A Month in a Dandi. A woman's wanderings in Northern India

Preface

. " I p VERY one has a book in him or her, if one only -*— ' knew how to extract it," is a saying attributed to Murray the First. Whether it might have been wiser to have conserved the energy requisite for its extraction, or devoted it to some other subject, is a question that has more than once exercised the writer's mind and depressed her spirits. "Are you going to write a book ? " said some of my Anglo-Indian friends when I questioned them on matters social and political. I indignantly repelled the insinuation, making haste to conceal the cloven hoof, for Anglo-India hates books on India, more particularly those that are not of a laudatory character. And I really had not at that time the remotest intention of confiding to the public these notes and impressions. They were originally written as an Essay, and delivered to a Literary Society of which the writer had long been a member.

Yet, in spite of the slender thread of personal experience on which these impressions Preface. are strung, they touch on matters of profound importance, on questions, especially in the last two chapters, deserving the attention of the serious and thoughtful. If by perusing these pages the Reader obtains a clearer view of England's attitude to her great Dependency, if his pre possessions against "black" men and the " poor heathen " should melt away in any degree, if the assumption that what is good for England must necessarily be so for India, receives a slight shake, the writer will feel rewarded. The bond that unites us to our Asiatic fellow-subjects is not one that we or they desire to sever ; yet it behoves us to narrowly examine that it does not chafe, or grow into a galling yoke. C. S. B. Hull, November, i8gi. CONTENTS. PAGE

Chapter I

— THE ASCENT FROM THE PLAINS TO THE HILLS ------ I ,, II. — KASAULI AND ITS AMUSEMENTS - - 28 ,, III. THEORIES ON HEAT 36 ,, IV. SIMLA, THE QUEEN OF HILL STATIONS - 49 ,, V. STARTING ALONE FOR THE INTERIOR - 65 „ VI. IN BUSSAHIR STATE 93 „ VII. THE RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL AT PANGAY - 141 ,, VIII. — ON CONGRESS ----- 162 ,, IX. ON THE GROWING POVERTY OF INDIA - A MONTH IN A DANDI

CHAPTER I.

I WAS certainly born to be unlucky, else why should the ship in which I sailed to India get ashore in the Suez Canal, and for three mortal days leave her unhappy crew and passengers to grill under the Egyptian sky, in a bleak desert of burning sand? No motion to dispel the heated air of the cabins, not a breath of wind to revive our drooping souls under the deck awning. If not unlucky, why did I remain slumbering on the seat of the railway carriage at Lahore, and permit the Mooltan train to travel to that ancient city without me ? Intuition, for you hardly ever see, and certainly never hear a guard of an Indian railway, had warned the other passengers to get out unless they meant to travel to Peshawur, why did it therefore neglect to warn me? And if not unlucky, why should an Anglo- Indian lady enter the compartment of an East Indian Young Anglo-India. 2 Judge. railway carriage, accompanied by two children, where Jedgey Stone's daughter and I had comfortably established ourselves?

It was not that we begrudged the labour necessary to bestow our too voluminous luggage into smaller space and make room for the new comers ; it was not that there would not be enough sleeping-berths for all of us, for the Indian railway companies are merciful to the Saheb when he travels by night, and make every arrangement for a comfortable sleep, even forbidding ticket collectors to disturb it unseasonably ; it was not that the lady was a mere female. No, it was the two little girls that made us take a sorrowful look into each others' eyes, filled with deep sympathy. For little girls of eight and ten are emphatically Anglo- Indians, not children, but masters of ayahs and other native servants, unused even to that slight amount of discipline which the laxest of parents usually think necessary in England.

