'_Bunnia_--Mission-school--expelled--_box-wallah_ (peddler)--Ceylon
pearl-merchant--all mine English education--out-casted, and made up name
Dana Da--England with American thought-reading man and--and--you gave
me ten rupees several times--I gave the Sahib's bearer two-eight a month
for cats--little, little cats. I wrote, and he put them about--very
clever man. Very few kittens now in the _bazar_. Ask Lone Sahib's
sweeper's wife.'
So saying, Dana Da gasped and passed away into a land where, if all
be true, there are no materialisations and the making of new creeds is
discouraged.
But consider the gorgeous simplicity of it all!
ON THE CITY WALL
Then she let them down by a cord through the window; for her house was
upon the town-wall, and she dwelt upon the wall.--_Joshua_ ii. 15.
Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world. Lilith
was her very-great-grandmamma, and that was before the days of Eve
as every one knows. In the West, people say rude things about Lalun's
profession, and write lectures about it, and distribute the lectures to
young persons in order that Morality may be preserved. In the East where
the profession is hereditary, descending from mother to daughter, nobody
writes lectures or takes any notice; and that is a distinct proof of the
inability of the East to manage its own affairs.
Lalun's real husband, for even ladies of Lalun's profession in the East
must have husbands, was a big jujube-tree. Her Mamma, who had married
a fig-tree, spent ten thousand rupees on Lalun's wedding, which was
blessed by forty-seven clergymen of Mamma's church, and distributed five
thousand rupees in charity to the poor. And that was the custom of the
land. The advantages of having a jujube-tree for a husband are obvious.
You cannot hurt his feelings, and he looks imposing.
Lalun's husband stood on the plain outside the City walls, and Lalun's
house was upon the east wall facing the river. If you fell from the
broad window-seat you dropped thirty feet sheer into the City Ditch. But
if you stayed where you should and looked forth, you saw all the cattle
of the City being driven down to water, the students of the Government
College playing cricket, the high grass and trees that fringed the
river-bank, the great sand bars that ribbed the river, the red tombs
of dead Emperors beyond the river, and very far away through the blue
heat-haze, a glint of the snows of the Himalayas.
Wali Dad used to lie in the window-seat for hours at a time watching
this view. He was a young Muhammadan who was suffering acutely from
education of the English variety and knew it. His father had sent him to
a Mission-school to get wisdom, and Wali Dad had absorbed more than ever
his father or the Missionaries intended he should. When his father died,
Wali Dad was independent and spent two years experimenting with the
creeds of the Earth and reading books that are of no use to anybody.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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