An American Girl in India/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
WE LAND ON INDIAN SOIL
I am not going to rhapsodise over the entry into Bombay Harbour. I am sure lots of other people have done that, and made of themselves horrid bores. In fact, I am not going to rhapsodise over anything in this book, except—well, perhaps I shall once or twice when I come to the dear little Shan chiefs at the Durbar with their quaint, wide, pagoda-hats, or perhaps the state entry, or Boy Patiala, or Sir Pertab Singh and the Imperial Cadets, or the State Ball in the Dewani Khas (or the Dewani Am, which was it? I never could remember which was which; they confused me as much as starboard and port on board ship, only, luckily, they didn't lead to such dreadful consequences), or the beautiful Vice-Reine, with her wonderful jewels, or—well, perhaps there are just a few things I must rhapsodise over later on, but they are not so hackneyed as Bombay Harbour. That is always there on view, and you have only got to take a ticket by P. and O., and there you are in fourteen days. That's the great mistake of being always on view— one never gets half the appreciation one deserves. That's really why I came out to India as I have already explained. I thought that a temporary disappearance from the scene at home would be most salutary—for myself and friends. For there was no disguising the fact that I had been on view for quite a respectable number of seasons.
The heat as we landed at Bombay was something frightful. It seemed to settle down upon you as you left the launch and stepped on to the Apollo Bunder. It sort of gathered round you like a thick, stifling veil, and you had to fight to get your breath through it. I felt quite helpless by the time we had struggled through the customs. Marjory, of course, was worse than useless. She had been torn with apprehension that she would be seasick on the launch, but the only effect of her having avoided that humiliation was to make her collapse with thankfulness on the largest and most comfortable trunk she could see within reach as soon as she got on shore, quite oblivious of the fact that she was horribly in everybody's way. So we sent her at last with a handbag to sit in a carriage outside, while Lady Manifold, Ermyntrude, and I talked wildly to strange men of a strange and wondrous hue. Ermyntrude proved a veritable heroine, but of course Lady Manifold made most noise. She had once been in Portugal, she had told us on the launch as we neared the shore, and she knew how to manage these Portuguese. She waved her hand grandiloquently towards the crowd of Goanese, Lascar-like men upon the Bunder. She spoke in Portuguese and her own most gracious manner to one very superior-looking man in white drill. I confess I should not have hesitated to receive him as a distinguished foreigner if I had met him in the West. He looked at Lady Manifold for a moment after she had spoken as if she had been some strange animal just let out of the Zoo. Then—
'Missus showing Missus' things, me doing everything,' he said quietly.
It was rather a shock, but Lady Manifold bore it well, and accepted things as they were, induced thereto by a keen desire for the recovery of much luggage. That man was certainly a treasure, however doubtful his nationality may have been. He just bustled about straight away, and reduced chaos to order. Even Lady Manifold's numerous and contradictory directions didn't confuse him. He just went on quietly with his work, ordering coolies and marshalling our array of boxes with delightful unconcern. Only once Lady Manifold's anxious attention was diverted from her luggage. A particularly unclothed coolie brushed close by, balancing the hugest of dress-trunks on his head. I admired him immensely, with his brown, shiny body, so strong and lissome and well-developed, and moving easily and gracefully along beneath a burden that would have broken the neck or softened the brain of any of one's men friends at home. But Lady Manifold was horrified.
'Oh,' she said, with a shocked glance at the sublimely unconscious, offending coolie, 'I almost regret I brought Marjory. I do trust we shall not see any more so absolutely devoid of shame as that.'
Poor Lady Manifold! I guess she saw some hundreds of thousands quite as scantily clothed as that before she reached Bombay again, but I don't think she ever got so used to them as not to feel a shock each time she saw one. Marjory once horrified her by declaring that she should love them if only they were clean. If it were possible to horrify her more than that, I did it. 'I like them just as they are,' I remember saying, 'unwashed, unkempt, rather odoriferous, but very picturesque.' I think Lady Manifold has regarded me as something very modern ever since. But this is anticipating. It isn't really till you come to go away that you begin to feel with how firm a grip the life of India has taken hold of you, how you love the naked little nut-brown babies playing in the sun, and how the very savour of the East lingers in the nostrils with a strange regret.
But as yet I am only on the Apollo Bunder, and getting my first glimpse of a coolie on his native heath, and sniffing the air daintily as he passes, not quite sure at first if I am going to like him. Marjory, when we joined her outside, was undergoing the same experience. She was looking quite animated.
'Oh,' she said, as we got into the carriage beside her, 'I've never seen men like this before. Just look at that man there.'
