Roving East and Roving West | Page 2

strikes one as a
land destitute of ambition. In the cities there are infrequent signs of
progress; in the country none. The peasants support life on as little as
they can, they rest as much as possible and their carts and implements
are prehistoric. They may believe in their gods, but fatalism is their true
religion. How little they can be affected by civilisation I learned from a
tiny settlement of bush-dwellers not twenty miles from Bombay, close
to that beautiful lake which has been transformed into a reservoir,
where bows and arrows are still the only weapons and rats are a staple
food. And in an hour's time, in a car, one could be telephoning one's
friends or watching a cinema!

THE SAHIB
I did not have to wait to reach India for that great and exciting moment
when one is first called "Sahib." I was addressed as "Sahib," to my
mingled pride and confusion, at Marseilles, by an attendant on the
steamer which I joined there. Later I grew accustomed to it, although
never, I hope, blasé; but to the end my bearer fascinated me by alluding
to me as Master--not directly, but obliquely: impersonally, as though it
were some other person that I knew, who was always with me, an alter
ego who could not answer for himself: "Would Master like this or
that?" "At what time did Master wish to be called?"
And then the beautiful "Salaam"!
I was sorry for the English doomed to become so used to Eastern
deference that they cease to be thrilled.

THE PASSING SHOW
It is difficult for a stranger to India, especially when paying only a brief
visit, to lose the impression that he is at an exhibition--in a section of a
World's Fair. How long it takes for this delusion to wear off I cannot
say. All I can say is that seven weeks are not enough. And never does
one feel it more than in the bazaar, where movement is incessant and
humanity is so packed and costumes are so diverse, and where the
suggestion of the exhibition is of course heightened by the merchants
and the stalls. What one misses is any vantage point--anything
resembling a chair at the Café de la Paix in Paris, for instance--where
one may sit at ease and watch the wonderful changing spectacle going
past. There are in Indian cities no such places. To observe the life of the
bazaar closely and be unobserved is almost impossible.
It would be extraordinarily interesting to sit there, beside some well-
informed Anglo-Indian or Indo-Anglian, and learn all the minutiæ of
caste and be told who and what everybody was: what the different
ochre marks signified on the Hindu foreheads; what this man did for a
living, and that; and so forth. Even without such an informant I was
never tired of drifting about the native quarters in whatever city I found
myself and watching the curiously leisurely and detached commercial
methods of the dealers--the money lenders reclining on their couches;
the pearl merchants with their palms full of the little desirable jewels;
the silversmiths hammering; the tailors cross-legged; the whole
Arabian Nights pageant. All the shops seem to be overstaffed, unless an
element of detached inquisitiveness is essential to business in the East.
No transaction is complete without a few watchful spectators, usually
youths, who apparently are employed by the establishment for the sole
purpose of exhibiting curiosity.
I picked up a few odds and ends of information, by degrees, but only
the more obvious: such as that the slight shaving of the Mohammedan's
upper lip is to remove any impediment to the utterance of the name of
Allah; that the red-dyed beards are a record that their wearers have
made the pilgrimage to Mecca; that the respirator often worn by the

Jains is to prevent the death of even a fly in inhalation. I was shown a
Jain woman carefully emptying a piece of wood with holes in it into the
road, each hole containing a louse which had crawled there during the
night but must not be killed. The Jains adore every living creature; the
Hindus chiefly the cow. As for this divinity, she drifts about the cities
as though they were built for her, and one sees the passers-by touching
her, hoping for sanctity or a blessing. A certain sex inequality is,
however, only too noticeable, and particularly in and about Bombay,
where the bullock cart is so common--the bullock receiving little but
blows and execration from his drivers.
The sacred pigeon is also happy in Bombay, being fed copiously all
day long; and I visited there a Hindu sanctuary, called the Pingheripole,
for every kind of animal--a Home of Rest or Asylum--where even
pariah dogs are fed and protected.
I