Part 3

Toast. Anchovy Poshteg.

Puddin. Billimunj. Ispunj roli.

I must take this opportunity to record a true story of a menu, though it does not properly pertain to Domingo, but an ingenious Ramaswamy, of Madras. This man’s master liked everything very proper, and insisted on a written menu at every meal. One morning Ramaswamy was much embarrassed, for the principal dish at breakfast was to be devilled turkey. “Devil very bad word,” he said to himself; “how can write?” At last he solved the difficulty, and the dish appeared as “D—d turkey.”

Our surprise at Domingo’s attainments is no doubt due very much to the humble attire in which we are accustomed to see him, his working dress being a quondam white cotton jacket and a pair of blue checked pantaloons of a strong material made in jails, or two pairs, the sound parts of one being arranged to underlie the holes in the other. When once we have seen the gentleman dressed for church on a festival day, with the beaver which has descended to him from his illustrious grandfather’s benevolent master respectfully held in his hand, and his well brushed hair shining with a bountiful allowance of cocoanut ointment, surprise ceases. He is indeed a much respected member of society, and enjoys the esteem of his club, where he sometimes takes chambers when out of employment. By his fellow servants, too, he is recognised as a professional man, and called The Maistrie, but, like ourselves, he is an exile, and, like some of us, he is separated from his wife and children, so his thoughts run much upon furlough and ultimate retirement, and he adopts a humble style of life with the object of saving money. In this object he succeeds most remarkably. Little as we know of the home life of our Hindoo servants, we know almost less about that of Domingo, for he rarely has his family with him. Is he a fond husband and an indulgent father? I fancy he is when his better nature is uppermost, but I am bound to confess that the cardinal vice of his character is cruelty, not the passive cruelty of the pure Asiatic, but that ferocious cruelty which generally marks an infusion of European blood. The infusion in him has filtered through so many generations that it must be very weak indeed, but it shows itself. When I see an emaciated crow with the point of its beak chopped off, so that it cannot pick up its food, or another with a tin pot fastened with wire to its bleeding nose, I know whose handiwork is there. Domingo suffers grievously from the depredations of crows, and when his chance comes he enjoys a savage retribution. Some allowance must be made for the hardening influence of his profession; familiarity with murder makes him callous. When he executes a moorgee he does it in the way of sport, and sits, like an ancient Roman, verso pollice, enjoying the spectacle of its dying struggles.

According to his lights Domingo is a religious man; that is to say, he wears a necklace of red beads, eats fish on Fridays, observes festivals and holidays, and gives pretty liberally to the church under pressure. So he maintains a placid condition of conscience while his monthly remittance to Goa exceeds the amount of his salary. He rises early on Sunday morning to go to confession, and I would give something to have the place, just one day, of the good father to whom he unbosoms himself. But perhaps I am wrong. I daresay he believes he has nothing to confess.

One story more to teach us to judge charitably of Domingo. A lady was inveighing to a friend against the whole race of Indian cooks as dirty, disorderly, and dishonest. She had managed to secure the services of a Chinese cook, and was much pleased with the contrast. Her friend did not altogether agree with her, and was sceptical about the immaculate Chinaman. “Put it to the test,” said the lady; “just let us pay a visit to your kitchen, and then come and see mine.” So they went together. What need to describe the Bobberjee-Khana? They glanced round, and hurried out, for it was too horrible to be endured long. When they went to the Chinaman’s kitchen, the contrast was indeed striking. The pots and pans shone like silver; the table was positively sweet; everything was in its proper place, and Chang himself, sitting on his box, was washing his feet in the soup tureen!

THE MUSSAUL, OR MAN OF LAMPS.

Etymologically Mukkun is a man of lamps, and, when he has brushed your boots and stowed them away under your bed, putting the left boot on the right side and vice versa, in order that the toes may point outwards, as he considers they should, then he addresses himself to this part of his duty. Old Bombayites can remember the days of cocoanut, when he had to begin his operations during the cold season by putting a row of bottles out in the sun to melt the frozen oil; but kerosine has changed all that, and he has nothing to do but to trim the wick into that fork-tailed pattern in which he delights, and which secures the minimum of light with the maximum destruction of chimneys, to smear the outside of each lamp with his greasy fingers, to conjure away a gallon or so of oil, and to meet remonstrance with a child-like query, “Do I drink kerosene oil?” Then he unbends, and gives himself up to a gentle form of recreation in which he finds much enjoyment. This is to perch on a low wall or big stone at the garden gate, and watch the carriages and horses as they pass by. Other Mussauls, ghorawallas, and passing ice coolies stop and perch beside him, and sometimes an ayah or two, with a perambulator and its weary little occupant, grace the gathering. I suppose the topics of the day are discussed, the chances of a Russian invasion, the dearness of rice, and the events which led to the dismissal of Mr. Smith’s old Mussaul Canjee. Then the time for the lighting of lamps arrives, and Mukkun returns to his duties.