I looked, and I blush to write it, though I must do so, as I started out to give a full and true account of my Indian experiences, but I must say I blush to write it—that man was wearing his shirt outside. I thought at first that he must have forgotten to dress himself completely. I remember myself once to have gone out without a waist-belt, but, of course, the effect could not have been anything like so bad as this. But it was soon borne in upon me that the wearing of the shirt outside was a common custom of the country. Of course, it is only a recent custom. It's just typical of what Western civilization has done so far for India. Like new cloth on an old garment, it has just patched itself on in an obvious, startling, ugly patch, absolutely ruining the charm of things Eastern and picturesque. So utterly unlike, it seems impossible they should ever merge gracefully the one into the other. If civilized man only realised his responsibilities in the matter of dress alone, I am convinced that he would speedily evolve something less hideous than his present-day attire. If only every Englishman could see himself caricatured in some ambitious native! Fortunately, we women haven't so much to answer for in this respect. True, a native woman in a Parisian costume is a sight for the gods, but that isn't so much the fault of the Parisian costume. Besides, these are mercifully rare so far. The Indian woman is a nice, shy, retiring sort of creature, very backward, and really without much use for new fashioned costumes, as she is never allowed out to show them off. And a woman, after all, only really cares about dress for other people to see. We should all get slouchy if we were shut up by ourselves without a chance of our best young man or our deadliest rival dropping in unexpected-like. But for what reason men dress—as they do—I never could quite discover. They can't possibly think that they look nice in hideous things like trousers, that get creased and baggy at the knees whatever care you take—at least, Bob says so—and a coat and waistcoat that show off to the full every awkward line and curve. And as for a man's dress-suit! The only decent thing he has got is a frock-coat, and that is never allowed out without that most hideous of head-gears, a topper. Men talk about women being the slaves of fashion. But it is nothing compared with the depth of the slavery of men. Why, there isn't a single one of them with the courage to break away, and start out on a new line on his own. And the comic part of it is that they nearly all agree that their present-day dress is hideous. Yet they go on wearing it like a lot of sheep simply because everybody else does. In fact, so deeply are they enthralled that it's considered quite bad form—so Bob says—to diverge, even to the smallest extent, from the common ruck. You get called a 'bounder' if you let your desire for colour or originality break out too loudly in a waistcoat or a tie. But if men could only see the terrible effect their style of costume is having upon the native mind and landscape, I really do think they would hold a meeting in Hyde Park, and change it. The poor native, seeing that the Englishman is on top just now, thinks that he must be right in the matter of clothes too. And so he copies him as far as he can go. On the top of a native dhoti, mysteriously wound about him, the Babu sports an English shirt, with no attempt to conceal the lower ends, which an Englishman always modestly leaves to your imagination. Add to this a fair length of brown leg, gorgeous parti-coloured socks— ometimes held up by suspenders—and patent leather shoes, and, as Ermyntrude said as to the result, she never could have believed it. When the Babu takes a fancy to the tall silk hat—he has already developed a weakness for the preposterous round stiff collar—the effect will be complete.
We didn't quite know whether we were disappointed or not with Bombay as we drove through the streets to the hotel. It was a bit too Continental and not quite Eastern enough for my taste; but, as Lady Manifold said, we must reserve our final judgment, as we hadn't yet seen the railway-station and Malabar Hill, both of which we had been told were beautiful.
That Bombay Hotel was certainly a revelation. They had put Ermyntrude in a tent on the roof to start with.
'Oh, miss!' said Ermyntrude when she descended after having seen it, 'it gives me quite a turn to think of sleeping there. Supposing—oh, miss!'
Ermyntrude's left hand felt about for the region of her heart, and speech failed her. I tried to reassure her.
'But oh, miss, on the roof! on the roof!' she groaned despairingly, recovering her garrulity. 'And it's that exposed, miss, and the canvas that thin, I'm sure my every action will be silhoutted for all who wants to see when there's a lamp alight inside of it. And oh, miss, to have no door to lock at nights, and to lie there open all round, a kind of tempting thieves and robbers and such-like persons to come and do their worst! Oh, miss, I never should have thought it. I came prepared like for this savage country, miss, but to think that I should spend the very first night on the roof, miss! Oh, I never should have thought I could have done it!'
It was not until the manager had assured us that no other room of any kind was available that Ermyntrude became resigned. 'A cellar, even a cellar,' she had urged pathetically while there was yet hope, 'anywhere, miss, where I can be a bit more private like.' But the manager had shaken his head. So there was nothing left for Ermyntrude but to retire to her tent upon the roof, where the heat, she told me afterwards, was 'like a foresight of 'ell, so to speak, miss.' But even that she preferred to the lonely watches of the night, which were 'that gruesome you couldn't sleep for thinking of all the nasty wicked things you'd done and feeling sorry.'
