Hindoo Holiday

by J. R. Ackerley

  It was full moon this evening when I left my house and walked over to the Guest House for dinner. On the steps of the verandah I saw Narayan and Sharma sitting together, but at my approach the latter rose and, going towards the pantry near which Hashim was standing, hid behind his back. Narayan rose also, but did not run away.

  “Sharma!” I said, when I had reached the steps. There was no reply, and neither Narayan nor Hashim made any sign. “Sharma!” I repeated; and this time both the others echoed me. Sharma came out from behind Hashim’s back and stood still in the moonlight.

  “Salaam!” I said, greeting him.

  “Salaam!” said the boy touching his head.

  I went in to dinner.

  PART 2

  MARCH 9TH

  I got back this evening at about five o’clock. Having delayed too long in warning Babaji Rao of the time of my arrival at Dipra, I found no car there to meet me; but there was a lorry at the station bound for Chhokrapur, and I got my luggage and myself on to that.

  The driver of the lorry, which was already full of sleepy Indians with their little brass bowls and baggage, offered me the front seat next to him, and there I sat, very limp after a hot and stuffy journey, and waited for the lorry to start.

  This occurred an hour later. A lean man in a yellow turban and threadbare European suit came and addressed me, having paved the way to conversation by a display of large teeth as yellow as his turban, to which I had not responded. He spoke English.

  “Sir, excuse me; you are going to Chhokrapur?”

  I nodded feebly, already bored by what I knew would follow.

  “You have employment there?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are Dewan of the State, perhaps?”

  “No.”

  “Ah; then what is your business?”

  “Private.”

  A bead of perspiration trickled down my nose and fell on to the attaché-case I was nursing on my knees. The brown eyes examined me and my luggage again, and then gazed dreamily at the railway station.

  “You are a soldier?”

  “No.”

  “In the political department, perhaps?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, then no doubt a civil servant?”

  “No.”

  He smiled faintly. This was certainly extremely interesting. Who could this Englishman be? After an interval he tried again. He felt sure he had met me, or at any rate seen me, before.

  “Where?” I asked, watching the lorry-driver, who was arguing with some of the passengers and spectators over the crankhandle to which the engine had failed to respond.

  “In Benares?” hazarded the man in the yellow turban.

  I glanced at him, wondering whether I actually had seen him in Benares, and no doubt this decided him that he had made a good shot. Yes, in Benares, he felt sure, and he distinctly remembered that we had met and talked, and I had told him of the business upon which I was engaged, but the nature of which he had now unhappily forgotten.

  “When was this?” I asked sleepily.

  Somewhere between 1927 and 1929, he conjectured with a smile, and was confounded when I said that I had only been in Benares once, and then only for three days, and that only three weeks ago. Then, to show that I bore him no ill-will, I asked him whither he was bound, what his business was, what salary he was getting, whether he was married, and how many children he possessed; and having elicited, without the least difficulty, all this information, I said I wished to sleep, and he said he wished to make water, and we parted on good terms. Shortly afterwards the owner of the lorry, whose eyes were more vertical than horizontal, came to collect the fares himself, for no one would be so simple as to expect money to pass unchanged through the hands of employés. I asked for a ticket as far as Rajgarh, thinking that the Maharajah’s car might meet me on the way, and was told that it cost three rupees. I smiled scornfully. As a matter of fact, I had no idea at all what the fare was, but one is always overcharged as a matter of course. It is the custom. The person in the yellow turban had reappeared by this time, and was able to inform me that one and a half rupees was the correct price; so I requested him to ask the lorry-owner why I was being charged double.

  “The Sahib is occupying double seat space,” was the naïve reply.

