"Who And What Is This Mysterious Hindu?" I Wondered In My Uncertain
Thoughts.
"Who is this man, who unites in himself two such distinct
personalities:
The one exterior, kept up for strangers, for the
orld in general, the other interior, moral and spiritual, shown
only to a few intimate friends? But even these intimate friends
do they know much beyond what is generally known? And what do
they know? They see in him a Hindu who differs very little from
the rest of educated natives, perhaps only in his perfect contempt
for the social conventions of India and the demands of Western
civilization.... And that is all - unless I add that he is known
in Central India as a sufficiently wealthy man, and a Takur, a
feudal chieftain of a Raj, one of the hundreds of similar Rajes.
Besides, he is a true friend of ours, who offered us his protection
in our travels and volunteered to play the mediator between us
and the suspicious, uncommunicative Hindus. Beyond all this, we
know absolutely nothing about him. It is true, though, that I
know a little more than the others; but I have promised silence,
and silent I shall be. But the little I know is so strange, so
unusual, that it is more like a dream than a reality."
A good while ago, more than twenty-seven years, I met him in the
house of a stranger in England, whither he came in the company of
a certain dethroned Indian prince.
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