Too often the poor little Anglo-Indian child is a miserable creature, destitute of spirit and energy ; his white face, weary look, and melancholy eye tell the tale of an unsuitable climate withering his life's blood, and demand unceasing care from anxious parents. But the specimens before our eyes, were of an entirely different sort ; strong, active, talkative, aggressive, our languid eyes followed their vivacious movements with wonder streaked with fear. If the fierce heat of an Indian summer day within the walled city of Dehlie would not tame their spirits, then what would ? Why take such beings to the hills at all ? Surely their poor fatigued mother could not desire a At a Railway Station. 3 Quilt. Brass pot. redoubling of their stock of energy to torment her, or the bracing of appetites which struck us as peculiarly healthy, and abnormally large for one of the hottest days that we had had.

The first bell has gone, and the excitement is fast rising to fever heat. The true Oriental is usually calm, composed, placid, resigned ; often you may read " Kismet," " It is Allah's will " on his face. But not at a railway station. He has mastered the fact that if the train is intended to start at six o'clock, it will certainly do so ; and for once he is filled with the idea of the importance of time. He has bought a ticket, and is now rushing wildly back to the ancient family ekka, drawn by a noble milk-white bullock, for his bundle. Depositing it on the seat, where he will presently sit with his knees drawn up to his chin, he rushes back for his rezai and drinking pot. When he returns, surely some one must have taken his seat, else why these shouts, screams, execrations, growls, snarls angry rejoinders, yells ?

Here is one rushing for water, another buying cakes and a queer spicy-looking compound, which the vendor digs out of a pot with his fingers, and smears over the cakes. Now follows a great box on the head of a tall coolie, who majestically stalks along in his waist cloth as if it were an ermine robe, and the box a feather. " Brahmani Pani," shouts a man with a zinc bucket of water, and instantly half a dozen brown hands stretch forth lotas to receive the precious fluid. For it is the duty of the railway company to supply all travellers with water at the stations. Should you be a Brahman, your water Orientals Excited. 4 Skin. must be in a metal vessel, a mussack will do for a Muhammadan. Yes, it is intensely exciting, and not till the train has slowly steamed out on to the handsome bridge that spans the Jumna, close to the Fort, the Palace of the Great Moghul and Selimgurh, does the awful din subside, and the passenger resign himself to the inevitable.

I laughed with as much fervour as the heat would admit of, at the wild excitement depicted on the faces of my Aryan brothers, but had I been privileged to know that my bearer had only put one box into the luggage van, that the luggage bulletin I had carefully placed in my purse only registered one box, I should have rushed dow-n that platform as madly as the most excited Oriental of them all, for it was my box of dresses that was amissing ! But Heaven tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and, though I knew it not, I was to spend the next few days in bed. Thank Heaven the sun has set. In six hours it may be moderately cool, eight at most, and then one may sleep a refreshing sleep. Four more hours and the fiend will rise again, to wither the brown grass, blast the thirsty trees, take the little remaining spirit out of the hard-worked bullock, strike with heat apoplexy the sick and the careless, putrefy flesh only killed four hours, dry up rivers and canals, blind with his awful glare, drive indoors for eleven hours all that can move into shelter.

Oh, that some Joshua at the Antipodes would bid thee stand still, thou fierce relentless fury, and then this hot and panting land might grow cool once more ! Or at least, may the gods fulfil the prayer of the Yedic poet, Dark Heat. 5 who asks for a hundred winters. Or, if none of these things are worth the asking in these infidel days, the traveller may still pray that the halts at railway stations may be short, and the runs between them swift, for great is the heat of an Indian railway station. At the very first station we stop at, we make the pleasing discovery, that an aerated water and ice compart ment is only a short distance from us, and here we pay many visits, and would have paid more but for the fact that there was no ice to be got, only luke-warm lemonade and soda water, which the polite attendant assured us would soon be cool.

