The Mohammedan Mother by John Lang
The scenery is more beautiful than that of Simlah, for
Mussoorie and Landour command a view of Dehra Dhoon which resembles (except
that the Dhoon is grander and more extensive) the plains of Italy as seen from
the ascent of the Simplon.
I have seen a storm on the heights of Jura – such a storm as
Lord Byron describes. I have seen lightning and heard thunder in Australia: I
have, off Terra del Fuego, the Cape of Good Hope, and the coast of Java, kept
watch in thunderstorms which have drowned in their roaring the human voice, and
made every one deaf and stupefied: but these storms are not to be compared with
a thunderstorm at Mussoorie or Landour.
Black and White by R. Francis Strangman
All spoke at once – not to each other, but apparently to
everything and anything inanimate which happened to be near them (For in India
it is always so when ten or twelve are gathered together.)
Mrs James Greene by Ethel Anderson
Indian men do not admire Englishwomen – white women, that is
to say. Their pasty faces, they assert, look anaemic and unwholesome; beside
the honey-coloured and flawless skins of Indian beauties they lack brilliance.
Their hair, too, seems dull and lusterless in contrast with the satin-sheened
oiled and raven tresses of zenana belles. Their figures (they consider) are
bad; their heads, hands, and feet are too large. They have, in short, no grace
of movement, no subtlety of rhythm in dancing, no charm of expression in their
colourness, washed-out eyes.
Indian men admire above all things bravery in a woman.
Meeting Mister Ghosh by Haydn M. Williams
He darts hither and thither along the map of his rhetoric
while we all strive to retain, though half-lost, some of the more lucid
pronouncements: ‘Take toilet paper with you if you travel by train. Ignore
beggars and lepers. Respect habits of prudery among the women. Watch out for
pickpockets. Buses are overcrowded, but sometimes one has to ride on top of
one. If you hit someone ‘with your motor’, don’t stop but abscond! Do not
torment or injure cows. Note that there are seats reserved for women. Avail
yourself of a rickshaw should you be trapped in a flooded street. Watch out for
deep holes in the streets of Calcutta.’
A Foot in the Stream by David Malouf
We leave the city at last, but the stream of pedestrians
does not diminish as one might expect. It thickens, moving in both directions
at the side of the road…..all moving at the same easy pace, in the stately,
straight-backed style that makes walking look so good, so natural. There are no
slounchers or shufflers here. They walk with purpose, and it is this that makes
these crowds so odd to the Western eye. Where have they come from? Where are
they going? They suggest some important rendezvous up ahead……the stream never
thins out. It might go on like this right across the country. The whole of
India seems to be on the move between its borders, endlessly tramping, even
when we are far out in the countryside.
Occasionally, at the edge of the road, a casualty. One truck
is tipped forward with both its front wheels removed; it has been brought to its
knees. Another, further on, with its off-wheels missing, is an elephant on its
side, this is not just fancy or ‘a way of putting things’. One feels here that
machines, in joining the animal forms of transport, have entered a single
stream of creation that includes, men, beasts, birds, insects, trees. The
inclusiveness of the Indian, and specifically the Hindu view, subtly blurs in
the mind as in the eye our usual categories.
Hindoo Holiday by J.R.Ackerley
The other guests left this morning, and just before starting
Mrs Montgomery gave me final advice. ‘You’ll never understand the dark and
tortuous minds of the native,’ she said, ‘and if you do I shan’t like you – you
won’t be healthy.’
Monsoon by Inez Baranay
I was afraid the rest of India would be like Bombay airport,
but Bob has told me that nowhere in India is as bad as Bombay airport. It
certainly was the most crowded, confusing, chaotic, dirty, noisy, hustling
place; the beggars outside: the shantytown slums around it…….
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