Hindoo Holiday

by J. R. Ackerley

  “Why should I rise? I am an Emperor myself.”

  “An Emperor, eh? Then where is your army?”

  “Where, on the other hand, are my enemies?”

  “Well, your treasury—where is that?”

  “Where are my needs?”

  Similarly, the Dewan said, he had few needs, and the salary he drew was far more than he required. For his first six years as Dewan he had drawn only half that—five hundred rupees—and even that with his private income had been more than he could use. But at the end of the six years, his contract expiring, he had felt that he was entitled to more although he did not require it, and had demanded an increase to a thousand rupees, which had been refused. So he had tendered his resignation, which had been accepted.

  His Highness had then submitted to him a list of names, and asked him to nominate his own successor, and he had complied honestly with this request, but had prophesied at the same time that the nominee would not give as much satisfaction as he himself had given, and that sooner or later he would be recalled.

  He had then returned to his Lucknow home and reverted to his literary work.

  And nine months later His Highness had recalled him as he had foretold. Then, unhappily, he had not wanted to move; he takes root easily and does not like being disturbed, and he had expressed this disinclination to His Highness, but had added that should His Highness command him to return he should consider himself as having no choice in the matter. The command had been given, and he had returned to Chhokrapur to resume his duties as Dewan, on a three years’ contract at a thousand rupees a month. But now the three years have passed, and he has told His Highness that if he is required to contract for another term of office he must have fifteen hundred rupees a month.

  “I do not need it,” he cried, “but I am worth it, and therefore I must have it.”

  Again he has been refused; again he has sent in his resignation; again about ten new candidates for the Dewanship have been called, and again the Dewan has been asked to nominate his successor.

  But this time he has replied: “They are none of them of any use; no one can replace me. If Your Highness calls God himself I shall advise you against Him. He cannot serve you as well as I can, for He has not had the nine years’ special experience that I have had of the difficulties of this State and the difficulties of your complex nature. I am the only successor to myself that I can honestly recommend, and I am worth fifteen hundred rupees a month to you, and the State can easily afford to pay it—I, as Dewan, am the best judge of that.”

  He has not got it yet: His Highness has not made up his mind; but I do not think there can be any doubt as to what will happen.

  MARCH 29TH

  I asked Babaji Rao to-day whether it was true, as Narayan had told me, that a Hindoo boy may not shave off his mustache during his father’s lifetime. It was quite true, he said.

  “Does that give rise to jesting or bitter retorts in family disputes?” I asked. “I mean, might an angry son say to his father, ‘Well, the sooner I have a clean upper lip the better!’”

  Babaji Rao rather uneasily agreed that such a thing might possibly be said, but that as a rule children did not dispute with their parents.

  He was sitting with me in the encampment, and I asked him if he would like a drink of iced water.

  “But I suppose you won’t be able to take it, will you?” I added, remembering.

  “Perhaps you have some there?” he inquired of Narayan, who is a Brahman. Narayan nodded.

  Shortly afterwards one of the kitchen staff brought a jar of water, from which Babaji Rao drank.

  “But from whose hands are you taking water?” I asked. “That man wasn’t a Brahman. Was he of your caste?”

  “No,” said Babaji Rao, “but I know him, and he is of a caste from whose hands I may receive water.”

  “Oh dear,” I sighed, “what a muddle you’ve made of life!”

  But he said, smiling, that it was I who had made a muddle of his life—that was to say that I was indirectly responsible for a very grave occurrence in his house. His Mohammedan tonga-wallah, with whom I converse in grins, had snatched a brass lota (a small vessel for water) from the hands of his Hindoo servant. Such a thing was unheard of. The touch was defiling, and if the thing touched was brass it had to be cleansed with fire; but if it was phul, or some other substance that could not stand heat, it had to be thrown away. He himself had not witnessed the disgraceful incident, but his wife had been present and had been very angry indeed. And what did I think the tonga-wallah had said in self-defense? He had said that his master Babaji Rao would not mind, since he was himself so lax in principles as to drink water in the house of a European!

