Hindoo Holiday (28 page)

“I'm very surprised to hear that,” I said.

“So am I. He is the grandson of my old physician, whom I loved very much, and for his sake I wished to be kind to Narayan, but I cannot overlook these bad reports I have of him.”

“Personally I always find him a remarkably honest boy,” I said. “In fact I can't believe he has lied to you, Prince. I should have thought you could have told how truthful he was merely by looking at him. Don't you think he's got rather a fine face?”

His Highness raised his brows politely.

“I have never looked closely at him,” he said.

The Dewan to-day, in conversation with us, warmly denied having said that he would sacrifice his wife's life to preserve his own. He must, of course, he said, do his best to save her. He must die for her or for any other member of his family: it was quite impossible that he should have thought or spoken otherwise. Miss Trend said she did not wish to disbelieve him; she was only too glad to hear that women had eventually some value in the Hindoo's scheme of life, and he agreed with her that the lack of interest with which female babies were received into the world was very sad.

But he denied that these first feelings of disappointment and indifference continued.

“We worship our daughters,” he said. “We touch their feet. They do not touch ours. We cannot ask them to—it would be a scandal, a disgraceful request. Nor can we ask them to do any menial labor.”

Narayan said to me this evening:

“I like you very much; give me fifteen rupees a month, and

I will come and live with you for always. I will be your servant instead of friend.”

I asked him what difference this would make in his conduct towards me, and he said he would not sit in my presence, nor smile and laugh with me. He asked if he might have a photo of me, and I gave him one. It was very beautiful, he thought, and he would like to kiss it.

“Your face is good and some beautiful,” he said. “You are thin, with no belly and the chest of a fight-man.”

When I went back to England, he said, he did not know what he would do; he would take my photo and speak to it; but it would not answer.

I had no cigarette to give him, so I offered him the one I was smoking myself; but he said he could not accept it, because it had been in my mouth.

To-day was
Holi
day, the chief day of the festival of
Holi
, which, as far as I could gather from Babaji Rao, is named after a girl, Holikar, who was a devotee of the devil Madhu. Being herself insensible to fire, she conspired with her father to carry her brother into the flames and burn him up because he worshipped Krishna.

This was not the first time that they had tried to destroy the young man, but Krishna had always contrived to outwit Madhu whose instruments they were; and he was not at a loss on this occasion either, but managed to transfer the protective virtue from sister to brother, so that the wicked Holikar was consumed instead.

Holi
, then, is in honor of Krishna. It is held under the full moon, and used to be an occasion for the wildest excesses. The merrymakers would work themselves up with music, dancing, and
bhung
(the intoxicating juice of hemp) into such a frenzy that they would tear off their clothes and dance naked about the streets, singing improper songs, exhibiting improper images, and ending up indiscriminately in each other's arms. But the British Raj did not encourage such high spirits, and much of the interest has now died out. It is still, however, a queer affair. Babaji Rao told me that the inspiring idea was “Fellowship.” On
Holi
day, Hindoos go out to meet their friends and enemies and embrace them all, old disputes are patched up, and grievances forgiven. Moreover, social differences, as distinct from caste observances, disappear; all men are equal and may be treated so in the name of Friendship.

This gives opportunity, of course, for a good deal of license which on any other day would be termed disrespectful and punished. A clerk may pinch or slap his employer in a jocular manner, and the latter may not take offense. He may, however, retaliate; and though the attacker is entitled to only one pinch or slap, the attacked may have as many as he chooses; but good-humor must prevail, and pincher and pinched must part in peace. The only way to avoid this Brotherly Love is not to venture out, and Captain Daly, Miss Trend, and His Highness who was sitting in the marquee examining beautiful Kashmir shawls and silken muslins which a Benares merchant was spreading before him, warned me not to go down to the Fair. But I was curious to see the festival, and asked Babaji Rao to accompany me.

“Certainly,” he said, beaming through his spectacles; “but I cannot take responsibility for what may happen to you.”