You might not perhaps suspect it, but Mukkun is a prey to vanity. The pure oily transparency of his Italian complexion commands his admiration, and he thinks much of those glossy love-locks which emerge from his turban and curl in front of his ears. Several times a day he goes into his room to contemplate himself in a small hand mirror, and to wind up the love-locks on his finger. Poor Mukkun has, indeed, a very human side, and the phenomenon which we recognise as our Mussaul is not the whole of him. By birth he is an agriculturist, and there is in the environs of Surat a little plot of land and a small dilapidated hut in one corner of it, overgrown with monstrous gourds, which he thinks of as home, sweet home. There are his young barbarians all at play, but he, their sire, is forced to seek service abroad because, as he practically expresses it, the produce of his small field is not sufficient to fill so many bellies. But, wherever he wanders, his heart—for he has a heart—flutters about that rickety hut, and as he sits polishing your boots of a morning, you may hear him pensively humming to himself:—

Beatus ille qui, procul negotiis, Ut prisca gens mortalium, Paterna rura bobus exercet suis, Solutus omni fœnore.

He puts a peculiar pathos into the last line, for he is grievously haunted by an apparition in the form of an old man with a small red turban, gold earrings, and grey beard parted in the middle, who flourishes a paper in his face and talks of the debtors’ gaol; and hints that he will have the little house and field near Surat. Mukkun first fell into the net of this spider many years ago, when he wanted a few hundred rupees to enable him to celebrate the marriage of his little child. He signed a bond for twice the amount he received then, and it continues to increase from year to year, though he has paid the principal twice over in interest; at least he thinks he has, but he is not a good accountant. Every now and then he is required to sign some fresh document, of the contents of which he knows nothing, but the effect of which is always the same—viz., to heap up his liabilities and rivet his fetters more firmly, and punctually on pay day every month, the grim old man waylays him and compels him to disgorge his wages, allowing him so much grain and spices as will keep him in condition till next pay day. In a word, Mukkun is a slave. Yet he does not jump into the garden well, nor his quietus make with a bare bodkin. No, he plods through life, eats his rice and curry with gusto, smokes his cigarette with satisfaction, oils his lovelocks, borrows money from the cook to buy a set of silver buttons for his waistcoat, and when he tires of them, pawns them to pay for a velvet cap on which he has set his heart. In short, he behaves à la Mukkun, and no insight is to be had by examining his case through English spectacles; but it is our strange infirmity, being the most singular people on earth, to regard ourselves as typical of the human race, and ergo to conclude that what is good for us cannot be otherwise than good for all the world. Hence many of our anti-tyranny agitations and philanthropies, not always beneficial to the subjects of them, and also many of our misplaced sympathies. We see a spider eating a fly, and long to crush the spider, while we shed a tear for the fly. But the spider is much the higher animal of the two. It labours long hours laying out a net, and then waits all day for the fruit of its toil. Insects are caught and escape again, the net gets broken, and when, after many disappointments, the spider secures a fat fly, what advantage does it derive? A meal; just what the fly got by sitting in a pit of manure and sipping till it could sip no more. Doom that fly to the life which the spider leads, and it would drown itself in your milk jug on the spot, unable to bear up under such a weight of care and toil. In this parable the fly is Mukkun and the spider is Shylock, and my sympathies are not wholly given to the former. I quite admit that Shylock worries him cruelly, and if he had not given hostages to fortune, he would abscond with a light heart to some distant station where he might forget his old debts and contract new ones. But this is not the alternative before him. The alternative is to take care of his money, not to buy things which he cannot afford, to do without the silver buttons, and postpone the velvet cap, all which would put a strain on his mental and moral constitution, under which he would wear out in a week. He must find some other modus vivendi than that. If he had lived in the world’s infancy, he would have sold himself and his family to someone who would have fed him and clothed him, and relieved him of the cares of life. But Britons never, never, never shall be slaves, and under our rule Mukkun is forced to share that disability; so he attains his end in an indirect way, and lives thereafter in such happiness as nature has given him capacity to enjoy. Shylock will neither put him into gaol nor seize his field. We do not send our milch cow to the butcher. Shylock owns a hundred such as he, and much trouble they give him.

