We had adapted ourselves
to Peri's movements. and felt ourselves first-rate jockeys. But
for a whole week afterwards we could hardly walk.
A City Of The Dead
What would be your choice if you had to choose between being blind
and being deaf? Nine people out of ten answer this question by
positively preferring deafness to blindness. And one whose good
fortune it has been to contemplate, even for a moment, some fantastic
fairy-like corner of India, this country of lace-like marble palaces
and enchanting gardens, would willingly add to deafness, lameness
of both legs, rather than lose such sights.
We are told that Saadi, the great poet, bitterly complained of his
friends looking tired and indifferent while he praised the beauty
and charm of his lady-love. "If the happiness of contemplating
her wonderful beauty," remonstrated he, "was yours, as it is mine,
you could not fail to understand my verses, which, alas, describe
in such meagre and inadequate terms the rapturous feelings
experienced by every one who sees her even from a distance!"
I fully sympathize with the enamoured poet, but cannot condemn
his friends who never saw his lady-love, and that is why I tremble
lest my constant rhapsodies on India should bore my readers as much
as Saadi bored his friends. But what, I pray you, is the poor
narrator to do, when new, undreamed-of charms are daily discovered
in the lady-love in question? Her darkest aspects, abject and
immoral as they are, and sometimes of such a nature as to excite
your horror - even these aspects are full of some wild poetry, of
originality, which cannot be met with in any other country. It is
not unusual for a European novice to shudder with disgust at some
features of local everyday life; but at the same time these very
sights attract and fascinate the attention like a horrible nightmare.
We had plenty of these experiences whilst our ecole buissoniere
lasted. We spent these days far from railways and from any other
vestige of civilization. Happily so, because European civilization
does not suit India any better than a fashionable bonnet would
suit a half naked Peruvian maiden, a true "daughter of Sun,"
of Cortes' time.
All the day long we wandered across rivers and jungles, passing
villages and ruins of ancient fortresses, over local-board roads
between Nassik and Jubblepore, traveling with the aid of bullock
cars, elephants, horses, and very often being carried in palks.
At nightfall we put up our tents and slept anywhere. These days
offered us an opportunity of seeing that man decidedly can surmount
trying and even dangerous conditions of climate, though, perhaps,
in a passive way, by mere force of habit. In the afternoons, when we,
white people, were very nearly fainting with the roasting heat, in
spite of thick cork topis and such shelter as we could procure,
and even our native companions had to use more than the usual
supplies of muslin round their heads - the Bengali Babu traveled
on horseback endless miles, under the vertical rays of the hot sun,
bareheaded, protected only by his thick crop of hair.
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