The glance we both bestowed on him was most withering, but the callousness with which he turned to serve other customers exhausted with heat, showed that our unbelief was of no consequence when trade was brisk. Rushing through the hot black night, over rivers, crossed by noisy iron bridges, which shrieked in horrid chorus at our passage, past great, bare fields, the very air shouts out no green thing is on them, past distant twinkling villages, past railway lights, quiet is falling on the weary land. Our minds are filled with calculations, but not mathematical nor metaphysical. Shall we get strawberries at Meerut, the next station ? It is thought highly likely, so with hot parched mouths, we sit with our annas in hand ready to do business when the time comes. So overjoyed are we when the strawberry man appears, that we could almost embrace him for his condescension ; only when he was gone far up the station, do we fall to soundly abusing the rogue, for his strawberries, bought in the dark, are all bad.

Jetoo's Coach. Why won't the train move on and create the much wished for draught, without which we swelter and gasp for air ? At length a gentleman comes to tell us an accident has occurred on our line, and we must stay here a couple of hours till it is cleared. Oh ye Anglo- Indian imps ! Could parents who, through weakness or weariness are tempted to forego all discipline, and cultivate habits of insubordination, could they but spend the time with ye in that confined space and irritating climate, what food for reflection would it not afford them for a long time to come ? Umballa at last ! Two hours late, but time is of no value to an Indian driver. He waits there with the utmost patience and good humour till his passenger has washed and breakfasted. When I reappear, all my bedding is neatly spread out in a hideous coach which reminds me of a prison van.

About six individuals hold out an umber paw for buckshish for this service which no one wanted them to perform. The space between the seats is filled up with planks, so that I lie extended, windows and shutters all closed, as much as their rickety fastenings will permit, eating the morning air. Umballa is an immense military station ; the cracks in my shutters allow me to see that I am passing close to great barracks. Soldiers are stirring to prepare for parade, officers are already on horseback taking preliminary exercise, the dull, aimless routine of a soldier's day has begun. Thirty eight miles to Kalka, each one growing longer as the sun grows hotter. Kalka lies at the foot of the Himalayas, A Climate Like Paradise. 7 Sports. Frames of scented twigs and grass. on whose outer crest I hope to sleep to-night ; for there, up at Kasauli, nights are cool, and days not unendurably hot ; there, one can still enjoy something like the lovely winter of the plains, the only part of the Indian climate that the globe-trotter usually knows or consents to believe in.

" Lucky dogs, those Anglo-Indians " quoth he. " They live in a climate like paradise, all ride and drive, play tennis and dance from five to eight, dine like princes, every week a Cinderella at the club, a gymkhana on the cricket ground, polo in the morning, novels in the afternoon." Yet it has a melancholy side too this life of pleasure, when the heat becomes too great to continue it. When the bungalow must be closed at eight in the morning and only opened at sunset ; when the kus-kus tatties must be fitted into doors on the windy side of the house, if any such there be, and be constantly wetted by the water carrier to lower the temperature ; when the thermantidote must be brought forth from its winter resting place, and its fans set revolving to the same end ; when life must be reduced to little short of sickly vegetation under the punkah, body and brain alike too fatigued for exercise of any kind.

Describing a month of this awful existence to an Anglo- Indian lady, the interminable day whose only break was a drive before dinner, when the burning loo cracks the lips and dries the skin as cold does in northern climes, she broke forth into a joyful noise : " I am glad you have felt it. You won't go home and tell them what bloated aristocrats we are out here, living a life of enjoyment from morning to night. You will tell the truth?" And I promised, though Government Bullock Dak. Staging coach. Bengali title respect. surely none can pretend that Anglo-Indians do not get their share of good things, or that they do not know how to alleviate their unhappy circumstances. The chief alleviation is certainly leaving them behind, and journeying with as few of your lares and penates, as you can beguile yourself into regarding as indispensable.

Knowing ones pack them up before the season begins, to await the owner's arrival at a hill station. Griffins leave them at Umballa, to be forwarded per government bullock train, continuing their own journey by dak gharri. Anxiously they await the day of their appearance, unaware of the awful congestion of the traffic at this season. When hope has fled, the slow patient bullocks drag your " things " up the of hill side, and the mild Baboo ventures to suggest that, compared with X., you have been quickly served. The sun mounts higher and higher, needless to say, the Kalka road grows hotter and hotter. Surely bullocks must have been harnessed at the last stage, else why this jolting? No they are horses, but the road is not all it might be, and Jetoo has to urge them on with many a strange shout, which may possibly appear encouraging to equine ears.

