A Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of IndiaAcland, Charles
History
A Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of India
Acland, Charles
India -- Description and travel; India -- Social life and customs
The Government allow me a guard of soldiers; and a sentry, with
musket and bayonet, parades up and down the front verandah; they also
allow three servants for the use of the church. The soldiers present
arms to me and salute; and when any one comes at night, they call
out, "Hookum dar?" to which the answer is "Exprin:" these phrases
are corruptions of the English. The church is very nicely fitted
up; there is a door leading into it from my study, which serves on
Sundays as a vestry. The greatest inconvenience here--as in all the
churches in India--consists in the punkahs. Over the pulpit, altar,
and reading-desk are three small punkahs, and over the body of the
building three very large ones, extending over the whole breadth.
These are kept constantly in motion, and they sadly intercept the
voice of whoever is preaching. The house, being a bungalow, has, of
course, only the ground-floor; the roof is a thick thatch, extending
over the verandahs, which in England would be called porticoes,
and these are supported on thick white columns. The ceilings in a
bungalow are nothing but large sheets of canvass whitewashed. As in
India people are glad to keep all the doors within the house open,
there is placed between the different rooms a framework covered with
crimson or green silk, which the natives call a half-door. The beds
are nine or ten feet wide, with short posts, on which you may hang
mosquito-curtains, which are a sort of large sacks made of gauze,
without any opening. They are supported on the posts and tucked in
closely all round, so as to prevent the mosquitoes from stinging the
people in bed; the only covering, generally, is a sheet, and the
gentleman's sleeping-dress is a flannel jacket and a pair of calico
drawers with feet to them, to keep off the mosquitoes if they should
by chance get inside the curtains. Some people also throw a gauze
over the face for the same purpose. There are no feather-beds, but
the mattresses are generally stuffed with the fibres from the outside
rind of the cocoa-nut, called "coir.". The usual plan is to leave
the glass doors (French windows you would call them) all open, but
to shut the Venetian blinds, and to have a punkah over your head
going all night. At about six in the morning all the glass doors are
closed, and kept shut all day to exclude the hot air. If, however,
there should be any wind, one of them is opened and a tattie hung up
in its place; the tattie is a thick mat the size of the doorway, made
of the sweet-scented cuscus-grass; this is kept constantly wetted on
the outside.
[Sidenote: THE MOHURRUN--POSITION OF CUTTACK.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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