“What
may
happen to me?” I asked, and he said they would probably throw colored powder at me.

“They will make you like the rainbow,” wheezed His Highness; “you should not take him, Babaji Rao.”

“Let him go! Let him go if he wishes!” cried the Dewan, who is now very friendly with me. “They will not do him any harm.”

“Do you dare to come?” asked Babaji Rao.

“When I've changed into my oldest suit,” I said.

We drove down in the Dewan's car, which was greeted with loud cheers and held up by a mob of Hindoos outside the Palace, where the festivities were taking place.

The three-sided courtyard was crammed with people; boys perched upon the walls and roof, and clung like monkeys to the minarets, and a kind of dance was taking place in the center.

“Shall we get out?” I asked Babaji Rao, gazing rather nervously through the window at the yelling mob; but the answer came from outside. A Hindoo, whom I recognized with difficulty as the Dewan's chief accountant, had already pushed his way through the crowd towards us, and opened the door of the car. His face was smeared with red powder, as were all the other faces round us. He was the Master of Ceremonies, I learnt, and was followed by an assistant bearing a brass tray on which were two huge heaps of powder, one bright red and the other silvery, like the scales of a small fish.

“Come out of the car,” cried the M.C., “or we shall drag you out!”

It wasn't difficult to make a choice between these alternatives, and Babaji Rao and I got out. The Dewan remained seated.

“Come out, Dewan Sahib!” called the M.C., but the Dewan refused to budge.

“You have two victims,” he said, laughing shrilly, “and that is quite enough.”

I wasn't altogether surprised that no one insisted. Although one may not harbor malice for liberties taken at
Holi
, I doubt whether I should have tried to get equal with the Dewan for one day if I was to be unequal to him for the rest of the year. At any rate nobody molested him, and after a few moments he disappeared. So too, in a manner of speaking, did we. No sooner had we got out than the M.C. stuck his thumb in the red powder, which is called
gulal
, and pressed it firmly against our foreheads. This was the mark of friendship, and courtesy demanded that we should return the compliment, though there was no room on his face for any more. Other thumbs were dug into the stuff and pressed upon us, and I dug and dabbed wildly in return; then the M.C. took a handful and threw it in my face, and, apparently liking the effect, finally emptied the tray over our heads. The crowd closed in on us after this; daubed, laughing faces were pressed towards me; brown arms embraced me, drew me along, propelled me from behind, and rubbed more powder into my hair and clothes.

“He is a very good man,” said a voice; “give the Sahib more.”

Babaji Rao, his spectacles like bright-red saucers, was holding on to my sleeve, and in front of us a thin, naked man with a purple wig, a cod-piece, and bells on his ankles, was dancing and hooting. Remembering the spirit of the occasion, I smiled rather dimly through the red mist of powder, till a handful of water struck me in the face.

“No, no; no water!” cried Babaji Rao, with an ingratiating snigger; but his voice was lost in cheers and laughter, and when we had been squeezed to the center of the courtyard where a space had been left, a hose of violet-tinted water was turned on us both.

This made the colors run nicely, and when we were stained and soaked from head to foot and could not be made any wetter, we were abandoned for other victims. We stood for some time and watched them receiving similar treatment; then a rather spiritless game was played, in which a body of men armed with staves attacked a body of women, also armed with staves, who were defending a mysterious bundle hanging from a cross-beam. I intended to ask Babaji Rao whether this had anything to do with the legend of Holikar, and whether
gulal
represented fire; but my curiosity was a little damped. When we returned to the encampment His Highness was still there examining silks and brocades, and thinking he would be amused to see me, I went in to him before changing and said I too was a piece of brocade and would he care to purchase me.

He gave a shrill cry of horrified laughter and hid his face in his hands.

“Go away!” he cried. “Go away! Go away!”