Mukkun lives in dread of the devil. Nothing will induce him to pass at night by places where the foul fiend is known to walk, nor will he sleep alone without a light.

THE HAMAL.

Such is the Hamal in his youth, and as he grows older he gets more so. About middle life he sets hard, like plaster of Paris, his senses get obfuscated, and a shell appears to form on the outside of his intellect, so that access to his understanding becomes very difficult. Sometimes his temper also grows crabbed, and noli me tangere writes itself distinctly across the mark of his god on his old brow. A Hamal in this phase is the most impracticable animal in this universe. When found fault with, he never answers back, but he enters on a vigorous conversation with himself, which is like a tune on a musical box, for it must be allowed to go until it runs itself out; nothing short of smashing the instrument will stop it. How well I remember one veteran of this type, from whose colloquies with his own soul I gathered that he had been fifty-six years in gentlemen’s service, and never served any but gentlemen until he came to me. He computed his age, I think, at seventy-two, and asked leave to attend the funeral of his grandfather. Sometimes, happily, the Hamal’s senility takes the direction of benevolence. Who does not know the benign, stupid old man, with his snowy whiskers and kindly smile, which seems to grow kindlier with every tooth he loses!

It is a practical question whether you should endure the Hamal, or address yourself to the task of his reformation, and I am content to make myself singular by advocating the latter for two reasons; firstly, because he cannot be endured; secondly, because I cherish a fantastic faith in his reformability,—at least if you take him in his youth, before he has set. I believe we fail to cure him either because we do not try, or because we dismiss him before we succeed. Another great impediment to success in this enterprise is the foolish habit of getting wrathful. An untimely explosion of wrath will generally blow a sensitive Hamal’s wits quite out of his own reach, and of course, out of yours; or, if he is of the stolid sort, he will set it down as a phenomenon incidental to sahebs, but without any bearing on the matter in hand, and he will go on as before. Besides, a state of indignation is very detrimental to your own command of the language, and if you could in cold blood take your “Forbes” and study some of the sentences which you fulminated in your ebullitions of anger, you would cease to wonder that the subject of them was such an idiot.

Hum roz roz hookum day, Tum roz roz hookum nay, Ooswasty lukree—(whack, whack)

went home, I have no doubt, but it is the gift of few to be at once so luminous and so forcible. Try handling your Hamal in another way. Call him mildly—a mild tone thaws his understanding—and say to him, “Look here, my son. Do you see this gold writing on the backs of these books? For what purpose is it?” He will reply, “Who knows?” Then you can proceed, “That writing is the mark by which you may know the head of any book. Now consider, should a book stand on its head?” If he replies, “How should a book stand on its head?” then you are getting access to his intelligence, and may lead him on gradually to the conclusion that, whenever he puts a book into the shelves, he should make it stand so that the writing on the back of it may be uppermost. I tell you he will beam with intelligence, and rise earlier next morning to put his new learning into practice. After a few days he will forget and relapse into his old ways, but you must have patience.

After all, I think we could put up with the Hamal if only he would not try to think. This is his crowning vice. In vain I try to impress upon him that I engaged him to obey orders, and would rather do the thinking myself. Every now and then, at some particular phase of the moon, he sets his intellect in operations and the consequences are, as the Brahmin boy described the result of his examination, “appalling.” It was our Hamal’s duty to fill the filter, and at a time when the water was very bad, orders were given that it should be boiled before being filtered. One day, my wife saw the Hamal in the act of filling the filter, and it occurred to her to warn him to let the water cool first, lest he might crack the filter. “Oh yes,” said he, “I thought of that. After boiling the water, I cool it down by mixing an equal quantity of cold water with it, and then I put it into the filter.”

