By-Ways of Bombay | Page 6

the comparative quiet of the streets by night that one hears more
distinctly the sounds in the houses. Here rises the bright note of the
"shadi" or luck songs with which during the livelong night the women
of the house dispel the evil influences that gather around a birth, a
circumcision or a "bismillah" ceremony. There one catches the
passionate outcry of the husband vainly trying to pierce the deaf ear of
death. For life in the city has hardened the hearts of the Faithful, and
has led them to forget the kindly injunction of the Prophet, still
observed in small towns or villages up-country:--"Neither shall the
merry songs of birth or of marriage deepen the sorrow of a bereaved
brother." The last sound that reaches you as you turn homewards, is the
appeal of the "Sawale" or begging Fakir for a hundred rupees to help
him on his pilgrimage. All night long he tramps through the darkness,
stopping every twenty or thirty paces to deliver his sonorous prayer for
help, nor ceases until the Muezzin voices the summons to morning
prayer. He is the last person you see, this strange and portionless
Darwesh of the Shadows, and long after he has passed from your sight,
you hear his monotonous cry:--"Hazrat Shah Ali, Kalandar Hazrat Zar
Zari zar Baksh, Hazrat Shah Gisu Daroz Khwajah Bande Nawaz Hazrat
Lal Shahbaz ke nam sau rupai Hajjul Beit ka kharch dilwao!" He has
elevated begging to a fine art, and the Twelve Imams guard him from

disappointment.

III.
SHADOWS OF NIGHT.
There are certain clubs in the city where a man may purchase nightly
oblivion for the modest sum of two or three annas; and hither come
regularly, like homing pigeons at nightfall, the human flotsam and
jetsam, which the tide of urban life now tosses into sight for a brief
moment and now submerges within her bosom. Halt in that squalid lane
which looks out upon the traffic of one of the most crowded
thoroughfares and listen, if you will, for some sign of life in the dark,
ungarnished house which towers above you. All is hushed in silence;
no voice, no cry from within reaches the ear; the chal must be tenanted
only by the shadows. Not so! At the far end of a passage, into which
the sullage water drips, forming ill-smelling pools, a greasy curtain is
suddenly lifted for a minute, disclosing several flickering lights girt
about with what in the distance appear to be amorphous blocks of wood
or washerman's bundles. Grope your way down the passage, push aside
the curtain with your stick--it is far too foul to touch with the hand--and
the mystery is made plain. The room with its tightly-closed shutters and
smoke-blackened walls is filled with recumbent men, in various stages
of deshabille, all sunk in the sleep which the bamboo-pipe and the little
black pellets of opium ensure. The room is not a large one, for the
habitual smoker prefers a small apartment, in which the fumes of the
drug hang about easily; and its reeking walls are unadorned save with a
chromo plan of the chief buildings at Mecca, a crude portrait of a
Hindu goddess, and oleographs of British royalty. It were all the same
if these were absent; for the opium-smoker comes not hither to see
pictures, save those which the drugged brain fashions, and cares not for
distinctions of race, creed or sovereignty. The proprietor of the club
may be a Musalman; his patrons may be Hindus, Christians or Chinese;
and the dreams which riot across the semi-consciousness of the latter
are not concerned as a rule with heroes of either the spiritual or
temporal kind.

[Illustration: An Opium Club.]
The smokers lie all over the room in groups of four or five, each of
whom is provided with a little wooden head-rest and lies curled up like
a tired dog with his face towards the lamp in the centre of the group. In
his hand is the bamboo-stemmed pipe, the bowl of which reminds one
of the cheap china ink-bottles used in native offices, and close by lies
the long thin needle which from time to time he dips in the saucer of
opium-juice and holds in the flame until the juice frizzles into a tiny
pellet fit for insertion in the bowl of the pipe. The room is heavy with
vapour that clutches at the throat, for every cranny and interstice is
covered with fragments of old sacking defying the passage of the night
air. As you turn towards the door, a fat Mughal rises slowly from the
ground and makes obeisance, saying that he is the proprietor. "Your
club seems to pay, shet-ji! Is it always as well patronised as it is this
evening?" "Aye, always," comes