Roving East and Roving West | Page 3

was told early of certain things one must not do: such as saluting with
the left hand, which is the dishonourable one of the pair, and refraining
carefully, when in a temple or mosque, from touching anything at all,
because for an unbeliever to touch is to desecrate. I was told also that a
Mohammedan grave always gives one the points of the compass,
because the body is buried north and south with the head at the north,
turned towards Mecca. The Hindus have no graves.
In India the Occidental, especially if coming from France as I did, is
struck by the absence of any out-of-door communion between men and
women. In the street men are with men, women with women. Most
women lower their eyes as a man approaches, although when the
woman is a Mohammedan and young one is often conscious of a bright
black glance through the veil. There is no public fondling, nothing like
the familiar demonstrations of affection that we are accustomed to in
Paris and London (more so during the War and since) and in New York.
Nothing so offends and surprises the Indian as this want of restraint and
shame on our part, and in Japan I learned that the Japanese share the
Indian view.
It seemed to me that the chewing of the betel-nut is more prevalent in
Bombay than elsewhere. One sees it all over India; everywhere are

moving jaws with red juice trickling; but in Bombay there are more
vendors of the rolled-up leaves and more crimson splashes on
pavement and wall. It is an unpleasant habit, but there is no doubt that
teeth are ultimately the whiter for it. Even though I was instructed in
the art of betel-nut chewing by an Indian gentleman of world-wide
fame in the cricket field, from whom I would willingly learn anything, I
could not endure the experience.
Most nations, I suppose, look upon the dances of other nations with a
certain perplexity. Such glimpses, for example, as I had in America of
the movement known as the Shimmie Shake filled me with alarm,
while Orientals have been known to display boredom at the Russian
Ballet. Personally I adore the Russian Ballet, but I found the Nautch
very fatiguing. It is at once too long and too monotonous, but I dare say
that if one could follow the words of the accompanying songs, or
cantillations, the result might be more entertaining. That would not,
however, improve the actual dancing, in which I was disappointed. In
Japan, on the other hand, I succumbed completely to the odd, hypnotic
mechanism of the Geisha, the accompaniments to which are more
varied, or more acceptable to my ear, than the Indian music. But I shall
always remember the sounds of the distant, approaching or receding,
snake- charmers' piping, heard through the heat, as it so often is on
Sundays in Calcutta. To my inward ear that is India's typical melody;
and it has relationship to the Punch and Judy allurement of our
childhood.
It was in Bombay that I saw my first fakir, and in Harrison Road,
Calcutta, my last. There had been so long a series in between that I was
able to confirm my first impression. I can now, therefore, generalise
safely when saying that all these strange creatures resemble a blend of
Tolstoi and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Imagine such a hybrid, naked save for a
loin cloth, and smeared all over with dust, and you have a holy man in
the East. The Harrison Road fakir, who passed on his way along the
crowded pavement unconcerned and practically unobserved, was white
with ashes and was beating a piece of iron as a wayward child might be
doing. He was followed by a boy, but no effort was made to collect
alms. It is true philosophy to be prepared to live in such a state of

simplicity. Most of the problems of life would dissolve and vanish if
one could reduce one's needs to the frugality of a fakir. I have thought
often of him since I returned, in London, to all the arrears of work and
duty and the liabilities that accumulate during a long holiday; but never
more so than when confronted by a Peace-time tailor's bill.

INDIA'S BIRDS
One of the first peculiarities of Bombay that I noticed and never lost
sight of was the kites. The city by day is never without these spies,
these sentries. From dawn to dusk the great unresting birds are sailing
over it, silent and vigilant. Whenever you look up, there they are,
criss-crossing in the sky, swooping and swerving and watching. After a
while one begins to be nervous: it is disquieting to be so continually
under inspection. Now and then they quarrel and even fight: