Kitabı oku: «Peeps at Many Lands—India», sayfa 6

CHAPTER XVI
IN THE BAZAAR

What is a bazaar in India? It is, first of all, the quarter where the shopkeepers are gathered together, where the tiny shops stand in close-packed rows on either side of the narrow ways, and whither all who have money flock to spend it. But it is more than that. It is the place to which those who have no money resort just as freely, for here ebbs and flows in one unending flood the news, the rumours, the gossip of the town and country.

All day long an Indian bazaar is filled with throngs of buyers, sellers, newsmongers, idle loungers, merchants, sightseers – all the flotsam and jetsam of the city. It is always a scene of wonderful colour and movement. The sun strikes into the dusty ways on turbans of red, green, and orange; on robes of white, pink and blue; on petticoats of rose and saffron; on the bronze bodies of almost naked coolies who march along beneath their loads. People of every colour – white, brown, black, yellow – jostle each other in the crowded ways, and there is a bewildering variety of tint and form in the striking and picturesque scene.

The shops are, as a rule, of the simplest nature in form – an archway, a booth, a hole in a wall. Upon a low platform the trader spreads his wares, squats beside them, and waits for customers. Let us stroll along a row of shops and see what they have for sale. The first shop has a crowd of customers, for it is a confectioner's, and the Hindoo, big or little, old or young, has a very sweet tooth. The confectioner spreads his wares on tiers of shelves or on a counter made of dried mud and rising in steps, and at the back of his shop is a sugar-boiling furnace, where he is busy on fresh supplies, pulling candy or making cakes of batter fried in butter. He sells toffee covered with silver-leaf, candy flavoured with spices, and many kinds of a sweet called luddu, made of sugar and curded milk. This stall is not only a great attraction to the children who have a pie (about one-third of an English farthing) to spend, but to the flies also. The latter come in myriads to settle on the sweet stuff, and though a boy is always at work with a whisk trying to drive them away, he can never keep the place clear.

Opposite the confectioner's is the flour-seller, and he, too, is a very busy man, for from his stall the everyday wants of the people are supplied. Great numbers of the Hindoos never touch meat, and the bunniah (the grain-seller) furnishes the whole of their food. He has a great number of baskets, and these are piled high with barley, wheat, lentils, flour, sugar, peas, rice, potatoes, nuts, dried fruits, and the like. He also sells ghee (clarified butter) and sour milk. He has a big pair of scales to weigh out his flour, sugar, peas, or whatever may be called for, but no bags to pack them in: he leaves that to the customers. One brings a cloth, another a basin, another a brass ewer for milk. Many have nothing, and they carry away their purchases in their hands, or, if that be impossible, flour is poured into the corner of a shawl or the fold of a robe. One man unwraps his turban and knots his purchases into various corners of it, twists it into shape again, and goes off with his day's supply on his head. Butter and milk are carried away in a green leaf dexterously twisted into the form of a cup.

The next shop is one which finds the grain-seller a very convenient neighbour, for it is a shop which sells parched grain – a bhunja's shop. At first glance there seems nothing in the place, then you notice a large shallow pan set on a mud platform. Under the pan a fire burns, and a woman steadily feeds the fire with dry leaves and husks. A second woman is stirring the corn in the pan, and as the grain parches and crackles a delicious smell fills the place, and passers-by sniff it, and stop and throw down a small copper coin on the mud platform, which is also the counter. Then they hold out their hands or a fold of a robe, and receive the sweet-smelling parched wheat or maize, and go on, munching as they walk.

Next comes a goldsmith's. Here is no glittering shop with ornaments and precious vessels in the window, as in a London street, but an archway or a booth of mud exactly like his neighbours'. The goldsmith himself is at work with his blowpipe at a little brazier, softening and shaping a piece of gold into a bangle for a customer. He is a busy man, for the country women bring him their silver to be made up into the ornaments they love, and he has always a store of ear-rings and bracelets to sell.

He sells his goods by weight, and weighs them in a most delicate pair of scales, which he keeps in a sandalwood box. His weights are the oddest things in the world – "tiny scraps of glass, a bean perhaps, an irregular chunk of some metal, a bit of stick, a red and black seed, an odd morsel of turquoise, and a thin leaf of mother-o'-pearl." His customers thus have to take the weight on his word; and they do not always care about that, for, as the saying goes, a goldsmith would cheat his own mother on the scales. So that hot words often fly to and fro across the mud floor of his little shop, and passers-by pause to listen to the fierce dispute.

