Chapter III: Part 3

[Picture: The Dhobie] I AM an amateur philosopher and amuse myself detecting essence beneath semblance and tracing the same principle running through things the outward aspect of which is widely different. I have studied the _Dhobie_ in this spirit and find him to be nothing else than an example of the abnormal development, under favourable conditions, of a disposition which is not only common to humanity, but pervades the whole animal kingdom. A puppy rending slippers, a child tearing up its picture books, a mungoose killing twenty chickens to feed on one, a freethinker demolishing ancient superstitions, what are they all but _Dhobies_ in embryo? Destruction is so much easier than construction, and so much more rapid and abundant in its visible results, that the devastator feels a jubilant joy in his work, of which the tardy builder knows nothing. As the lightning scorns the oak, as the fire triumphs over the venerable pile, as the swollen river scoffs at the P. W. D., while arch after arch tumbles into its gurgling whirlpools, so the _Dhobie_, dashing your cambric and fine linen against the stones, shattering a button, fraying a hem, or rending a seam at every stroke, feels a triumphant contempt for the miserable creature whose plodding needle and thread put the garment together. This feeling is the germ from which the _Dhobie_ has grown. Day after day he has stood before that great black stone and wreaked his rage upon shirt and trowser and coat, and coat and trowser and shirt. Then he has wrung them as if he were wringing the necks of poultry, and fixed them on his drying line with thorns and spikes, and finally he has taken the battered garments to his torture chamber and ploughed them with his iron, longwise and crosswise and slantwise, and dropped glowing cinders on their tenderest places. Son has followed father through countless generations in cultivating this passion for destruction, until it has become the monstrous growth which we see and shudder at in the _Dhobie_.

But I find in him, at least, an illustration of another human infirmity. He takes in hand to eradicate the dirt which defiles the garment. But the one is closely mingled with the very fibres of the other, the one is impalpable, the other bulky and substantial, and so the torrent of his zealous rage unconsciously turns against the very substance of that which he set himself lovingly to purge and restore to its primitive purity. Indeed, I sometimes find that, while he has successfully wrecked the garment, he has overlooked the dirt! Greater and better men than the _Dhobie_ are employed in the same way.

Such are the consolations of philosophy,

“But there was never yet philosopher
Who could endure the toothache patiently,”

much less the _Dhobie_. He is not tolerable. Submit to him we must, since resistance is futile; but his craven spirit makes submission difficult and resignation impossible. If he had the soul of a conqueror, if he wasted you like Attilla, if he flung his iron into the clothes-basket and cried _Væ victis_, then a feeling of respect would soften the bitterness of the conquered; but he conceals his ravages like the white ant, and you are betrayed in the hour of need. When he comes in, limping and groaning under his stupendous bundle, and lays out _khamees_, _pyatloon_, and _pjama_, all so fair and decently folded, and delivers them by tale in a voice whose monotonous cadence seems to tell of some undercurrent of perennial sorrow in his life, who could guess what horrors his perfidious heart is privy to? Next morning, when you spring from your tub and shake out the great jail towel which is to wrap your shivering person in its warm folds, lo! it yawns from end to end. There is nothing but a border, a fringe, left. You fling on your clothes in unusual haste, for it is mail day morning. The most indispensible of them all has scarcely a remnant of a button remaining. You snatch up another which seems in better condition, and scramble into it; but, in the course of the day, a cold current of wind, penetrating where it ought not, makes you aware of what your friends behind your back have noticed for some time, _viz._, that the starch with which a gaping rent had been carefully gummed together, that you might not see it, has melted and given way. The thought of these things makes a man feel like Vesuvius on the eve of an eruption; but you must wait for relief till _Dhobie_ day next week, and then the poltroon has stayed at home, and sent his brother to report that he is suffering from a severe stomachache. When the miscreant makes his next appearance in person, he stands on one leg, with joined palms and a piteous bleat, and pleads an _alibi_. He was absent about the marriage of a relation, and his brother washed the clothes. So your lava falls back into its crater, or, I am afraid, more often overflows the surrounding country.

My theory of the _Dhobie_ is a mere speculation, a hypothesis deduced from broad, general principles. I do not pretend to have established it by scientific observation, and am very tolerant towards other theories, especially one which is supported by many competent authorities, and explains the _Dhobie_ by supposing a league between him, the _dirzee_ and the Boy. I think a close investigation into the natural history of the shirt would go far to establish this theory as at least partially true. In spite of the spread of “Europe” shops, the shirt is still abundantly produced from the vernacular _dirzee_ sitting crossed-legged in the verandah, and each shirt will be found to furnish him, on the average, with about a week’s lucrative employment. From his hands it passes to the _Dhobie_ and returns with the buttons wanting, the buttonholes widened to great gaping fish-mouths, and the hems of the cuffs slightly frayed. The last is the most significant fact, because it leads to the discovery of one of those delicate adaptations which the student of nature has so often occasion to admire; for, on examination, we discover that the hem had been made with the least possible margin of cloth, as if to facilitate the process of fraying. As we know that economy of material is not an object with the _dirzee_, it has been maintained that there is some connection here. Next the shirt passes into the hands of the Boy, who takes his scissors and carefully pares the ragged edges of the cuffs and collar. A few rotations of _Dhobie_ and Boy reduce the cuffs to the breadth of an inch, while the collar becomes a circular saw which threatens to take your head off. Then you fling the shirt to your Boy, and the _dirzee_ is in requisition again. Observation of white trousers will lead to similar results. Between _Dhobie’s_ fury and Boy’s repairs, the ends of the legs retreat steadily upwards to your knees, and by the time the Boy inherits them they are just his length. Remember, I do not say I believe in this explanation of the _Dhobie_. I give it for what it is worth. The subject is interesting and practical.