Every five or six miles, there is a shift, sometimes horses, sometimes bullocks, and to the credit of the latter, I am bound to state that I never could distinguish the one from the other by their motion. Kalka and breakfast, a very bad one by the way, at the foot of the glorious hills ! Ever since Saharunpore they have been visible, could one venture to push one's head out of Jetoo's coach without danger of sunstroke. The mutton (e)cutlet and tough chicken curry disposed of, in the Imposing on Griffins. 9 Opened Feb 1891. Table-servant company of an arrogant, overbearing Englishman, of a type too, too common in India, arrangements have to be made for the traveller to be borne the nine miles uphill that separate Kalka from Kasauli. Before another season begins, the Dehlie-Umballa-Kalka Railway line will be open, and the thirty-eight miles dividing Umballa from Kalka will be travelled in a couple of hours, in the comfortable carriages of the East Indian Railway.

Long live our virtuous government, who are not afraid to tie a load of debt round their own necks and those of posterity, in order to open up the gorgeous East. The afternoon sun was high in the heavens, when a small cavalcade started on the ascent to Kasauli. A very cursory glance of the hotel khidmatgar had sufficed to show him I was a griffin, so he found no difficulty in palming off two more men on me than were necessary to bear my person and effects up the hill. I took my seat in a vehicle known as a dhoolie, a kind of low chair with two poles back and front, each end resting on a strong lad's shoulder. A large trunk was slung on to the shoulders of two men by means of another pole ; of the rest of my luggage I caught glimpses at intervals, as the winding of the road permitted. I joyfully bid adieu to the hot plains of the Punjab, leaving behind all my friends and Indian acquaintances, and all for the joy of having evenings sufficiently cool to sleep under a blanket without a punkah.

Let those despise such blessings who have never felt that they are such, whose feeble imaginations cannot depict conditions and sensations different from those actually environing them. To place one's bed in B Idle Days and Sleepless Nights. 10 Fellow what one hopes may prove a draught from four open doors, to listen to the steady creaking of the punkah, only interrupted by somnolent attacks of the punkah-wallah, who now and then must be gently incited to resume duty, to listen to the endless howling of the dogs of the native quarter, or of jackals whose nervous system seems to be deranged, or to the peculiar whirr of tropical insects bent on making music in the small hours of the morning, to turn and toss from side to side in the expectation of finding a breath of air, to strike matches under the mosquito curtains in pur suit of mosquitoes and sand flies, to do all these, and many more vain things, after a listless, aimless, indolent, exhausting day, persuades even the optimistic temperament that life is unendurable, and that mere existence is not man's destined end.

Worst thought of all, and most crushing, is the certainty that to-morrow will be like it, and the day after, and many more weary, hopeless days ; for it is only April, the rains will not come till June, and have been known hardly to come at all. Thank Heaven, it is all left behind. Sleep, real, refreshing sleep, invigorating air, healthy appetite, all lie upwards, and Excelsior is the watchword. The coolies seem animated by almost as much hope as myself. I am ignorant of their language, and wonder if they find the words of the old chant suitable to the occasion : " Who is this we carry here ? Hinda ka tinda ! A Saheb very big we fear. Hinda ka tinda ! Alack ! he is a heavy one, weighing very many stones, Surely 'tis an elephant. Hinda ka tinda," Delights of a Dhoolie. 11 Put me down. Gently.

Subsequent experiences in dhoolies quickly taught me that there are various paces and ways of bearing a passenger, which much affect his comfort. If all the bearers keep exact step, the result is a long swing, which becomes most painful, even verging on agony to a person in indifferent health. The best plan is for two bearers on each side only to keep step, the other two break the swing, by failing to keep step, and thus the traveller is more comfortable. " Niche ruk do," I called out every now and then, varying the remark with " Ahsti," but feeling alarmed at the sound of my own voice in Hindustani, and ignorant of the exact amount of torture that should be borne, I put up meekly with much ill-usage, and enough shaking to turn one inside out. We passed Kasauli bazar on the opposite side of the ravine.