Beyond the goldsmith's stands the shop of a cloth merchant, and this is a very fine shop, one of the grandest in the bazaar. So large is the merchant's stock that his booth is really big, or he fills three or four archways with his piles of calico and woollen. Here you may buy the strong woollen and cotton cloths of the country, made well and dyed in quiet, tasteful colours – goods which will wash and wear for year after year. But, alas! you may also buy from an even greater store of the poorest and cheapest goods which Manchester can turn out – cottons which will be of the flimsiest as soon as the dressing is washed out of them, cheap gaudy woollens made of shoddy, and silks of no greater strength than the paper which enwraps them. For the craze for cheapness has invaded the Indian bazaar as elsewhere, and the splendid old silk muslins, the brocade which would last for a century, the woollen shawl that was handed down from mother to daughter, find few or no buyers nowadays.

The druggist (the pansari-ji) contents himself with one small room, but it is packed from floor to ceiling with a thousand odds and ends – drugs, medicines, spices, one can hardly tell what. He wraps his more precious wares in scraps of paper, and stows them away in baskets, boxes, pots, and pigeon-holes in the wall. He prides himself on keeping everything in stock in his line, and one writer speaks of testing a pansari-ji by asking for cuttle-fish bone, "and lo! there it was – just two or three small broken pieces in a paper screw." The druggist may be the doctor of his quarter as well, and a favourite method of cure will be to write a mysterious talisman on a scrap of paper or a betel-leaf. This is rolled into a pill and swallowed by the patient. Opium he sells largely, and at evening he dispenses the sleep-compelling drug to knot after knot of customers.

The fruit-dealer's shop makes a beautiful patch of colour in the bazaar, with its heaps of golden oranges, of purple plums, of speckled pomegranates, of jackfruits and guavas, and many other kinds. But, as a rule, the fruit-dealers and greengrocers like a stall in a more open place, where they can pile their big melons up in a heap, and spread their wares in the lee of a wall, and throw an awning over to keep the sun off.

Now comes the cookshop, where rows of turbaned customers are squatted on the floor with bowls before them, and the busy cook is at work over a fireplace fed with dried leaves. He fries cakes of rice in oil, he spits half a dozen scraps of meat on a wooden skewer, and roasts them over charcoal. Then a big pot simmers over the fire of leaves, and the smell of a "double-onioned" stew is wafted across the place to mingle with a thousand other queer smells of the bazaar. He sells vegetables done up into all kinds of shapes, and made hot to the taste with plenty of curry; he pickles carrots; he has sweetmeats and great stores of pillau, a dish of meat cooked in rice. He has plenty of customers, for his prices are very low.

Then there is the kobariya, the marine-store dealer of the bazaar, whose shop is heaped with second-hand clothes, scrap-iron, and odds and ends. Mrs. Steel gives a vivid description of the wares of the kobariya:

"Old things, and still older things, upside down, higgledy-piggledy, hang on the top of each other: a patent rat-trap shouldering a broken lamp, an officer's tunic sheltering a pile of tent-pegs, a bazaar pipkin on top of some priceless old plate, a parrot's cage filled with French novels, a moth-eaten saddle keeping company with an old sword, and over all, sufficient scrap-iron to furnish forth a foundry; and in an old caldron, incense spoons, little brass gods, prayer measures, sacred fire-holders, all mixed up with battered electro-plated forks, hot-water jug lids, and every conceivable kind of rubbish."

CHAPTER XVII
IN THE JUNGLE

The jungle, the Indian forest, is the home of many wild creatures, and the sportsman who goes into it in search of them often has to take his life in his hands. This is true, above all, if he is pursuing the tiger, the most ferocious beast that India knows, the king of the jungle. It is true, there are lions in India, but not many, and the Indian lion is of no great importance: the tiger is the beast of beasts.

The tiger is a terrible scourge to the Indian herdsman: a big brute will often take up his quarters near a village, and levy a regular toll on the village herds, killing cow after cow, and buffalo after buffalo. He is often perfectly well known, and the villagers see him about the roads, or crossing their fields, or gliding through the jungle without a sound on his soft pads. If a dozen of them are together they do not fear him: they march right through his haunts, shouting and singing, rattling sticks on the bamboo-trunks, and beating drums, and he gets out of the way and stops there. This is if he be an ordinary tiger, a cattle-killer; but if a man-eater haunts the neighbourhood, then the ryot's soul is filled with fear. He dares scarcely leave his house: to leave the village is to face a terrible danger; he knows not when the monster may steal upon him.

The man-eater goes about his work in dreadful silence. The ordinary tiger will often make the jungle ring again with his hoarse, deep roar; not so the man-eater. The latter glides without a sound, and under cover of a patch of bamboos or a clump of reeds, up to the wood-cutter felling a tree, or up to the peasant in his rice-field, or up to a woman fetching water from the well. Silent as death, he bounds upon his victims and fells them with a single stunning blow of that huge paw driven by muscles of steel. The great white fangs are buried for an instant in the throat, then the body is lifted in the mouth as a dog lifts a rat, and is carried away to the lair, where he makes his dreadful meal.

