The Eyes of Asia | Page 5

But his name remains. Though Jam and Suliman are gone Their names are not lost.
When that arrives, my Maharanee Baharanee will despatch to you posh-free par parshel-posh [post-free per parcel-post] my Cross that the Badshah gave me, and a letter from my Captain Sahib's Mother with whose brother I served when I was a man. As for my debts, it does not trouble me in the least that the moneylenders should be so troubled about them. But for the Army and the Police the people would have killed all moneylenders. Give my duty to the Rana of Pech, for his line were my father's overlords from the first. He can hang up my sword beside my father's.
Do not be concerned for whatever overtakes me. I have sifted the sands of France: now I sift those of England. Here I am held in the greatest kindness and honour imaginable by all whom I meet. Though I am useless as a child yet they are unwearied of me. The nurses in my Maharanee Baharanee's Hospital, which is by day a home and a house to me, minister to me as daughters to a father. They run after me and rebuke me if I do not wear a certain coat when it rains daily. I am like a dying tree in a garden of flowers.

THE FUMES OF THE HEART
Scene. Pavilion and Dome Hospital, Brighton--1915.
What talk is this, Doctor Sahib? This Sahib says he will be my letter-writer? Just as though he were a bazar letter-writer at home?... What are the Sahib's charges? Two annas? Too much! I give one.... No. No! Sahib. You shouldn't have come down so quickly. You've forgotten, we Sikhs always bargain.... Well; one anna be it. I will give a bond to pay it out of my wound-pension when I get home. Sit by the side of my bed....
This is the trouble, Sahib. My brother who holds his land and works mine, outside Amritsar City, is a fool. He is older than I. He has done his service and got one wound out of it in what they used to call war--that child's play in the Tirah years ago. He thinks himself a soldier! But that is not his offence. He sends me postcards, Sahib--scores of postcards--whining about the drouth or the taxes, or the crops, or our servants' pilferings or some such trouble. He doesn't know what trouble means. I want to tell him he is a fool.... What? True! True! One can get money and land but never a new brother. But for all that, he is a fool.... Is he a good farmer? Sa-heeb! If an Amritsar Sikh isn't a good farmer, a hen doesn't know an egg.... Is he honest? As my own pet yoke of bullocks. He is only a fool. My belly is on fire now with knowledge I never had before, and I wish to impart it to him--to the village elders--to all people. Yes, that is true, too. If I keep calling him a fool, he will not gain any knowledge.... Let me think it over on all sides! Aha! Now that I have a bazar-writer of my own I will write a book--a very book of a letter to my fool of a brother.... And now we will begin. Take down my words from my lips to my foolish old farmer-brother:--
* * * * *
"You will have received the notification of my wounds which I took in Franceville. Now that I am better of my wounds, I have leisure to write with a long hand. Here we have paper and ink at command. Thus it is easy to let off the fumes of our hearts. Send me all the news of all the crops and what is being done in our village. This poor parrot is always thinking of Kashmir.
"As to my own concerns, the trench in which I sat was broken by a bomb-golee as large as our smallest grain-chest." [He'll go off and measure it at once!] "It dropped out of the air. It burst, the ground was opened and replaced upon seven of us. I and two others took wounds. Sweetmeats are not distributed in war-time. God permitted my soul to live, by means of the doctors' strong medicines. I have inhabited six hospitals before I came here to England. This hospital is like a temple. It is set in a garden beside the sea. We lie on iron cots beneath a dome of gold and colours and glittering glass work, with pillars." [You know that's true, Sahib. We can see it--but d'you think he'll believe? Never! Never!] "Our food is cooked for us according to our creeds--Sikh, or Brahmin, or Mussulman and all the rest--When a man dies he is also buried according to his creed.