In Bombay, since hard times set in, the offices of Hamal and mussaul have got a little mixed, and a man will show you characters testifying that he has served in both capacities. Such a man is, properly speaking, simply a mussaul who has tried to do the Hamal’s work. The cleaner of furniture and the lighter of lamps and washer of plates and dishes cannot change places or be combined. I have read that the making of one English pin employs nine men, but it is a vain boast. The rudiments of division of labour are not understood in Europe. In this country every trade is a breed. Rama is by birth a cleaner of furniture. This kind of employment came into the country with our rule, so that the domestic Hamal, who is an offshoot of the palkee hamal, or “bearer,” has not had time to become what fanciers would call a permanent strain, and you will find that you can convert Rama into a chupprasse, a malee, or even a ghorawalla, but into a mussaul never. He is a shoodra, sprung from the feet of Brahma, and the Brahman, who sprung from the head of the same figure, despises him, but not with that depth of contempt with which he himself despises the mussaul, who is an outcast, and sprang from nowhere in particular. He cannot conceive that thirty generations of washing could purify the descendants of Mukkun so that he might touch them and not be unclean. You, his master, rank theoretically with Mukkun, and he will neither touch your meats nor the plate off which you have eaten them. He will keep your house clean, and even perform some personal services, for he has a liberal mind, and is there not also a toolsee plant in a pot on a kind of earthen altar in front of his hut, before which he performs purificatory ceremonies every morning? And does he not bathe after leaving your presence before he eats? If you pass by the clean place where he is about to cook his food in the morning, you will see a large pot of water on the fire. When this gets warm—for Rama is not a Spartan—he will stand on a smooth stone, as sparingly clad as it is possible to be, and pour the water on his head, polishing himself vigorously as it runs down his limbs; then, after dressing his long hair and tying it in a knot on the top of his head, he will sit down to eat, in a place by himself, with the feeling that he has warded off defilement from that which goeth in at his mouth. That which goeth out of his mouth gives him no concern.

THE BODY-GUARDS.

I will sketch my ideal of a model Chupprassee. He is a follower of the Prophet, for your Gentoo has too many superstitions and scruples to be generally useful. He parts his short black beard in the middle and brushes it up his cheek on either side, the ends of his moustache are trimly curled, he wears his turban a little on one side, carries himself like a soldier, and is always scrupulously clean. He comes into your presence with a salutation which expresses his own dignity, while it respects yours. He wishes to know whether the protector of the poor has any commands for his slave. When you intimate your wishes he responds with a formula which is the same for all occasions—“Your Lordship’s commands shall be executed.” And they are executed. If he knows of difficulties or impossibilities, he keeps them to himself. Alas! this is an ideal, how antipodal sometimes to the real! I am thinking of the gigantic Sheikh Mahomed, with his terrible beard and womanly voice, who would convey my commands to a menial of lower degree and return in five minutes to detail the objections which that person had raised. Another type of Mahomedan Chupprassee, whom we see is to abhor, expresses his opinion of himself by letting half a yard of rag hang down from his turban behind. He calls himself a Syed and, perhaps, on account of the sanctity implied in this, forbears to wash himself or his clothes. This man is clever, officious, familiar, servile, and very fond of the position of umbrella-bearer in ordinary to your person: therefore, transfer him to the personal staff of some native dignitary, where he will be appreciated. If my model does not suit you, there are many types to choose from. We have the lofty and sonorous Purdaisee, the Rajpoot, son of kings, the Bhundaree, or hereditary climber of palm trees, the Israelite, the low caste, useful, intelligent Mahar, and many more. Even the Brahmin in this iron age becomes a Chupprassee. But three-fourths of all our belted satellites come from one little district south of Bombay, known to our fathers as Rutnagherry, re-christened Ratnagiri by the Hon. W. W. Hunter, C.I.E., A.B.C., D.E.F., etc. Every country has its own special products; the Malabar Coast sends us cocoanuts and pepper; artichokes come from Jerusalem; ducks, lace, cooks, and fiddlers from Goa. So Rutnagherry produces pineapples and Mahrattas, and the Mahrattas do not eat the pineapples. Till quite recently they employed themselves exterminating each other, burning each other’s villages and crops, and inventing new ways of torturing old men to make them confess where their money was buried. We have stopped these practices without stopping the religious arrangements for keeping up the supply of the race; so the Mahratta marries, as in duty bound, and multiplies, and then casts about for some way of maintaining his growing family; and our Chupprassee system, looked at politically, is a grand escape pipe. Pandurang Huree gives the Mahrattas the palm, as liars, over all the other races of India. He may be right, but where excellence is so universal, comparison becomes doubly odious. Some Mahrattas put rao after their names and treat themselves with much respect, especially if they can grow a little island of whisker on each cheek and run the moustache into it. These men differ from common Mahrattas in the same way as Mr. Wilberforce Jones, or Mr. Palmerston Smith, differs from the ordinary run of Joneses and Smiths.

