Hindoo Holiday

by J. R. Ackerley

  “The Dewan,” I said, “is certainly the only sensible man among them, and as for ridicule—no one will dare to laugh at you. What is the good of being a king if you can’t indulge every whim that comes into your head?”

  But he shook his finger at me sadly.

  “You should not be saying these things,” he said; “for today is a Friday, and advice given on a Friday should never be taken, for it is sure to have bad results. So you must say ‘Go, Maharajah! Go! You must go!’—and then, perhaps, to-morrow——?” he turned his hands.

  However, I was not quite happy about it when I left him. Babaji Rao might still manage to commit him to the rituals from which there was no retreat, so when I returned from my ride this morning before breakfast I sent this letter to the Palace:

  “I saw a mongoose this morning, King. It was slinking in the direction of Garha, was obviously in a great hurry, and appeared to be smiling to itself. What does this mean?”

  The reply was disappointing:

  “I can’t explain, except that the whole day has passed today in anxiety and worries. I do not know if I go now or not . . .”

  However, later on Babaji Rao came up to see me, looking as if his day also had passed in anxiety and worries.

  “You have got your wish,” he said in a distant voice; “His Highness’s tour has been postponed.”

  “That’s a good thing!” I replied.

  “I thought you would think so,” he remarked rather coldly; “we have not the same point of view.”

  And, later still, came another note from the Palace:

  “DEAR FRIEND,—It has been decided. I do not go upon my tour. I am very tired.”

  MARCH 17TH

  Narayan and Sharma sat with me this evening before dinner. I asked Narayan what he thought of the Mohammedans here who look after the Guest House, and he said that Hashim was the only good man among them. The cook was a thief, and as for Munshi, he was old and very crafty. But Hashim was a good man.

  “Why is Hashim a good man?” I asked.

  “If he hear secret talk he say nothing. Other people hear and tell all, all. I do not like that. That is bad.”

  I smiled, but he remained quite grave.

  “Not good,” he repeated; “I do not like.”

  They had some business, the two of them, in the city, so could not sit with me while I had dinner; but they said they would return later on and drive down to the Palace with me. When I had finished I found them waiting for me on the verandah of my house, and with them a young man named Prasad.

  I met him first some months ago, when His Highness sent him up to me as a companion on approval. But I did not like him at all. He was vain, and his manners were as bad as the English he was alleged to speak; he didn’t remove his shoes on entering my house, nor wait to be offered a chair or a cigarette; and since he was ugly as well, I told His Highness that I never wanted to see Prasad again.

  I was surprised, therefore, to find him on my verandah with Narayan and Sharma. He had driven up in the carriage, he said, and wished to drive back in it again. He thereupon seated himself in front, next to the coachman. But it seemed to me that there was an air of uneasiness about the three of them, and though on the way down Prasad became playful, and suddenly twitching Narayan’s hat from his head, tried it on himself and then pretended to throw it into a tank, this jocularity was not well received; Narayan was annoyed, and Sharma alarmed and vigilant. When Prasad left us in the precincts of the Palace, I asked Narayan what he thought of him.

  “He a very bad man!” he pronounced with great severity. “He steal your cigarettes to-night. Nine cigarettes. I tell him he very bad man—if he ask, you give. I tell him put them back, but he say No, I will not; so I tell him I tell you, so you not think we take them.”

  The Hindoo never builds an arch; he prefers the rectangular form, the straight stone beam resting on uprights; for then there is pressure in only one direction, downwards.

  The Mohammedan builds arches, but the Hindoo despises them. There is pressure in two directions, downwards and outwards, and the Hindoo considers this self-destructive.

  “The arch never sleeps,” he says.

  I was thinking of this, this evening, as I sat with His Highness and looked at the entrance to his unfinished “Cathedral.” Then I turned my attention to the massive back porch of his Palace.

  “What sort of thing would you call that?” he asked me, seeing the direction of my gaze.

  “Architecturally, do you mean?”

  “Yes,” he said, and there was an expectant pause while I surveyed the ugly stuccoed projection, clearly a recent addition, supported by two fat pinkwashed Georgic columns.