[Picture: Homeward bound]

Did you ever open your handkerchief with the suspicion that you had got a duster into your pocket by mistake, till the name of De Souza blazoned on the corner showed you that you were wearing someone else’s property? An accident of this kind reveals a beneficent branch of the _Dhobie’s_ business, one in which he comes to the relief of needy respectability. Suppose yourself (if you can) to be Mr. Lobo, enjoying the position of first violinist in a string band which performs at Parsee weddings and on other festive occasions. _Noblesse oblige_; you cannot evade the necessity for clean shirt-fronts, ill able as your precarious income may be to meet it. In these circumstances a _Dhobie_ with good connections is what you require. He finds you in shirts of the best quality at so much an evening, and you are saved all risk and outlay of capital; you need keep no clothes except a greenish black surtout and pants and an effective necktie. In this way the wealth of the rich helps the want of the poor without their feeling it, or knowing it—an excellent arrangement. Sometimes, unfortunately, Mr. Lobo has a few clothes of his own, and then, as I have hinted, the _Dhobie_ may exchange them by mistake, for he is uneducated and has much to remember; but, if you occasionally suffer in this way, you gain in another, for Mr. Lobo’s family are skilful with the needle, and I have sent a torn garment to the washing which returned skilfully repaired.

[Picture: Dhobies]

I suspect I am getting bitter and ironical, and it will be wise to stop, for we are fickle creatures, the best of us, and it is quite possible that, in the mild twilight of life, in the old country, I shall find myself speaking benevolently of the _Dhobie_, and secretly wishing I could hear his plaintive monotone again counting out my linen at four rupees a hundred.

THE AYAH.

[Picture: The Ayah]

I WAS roaming among the flower-beds and bowers of a “Peri’s Paradise,” known in Bombay as The Ladies Gymkhana, when I was startled by a voice like the sound of a passionate cart-wheel screaming for grease. “Lub ob my heart,” it cried, “my eshweet, don’t crei! don’t crei!” The owner of the voice was a woman with a negro type of countenance, as far as I remember, but her figure has remained with me better than her face. It was a portly figure, like that of a domestic duck in high condition, and her gait was, as Mr. Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee would say, “well quadrate” to the figure. Engulphed in her voluminous embrace was a little cherub, with golden curls and blue eyes dewy with passing tears—a pretty study of sunshine and shower. The great, bare arms of the pachyderm were loaded with bangles of silver and glass, which jingled with a warlike sound as she hugged her little charge and plastered its pretty cheeks with great gurgling kisses, which made one shudder and think involuntarily of the “slime which the aspic leaves upon the caves of Nile.” Many of us have been Anglo-Indian babies. Was there a time when we suffered caresses such as these? What a happy thing it is that Lethe flows over us as we emerge from infancy, and blots out all that was before. Another question has been stirring in my mind since that scene. What feeling or motive prompted those luscious blandishments? Was it simple hypocrisy? I do not think so. The pure hypocrite is much rarer than shallow people think, and, in any case, there was no inducement to make a display in my presence. What influence could I possibly exercise over the fortunes of that great female? A maternal hippopotamus in the Zoo would as soon think of hugging a young giraffe to propitiate the spectators. Of course you may take up the position that the hypocrisy is practised all day before her mistress, and that the mere momentum of habit carries it on at other times. This is plausible, but I suspect that such a case would rather come under the fundamental law that action and reaction are equal and opposite. Let us be charitable and look for better reasons. The mere milk of human kindness explains something, but not enough, and I am inclined to think that the _Ayah_ is the subject of an indiscriminate maternal emotion, which runs where it can find a channel. The effect of culture is to specialise our affections and remove us further and further from the condition of the hen whose philoprogenitiveness embraces all chicks and ducklings; so it may well be that the poor _Ayah_, who has not had much culture, is better able than you or I to feel promiscuously parental towards babies in general, at least, if she can connect them in any way with herself. Towards babies in the care of another _Ayah_ she has no charity; they are the brood of a rival hen and she would like to exterminate them. Again, we must love and hate, if we live at all. The _Ayah’s_ horizon is not wide, her sentiments are neither numerous nor complex, and her affections are not trained to lay hold of the abstract or the historical. If you question her, you will find that her heart does not bleed for the poor negro, and she is not in the habit of regarding the Emperor Caligula with abhorrence. She has one or two brothers or sisters, but they are far away and have become almost as historical as Caligula. In these circumstances, if she could not feel motherly towards babies, what feeling would be left to her? And, perhaps, if we knew her story, baby has a charm to open up an old channel, long since dry and choked with the sands of a desert life, in which a gentle stream of tenderness once flowed, with “flowerets of Eden” on its banks, and fertilised her poor nature. But we do not know her story. She says her husband is a cook. More about him she does not say, but she hugs “Sunny Baba” to her breast and kisses him and says that nothing shall ever part her from him till he grows to be a great _saheb_, with plenty of pay, when he will pension her and take care of her in her old age. And her eyes get moist, for she means it more or less; but next day she catches a cold and refuses food, saying that all her bones ache and her head is revolving; then the horror of dying among strangers, “unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,” proves too much for the faithful creature, and she disappears without notice, leaving her darling and its mother to look out for another _Ayah_.

