My Reminiscences | Page 4

it is
now. Apart from that, the children of our household were entirely free
from the fuss of being too much looked after. The fact is that, while the
process of looking after may be an occasional treat for the guardians, to
the children it is always an unmitigated nuisance.
We used to be under the rule of the servants. To save themselves
trouble they had almost suppressed our right of free movement. But the
freedom of not being petted made up even for the harshness of this
bondage, for our minds were left clear of the toils of constant coddling,
pampering and dressing-up.
Our food had nothing to do with delicacies. A list of our articles of
clothing would only invite the modern boy's scorn. On no pretext did

we wear socks or shoes till we had passed our tenth year. In the cold
weather a second cotton tunic over the first one sufficed. It never
entered our heads to consider ourselves ill-off for that reason. It was
only when old Niyamat, the tailor, would forget to put a pocket into
one of our tunics that we complained, for no boy has yet been born so
poor as not to have the wherewithal to stuff his pockets; nor, by a
merciful dispensation of providence, is there much difference between
the wealth of boys of rich and of poor parentage. We used to have a
pair of slippers each, but not always where we had our feet. Our habit
of kicking the slippers on ahead, and catching them up again, made
them work none the less hard, through effectually defeating at every
step the reason of their being.
Our elders were in every way at a great distance from us, in their dress
and food, living and doing, conversation and amusement. We caught
glimpses of these, but they were beyond our reach. Elders have become
cheap to modern children; they are too readily accessible, and so are all
objects of desire. Nothing ever came so easily to us. Many a trivial
thing was for us a rarity, and we lived mostly in the hope of attaining,
when we were old enough, the things which the distant future held in
trust for us. The result was that what little we did get we enjoyed to the
utmost; from skin to core nothing was thrown away. The modern child
of a well-to-do family nibbles at only half the things he gets; the greater
part of his world is wasted on him.
Our days were spent in the servants' quarters in the south-east corner of
the outer apartments. One of our servants was Shyam, a dark chubby
boy with curly locks, hailing from the District of Khulna. He would put
me into a selected spot and, tracing a chalk line all round, warn me with
solemn face and uplifted finger of the perils of transgressing this ring.
Whether the threatened danger was material or spiritual I never fully
understood, but a great fear used to possess me. I had read in the
Ramayana of the tribulations of Sita for having left the ring drawn by
Lakshman, so it was not possible for me to be sceptical of its potency.
Just below the window of this room was a tank with a flight of masonry
steps leading down into the water; on its west bank, along the garden

wall, an immense banyan tree; to the south a fringe of cocoanut palms.
Ringed round as I was near this window I would spend the whole day
peering through the drawn Venetian shutters, gazing and gazing on this
scene as on a picture book. From early morning our neighbours would
drop in one by one to have their bath. I knew the time for each one to
arrive. I was familiar with the peculiarities of each one's toilet. One
would stop up his ears with his fingers as he took his regulation number
of dips, after which he would depart. Another would not venture on a
complete immersion but be content with only squeezing his wet towel
repeatedly over his head. A third would carefully drive the surface
impurities away from him with a rapid play of his arms, and then on a
sudden impulse take his plunge. There was one who jumped in from
the top steps without any preliminaries at all. Another would walk
slowly in, step by step, muttering his morning prayers the while. One
was always in a hurry, hastening home as soon as he was through with
his dip. Another was in no sort of hurry at all, taking his bath leisurely,
followed with a good rub-down, and a change from wet bathing clothes
into clean ones, including a careful adjustment of the folds of his waist
cloth, ending with a turn or