  “The Sahib did not ask for double seat space,” I said smiling, and handed him one and a half rupees. The owner and the driver, who accompanied him, smiled calmly in return; they had failed to rob me, but were not cross with me on that account. After this there was a general agreement that no one had anything more to do or say and that we might as well start; it was 2:45 P.M., and there seemed to me to be no reason why we should not have started three-quarters of an hour earlier. Then the driver said that he was hot and wished to go round the corner to get a drink of water from the pump. This announcement was greeted with general disfavor; people who had been dozing when the remark was made stiffened into life and added their protest to the general outcry; and for about ten minutes there was a discussion as to whether or not there was time for the lorry-driver to go and get a drink of water from the pump. The man in the yellow turban, who explained to me what was happening, also voted. Eventually the driver gave in; the engine was flogged into motion, and we drove off. Five minutes later one of the Maharajah’s cars appeared in a cloud of dust. I stopped the lorry and got out, and spent a few vain minutes trying, with the chauffeur’s help, to get my one and a half rupees refunded. I didn’t much care; but it was the right thing to do.

  The lorry then proceeded upon its way.

  There was a note for me from His Highness.

  “DEAR FRIEND,—Delighted to hear you come to-day. Sending car. Napoleon the 3rd is also to reach Dipra at the same hour. If not inconvenient can you bring them with you too—and oblige.”

  We drove back through the torrid heat to the station and made inquiries. Yes, the party His Highness was expecting had arrived; they were in the lorry I had just left.

  The chauffeur was quite unmoved by this news, and I was, by this time, in a state of Indian resignation; so we set back without a word in pursuit of the lorry, which we found not very far from the place where we had left it. It had broken down.

  Napoleon the Third was seated on a pile of dusty blankets inside it, wedged between the knees of his uncle and aunt.

  He was wearing a yellow coat, pink cotton trousers, and some silver bracelets and rings; but he was very grubby, and had sore eyes which were lavishly smeared with a thick black paste. We rescued him and his uncle from the lorry and stuffed them and their baggage into the back of the car. The aunt, who kept her face carefully concealed, we left where she was.

  When I had washed and changed my clothes, Babaji Rao came to see me. After talking for some time about my holiday and His Highness’s pilgrimage, which is now dated to begin on the 17th, he said he was thirsty and called across to the kitchen for a lota of water. This was brought by Narayan, who handed it to Babaji Rao and then left.

  Babaji Rao went out on to the verandah to drink it, and when he came back explained that there were many people in Chhokrapur who might have talked if he had drunk water in my house. He said he did not mind much about it himself, and had, indeed, often eaten and drunk in the presence of Europeans when he was at St. John’s College, Agra; but it was better to be careful nevertheless. Of course it was only on these extreme points, he said, that he found himself personally tolerant; he would not receive food from lower castes, nor eat with them; nor would he allow his food to be cooked by any one except a Brahman or one of his own caste. I asked how it was that in the Palace His Highness employed a Mohammedan cook; but, Babaji Rao explained, he did not actually cook, he only showed the Hindoo cooks how to cook; he was not even allowed in the kitchen, but sat outside and gave instructions through a hole in the wall.

  After dinner His Highness sent up the carriage with its piebald steeds to bring me down to the Palace.

  It was a warm, still evening; vapory clouds trailed acros
s a crescent moon, and the air was sickly with the scent of sajna. His Highness was curled up outside the Palace on a charpai. A dilapidated canvas fence had been erected round him, forming a private enclosure. My chair and the usual tables were set beside him; charcoal glowed through its soft gray ash in a bowl on the ground. Apparently the weather was not yet warm enough for him; but my shirt was sticking to my back. We chatted about one thing and another, while whiteclad servants were visible now and then behind him, pale shapes floating in the gloom. One brought a hookah. I said I had heard he was intending to start very soon upon his pilgrimage, and after rather sharply inquiring who had informed me of this, as though a breach of confidence had been committed, he sighed that he was afraid that this time there was no avoiding it.

  “They all say that I must go, and so——” He made a gesture of resignation. But he was very sorry to have to do so, he said, for the annual festival of Holi was beginning soon, and there would be a great fair, lasting for about a fortnight, at Garha, to which he had intended to take me. He went there every year, he said, during the Holi season, staying with his court in Garha Palace, while the visitors and friends he invited lived under canvas. It was a very important festival; people came to it from all over the Province and even from the big cities of India, to sell and buy; and there was always much interest and amusement of every kind.