It is a fortunate thing for us that the Ayah is able to conceive such a devouring passion for our children, for it appears, from her own statements, that but for this strong tie, nothing would induce her to stay a day in our service where the constant broils with the other servants, into which she is driven by her determination to be faithful to her own mistress, make life almost unbearable to a peaceable woman like her. The chief object of her righteous indignation is the “Bootrail.” She is so reluctant to make any personal complaint, that she would pass over his grudging her a little sugar in her morning tea, but when he takes away a whole cupful for his own children, conscience compels her to tell her mistress. She has often pointed out to him that such conduct is not right, and tried to reason with him, but he only insults her. The cook, being a notorious inebriate, plays into the “Bootrail’s” hand, on condition that the latter will not tell upon him. Why did master send away the dinner last night without touching it? Because the cook was on the floor and the _matie_ had to do the work. Chh! Chh! Chh! It is very shameful and makes her feel so bad. She herself is a teetotaler, as her mistress knows. That night when she was found with a pillow in her arms instead of the baby, singing to it and patting it to sleep, she had been smoking an English cheroot which a friend had given her, and, as she is accustomed only to country tobacco, it went to her head and stupefied her. Nothing would induce her to drink spirits, but the other servants are not like her. The _mussaul_ is not a bad man, but the “Bootrail’s” example infects him too. He barters the kerosine oil at the petty shop round the corner for arrack. As for the _hamal_, she is tired of fighting with him. From this account of herself you will be able to infer that the _Ayah_ is not a favourite with the other servants; but she is powerful, and so with oriental prudence they veil their feelings. The butler indeed, tries to be proud and risks ruin, but the _mussaul_ truckles to her, and the cook, who can spoil her dinner, and has some control over her, trims between her and the butler. The _hamal_ is impracticable, and the _chupprassees_ adhere to the party in power for the time being.

The _Ayah_ is the “society” newspaper of small stations, and is indispensable. The barber is the general newsagent, and, as we part with our beards in the morning, we learn from him all particulars of the dinner at the general’s last night, and of the engagement that resulted between the pretty Missy Baba and the captain who has been so much about the house; also when the marriage is to take place, if the captain can get out of his debts, the exact amount of which Old Tom knows. He can tell us, too, the reason why she “jawaubed” him so often, being put up to it by her mother in the interests of a rival suitor, and he has authentic information as to the real grounds of the mother’s change of tactics. But Old Tom is himself dependent on _Ayahs_, and there are matters beyond his range, matters which even in an Indian station cannot reach us by any male channel. They trickle from _madam_ to _Ayah_, from _Ayah_ to _Ayah_, and from _Ayah_ to _madam_. Thus they ooze from house to house, and we are all saved from judging our neighbours by outward appearances.

That scene in the Ladies’ Gymkhana comes back and haunts me. What if the impress of those swarthy lips on that fair cheek are but an outward symbol of impressions on a mind still as fair and pure, impressions which soap and water will not purge away! Yes, it is so. The _Ayah_ hangs like a black cloud over and around the infant mind, and its earliest outlooks on the world are tinted by that medium. It lies with wondering blue eyes watching the coloured toys which she dangles before it, and takes in the elements of form and colour. She pats it to sleep, and, on the borders of dream-land, those “sphere-born, harmonious sisters, voice and verse,” visit it in the form of a plaintive ditty, which has for its simple burden,

Little, little fish
In bitter, bitter oil.
I will not part with one of them for three pice and a half.