I counted eleven stories of houses rising above each other, tier after tier, with their flat roofs and unglazed windows. Terror seized me as I gazed on the picturesque but dirty hill village. Could it be here I had to pass three months of the Indian summer, among squalor, noise, and noxious smells? "Is that Kasauli?" I asked my bearers, and my heart sank on receiving an affirmative reply. Hope revived when on reaching the bridge that crosses the ravine, we took a road that led, not to the village, but past barracks, and towards a church. For some time the clouds had been gathering, the air had been growing cold and sharp, the mountain tops were lost in mist. I huddled my wraps around me, shivering and cowering from unwonted cold. Homeless in the Storm. 12 Now and then, the lurid clouds lighted up the mountains, and showed Swiss-like cottages perched on the sides, but the growing darkness increased, and hid everything from view.

A drenching storm broke over us ; the coolies marked their sense of the unpleasantness of the situation by rushing furiously down the slippery mountain paths, bumping the dhoolie and its occupant together, and deaf to all entreaty. Panting, they deposit their white elephant at the door of a handsome bungalow, a tree close by bearing a painted board with " Colonel Ewart " on it. " Is this the house of Madame X.?" I ask them a l'Ollerndorf. The emphatic affirmation of the coolies causes me to extricate my numbed and aching limbs from their uneasy position, and to inquire of a bright young English lady who appears on the verandah if it is the house I am seeking. No, and I turn to bestow a rebuking glance on the coolies who have dragged me a mile out of my road for much less than nothing. Their indignant glance implies that it is mere malice on the part of the lady to deny that this is Madame X.'s house, and that the tell-tale board is a notorious snare and delusion ; and they fall to abusing each other soundly.

Hunting in the back recesses of my mind for an Urdu word that will express withering contempt for the bearers' stupidity, rebuke their loud-voiced disgust, and encourage them to renewed effort, I turn with pleasure to greet a second lady, whose name and face I know, having recently met her at a Dehlie function. Gladly I accept the shelter of her home, and a proffered cup of tea. Then when the storm has died down, I set off again, my coolies Non-Arya aborigines Common language of North India a mixture of Hindi and Persian. The Influenza Fiend. 13 Father X's house. We know. Pine with long needles. furnished with precise instructions as to the whereabouts of the house. "Padre X. ka koti? malum." And we set off at a double jog-trot. How soundly I meant to sleep that night, and how these hopes and intentions were utterly frustrated, is it not written on the tablets of memory ?

With aching limbs, parched tongue, throbbing brow, and leaden eyes, I prayed that light might come. Phantoms pursued, and waves submerged me ; half delirious, I rose to look for water. Alas ! it was the house of strangers, and guests were not meant to be thirsty. There was none. I pushed into another room, and eagerly swallowed the remains of a glass left by some one the night before. The influenza fiend and fever had laid hold of me, and for three days, all I saw of Kasauli's beauties, was the trunk of a gheel, which insufficiently darkened my window. I had almost forgotten I was in a great military station where our soldiers go to recruit their health. I was reminded of the fact when, though my face was turned right away from the door, I perceived scarlet stripes and epaulettes adorning the person of some one who leaned over me with tire some and bewildering questions about my health, to which I found coherent answers almost impossible.

It was Divisional Staff-Surgeon M. " Oh, I doat on the military !" wandered unexpectedly into a corner of my brain, when the light he admitted brought the brilliant stripes and epaulettes into greater prominence. My leaden eye followed them with languid fascination; a torpid feeling dimly related to amusement, made me think of striking up the tune, but I repressed it as unseemly. One Walk and One Tree. 14 Sports. "Ah, yes!" said the Man of War, "fever and influenza. Lots of people take it on coming up from the plains. All right in a few days." This in a tone of aggressive hilarity, that struck a curious chill on the ear of the half-dazed listener. But fever potions worked out their cure, and when I had found that great desideratum of the fever stricken, a place to lie on, I looked at the Decorated One with a certain amount of satisfaction, and thought his voice cheerful and comfortable.

