My three years in Manipur : $b and escape from the recent mutinyGrimwood, Ethel St. Clair
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My three years in Manipur : $b and escape from the recent mutiny
Grimwood, Ethel St. Clair
Grimwood, Ethel St. Clair, 1867-1928; Manipur (India)
There is no necessity to give a detailed account of the time spent
between our leaving Manipur and our return there. It extended over a
period of some ten or twelve weeks only. Instead of remaining at Jorehat
three months as we had at first expected, we were there only ten days,
just long enough to get everything unpacked and stowed away, when a
telegram came from Shillong, ordering my husband to another station
called Gauhati, on the Brahmapootra. As it was a better appointment, he
accepted it, but it was very hard work having to start off on the march
again before we had had time to rest ourselves after our long journey
from Manipur. That wonderful domestic whom we could never do without in
India, the bearer, soon repacked all our things.
Why haven’t we someone like a bearer in England? He is a perfect godsend
in the shiny East. He is valet to the Sahib, makes the beds, dusts
the rooms, cleans the lamps and boots, and is responsible for all the
performances of the other domestics. If they fail to do their duty, or
break your furniture or crockery, you scold the bearer. If one of your
horses goes lame or gets out of condition, the bearer knows of it very
soon, and if your cook sends you up anything nasty for dinner, or the
butter is sour or the milk turned, your bearer is admonished. No doubt he
lectures the other servants for their misdeeds, and takes many gratuities
from them, varying in bulk, for pacifying his irate master or mistress.
He generally gets on amicably with the whole establishment, but sometimes
he makes an enemy of one or other of the servants, and ructions are as
constant as they are noisy. The two bearers (for they generally hunt in
couples) that we had had been with my husband for many years. They were
both very excellent servants, though the elder of the two gave himself
the airs and graces of a Maharajah.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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