As its mind expands, new mysteries of the universe unfold themselves through the same interpreter. It learns to see through the hollowness of promises and threats before it knows the words in which they are framed. With the knowledge of words comes the knowledge of their use as means of concealing the truth and gaining its little ends. Then the painful experience of discipline and punishment reveals the same motherly figure in the new light of a protector and comforter, and it learns to contrast her with the stern persons whom she has taught it to call pa-pa and ma-ma. When they refuse anything on which it has set its childish heart, it knows to whom to go for sympathy. She will console it and teach little artifices, by which it may evade or circumvent them. She supplies discipline of another kind, however, and the yet simple trusting mind of the little Pantheist lives in terror of papa’s red-faced friend with the big stomach, who eats up ten or twelve little children every day, and of the Borah with the great box full of black ants, in which he shuts up naughty boys till the ants pick the flesh from their disobedient bones. When it goes to the bandstand, it gazes from a safe distance on the big drum, full of boys and girls who would not let their hair be combed: it hears their groans at every stroke of the terrible drumstick. Thus the religious side of the tender nature is developed, and _Ayah_ is the priestess. Under the same guidance it will, as it grows older, tread paths of knowledge which its parents never trod. Whither will they lead it? We know not who never joined in the familiar chat of _Ayahs_ and servants, but imagination “bodies forth the forms of things unseen” and shudders. Let us rejoice that a merciful superstition, which regards the climate of India as deadly to European children, will step in and save the little soul. The climate would do it no harm, but there is a moral miasma more baneful than any which rises from the pestilential swamps of the Terai, or the Bombay Flats.

[Picture: The Ayah] P. S.—I have just taken another look at our present _Ayah_. She is a little old woman from Goa, with humorous “crow’s feet” at the corners of her kind eyes. She is very retiring and modest, and all the servants seem fond of her. It is evident that nature is various, and we cannot all be types.

R. R. THE PUNDIT.

[Picture: The Pundit]

THE Pundit is like duty; his cough rouses us from our beds in the morning like the voice of conscience. Why must we pass examinations? Not that we may know the language of the people, for it is matter of daily observation, that of all the mysteries which perplex the humble mind of the country bumpkin in this land, causing him to scratch his—well, not his head—there is none which he gives up as hopeless sooner than the strange sounds addressed to him by the young _saheb_ who has just passed his higher standard. He joins his palms in loyal acquiescence, and asserts that the gentleman is his father and mother. It was Swift, was it not, who suggested that all high offices of state should be filled by lot, because the result would be on the whole quite as satisfactory as that obtained by the present system, while disappointed candidates would curse Fortune, who has a broader back than the Prime Minister. No doubt examinations were introduced on the same sort of principle, to act as a buffer between the train of candidates and the engine of Government. That the examination often comes after instead of before the appointment is a necessary modification, without which no room would be left for the play of those kindly feelings for kith and kin which we bitterly nickname nepotism. Under this arrangement I have known a needy _nepos_ of H. E. himself provided with a salary for a whole year, till he could hold the examination at bay no longer, when he evacuated his position and retreated to his friends. Whatever the explanation of the matter may be, it falls to the lot of most of us to experience the Pundit. I may remark here that he is very commonly called a Moonshee, on the same principle on which a horse is not called a cow. The Pundit is not a Moonshee. The Moonshee is a follower of the Prophet and teaches Oordoo, or Hindoostanee, while the Pundit is a Brahmin and instructs you in Marathee or Gujarathee. The Moonshee struggles to get you to disgorge the sound _ghain_ and leads you through the enchanted mazes of the Bagh-o-Bahar; the Pundit distinguishes between the _kurmunnee_ and the _kurturree prayog_, and has many knotty points of mythology to expound, in order that you may rightly understand his idioms and appreciate his proverbial sayings. Of Pundits there are three species, quite distinct from each other. The first I would recommend if your object should, by any chance, be to learn to speak the language intelligibly; but he knows no English, and you must gird yourself to work if you employ him. This sort of teacher does not suit the tastes of the present generation and is dying out, I think. The second kind is invaluable if your purpose is to pass an examination. He knows English well, dresses smartly, and is altogether a superior sort of person to the last, especially in his own estimation; but appearances are delusive, and the sign that really distinguishes him from other Pundits is that he enjoys in a high degree the esteem and confidence of a native member of the examining body. Another unfailing characteristic of him is that he requires a monstrous monthly stipend and the promise of a handsome _douceur_ if you pass; but then you have the satisfaction of knowing that, if you fulfil the conditions, that happy result is certain. His system leaves no room for failure. Some people regard this man as a myth, but I have had authentic accounts of him from numerous young gentlemen who had failed in their examinations simply, as they themselves assured me, because they did not employ him. The third class consists of young men, aspirants to University honours and others, with some knowledge of English and a laudable desire to improve it by conversation with Englishmen. I do not know for what purpose this sort of Pundit is useful.