  But this year, owing to his pilgrimage, he would not be able to go, which was a great nuisance, and though Babaji Rao would no doubt take me there for a day’s expedition, it would be a very half-hearted affair without his personal patronage.

  Moreover he had already invited, he said, two very old and dear friends of his, Captain Daly and Miss Trend, to keep Holi with him; and now he must write and put them off.

  I agreed with him that this was very disappointing and a great misfortune to us both, and asked whether he could not postpone his tour for another month. He struck his hands together as much as to say that the matter was beyond hope.

  “If I do not go now, I cannot go until next year; it will be too hot, and then the rains will come.”

  “Then put it off till next year,” I said, “and let us go and enjoy ourselves at Garha.”

  “Ah, I would like it very much.”

  “Then it’s done. For you are King and can do as you like.” But he shook his head mournfully.

  “I must go,” he said.

  Then he changed the subject. He told me that Mr. Bramble had paid him another visit during my absence, but that his estimate of the cost of the Greek Villa had been too heavy, and so the Villa, on which he had really set his heart, had had to be reduced to a two-room Greek Pavilion which would cost a thousand pounds and was to be built more or less on the spot where we were sitting. I looked about me to take in the position.

  “Then it will be just between the rear portico of your Palace and this unfinished building behind me?” I said, looking up at a dark mass of stone encased in scaffolding. “What is it, by the way? Is it a temple?”

  “Yes, a temple.”

  “What kind of temple?” I asked.

  His Highness slipped his feet out of his sandals, and dangling his legs over the side of the bed, trailed his toes in the thick warm dust.

  “Oh—just a—just an ordinary temple,” he said.

  “But this is bigger than any I’ve seen in the city; is it going to be the cathedral?”

  “You are quite right,” he replied with a touch of importance; “it is my cathedral—and also my private chapel,” he added.

  “How long has it been building?” I asked.

  He did not answer for some time, and peering through gloom, I perceived that he was shaking with merriment.

  “Thirty years!” he at last spluttered, and was again convulsed.

  MARCH 11TH

  Narayan tells me that when I went away he was very unhappy, and sorrowed whenever he looked at my empty house. He could not eat any food that day, and when Sharma asked:

  “Why do you not eat? Is it because the Sahib has gone away?” he replied:

  “No; I have a pain in my belly.”

  “Yet you seldom came to see me when I was here,” I said doubtfully.

  “But Mr. Babaji Rao was always with you, or the doors were closed, and I was afraid you would be angry with me.”

  He told me this yesterday and stayed three hours with me, taking both my hands in his as he left.

  “Sharma a shy boy,” he said; “but I do not know why he is shy of you.”

  I asked him how it was that he, a Brahman, could have a friend of the barber caste.

  “It does not matter,” he said.

  “Can you take food from him?”

  “No, I cannot.”

  “Betel?”

  “Yes, I can take.”

  “Why did you choose him for your friend?”

  But he only laughed softly at this, and when I repeated it the third time said:

  “He was my class-fellow.”

  Babaji Rao wrote to me while I was away that Abdul had been sent to Sarwar, a station just outside Chhokrapur, on State business, and hoped to be back before my return, but that if he was delayed (“which alternative,” wrote Babaji Rao, “I believe you will prefer”), he wished to be excused for a few days. Babaji Rao was quite right; my desire never to see Abdul again made it easy to leave him permanently in Sarwar, so I was not altogether agreeably surprised when he was announced to-day as I was finishing lunch. Hashim showed him in. He was all in white, very spick and span, but low-spirited.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Ackerley.”

  “Good afternoon, Abdul.”

  “Do I bore upon your time?”

  “Please sit down.”

  He placed his umbrella against the wall and sat down.

  “You have had an enjoyable travel?” he asked abruptly.

