Roving East and Roving West | Page 6

reserved for such obsequies. There were always, also, during my stay, new supplies of fire-wood outside the great Hindu burning ground in Queen's Road; and yet no epidemic was raging; the city was normal save for a strike of mill-hands. It is true that I met wedding parties almost equally often; but in India a wedding party is not, as with us, a suggestion of new life to replace the dead, for the brides so often are infants.
One of the differences between the poor of London and the poor of India may be noticed here. In the East-End a funeral is considered to be a failure unless its cost is out of all proportion to the survivors' means, while a wedding is a matter of a few shillings; whereas in India a funeral is a simple ceremony, to be hurried over, while the wedding festivities last for weeks and often plunge the family into debts from which they never recover.

THE GARLANDS
The selective processes of the memory are very curious. It has been decreed that one of my most vivid recollections of Bombay should be that of the embarrassment and half-amused self-consciousness of an American business man on the platform of the railway station for Delhi. Having completed his negotiatory visit he was being speeded on his way by the native staff of the firm, who had hung him with garlands like a sacrificial bull. In the Crawford Market I had watched the florists at work tearing the blossoms from a kind of frangipani known as the Temple Flower, in order to string them tightly into chains; and now and again in the streets one came upon people wearing them; but to find a shrewd and portly commercial American thus bedecked was a shock. As it happened, he was to share my compartment, and on entering, just before the train started, he apologised very heartily for importing so much heavy perfume into the atmosphere, but begged to be excused because it was the custom of the country and he didn't like to hurt anyone's feelings. He then stood at the door, waving farewells, and directly the line took a bend flung the wreaths out of the window. I was glad of his company, for in addition to these floral offerings his Bombay associates had provided him with a barrel of the best oranges that ever were grown --sufficient for a battalion--and these we consumed at brief intervals all the way to Delhi.

DELHI
"If you can be in India only so short a time as seven weeks," said an artist friend of mine--and among his pictures is a sombre representation of the big sacred bull that grazes under the walls of Delhi Fort--"why not stay in Delhi all the while? You will then learn far more of India than by rushing about." I think he was right, although it was not feasible to accept the advice. For Delhi has so much; it has, first and foremost, the Fort; it has the Jama Masjid, that immense mosque where on Fridays at one o'clock may be seen Mohammedans of every age wearing every hue, thousands worshipping as one; it has the ancient capitals scattered about the country around it; it has signs and memories of the Mutiny; it has delectable English residences; and it has the Chadni Chauk, the long main street with all its curious buildings and crowds and countless tributary alleys, every one of which is the East crystallised, every one of which has its white walls, its decorative doorways, its loiterers, its beggars, its artificers, and its defiance of the bogey, Progress.
Another thing: in January, Delhi, before the sun is high and after he has sunk, is cool and bracing.
But, most of all, Delhi is interesting because it was the very centre of the Mogul dominance, and when one has become immersed in the story of the great rulers, from Babar to Aurungzebe, one thinks of most other history as insipid. Of Babar, who reigned from 1526 to 1530, I saw no trace in India; but his son Humayun (1530-1556) built Indrapat, which is just outside the walls of Delhi, and he lies close by in the beautiful mausoleum that bears his name. Humayun's son, Akbar (1556-1605), preferred Agra to Delhi; nor was Jahangir (1605-1627), who succeeded Akbar, a great builder hereabout; but with Shah Jahan (1627-1658), Jahangir's son, came the present Delhi's golden age. He it was who built the Jama Masjid, the great mosque set commandingly on a mound and gained by magnificent flights of steps. To the traveller approaching the city from any direction the two graceful minarets of the mosque stand for Delhi. It was Shah Jahan, price of Mogul builders, who decreed also the palace in the Fort, to say nothing (at the moment) of the Taj