Most remarkable stories are told of the ferocity and daring of man-eating tigers. They have been known to venture boldly into a village by night and carry off sleepers who had sought a cool couch out of doors in the summer heats, and by day they have made fields and roads quite impossible places to venture into. Villages and whole tracts of country have at times been deserted by their inhabitants owing to the ravages of these ferocious creatures, and when an English sportsman arrives to tackle the savage beast he is hailed as a deliverer.

There are two favourite ways of hunting a tiger. The first depends on the fact that he must drink. The sportsman, by means of native watchers, discovers the pool or water-hole where the tiger quenches his thirst. Then in a field near at hand is built a machan, a little platform where the hunter may watch and wait for his prey. He climbs into the machan at sunset, and waits till the tiger comes to drink at some time between the dark and the dawn, when a fortunate shot will put an end to the marauder.

The other way – a far more exciting and picturesque fashion – is to pursue the tiger upon elephants. The sportsmen are in open howdahs, and the elephants crash their way through the long grass, the reeds, the young bamboos, in search of the tiger. At last the tiger is driven into the open, and bullet after bullet is poured into his body by the marksmen. He is rarely killed at once, and in his agony he will often turn upon his pursuers with terrible fury. This is the moment of danger. With the horrible coughing roar of a charging tiger, he hurls himself with tremendous bounds upon his foes. His eyes blaze like green emeralds, his great fangs glitter like ivory. At springing distance he leaves the ground and shoots through the air like a thunderbolt, full upon the nearest elephant. Now is the time to try the sportsman's nerve and steadiness of aim. Unless the tiger be struck down by the heavy bullet, he will land with teeth and claws upon the flank of the elephant, striking and tearing with terrible effect at his foes.

More lives have been lost, however, by sportsmen following up a wounded tiger on foot. The tiger lies apparently stiff and still, as if already dead. The hunter comes too near, and finds that there is a flicker of life left. Before he can retreat, the wounded beast puts forth its last strength to spring upon him and take a terrible revenge for its injuries.

We said that the tiger is the king of the Indian jungle. There are some observers who dispute this; they award the palm to the elephant. Certainly there can be no more majestic sight than a herd of wild elephants in their native jungle. They move slowly along, staying now and again to crop the young shoots or to spout water over themselves at a pool or river. The huge grey bodies, on the round, pillar-like legs; the great flapping ears; the swinging, curling trunks; the rolling, lumbering walk, present a scene of great interest, heightened by the antics of the baby elephants, the calves, who trot along by their mothers and frisk around the herd.

The Indian elephant is rarely pursued and shot – it is far too valuable; but the capture and taming of these mighty creatures is very exciting and interesting work. In Central India, especially in Mysore, their capture is usually carried out by means of a kheddah, a kind of pound. Two huge fences are built in the forest in the shape of a mighty V. The wide end of the V is often a mile or more across, and into this end a herd of wild elephants will be driven by great numbers of beaters. The elephants are urged forward to a large enclosure, into which the narrow end of the V opens. Once they are in this, a great gate is dropped behind them, and they are imprisoned.

Now the work of taming them begins. Tame elephants take a great share in this, and show much cleverness in bringing their wild brethren into captivity. Two or three tame elephants, each with a driver on its back, will surround a wild one, and hustle and push it towards a strong tree. Now a man slips down from the back of a tame elephant, and slips a noose of strong rope round the leg of the wild one. This is dangerous work, and the man has to be very quick and skilful. The rope is now thrown round the tree, and drawn tight. Other ropes are soon fastened, and the huge wild creature is made a prisoner.

The task of taming him at once begins. From the first the men move about the captive and talk to him, to accustom him to their sight and presence. They give him plenty of nice things to eat, and from the first he does not refuse food, except in very rare cases. Very often within a couple of days the elephant is taking pieces of sugar-cane and fruit from the hands of his keepers. Now the friendship grows rapidly. The men begin to pat and caress the huge captive as they sing and talk to him, and within a couple of weeks his bonds are loosened, and he is led away between two tame companions to complete his education.

There is one elephant that no one tries, or dares to try, to capture. This is the "rogue," and he is pursued and shot at once, if possible. A rogue elephant is a savage, vicious brute who has left the herd and taken to a solitary life. They are very dangerous, and many of them will attack either man or beast that may come in their way. Their great size and vast strength render them easy conquerors over all they meet, and a rogue elephant is the dread of the neighbourhood where he roams. To hunt him is a very dangerous sport. He is very wary, very cunning, and quite fearless. If fired upon he charges full upon his foes, and, unless a well-directed bullet brings him down, the death of the hunter is certain. The rogue hurls him down and tramples upon him, smashing the body beneath his huge feet.