Behind the Bungalow, Edward Hamilton Aitken [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

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.

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'etre 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.


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

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