  When we had both agreed that of course the boy’s statement was not true, for Babaji Rao always takes his water on to the verandah to drink, we allowed ourselves to be amused at this little scene, and I asked him how long he thought the paralyzing state of affairs which gave rise to it would continue. He said that every intelligent Indian naturally desired peace, solidarity, and social reform, and that progress was being made; but it was inevitably difficult and slow. I asked him for instances of this progress—any evidence to show the least sign of reconciliation between Mohammedans and Hindoos, and he replied that a Hindoo was now able to receive betel from the hands of a Mohammedan. That was certainly something, I said, but that it seemed to me that he, as an intelligent man in pursuit of truth, should be giving active support to the movement, not necessarily in public, but quietly at home, where charity begins. He might, for instance, in this very affair of his tongawallah, have given a lead, by drinking himself, let us say, from the contaminated vessel? Had not the Dewan eaten an egg?

  But Babaji Rao replied that such a course had not been open to him, for where his kitchen was concerned other people besides himself were involved. When his father and mother came to visit him, for example, they ate with him on the tacit understanding that his utensils had been used in the orthodox manner. One could not possibly abuse this confidence; it would be deceitful and unfair.

  “But I wasn’t suggesting that you should deceive any one,” I said. “I meant rather that you should then write to your parents and say that your utensils had not been used in an orthodox manner, and that in future, therefore, if they felt disinclined to use them, they had better bring their own.”

  Babaji Rao smiled deprecatingly.

  “I would not dare to do such a thing,” he said.

  We went down to find the Dewan in the later afternoon, and were just in time to see him returning from his evening’s exercise, a run. He was wearing his small pink hat, a collarless shirt hanging outside his dhoti, a waistcoat, and leather slippers on his bare feet, and he came waddling along towards us with an energetic movement that never quite turned into a run, brandishing his stick and chattering to himself. He said that he did not much like taking strenuous exercise, but that it was good for him; he had a lazy disposition, and that was why he stayed on as Dewan of the State. Some part of him was contented to remain, but he did not really care for the work, it meant nothing to him, and being a person of independent means he could discontinue it if he wished. But he was too lazy to break away, though if any circumstance should forcibly deprive him of his position he would be very grateful.

  His real wish—his dream—was to be an actor, and though this was not looked upon as a serious or respectable profession in India, that was not the reason that withheld him from following it. He would particularly like, he said, to act in his own dramas, of which he had written several.

  Here Babaji Rao, usually deferentially silent when the Dewan is with us, chimed in. He also expressed dissatisfaction with his life; he, too, would welcome more leisure to continue his philosophical writings; but he had not the Dewan’s independence, and moreover, they both agreed, their affection for His Highness put another obstacle in the way of their leaving him. But they both managed to find a little leisure for their private interests.

  “He is wr
iting my biography,” said the Dewan, indicating his friend. But his own duties, he continued, though not arduous, were as much as the doctor would allow him to undertake at present.

  He suffered greatly from nerves. Once he had overworked; he had written three books in one year, and it had affected his nerves so badly that his doctor had ordered him to lead “a fool’s life.” This he had done ever since.

  “In fact, for the first six weeks I did not even think!” he said.

  I asked him what his symptoms had been, and he replied:

  “First of all, if I bent forward like this, I felt I should fall over on to my face. I never did actually fall, but the feeling was there. Secondly, I had a kind of drowsiness in my eyes, a kind of . . . bitterness. There is a little still, but it has practically all gone.

  “Thirdly . . . What was my third symptom?” he asked his biographer. They pondered this together for a moment.

  “I have forgotten now,” said the Dewan. “But anyway there were three.”

  “You must look it up in your diary,” murmured Babaji Rao.