Old Ragunath Rao belonged to the first of these three classes. He knew no English, and he desired to know none, neither English words nor English thoughts. He was an undiluted Brahmin. He had taught a former generation of Anglo-Indians, long since retired, or in their graves, and one or two of these, who were very religious men, had impressed him by their characters so deeply that he always spoke of them with reverence, as not men but divinities. The tide had ebbed away from him, and no one employed him now: he was very poor. His face was heavy, his ears like beef-steaks, with a fringe of long bristles round the edge and a bushy tuft of the same sprouting from the inside. His features were not pleasing, but strongly expressive of character, stubborn Hindoo character, self-disciplined, self-satisfied, and in a set attitude of defence against the invasions of novelty. His athletic intellect was exercised in all manner of curious questions. The only matter about which it never concerned itself was reality, the existence of which he probably doubted. At any rate, he considered truth, right, wrong, to be subjects for speculative philosophy. As a practical man, he had minutely acquainted himself with all the things that behoved to be believed by an orthodox Brahmin, and he was not the man to give way to mere facts. This frame of mind begot in him a large tolerance, for what possible connection could there be between what it became him to believe and what it became you to believe? If his son had turned a Christian, he could have swung him from a tree by his thumbs and toes and flagellated him from below with acute pleasure; but if you expounded Christian doctrines and morals to him, he would listen with profound admiration. A Christian who lived up to his creed he respected unfeignedly. Strange old man! like one of his own idols, not modelled upon anything that is in heaven or on earth. Are they not, he and the idol, the fruit of the same tree?

What memories rise out of their graves at the mention of old Ragunath! Just about a quarter of an hour after his time he comes slowly up the steps, panting for breath, and leaving his shoes at the door, walks in with a _quasi_ courtly salutation. As soon as he can recover his voice, he tells of a hair-breadth escape from sudden death. As he was crossing the road, a carriage and pair bore down on him. He stood petrified with terror, not knowing whether to hurry forward or turn back, but just as the horses were upon him, he made a frantic effort and gained the side-walk! He infers that his time to die had not arrived, and takes the occasion to impart some information about the planets and their influence on human destinies. Then we seat ourselves, and he takes my exercise (translation from Grant Duff), and reads it slowly in a muffled voice, which is forced to make its exit by the nose, the mouth being occupied with cardamoms or betel nut. As he reads he corrects with a pencil, but gives no explanation of his corrections; for you must not expect him to teach: he is a mine simply, in which you must dig for what you want. One thing you may depend on, that whatever you extract from that mine will be worth having, indigenous treasure, current wherever Hindoo thought is moving, very different from the foreign-flavoured pabulum with which your English smattering instructor charges his feeding bottle. The exercise gives Ragunath an opportunity of digressing into some traditional incident of Maratha history which escaped the researches of Mr. Grant Duff, an incident generally in which Maratha cunning (_sagacity_ he calls it) triumphed over English stupidity. After the exercise comes the inevitable petition. I do not remember the subject of it—some grievance no doubt connected with hereditary rights in land—but it matters little; the whole document might as well be a Moabite stone recording the wars of Mesha with Jehoram, for not a letter of it stands out recognisable to my eyes. Indeed, no letter, or word either, stands out at all; the scribe seems never to have lifted his pen from his paper except for ink, and that generally in the middle of a word. However, Ragunath takes the greasy paper from my hand, remarks that the handwriting is good, and starts off reading it, or, I should say, intoning it, on exactly the same principle, _viz._, never pausing except for breath, and that generally in the middle of a word. Then we read together the “Garland of Pearls,” which he illuminates with notes of his own. Speaking of old age, he remarks that the hair of some men ripens sooner than that of others, but that our heads must all grow grey as our brains get thin. He discourses on anatomy, food, digestion, the advisability of lying down on the left side for twenty minutes after meals, and on many things in heaven and earth which are not dreamed of in our philosophy. As the morning wears on, the old man, who is not accustomed to sitting on chairs, begins to fidget, and shows signs of a desire to gather up his feet into the seat and nurse them. At last drowsiness overtakes him. His eyes are open, but his mind is asleep, and I may do as I please with grammar and idiom: even when I yawn, he omits to snap his fingers and lets the devil skip down my throat. When he awakes he suggests that it is time to stop, and asks leave for the next day, as he has to renew his sacred thread. Poor old Ragunath! I fear he has gone long since to the burning ground on the banks of the Moota Moola.

[Picture: Learned repose] Before we part let me give you a hint. Always keep a separate chair for your Pundit, one isolated on glass legs, if possible. Even this does not afford complete security, for he now and then detects one of the many insects which you have watched coursing up and down his white scarf, and picking it off with his finger and thumb, puts it on the floor. His creed forbids him to take the life of anything which may possibly be the corporeal habitation of the spirit of one of his deceased ancestors, but these little insects irritate him, so he deports them as we do our loafers.

HURREE, THE DIRZEE.