  “Well,” I said, “I should say it was—Heaven knows what!” He gave a crow of joy.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, “you are quite right; it is a ‘Heaven knows what.’”

  He explained that he had had it built over the Palace steps at the request of two old men who used to sleep there. There had been no shelter there before, and the rain used to pour down on them as they lay, so they had come to him one day and said: “Can we have a roof to sleep under?”

  That was why he had had the “Heaven knows what” built, and as it was nearing completion—he struck his hands together—both the old men had died.

  “One was eighty,” he concluded, “and the other was eighty-five.”

  This story amused him so much that he almost choked.

  “Who were they?” I asked.

  He became serious again, and replied with an air of importance:

  “One was my court painter, and the other was the Poet Lockrit.”

  “‘Laureate’?” I suggested. We got that straight. “And why, in any case, did they choose to sleep on the Palace steps where the rain was likely to pour down on them?”

  “They did not choose,” he replied; “I told them to. Did you not know I like old men, and always keep some near me to crack jokes with them when I wake up at night? And this is where they sleep. Old men and boys—I like them very much.”

  MARCH 20TH

  We drove to Garha last night. I sat in the back of the car between Narayan and Sharma: Hashim and Habib sat in front with the chauffeur. On the plains it was chilly, but when the road dipped between hills the air was warm. A strange, wild country, I thought . . . and strange, wild companions. I put my arm round Sharma’s shoulders, and he at once became alarmed and nervous; but when he saw that my other arm was round Narayan’s shoulders he did not mind, and allowed me, later on, to clasp his hand. We arrived late, driving round the great tank with the Queen’s palace on its rim, and through the marketplace which stretched away on our left to the seven famous temples. It was already filled with booths and stalls, but they were dark and silent now, their owners asleep round their charcoal fires.

  About a mile further on a newly made path to the right took us off the main road to where our encampment lay among the trees.

  This morning Sharma wasn’t well; he had a slight chill, and an abrasion on his heel where his new shoes had rubbed it.

  “His body very great trouble; very . . . lazy,” Narayan tried to explain, and I gathered that his friend was feeling a little stiff. He told me this during breakfast, having hesitated shyly in the entrance to the marquee, awaiting my invitation to join me, as though none of the invitations and permissions that had gone before could have any bearing on this or any future occasion. This hesitancy is due, no doubt, partly to the sensitiveness of a gentle, timid nature, and partly to the rigid observances of his own kitchen-rituals. I have asked him, on two or three occasions, to sit with me whilst I had my dinner, but that established no precedent in his mind, and certainly gave him little guidance to my views about breakfast. Also there are his own sensibilities to consider; it can hardly fail to disgust him to see me eating the things which he has been brought up to regard as inedible, and as I poked poached egg into my mouth, I wondered what he was thinking and what his father would say if he knew his son had been pres
ent at such an exhibition of depravity. Later the sick Sharma arrived bare-headed upon the scene, and Habib, when I had finished eating handed round some cigarettes; but Narayan did not like this—the Sahib’s servant handing cigarettes to a low-caste creature like Sharma; he was vexed into a sharp “No!” and taking a cigarette from the tin gave it himself to his friend.

  Sharma complained a little about his sore heel, and I told him, through Narayan, that if he came with me to my tent I would give him some iodine to put on it. When he had looked to Narayan for advice on this point, he agreed, and crossed the graveled place with me, shambling beside me like an animal with his toes turned in. He doesn’t move like Narayan with grace and dignity, but shambles along head first, drawing his long loose legs after him. When we reached the tent, I took up my attaché-case to get the iodine, but it was unfastened, the lid dropped open, and all the contents were scattered on the floor. I gazed for a moment with mock consternation at the scene, and then at Sharma.