  “Very, thank you.”

  “And you returned the day before yesterday, is it not?” I nodded. “But you did not inform me of your return? I think you did not wish me to know of it, is it not? Am I right? I think so.”

  “I thought you were in Sarwar,” I said.

  “But you did not ask any man? Mr. Babaji Rao would have told you, or Mr. Narayan. But I think you did not wish to see me?” He dropped his head a little to one side, and drew up the corners of his mouth into a subtle smile. “And thank you, Mr. Ackerley—thank you very much—for the many letters you promised to write to me while you were away.”

  He cleared his throat, which was getting husky, and drawing in his chin, gazed into his lap. Then he cast a rapid glance at me and found me smiling. At once his lips began to tremble.

  “Are you pleased, Mr. Ackerley? I think so. You are pleased at my misfortunes. I see. I understand. Every man hates me and wishes to ruin me, but I say to myself, ‘Mr. Ackerley will not forget me; he has given me his promises, and loves me in his heart.’ But I was wrong, yes? I think you do not wish to help me. You promise many things, and when nothing is done you mock at me and are pleased. I think so. Is it not?”

  “Look here, Abdul,” I said, “let’s understand that I didn’t write to you because I didn’t think about you, but that I don’t hate you or wish you any harm. I did my best for you before I went away, and I said I’d try again when I came back; so don’t let’s have any more of that nonsense.”

  He brightened up at once.

  “Ah, Mr. Ackerley, then you do not hate me and want to leave me? Ah, Mr. Ackerley, I am happy. But what must I do? For they hate me and will send me to Sarwar. . . .”

  “I thought you’d been to Sarwar,” I said.

  “Yes, I have been; but that was nothing. Now they say I shall be transferred there to work in the office. They are very angry with me, and so they send me away.”

  “But that’s absurd,” I said, vexed. “You’re my tutor. They can’t send you away without my permission.”

  “It is what I think; but they say so,” said Abdul shrewdly.

  I asked him whether he had received his sala
ry during my absence, and he said he had—the usual twelve rupees, without increment; but he did not wish me to do any more about that, he said; nothing mattered so long as I did not hate him and send him away. The Dewan hated him, and his officer hated him; that was all that my strong recommendation and His Highness’s promises had done, but—

  “Do not talk of it! Let it be! What about it? I am a poor man and cannot provide my family members; but what about it? Every one hates me, and wishes to injure me; but what about it? Let it be. . . .”

  I said it was all nonsense to talk about people hating him and wishing to injure him; but he contradicted this, in a confused, trembling voice. Two pleaders had died suddenly while I was away, he said, and he had twice visited the Dewan to ask to be appointed to their places—for which he must have found a good deal of courage, I thought. And this was not like asking for an increment, he explained; for a pleader’s life is a precarious one and depends entirely upon personal ability. But the Dewan had practically told him that if there was no one else in Chhokrapur to fill a vacant post he would not give it to him. This, apart from anything else, seemed to me stupidity in the Dewan, for Abdul would surely make an excellent pleader, if he “bored upon” the judge’s time as much as he has “bored upon” mine.

  But perhaps the Dewan is the judge.

  I sat on my verandah this afternoon and watched the squirrels play. They are small and of a light tan color, with four darkbrown stripes running down their backs from head to tail. Every tree seems full of them, and what a commotion they make, bickering and flying about the branches and up and down the trunks!

  Whimsical, electric creatures! Two of them had a fight—malicious, I think—one leaping upon the other from behind whilst he was enjoying a peaceful tea of bullock-dung. What a scuffle ensued! They whirled round and round like a Catherine-wheel, so that one could not tell where one squirrel began and the other left off. Then having produced, I dare say, acute indigestion in his indignant victim, the attacker beat a hasty retreat, fleeing in long, curving leaps to an adjacent tree-trunk. Pretty, restless, mischievous little people; gluttonous and incontinent; neglectful parents, I feel sure, and saucy, perverse children.