A few days of influenza are a light affliction that endure but for a moment, but the weeks, and even months of prostration that follow it, are bad to bear. I dragged heavy and unwilling limbs to the points whence the best views can be seen. Kasauli has been described as a station with one walk and one tree, and the statement is true with trifling modifications. Five hundred English soldiers recruit up here after maladies incurred in the plains, due to climate, injudicious eating and drinking, want of work and constant recreation that has ceased to amuse. The three hotels the place boasts are filled with officers up on duty, attending garrison classes and working for examinations. Flag-signalling, military law, parade, fortification, run it pretty close with the gymkhana, tennis, riding, and the club dances.

According to some, the life Her Majesty's officers lead is pure slavery, hard work and poor pay. But some of those who were happy enough to possess a moderate standard of diligence by which to measure their attainments, have confessed to me that a couple of hours' work was about all they ever did, and that they found a difficulty in bridging the fly-slow hours that lie The Study of Martial Law. 15 between breakfast and five o'clock tennis. "India," said a bright young military man to me, " is undoubtedly the country for a diligent and able man to make his mark. Not many people, at any rate in the army, mean work, and if one is an exception, he is bound to rise." Making allowance for individual eccentricity, much ingenuity is expended in discovering methods of darkening the occupant's rooms to a pitch that will keep them fairly cool, and yet admit of the study of — a novel, and con sumption of a whiskey peg.

When from the lofty eminence on which my suite of apartments was situated, I perceived a messmate's bearer cross the compound with a bottle of soda, gently raise the chick which shut out the insect world from his master's room, and lastly, the loud report of a cork, I knew pretty exactly what point had been reached in the dry study of martial law. A very little later, the bungalow is entirely darkened. If retrospection, inspection, self-examination and meditation follow, these questionings appear to have no humbling or saddening effect, for in due time a bright-skinned and well-groomed young man emerges, jauntily arrayed in tennis flannels, racket in hand and terrier at heels. For two hours he will work as hard as ever he did, playing with men instead of with ladies, much to the disgust of the latter, who will not sacrifice the neatness of their tennis costumes even to freedom of the arms.

If the men did but know how severe is the labour of playing tennis in tight sleeves and stays, surely they would relent, and show more affection for a " square " game. A curious compound is the young military man, Who Keeps the Saheb? often large-limbed and broad-shouldered, but small and undeveloped in the mind. He and the ladies of a station are often said to make each other unendurable by flattery, hence perhaps part of the antagonism that generally exists between civilians and military men. Ladies were certainly in a minority at Kasauli, at least in the hotels. I found them planted out as follows : at the chief hotel, not one lady ; at another, one only ; at a third, two of the salt of the earth. At first, I used to make an attempt to entertain the military youths, but, finding it a heavy drain, I gradually ceased the malpractice, and am not aware that any regret was caused thereby.

" Lazy animals these niggers are, aren't they?" said one, addressing me. " Perhaps they are, but you know they keep you," I responded with cheerful candour. He disclaimed emphatically, but he was overbearing and conceited, so that I enjoyed proving the statement up to the hilt. The long glance that he cast on a comrade-in-arms out of the corner of his eye said as plainly as possible : " What manner of woman is this, who dares to prove that / am paid out of the taxes raised from these niggers ? Let us crucify, no, I mean boycott her." This idea was new and unpalatable, and, as I was all forlorn, the other ladies being related to military men, and not a single civilian at table among the men, I thought discretion the better part of valour, and tried to hide under a bushel that new light which the emancipated woman is perhaps too fond of setting on a candlestick.