[Picture: Hurree] A WARM altercation is going on in the verandah. A little human animal, with a very large red turban on his little head, stuck full of pins and threaded needles, stands on all fours over a garment of an unmentionable kind, which I recognise as belonging to me, and a piece of cloth lies before him, out of which he has cut a figure resembling the said garment. The scissors with which the operation was performed are still lying open upon the ground before him. His head is thrown so far back that the great turban rests between his shoulder blades, his brow is corrugated with perplexity, his mouth a little open, as if his lower jaw could not quite follow the rest of his upturned face. Hurree cannot know much about toothache. What would I not give for that set of incisors, regular as the teeth of a saw, and all as red as a fresh brick! I suppose the current quid of _pan suparee_ is temporarily stowed away under that swelling in the left cheek, where the fierce black patch of whisker grows. The survival of a partial cheek pouch in some branches of the human race is a point that escaped Darwin. But I am digressing into reflections. To return: a lady is standing over the quadruped and evidently expressing serious displeasure in some form of that domestic language which we call Hindoostanee, with variations. The charge she lays against him seems to be that he has, in disregard of explicit instructions and defiance of common sense, made a blunder to which her whole past experience in India furnishes no parallel, and which has resulted in the total destruction of a whole piece of costly material, and the wreck of a garment for want of which the _saheb_ (that is myself) will be put to a degree of inconvenience which cannot be estimated in rupees, and will most certainly be provoked to an outbreak of indignation too terrible to be described. So little do we know ourselves! I had no idea I harboured such a temper. However, Hurree does not tremble, but pleads that it was necessary to make the garment “leetle silope,” and though he admits that the slope is too great, he thinks the mistake can be remedied, and is pulling the cloth to see if it will not stretch to the required shape. Failing this, he has other remedies of a technical kind to suggest. I do not understand these matters, and cannot interpret his argument, but he puts his fingers on the floor and flings himself lightly to the other side of the cloth, to point out where he proposes to have a “fals hame,” or some other device. She rejects the proposal with scorn, and again impresses him with the consequences of his wicked blunder. At last I am glad to see that a compromise is effected, and the little man settles himself in the middle of a small carpet and locks his legs together so that his shins form an X and he sits on his feet. In this position he will ply his needle for the rest of the day at a rate inversely proportional to the distance of his mistress. When she retires for her afternoon _siesta_ the needle will nap too. Then he will take out a little _Vade Mecum_, which is never absent from his waistband, and unroll it. It is many-coloured and contains little pockets, one for fragments of the spicy areca, one for the small tin box which contains fresh lime, one for cloves, one for cardamoms, and so on. He will put a little of this and a little of that into his palm, then roll them all up in a betel leaf out of another pocket, and push the parcel into his mouth. Thus refreshed he will go to work again, not, however, upon the garment to which he is now devoted, but upon a roll of coloured stuffs on which he is at the present moment sitting. You see, times are hard and Hurree has a large family, so he is obliged to eke out his salary by contract work for the _mussaul_. His work suffers from other interruptions. When the carriage of a visitor is heard, he has to awaken the _chupprassee_ on duty at the door, and on his own account he goes out to drink water at least as often as the _chupprassee_ himself. As the day draws near its close, he watches the shadow like a hireling, and when it touches the foot of the long arm chair, he springs to his feet, rolls up his rags and threads into a bundle, and trips gaily out. As he does so you will observe that his legs are bandy, the knees refusing to approach each other. This is the result of the position in which he spends his days.

[Picture: A “leelte silope”]

This is how we clothe ourselves in our Indian empire. Our smooth and comfortable _khakee_ suits, our ample _pyjamas_, the cool white jackets in which we dine, in this way are they brought about. But you must not allow yourself to think of the _Dirzee_ simply as an agency for producing clothes. Life is not made up of such simplicities. The _raison d’être_ of that mango tree lies without doubt in the chalice of nectar, called “mango fool,” with which Domingo appeases me when he guesses that his enormities have gone beyond the limits even of my endurance; but I see that thirty-seven candidates for the place of the _chupprassee_ who went on leave yesterday have encamped under its shade, that they may watch for my face in the verandah. The trespassing goat also has browsed on its leaves, and from the shelter of its branches the Magpie Robin pours that stream of song which, just before the dawning of the day, in the cloudy border land between sleeping and waking flows over my soul. But I shall never really know the place that tree has filled in my life, unless someone cuts it down and gives me a full view, from my easy chair, of the dirty brick-burners’ hut, with the poisonous film of blue smoke playing over the kiln, and the family of pariah puppies below, sporting with the sun-dried remains of a fowl, which deceased in my yard and was purloined by their gaunt mother. Now let imagination blot out the _Dirzee_. Remove him from the verandah. Take up his carpet and sweep away the litter. What a strange void there is in the place! Eliminate him from a lady’s day. Let nine o’clock strike, but bring no stealthy footstep to the door, no muffled voice making respectful application for his _Kam_. From nine to ten breakfast will fill the breach, and you may allow another hour for the butler’s account and the godown; but there is still a yawning chasm of at least two hours between eleven and tiffin. I cannot bridge it. Imagination strikes work. The joyful sound of the Borah’s voice brings promise of relief; but no! for what interest can there be in the Borah if you have no _Dirzee_? In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is “rank bosh.” She declares that the _Dirzee_ is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening for the last month he has watched her getting ready for to drive, and just as her foot was on the carriage step, has reminded her, with a cough, that his work was finished and he had nothing to do. If she could only do without him, she would send him about his business and be the happiest woman in the world, for she could devote the whole day to music and painting and the improvement of her mind. Of course I assent. That is a very commendable way of thinking about the matter. But, as an amateur philosopher, I warn you never to let yourself get under practical bondage to such notions. I tell you when you betake yourself to music or painting, carpentry or gardening, as a means of getting through the day, you are sapping your mental constitution and shortening your life: unless you are sustained by more than ordinary littleness of mind you will never see threescore and ten. All these things are good in proportion as you have difficulty in finding time for them. When you have to rise early in the morning and work hard to make a little leisure for your favourite hobby, then you are getting its blessing. Now, the _Dirzee_ is not a means of killing time. On the contrary, I see that he compels his mistress to take thought how she may save time alive, if she wishes to get anything done. He hurries the day along and scatters its hours, so that _ennui_ cannot find an empty minute to lurk in. I do not deny that he is the occasion of a few provocations, and the simile of the fly is just; but are not provocations an element in the interest of every pursuit, the pepper which flavours all pleasant occupation? I collect butterflies, and my friends think I am a man to be envied because I have such a taste. Do they suppose a butterfly catcher has no provocations? Was it seventeen or seventy times (I forget) in one page that I laid down my pen, put off my spectacles and caught up my net to rush after that brute of a _Papilio polymnestor_, who just came to the _duranta_ flowers to flout me and skip over the wall into the next garden? And does anyone but a butterfly hunter know how it feels to open your cabinet drawers just a few hours after the ants have got the news that the camphor is done? Does anyone but an entomologist know the grub of _Dermestes intolerabilis_? Why should a collection of butterflies be called an object of perennial interest and delight, and the _Dirzee_ an unmitigated provocation? They are both of one family. Nothing is unmitigated in this world.