  To-day is Saturday, which, with Tuesday, is especially sacred to Hanuman, the monkey-headed God of Physical Power. One of his shrines is built near the encampment, and had many visitors throughout the day, among them Narayan. As they approached to worship they shuffled off their shoes, walked barefooted once round the shrine, bowed, or knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground. Some of them brought cocoanuts and broke them before the image, a hideous figure painted with vermilion and armed with a club. I was very surprised to see our Mohammedan cook taking part in this idolatry, which the Koran strictly forbids. He carried a cocoanut, which he broke before the image, and having sacrificed the milk, took back the pieces with him to the kitchen to make puddings and toffee. Narayan said it was not at all an uncommon sight; many of the Mohammedans resident in the State had adopted the Hindoo customs—a topknot, for example, was being cultivated by Hashim on the head of his baby—and I thought this a much better sign for the future than Babaji Rao’s alleged neutrality of the betel-leaf.

  When I returned to the encampment in the dusk, Narayan came down the path to meet me. I thought how graceful he looked in his white muslin clothes, the sleeves of his loose vest widening out at the wrist, the long streamers of his turban floating behind him. The breeze puffed at his dhoti as he approached, molding the soft stuff to the shape of his thigh; then as he turned a bend in the path another gentle gust took the garment from behind and blew it aside, momentarily baring a slim brown leg. I took his hand and led him into my tent, and he told me that His Highness had invited him to return to the New Bakhri, but that he feared to do so lest he should be treated with disrespect, and anyway it did not matter much because he liked being with me.

  “I want to love you very much,” he said.

  “You mean you do love me very much.”

  “I want to.”

  “Then why not?”

  “You will go to England and I shall be sorry. But you will not be sorry. I am only a boy and I shall be sorry.”

  When he got up to go, he asked me not to accompany him as usual to the fair-ground where he meets Sharma, but to let him go back alone this evening; then before I had time to reply, he suddenly laughed softly and drew me after him. And in the dark roadway, overshadowed by trees, he put up his face and kissed me on the cheek. I returned his kiss; but he at once drew back, crying out:

  “Not the mouth! You eat meat! You eat meat!”

  “Yes, and I will eat you in a minute,” I said, and kissed him on the lips again, and this time he did not draw away.

  MARCH 30TH

  Our second attempt to leave Garha occurred to-day, and by three o’clock we were all packed and ready to move when the Tahsildar arrived on a pale-green bicycle to say that His Highness had a boil on his shoulder-blade and we were to stay on for another two days.

  We all unpacked again. Later on Babaji Rao came up to the encampment and read peevishness in my face.

  “You are not very pleased?” he suggested.

  “No one could possibly feel pleased,” I replied, “after packing and unpacking a large portmanteau in 103 degrees in the shade.”

  He said nothing, the decent, gentle fellow—for I suddenly remembered that earlier occasion when it was he who had been put out by His Highness’s postponements and I had shown complete heartlessness at his discomfiture.

  In the evening we sat with the Dewan, and I asked him how the complicated network of rules and regulations with regard to eating and drinking had originated. From the earliest days, he said, when through fear of poison it was written that “an Aryan must take food and drink from the hands of an Aryan, and may from any other man he trusts.” Out of that feeling had been evolved the intricate caste laws of the present day, by which, one might roughly state, Hindoos were permitted to take water from any Hindoo, except from a sweeper, fruit and dry food from any Hindoo, but cooked food only from their own or higher castes. As for Mohammedans, he said, their touch of course defiled, and one could take nothing from them at all. “Except betel,” I put in brightly, quoting Babaji Rao’s single instance of the reconciling of the two races. But the Dewan promptly rejected this. One could not take even betel from a Mohammedan, he said. Babaji Rao murmured apologetically that there was a difference between betel prepared and betel handed by a Mohammedan.

  “There is no difference,” said the Dewan flatly, and Babaji Rao sank back into the silence from which he had so rashly emerged.