In the evening Miss Trend told me that she had paid a call on the Maharani. European ladies are permitted to visit Indian ladies, it seems, and are often invited to do so. She said that the Maharani was a charmingly pretty girl, not yet twenty years old, and that it was dreadful to think of the loneliness and monotony of her life, shut up in that Palace with only her women for company, and seldom visited, even by the Maharajah, who in any case could hardly be considered romantic. Her pleasure, after a few moments of shyness, at Miss Trend's visit had been touchingly childish, and she had brought out all her fine dresses and jewels, which she seldom had a chance to display except to her women.

We were due to leave here to-day. His Highness was to have departed very early in the morning, during the only auspicious hour, but a postponement had to be made and we are to stay on for another four or five days.

I am not very pleased about this, for it is getting uncomfortably hot for canvas, and in the dining-marquee, which has only a single roof, I have to wear my hat during lunch.

The reason for the postponement is that the young Prince has smallpox.

At least, that is what the Dewan told me yesterday afternoon. But in the evening His Highness contradicted it.

“It is measles,” he said.

“Oh, well, that's better, isn't it?” I said.

“They say it is the same thing,” he replied fretfully. “It is a great nuisance, for after this evening I shall not be able to see you for some days.”

“Because of infection?” I asked.

He began to shake with amusement.

“No, no,” he said. “But I must not shave, or put on my hat or shoes.”

This is ritual, apparently; for smallpox, of which there are said to be three kinds, is presided over by a Goddess named Devi who has a thousand arms. The remedy for the disease lies in her thousand hands. Certain ignorant country-people believe that she causes the disease; others think that she actually
is
the disease, and will not allow the bodies of those who succumb to it to be burnt in case Devi is burnt too, though this would seem, in the circumstances, to be the very best thing for her; but more enlightened people, such as those that surround His Highness, are of the opinion that her power is purely remedial. For this reason doctors are not allowed to touch the patient, for that would be a declaration of skepticism as well, perhaps, as a breach of professional etiquette. It would also be sacrilegious; for the body of the patient is considered holy, a house ready for the Goddess to enter; so only the mother and nurses may touch the patient, preparing it for the divine visitation, while the father, bareheaded, unshaved and unshod, makes pilgrimages to all the Goddess's temples in the neighborhood to entreat her assistance.

I was sitting by myself on a chair in the Palace courtyard this afternoon, waiting for Babaji Rao who had gone in on some business, when the stout Hindoo doctor came waddling out of the Queen's apartments.

“How is the child?” I asked, as he came over to me.

“Much better,” he said. “It is only a heat-rash and there is no fever.”

“How do you know there is no fever?” I asked slyly.

“I do it this way,” he explained. “I make the nurse place her hand on the child's body and keep it there; then I feel the nurse's hand and so discover how much heat has been transmitted by the patient.”

Later in the afternoon the Political Agent arrived in Garha, and the Dewan made excuses for the Maharajah's absence, saying that the little Prince had smallpox and so His Highness could not, on that account, personally receive his guest.

“It is thought to be measles, not smallpox,” said Babaji Rao.

“Smallpox,” repeated the Dewan firmly.

“It is a heat-rash,” piped the stout doctor from the background.

“Anyway,” observed the Dewan with finality, “we are taking it to be smallpox, and Their Highnesses are observing the rites.”

An Englishman who sat at my hotel table in Delhi, I remember, told me that he had contracted smallpox within twenty-four hours of arriving in India, from dirty sheets in the ———Hotel, Bombay. I expressed surprise at his unblemished appearance, and he said he shared my surprise; he had expected to look like a gruyère cheese for the rest of his life.

I visited the ———Hotel myself on a number of occasions when I was in Bombay, but without ill consequences. The only note I have about it is of an Indian soldier, in khaki, wearing puttees but no boots or socks, whom I noticed one day chatting to the clerk at the reception desk. His slight claim upon my interest was that he dropped a pencil on the floor, but instead of bending down to pick it up, he merely glanced at it, seized it deftly between his toes and, without interrupting his conversation or altering the indolent attitude in which he leant against the desk, lifted his foot and restored the pencil to his dangling hand.