Glimpses of Bengal | Page 9

convincing me of the untimeliness of his performance in more
senses than one.
[Footnote: A Raga, or mode of Indian classical music, supposed to be
appropriate to the early dawn.]
The steamer has been aground in a narrow ditch of a canal ever since
last evening, and it is now past nine in the morning. I spent the night in
a corner of the crowded deck, more dead than alive. I had asked the
steward to fry some luchis for my dinner, and he brought me some
nondescript slabs of fried dough with no vegetable accompaniments to
eat them with. On my expressing a pained surprise, he was all
contrition and offered to make me some hotch-potch at once. But the
night being already far advanced, I declined his offer, managed to
swallow a few mouthfuls of the stuff dry, and then, all lights on and the
deck packed with passengers, laid myself down to sleep.
Mosquitoes hovered above, cockroaches wandered around. There was a
fellow-sleeper stretched crosswise at my feet whose body my soles
every now and then came up against. Four or five noses were engaged
in snoring. Several mosquito-tormented, sleepless wretches were
consoling themselves by pulls at their hubble-bubble pipes; and above
all, there rose those variations on the mode Bhairab! Finally, at
half-past three in the morning, some fussy busy-bodies began loudly
inciting each other to get up. In despair, I also left my bed and dropped
into my deck-chair to await the dawn. Thus passed that variegated
nightmare of a night.
One of the hands tells me that the steamer has stuck so fast that it may
take the whole day to get her off. I inquire of another whether any
Calcutta-bound steamer will be passing, and get the smiling reply that

this is the only boat on this line, and I may come back in her, if I like,
after she has reached Cuttack! By a stroke of luck, after a great deal of
tugging and hauling, they have just got her afloat at about ten o'clock.

TIRAN.
7th September 1891.
The landing-place at Balia makes a pretty picture with its fine big trees
on either side, and on the whole the canal somehow reminds me of the
little river at Poona. On thinking it over I am sure I should have liked
the canal much better had it really been a river.
Cocoanut palms as well as mangoes and other shady trees line its banks,
which, turfed with beautifully green grass, slope gently down to the
water, and are sprinkled over with sensitive plants in flower. Here and
there are screwpine groves, and through gaps in the border of trees
glimpses can be caught of endless fields, stretching away into the
distance, their crops so soft and velvety after the rains that the eye
seems to sink into their depths. Then again, there are the little villages
under their clusters of cocoanut and date palms, nestling under the
moist cool shade of the low seasonal clouds.
Through all these the canal, with its gentle current, winds gracefully
between its clean, grassy banks, fringed, in its narrower stretches, with
clusters of water-lilies with reeds growing among them. And yet the
mind keeps fretting at the idea that after all it is nothing but an artificial
canal.
The murmur of its waters does not reach back to the beginning of time.
It knows naught of the mysteries of some distant, inaccessible
mountain cave. It has not flowed for ages, graced with an old-world
feminine name, giving the villages on its sides the milk of its breast.
Even old artificial lakes have acquired a greater dignity.
However when, a hundred years hence, the trees on its banks will have
grown statelier; its brand-new milestones been worn down and

moss-covered into mellowness; the date 1871, inscribed on its
lock-gates, left behind at a respectable distance; then, if I am reborn as
my great-grandson and come again to inspect the Cuttack estates along
this canal, I may feel differently towards it.

SHELIDAH,
October 1891.
Boat after boat touches at the landing-place, and after a whole year
exiles are returning home from distant fields of work for the Poojah
vacation, their boxes, baskets, and bundles loaded with presents. I
notice one who, as his boat nears the shore, changes into a freshly
folded and crinkled muslin dhoti, dons over his cotton tunic a China
silk coat, carefully adjusts round his neck a neatly twisted scarf, and
walks off towards the village, umbrella held aloft.
Rustling waves pass over the rice-fields. Mango and cocoanut tree-tops
rise into the sky, and beyond them there are fluffy clouds on the
horizon. The fringes of the palm leaves wave in the breeze. The reeds
on the sand-bank are on the point of flowering.