  He was watching me with awe—a kind of fearful sympathy. How would the Sahib act in the face of such a disaster? his expression seemed to say. Treacherous attaché-case! The Sahib would surely be very angry! His dismay was so evident that I laughed aloud, and at once he laughed too, childishly relieved, and went down on his knees to collect the scattered things. Among them he found various objects to interest him—a postcard of a stone image of Buddha, and a small red packet of razor blades. The latter he found very mysterious and attractive. What was it? I told him; we both laughed again, and I pulled the wispy topknot that hung like a short piece of string from the crown of his bullet head. Later on, I heard, he recounted to the kitchen how the Sahib had dropped everything out of his bag on to the floor and had only roared with laughter.

  I walked through the fair with Narayan later in the morning and examined the wares. There was nothing there of much interest, except some rough local brass-work, and a few pieces, more elaborate and finished, from Ahmedabad and Benares. Otherwise there was the usual assortment of stuff: Indian sweetmeats and foods, haberdashery, cloth, and cheap trinkets, mostly of Japanese or European manufacture. There were also some primitive merry-go-rounds and a performing bear.

  One of the general stores had a few gramophones for sale, and the storekeeper played an Indian record for us, which we did not much like.

  Although the fair was not quite at its height, there was a great surge of people up and down the narrow passages between the stalls, and among them one or two Europeans, whom I did not know, probably up for the day from Rajgarh. It was very hot, and after a little we got tired of the market itself and wandered around the outskirts. We peered into the courtyard of His Highness’s grandfather’s tomb, against the entrance to which grows the pretty plant which I have already mentioned. It is the oleander (kanel), a poisonous evergreen shrub with bright red or white flowers and leathery spear-like leaves. I remembered what was alleged to have happened to His Highness’s grandfather, and wondered whether this plant, which was the only vegetation growing there, had been deliberately selected to keep this particular memory green. The tomb, Babaji Rao tells me, contains nothing but an oil-painting of the deceased, his bed, pillow, and sandals, and a few of his ashes.

  Then we walked round the Palace and saw a man playing with a little boy, who, Narayan said, was the Raja Bahadur, His Highness’s son. He was a pretty little chap, dressed in a silk coat and trousers and a round black hat embroidered in blue; but he was very shy and would not speak to me or shake hands. In fact, he seemed very frightened of my strange appearance, my queer white skin and my queer white hat, and hid his face against the man’s chest as though he were going to cry. Sharma was given a detailed account of our adventures when we returned, and grieved very much that he had not been with us when we had heard the gramophone play.

  His Highness paid a call this afternoon, and hobbled about with Babaji Rao and me among the tents. He was very smartly dressed in a new skirted coat of white silk, beautifully embroidered with blue and silver thread.

  The encampment was completed and ready for the reception of Captain Daly and Miss Trend, who are due to arrive tomorrow; it included five or six doubled-sided bell tents and a dining-marquee. His Highness surveyed the scene in silence, and then asked first me and then Babaji Rao what we thought of it. I said I was very comfortable and thought it very nice indeed, and Babaji Rao echoed my satisfaction.

  “Well, I am not satisfied; I am far from satisfied,” announced His Highness promptly, and began to scold Babaji Rao with heartless glee. As for me, he said, I was not expected to know any better, for I had no “political knowledge”; but Babaji Rao—was this really all he had learnt in all these years? Could he possibly stand there and look at these things and say that he was satisfied? Then he was a fool! What did he think he was doing? Had he no eyes? For some people this accommodation might do, but not for such important, influential people as Captain Daly and Miss Trend.

  “What will my guests say,” he cried, “when they see such . . . such . . . Swiss cottages? Miss Trend will go away at once. She will say to me, ‘Maharajah, is it for this you have called me here?’ She will be very angry. She will eat me up! She will eat us all up!”

  He prodded the unhappy Babaji Rao with his stick, and said that bigger tents must be put up at once.

  I did not like having the poor man ragged in front of me, so I said that if the new guests were so particular His Highness had better build a palace for them, for nothing short of that would do; and this broke his tirade.

  Then he summoned Hashim, and told him that if he did not attend well to the needs of the new guests, if there was one complaint, he would cut off his nose.