  I asked why the touch of a Mohammedan and a European was so contaminating, and the Dewan said it was due to their meat-eating habits and to their lack of scrupulosity in washing. If his wife left the kitchen for a moment, he said, to fetch him something, for instance, she would wash her hands carefully before returning; but Mohammedans and Europeans had dirty habits: they used paper instead of water in their lavatories, they did not take off their leather shoes in the kitchen, they smoked in the kitchen and ate BEEF, and when they did wash they washed with soap which is made of animal fat.

  Europeans touched their lips or the wet ends of their cigarettes, and cooked their food or shook hands with other people afterwards without having washed. Smoking was a filthy habit, he considered, and when I remarked that many high-class Hindoos had contracted it, he agreed that this was unhappily true, but at any rate they washed. But Europeans had no care over such important matters; look, for example, at their disgusting custom of afternoon tea! The strainer they used! On account of it, though he had sometimes consented to drink tea with Europeans, he had never once accepted a second cup. What happened? When the cups were refilled, frequently without having been emptied of their dregs and rinsed with clean water, the mixture composed of new tea, dregs, and sputum would rise and touch the strainer, which would then be transferred to the next person’s cup, and so on! Ice too! This was often put into a glass from which a man had already drunk, and so carelessly that the spoon was permitted to touch the polluted liquid and then the same spoon was used again for somebody else’s glass! Or even if it did not actually touch the liquid, the falling ice might splash up drops on to it! Disgusting! He had sent ice away in these circumstances, And the custom of the “loving-cup” of which he had heard, he thought unspeakably revolting; nothing could induce him to drink from another person’s glass. He spoke very forcibly; but I said that although when I considered it I understood the danger of germs and disease, it seemed to me that only by ceasing to breathe could one escape from it, and that I did not think about people’s mouths in such a way.

  What about kissing? I asked. With such ultra-hygienic notions as he held, how could he bring himself to kiss his wife? He replied that a man and his wife were one. . . . Well, I said, passing this over with the silence it deserved, what about the other members of his family—his parents, sisters, and children? Did he kiss them? Certainly not, he said, that was to say not on the lips; one kissed one’s children, and perhaps one’s mother, on the cheeks or brow, but one never kiss
ed any other members of the family after they had passed the age of puberty.

  “For a man to kiss his elder sister would be an enormity!” cried the Dewan; “to kiss her anywhere,” he added. Europeans did not seem to attach much importance to a kiss; they kissed the mouth passionately or dispassionately according to their feelings. “But in India,” he said, “a kiss on the mouth is a very big thing; it is a completed sexual act.”

  This evoked another mild protest from Babaji Rao. One had, he murmured with a deferential cough, to take into consideration the states of mind of the kisser and the kissed. But the Dewan rejected this, and in answer to a further question from me, declared that although he could not say that a good deal of illicit love-making did not go on in the State, there was no kissing upon the lips.

  “Why should there be?” he inquired ingenuously. “A man can kiss upon the cheeks and upon the eyes, and that is good enough.”

  I felt that I was not getting accurate information from him, and forbore questioning him further on the subject.

  MARCH 31ST

  When I was riding in the jungle this morning I saw a tree in the near distance more beautiful, I thought, than any other tree I had seen. Its feathery foliage was so light that it seemed more like a soft green cloud drifting a little in the breeze. It was a mango tree.

  I rode up with a desire to touch it, but reined in my horse when I saw a blue jay sitting in the branches. I watched it for a little until suddenly, for no reason, it flew away.

  “Yes,” I called after it, “and if I had wings like yours I would spread them too.”

  The blue jay is sacred to Siva, the destroyer and recreator; not, as I was told, because blue is Siva’s color, but because both the bird and the God are called Nil-Kanth (Blue Throat). Siva has a blue throat because, out of compassion for the human race, he swallowed a deadly poison which would otherwise have destroyed the world. He kept this poison in his throat and would not let it go further, “for,” said he, “I have the Lord Vishnu in my heart.”