Read Online Hindoo Holiday by J.R. Ackerley - Free Book Online Page A

Maharajah Sahib, or he will be angry with me.”
    I promised.
    â€œDo you like Europeans?” I asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause he is so wisdom.”
JANUARY 6TH
    To the Hindoo all life is sacred. He may not kill, and he may not eat meat. If he does eat meat he is outcaste. Babaji Rao, the Secretary Sahib, is extremely orthodox, and the mere mention of meat discomposes him. No doubt this is one of the reasons why the Guest House accounts are in such confusion, and the monthly bill for supplies, which has to be met from the State funds, causes the Dewan much anxiety. The Secretary’s signature is required as a check to the stores list; but he signs with averted eyes. He took me off in his tonga this morning to inspect the jail, but the old St. Peter—Munshi, as they call him—who keeps the keys of the storeroom, waylaid us near the Palace with indents for the Secretary to check. The inevitable crowd of small children and loafers at once collected.
    â€œI do not understand these foods,” said the Secretary, gazing with disgust at the papers before him. . . . “Lungs? . . . Do you eat lungs?”
    He repeated the Hindi word that stumped him to the bystanders; but no one had any idea to offer. I suggested kidneys as a possible alternative, and as such it was hastily set down.
    â€œIf,” said the Secretary Sahib uneasily as we continued on our way, “if my father knew that I had to discuss hens and eggs and kidneys in this way, he would be very cross with me.”
    The jail is a long, low, distempered building on the outskirts of the town, with an armed guard over its triple iron gates, only one of which is allowed to be open at a time. There must have been some forty or fifty prisoners, all in leg-irons, squatting on their haunches in the sun in the various yards, spinning hemp and yarn with primitive machines, or plaiting rope. Others were weaving coarse sheets and towels, or sat cross-legged on benches in a shed making carpets. One man was sewing treasure-bags. All of them wore round their necks small discs on which their numbers and terms of imprisonment were engraved, and these the Secretary glanced at from time to time with something of the detachment with which one inspects the price tickets on articles in a shop. Many of them were in for a long term of years, he said; some for life; but the worst characters were grinding grain in a building near by—the hardest and most distasteful work of all.
    I walked about among them, giving, as far as possible, equal attention to all, in case my visit was as important to them as are the visits of the Prince of Wales on tours of inspection in England, and lent a particular significance to this day otherwise indistinguishable from hundreds of others; and they all seemed pleased to show their skill in the particular work they were doing. But all were miserable, weedy creatures, and I did not feel any personal interest in any of them. The kitchen or cookhouse we also visited, and I tried to walk into it, but was prevented; one may not set foot in Hindoo kitchens—even in a prison—without first removing one’s shoes. It was swarming with flies. Meal-cakes were in process of being made—things like very large crumpets which were turned out of the frying-pan into the hot ashes of the fire itself.
    Apparently these and some other corn confection formed the staple diet. Still thinking of the Prince of Wales, I asked Babaji Rao whether I should send the prisoners something—some tobacco, for instance; but he said there was not the slightest need to feel pity, for they were far better off than the other peasants who were not in prison.
    Some building is in progress here, a garage for the Guest House, and the workmen carry the water for mortar-mixing up the hill in large, round, earthenware pots, or lutiya , balanced on their heads. They also water the shrubbery in the drive, and sometimes