How uniformly does ambition rule us all! The young rao, fired by the hope of wearing a belt, makes a bold resolve to leave his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers, their wives and children, his uncles, aunts, and cousins, and the little hut in which they have all lived so happily since he was a little, naked, crawling thing, dressed in a silver rupee. He looks for the last time on the buffalo and the lame pariah dog, ties up his cooking pots and a change of raiment in a red handkerchief, and starts on foot, amid the howling of females, for the great town, a hundred miles away, where the brother-in-law of his cousin’s wife’s uncle is on the personal staff of the Collector. He fears that the water of the place may not suit his constitution, but he risks that and other unknown perils. Arriving at his destination, he works his interest by quartering himself on his influential connection, who, finding that an extra seer of rice has to be boiled for every meal, leaves no stone unturned to find employment for him. First a written petition is drawn up by the local petition writer, in the following terms “Most Honoured and Respected Sir,—Although I am conscious that my present step will apparently be deemed an unjustifiable and unpardonable one, tantamounting to a preposterous hardihood in presuming to trespass (amidst your multifarious vocations) on your valuable time, yet placing implicit reliance on your noble nature and magnanimity of heart, I venture to do so, and ardently trust you will pardon me. Learning that a vacancy of a sepoy has occurred under your kind auspices, I beg most respectfully to tender my services for the same, and crave your permission to invite your benign attention to the episodes of my chequered life, though of a doleful and sombre nature, and concatenation of melancholy events that have made their visitations. My eldest brother died one year since, leaving an heritage of a relict and two female issues to bemoan and lament his premature and irreparable loss. And two months since my revered parent paid debt of nature, at 2 p.m. on 15th February, A.D. 18–, thus leaving the entire burden of 13 (thirteen) souls on my individual shoulders, which, in my present and forlorn circumferences, I am unable to cope with. I, therefore, throw myself on your benevolent clemency and humane consideration, and implore you to confer the vacancy in question which will enable me to meet the daily unavoidable returning requisites of domestic life in all their varied ramifications, and relieve a famishing family from the jaws of penury and privation. By thus delivering me from an impending impossibility most prejudicial to my purse resources, you will confer on your humble servant a boon which will be always vivid on the tablet of my breast, never to be effaced until the period that I am sojurning on the stage of this sublunary world’s theatre.” The petition goes on to explain that all the unhappy petitioner’s efforts to earn an honest livelihood by the perspiration of his brow have been frustrated owing to the sins committed by his soul in a former birth, and ends with religious reflections and prayers. While this is presented to the Collector, the candidate stands under a tree at some distance and rehearses, with palpitating heart, the salaam he will make if admitted to the august presence. Life and death seem to hang on the impression which may be produced by that salaam. But the cousin’s wife’s uncle’s brother-in-law sets other machinery in motion. He humbles himself and makes up an old quarrel with the Naik; he flatters the butler till that great man is pleased and promises his influence; and he wins the Sheristedar’s vote by telling him earnestly that all the district knows he is virtually the Collector and whatever he recommends is done. Nor is the ayah forgotten, for the ayah has access to the madam, and by that route certain shameful matters affecting a rival candidate will reach the saheb. Now, supposing that the sins of a former birth fail to checkmate all these machinations, and that the new arrival actually finds himself swimming in the unfathomed bliss of a belt with a brass plate, and a princely income of seven Queen’s rupees every month, who could foretell that almost before a year has passed he will again be floundering in the mire of disappointed ambition? Yet so it is. He hears of another Chupprassee with only eleven months’ service against his twelve, who has been promoted to eight rupees, and immediately the canker of discontent eats into his heart. Later on he finds that the cup of his happiness will never be quite full until he gets ten rupees a month, and when he has reached that giddy height, he will see dawning on his horizon the strange and beautiful hope that he may be a Naik. It is a desperate ambition—

“He who ascends to mountain tops shall find The highest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow; He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below.”

Subordinate Chupprassees will slight his authority, his fellow Naiks will disparage him, disappointed rivals will send in anonymous petitions accusing him of all manner of villanies of which he is not guilty, and, worse still, revealing the little briberies and oppressions of which he is not innocent. But who of us learns wisdom in these matters? The Naik soon comes to feel that if justice were done to merit, he would be a Havildar. After he has attained that proud distinction, he retires to “husband out life’s taper at its close” in the same old hut, amidst the same conglomerate of relations, but nephews and nieces, and grandchildren have taken the place of uncles and aunts and parents. The buffalo and the pariah dog are apparently the same. Then the whole range of official machinery is put in motion to reward his long and faithful services, and the Governor in Council grants him the maximum pension of four rupees a month, subject to the approval of the Viceroy, and he spends his few remaining days in gratitude to the Sircar. But one thing rankles in his mind. Babajee, not nearly so good-looking a fellow as himself, rose to be a Jemadar.

Falstaff: My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about.

Pistol: Two yards, and more.

THAT 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.