But the great Sir W. W. went in his Legislative Consular brougham and
never in an unbridled tram-car which pulled up somewhere in the middle
of Dhurrumtollah. “You want go Park Street? No trams going Park Street.
You get out here.” Calcutta tram conductors are not polite. Some day one
of them will be hurt. The car shuffles unsympathetically down the
street, and the evicted is stranded in Dhurrumtollah, which may be the
Hammersmith Highway of Calcutta. Providence arranged this mistake, and
paved the way to a Great Discovery now published for the first time.
Dhurrumtollah is full of the People of India, walking in family parties
and groups and confidential couples. And the people of India are neither
Hindu nor Mussulman--Jew, Ethiop, Gueber, or expatriated British. They
are the Eurasians, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them in
Dhurrumtollah now. There is Papa with a shining black hat fit for a
counsellor of the Queen, and Mamma, whose silken attire is tight upon
her portly figure, and The Brood made up of straw-hatted, olive-cheeked,
sharp-eyed little boys, and leggy maidens wearing white, open-work
stockings calculated to show dust. There are the young men who smoke bad
cigars and carry themselves lordily--such as have incomes. There are
also the young women with the beautiful eyes and the wonderful dresses
which always fit so badly across the shoulders. And they carry
prayer-books or baskets, because they are either going to mass or the
market. Without doubt, these are the people of India. They were born in
it, bred in it, and will die in it. The Englishman only comes to the
country, and the natives of course were there from the first, but these
people have been made here, and no one has done anything for them except
talk and write about them. Yet they belong, some of them, to old and
honorable families, hold “houses, messuages, and tenements” in Sealdah,
and are rich, a few of them. They all look prosperous and contented, and
they chatter eternally in that curious dialect that no one has yet
reduced to print. Beyond what little they please to reveal now and again
in the newspapers, we know nothing about their life which touches so
intimately the white on the one hand and the black on the other. It must
be interesting--more interesting than the colorless Anglo-Indian
article; but who has treated of it? There was one novel once in which
the second heroine was an Eurasienne. She was a strictly subordinate
character, and came to a sad end. The poet of the race, Henry
Derozio--he of whom Mr. Thomas Edwards wrote a history--was bitten with
Keats and Scott and Shelley, and overlooked in his search for material
things that lay nearest to him. All this mass of humanity in
Dhurrumtollah is unexploited and almost unknown. Wanted, therefore, a
writer from among the Eurasians, who shall write so that men shall be
pleased to read a story of Eurasian life; then outsiders will be
interested in the People of India, and will admit that the race has
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account