Maria Graham tells us that in her time “the _Dirdjees_, or tailors, in Bombay” were “Hindoos of respectable caste,” but in these days the Goanese, who has not capacity to be a butler or cook, becomes a _Dirzee_, and in Bombay I have seen Bunniah _Dirzees_. Hurree can hold his own against these, I doubt not, but the advancing tide of civilization is surely crumbling down his foundations. It is not only the “Europe” shop in Bombay that takes the bread out of his month, but in the smallest and most remote stations, Narayen, “Tailor, Outfitter, Milliner, and Dressmaker,” hangs out his sign-board, and under it pale, consumptive youths of the Shimpee caste bend over their work by lamplight, and sing the song of the shirt to the whirr-rr-rr of sewing machines. And as Hurree goes by on his way home, his prophetic soul tells him that his son will not live the happy and independent life which has fallen to his lot. But he has a bulwark still in the _dhobie_, for the “Tailor and Outfitter” will not repair frayed cuffs, and the sewing machine cannot put on buttons. And Hurree is not ungrateful, for I observe that, when the _dhobie_ delivers up your clothes in a state which requires the _Dirzee_, the _Dirzee_ always gives them back in a condition which demands the _dhobie_.

[Picture: The Dirzee]

THE MALEE.

“Another custom is their sitting always on the ground with their
knees up to their chins, which I know not how to account
for.”—_Daniel Johnson_.

[Picture: The Malee] I HAVE been watching Thomas Otway, gardener. His coat hangs on a tree hard by, and he, standing in his shirt sleeves, is slaughtering regiments of weeds with a long hoe. When they are all uprooted and prostrate, he changes his weapon for a fork, with which he tosses them about and shakes them free of soil and gathers them into heaps. Then he brings a wheel-barrow, and, piling them into it until it can hold no more, goes off at a trot. I am told his only fault is that he is _slow_.

I have also stood watching Peelajee. He, too, is a gardener, called by his own people a _Malee_, and by us, familiarly, a _Molly_. He sits in an attitude not easy to describe, but familiar to all who have resided in the otiose East. You will get at it by sitting on your own heels and putting your knees into your armpits. In this position Peelajee can spend the day with much comfort, which is a wonderful provision of nature. At the present moment he also is engaged in the operation of weeding. In his right hand is a small species of sickle called a _koorpee_, with which he investigates the root of each weed as a snipe feels in the mud for worms; then with his left hand he pulls it out, gently shakes the earth off it, and contributes it to a small heap beside him. When he has cleared a little space round him, he moves on like a toad, without lifting himself. He enlivens his toil by exchanging remarks upon the weather as affecting the price of grain, the infirmity of my temper and other topics of personal interest, with an assistant, whom he persuaded me to engage by the day, pleading the laborious nature of this work of weeding. When two or three square yards have been cleared, they both go away, and return in half an hour with a very small basket, which one holds while the other fills it with the weeds. Then the assistant balances it on his head, and sets out at one mile an hour for the garden gate, where he empties it on the roadside. Then he returns at the same rate, with the empty basket on his head, to Peelajee, who is occupied sitting waiting for him.