  Then he summoned the cook, and threatening him with his stick, said that if he did not cook better than he had ever cooked before he would cut off his head and place it on a table in his Palace bedroom. In fact, he was in a very good humor indeed, and when he had spread consternation throughout the whole camp, he stumped off with one hand in the small of his back, to call on a Miss Potter, a missionary, who it appeared had just arrived from nowhere in particular and pitched her tent close behind our encampment. A weedy-looking Indian boy, a proselyte no doubt, seated on a folded harmonium outside the tent, observed our approach and called his mistress, who at once appeared. She was a tall, placid-faced woman. She told the proselyte to bring out some chairs for us, and then came forward to greet us. But His Highness was in no mood for preliminaries. He opened fire at once.

  “Miss Potter—where is God?”

  “He is everywhere,” replied Miss Potter with dignity.

  “But, my dear Maiden,” exclaimed His Highness, planting himself firmly on one of the chairs, “what good is that to me?”

  MARCH 22ND

  “Only fools care about caste!” observed the Dewan yesterday afternoon: a remark which caused his disciple Babaji Rao to look down his nose. They had both come up to the encampment to call on Captain Daly and Miss Trend, to whom the Dewan appears to have a particular attachment, and we were all sitting in a circle in front of the marquee.

  Conversation had turned on marriage in India, and Miss Trend had said that, considering the huge dowries that highcaste Hindoos had to give to marry their daughters, it was hardly to be wondered at that so many female infants did not long survive birth. But the Dewan argued that this particular practice of infanticide had been due not so much to financial difficulties as to caste pride. High-caste Hindoo families had had the greatest difficulty in marrying their female offspring to persons considered suitable; and by suitability was meant their suitability as sons-in-law or, to a less extent, as brothers-inlaw; their suitability as husbands was unimportant. How was it possible to find any man quite good enough to be given the freedom of the terms susra and sala (father-in-law and brotherin-law)? Indeed, so vexed had been this question, that the words had now become expressions of contempt and abuse. But Hindoos, intelligent Hindoos, cared less about caste now.

  “Only fools care about caste!”
he said.

  But with the fools the difficulties remained, and, he admitted, he experienced them himself.

  “I have the misfortune to be of the very highest family of Brahmans,” he said, “and because I send my nephews to England for their education, my people say to me, ‘You are not a good Brahman. You send your nephews to England, and then you eat with them. We do not care for you.’ ‘Very well, my good fellows,’ I say, ‘then go avay. If you do not care for me I do not care for you. Go avay!’”

  But now, he said, the time has come for him to marry his nieces, and he is having the greatest difficulties. His own words are being turned against him. “You did not care for us before,” his old acquaintances say; “why do you care now?”

  It is a great problem, and though, he confessed, he does not much like the idea, he fears he will have to marry them outside his own caste.

  “Only fools care about caste!” murmured slow-witted Babaji Rao with a snigger: but the Dewan was already proceeding. Over his nephews, he was saying, he anticipated no difficulties; one of them, in fact, was already married to a Nepalese girl.

  “The Nepal girls,” he observed, “are very good; they are white and do not live long. Very rarely after fifty.”

  Later on in the conversation, apropos of something or other, the Dewan said that he held very strong convictions, but that they were always founded on fact. He liked facts. So, if he had been told twenty years ago that men would fly, he would have said, “Go avay, my good fellow. You are a fool.”

  But now that it is a fact, he would say, “Very well; that is all right. You have convinced me.”

  Now he is troubled about the soul. He used to suppose that there was one soul in each living creature; it wasn’t a conviction, but he tended to that belief. But now Babaji Rao has told him about the earthworm—that when it is cut in half, both halves live. Is the soul then divisible? Or are there two souls? Or more than two? No one has been able to convince him on this subject, and so he refuses to hold an opinion, for he does not like to have to change his mind. When he has an opinion he sticks to it, and so he never holds an opinion which it may be necessary to abandon. Once in his life, when he was a young man interested in politics and had a seat on the council at Delhi, he was forced to alter his mind three times in twenty minutes, and he thought to himself, “Who then are you? You are a very small thing in this world.” But since that shock to his amour-propre he had never once had to alter his mind over any conviction.