agreed to join their party and make a voyage down the river. The Bāiza Bāī was anxious to see my friends; we paid her a farewell visit; she was charmed with Mr C—, who speaks and understands the language like a native, and delighted with the children.
August 13th – Our little fleet of six vessels quitted Allahabad and three days afterwards we arrived at Mirzapur, famous for its beautiful ghāts and carpet manufactories.
August 17th – Anchored under the Fort of Chunar, a beautiful object from the river; it was not my intention to have anchored there, but the place looked so attractive I could not pass by without paying it a visit. The goats and sheep, glad to get a run after their confinement in the boat, are enjoying themselves on the bank; and a boy with a basket full of snakes (cobra di capello), is trying to attract my attention. In the cool of the evening we went into the Fort, which is situated on the top of an abrupt rock which rises from the river. The view, coming from Allahab
ad, is very striking; the ramparts running along the top of the rising ground, the broad open river below; the churchyard under the walls, on the banks of the Ganges, with its pretty tombs of Chunar stone rising in all sorts of pointed forms, gives one an idea of quiet, not generally the feeling that arises on the sight of a burial-place in India; the ground was open and looked cheerful as the evening sun fell on the tombs; the hills, the village, the trees all united in forming a scene of beauty. We entered the magazine and visited the large black slab on which the deity of the Fort is said to be ever present, with the exception of from daybreak until the hour of nine, during which time he is at Benares. Tradition asserts that the Fort has never been taken by the English, but during the absence of their god Burtreenath. We walked round the ramparts and enjoyed the view. The church, the houses which stretch along the riverside for some distance and the Fort itself looked cheerful and healthy; which accounted for the number of old pensioners to be found at Chunar, who have their option as to their place of residence.