It is clear that there may be two ways of doing the same thing. I have no doubt there is much to be said for both, but, upon the whole, the advantage seems to lie with the _Malee_. Otway does as much work in a day as Peelajee does in a week. But why should a day be better than a week? If you turn the thing round, and look at the other side of it, you will find that Otway costs three shillings a day and Peelajee two rupees a week. So, if you are in a hurry, you can employ half a dozen Peelajees, and feel that you are making six families in the world happy instead of only one. And I am sure the calm and peaceful air of Peelajee, as he moves about the garden, must be good for the soul and promote longevity. I hate bustle, and I can vouch for Peelajee that he never bustles. However, there is no need of odious comparisons. There is a time for everything under the sun, and a place. Here, in India, we have need of Peelajee. He is a necessary part of the machinery by which our exile life is made to be the graceful thing it often is. I pass by bungalow after bungalow, each in its own little paradise, and look upon the green lawn successfully defying an unkind climate, the islands of mingled foliage in profuse, confused beauty, the gay flower beds, the clean gravel paths with their trim borders, the grotto in a shady corner, where fern and moss mingle, all dripping as if from recent showers and make you feel cool in spite of all thermometers, and I say to myself, “Without the _Malee_ all this would not be.” Neither with the _Malee_ alone would this be, but something very different. I admit that. But is not this just one secret of the beneficent influence he has on us? Your “Scotch” gardener is altogether too good. He obliterates you—reduces you to a spectator. But keeping a _Malee_ draws you out, for he compels you to look after him, and if you are to look after him, you must know something about his art, and if you do not know, you must learn. So we Anglo-Indians are gardeners almost to a man, and spend many pure, happy hours with the pruning shears and the budding knife, and this we owe to the _Malee_. When I say you must look after him, I do not disparage his skill; he is neat handed and knows many things; but his taste is elementary. He has an eye for symmetry, and can take delight in squares and circles and parallel lines; but the more subtle beauties of unsymmetrical figures and curves which seem to obey no law are hid from him. He loves bright tints especially red and yellow, with a boy’s love for sugar; he cannot have too much of them; but he has no organ for perceiving harmony in colour, and so the want of it does not pain him. The chief avenue, however, by which the delights of a gardener’s life reach him is the sense of smell. He revels in sweet odours; but here, too, he seeks for strength rather than what we call delicacy. In short, the enjoyment which he finds in the tones of his native _tom-tom_ may be taken as typical of all his pleasures. I find however, that Peelajee understands the principles of toleration, and, recognising that he caters for my pleasure rather than his own, is quite willing to abandon his favourite yellow marigold and luscious jasmine for the _pooteena_ and the _beebeena_ and the _fullax_. But perhaps you do not know these flowers by their Indian names. We call them _petunia_, _verbena_, and _phlox_. This is, doubtless, another indication of our Aryan brotherhood.

Peelajee is industrious after the Oriental method—that is to say, he is always doing something, but is economical of energy rather than time. If there are more ways than one of doing a thing, he has an unerring instinct which guides him to choose the one that costs least trouble. He is a fatalist in philosophy, and this helps him too. For example, when he transplants a rose bush, he saves himself the trouble of digging very deep by breaking the root, for if the plant is to live it will live, and if it is to die it will die. Some plants live, he remarks, and some plants die. The second half of this aphorism is only too true. In fact, many of my best plants not only die, but suddenly and entirely disappear. If I question Peelajee, he denies that I ever had them, and treats me as a dreamer of dreams. I would not be uncharitable, but a little suspicion, like a mouse, lurks in the crevices of my mind that Peelajee surreptitiously carries on a small business as a seedsman and nursery gardener, and I know that in his simple mind he is so identified with his master that _meum_ and _tuum_ blend, as it were, into one. I am restrained from probing into the matter by a sensitiveness about certain other mysteries which may be bound up with this, and about which I have always suppressed my curiosity. For example, where do the beautiful flowers which decorate my table grow? Not altogether in my garden. So much I know: more than that I think it prudent not to know. For this reason, as I said, I forbear to make close scrutiny into what may be called the undercurrent of Peelajee’s operations, but I notice that he always has in hand large beds of cuttings from my best roses and crotons, and these flourish up to a certain point, after which I lose all trace of them. He says that an insidious caterpillar attacks their roots, so that they all grow black and wither away suddenly. I fall upon him and tell him that he is to blame. He protests that he cannot control underground caterpillars. He knows that I suspect, and I suspect that he knows, but a veil of dissimulation, however transparent, averts a crisis, so we fence for a time till he understands clearly that, when he propagates my plants, he must reserve a decent number for me.

Griffins and travelling M.P.s are liable to suppose that the _Malee_ is a gardener, and _ergo_ that you keep him to attend to your garden. This is an error. He is a gardener, of course, but the primary use of him is to produce flowers for your table, and you need him most when you have no garden. A high-class _Malee_ of good family and connections is quite independent of a garden. It seems necessary, however, that your neighbours should have gardens.