There didn't seem to be any attempt to make things comfortable in that hotel. I thought at first, when they showed me my room, that there must be spring-cleaning on. There was nothing in it except the bare necessities of life—no carpet, only a narrow strip of matting on the floor; a bed, a dressing-table, and one chair. There were only two things to be said for that room—it was lofty, and it had a bath-room attached. But the fact that it was lofty didn't make it airy. There was a big long window, but it looked straight out on to a dead wall, and that room had a nasty sort of mouldy smell about it that wasn't Eastern at all, but very much Western and Bloomsbury. I felt that if I were going to be ill a Bombay hotel was the very last place I should choose as a mise en scène. As for the cooking and the meals, I never felt so devoutly thankful before that I had a strong constitution. Lady Manifold is a yellow sort of person at the best of times, and she was quite knocked up after the first day, and fell back on soups and puddings. I suppose it was that I expected too much. I had looked upon India as the land of fruit, and I imagined that the tables in Bombay would be groaning beneath a wealth of mangoes, melons, pomegranates, and bananas. The first they told me were not in season; the second and third I lost my patience in trying to describe to an idiotic Bombay boy; while the last was the only fruit that they provided us with, and that of such a quality that it must have been extremely economical from the managerial point of view, for no one ate it.
Mentioning a Bombay 'boy' reminds me of the curious habit people have out here of calling their servants 'boys.' The first time I heard someone call out for his servant I thought he must be calling my soldier-boy friend on board, and it took me some time to get out of the way of thinking of him every time I heard his name and expecting to hear his cheery voice in response. Nobody could tell me why they called their servants 'boys.' It's like so many other things in India of which no one can tell you the why and wherefore. Things are there, and you've just got to take them as you find them. If you go and rout about trying to discover the reason why, you'll get looked at quite askance. Most people out there are content to live for years without ever attempting to lift the veil of mystery that hides the real India, and so they naturally resent it if a newcomer exhibits an inquiring turn of mind. And people don't like being asked questions that they can't answer. It's disconcerting, and it kinds of lowers you in your own estimation, and there's nothing more unforgivable than that. So when, the very first day I landed, I offended at least three people by asking them why they called their servants 'boy,' I began to feel that I was attempting to acquire knowledge at too great a cost, and gave it up. So I joined the throng, and called my servant boy.'
But it's really a ridiculous custom. Some one calls out 'Boy,' and up trots an old man with a white beard. You think there must be some mistake, and that he can't be 'boy,' yet the sahib shows no surprise at his appearance, and gives him the intended order quite casually. It doesn't matter how old you may be, you are doomed to be called 'boy' for the term of your natural life, if you happen to be born to that form of service. But the servant question hasn't yet arisen in the East as it has in the West, and you can call your servant what you like with impunity. And you generally call him much worse names than 'boy.'
One of the trials of that Bombay hotel was that it was filled with a whole crowd of Arethusians. Now one of the chief reasons why I had drawn such a sigh of relief as I first caught sight of Bombay Harbour was that henceforth my fellow-passengers would be no more seen. But they just littered themselves all around on shore. You ran up against them everywhere, especially against the ones you most wanted to avoid. Then, too, some of them seemed suddenly to be upon their native heath again, and took on strange and wondrous hues. The member of the Board of Revenue swelled visibly, and even his poor little wife brightened up, doubtless reflecting that now she took precedence of all but two or three ladies within an area of I don't know how many hundred square miles, and I suppose a thought like that must inflate one. Of course as luck would have it they had the table next to ours, while not far away loomed the authoress, radiating satisfaction at the stores of new copy she was rapidly gathering up. I sighed as I thought how impossible it would be for me ever to enjoy the delightful book that would evolve. I wonder how many of one's favourite books one would lose interest in if one met the distinguished authors themselves. Perhaps it's just as well that writers of books haven't come much my way, so some of my ideals still hold.
Of course we went for a drive round Malabar Hill. I graciously allowed Major Street to take us. Now I said I wasn't going to rhapsodise over Bombay Harbour. So I won't. But I can see again that first glorious Indian sunset even now, with its myriad dancing lights reflected in the clear blue mirror of the sea, silently merging and stealing one by one away beyond the far dim line where sky and ocean met. I was just revelling in it, and letting myself be carried away by it, and feeling that I wanted nothing more in this life—in fact, fast reducing myself after the trials and worries of board-ship life to a state of absolute and perfect contentment, when Major Street, just like a man, suddenly upset everything and made me forget the view and most other things straight away.