CHAPTER II.
Malabar Hill, and Domestic Life of the English in Bombay.
My first stay in Bombay was a comparatively short one, and was spent partly with friends at Colabah and partly in tents on the great green in front of Fort George.
My stepfather being connected with the engineer or public works department at the military station of Poonah, my life for a year or two was passed at that strange city. Upon the occasion of my marriage, however, I returned to Bombay for a settled residence, from which time I began my real experience of life in India.
We established ourselves at Malabar Hill, in a house completely isolated from the rest of the world, where my husband and I took up the study of the Sanskrit and Hindostanee languages. Malabar Hill is a rocky promontory on the south of the island of Bombay, and covered with beautiful houses, many of which are almost palaces. At its highest point, detached and alone, stands a lofty tower, the largest "dohkma," or "tower of silence," of the Parsees. Here the followers of Zoroaster deposit their dead. It is rendered not the less sombre by the birds of prey that hover around it in great numbers.
There are two other and smaller towers of silence on the island, all erected in the most isolated positions. No one is ever allowed to approach them save the Fire-priests and those who carry their dead. These strange towers or tombs are mysterious, grand, and barbaric in their very forms—at their base screened by huge branching trees from all human observation, open only to the blue sky, the free air, and the gloomy birds of prey hovering always near.
On the other side of this much-dreaded spot, and not far from a forest of palms which descends in graceful undulations to the very base of the hill, stood a solitary house, called by every one "Morgan's Folly." For full ten years it had found no occupant. Its owner and builder, having returned to England with broken fortunes and failing health, had entrusted the renting of it to a Parsee agent. By a happy accident this lonely house was discovered by my husband, who had it at once repaired, furnished, and fitted up for our use, and here we took up our abode after a few weeks' residence at Parel.
I wish I could do justice to this singular abode, on the portals of which the monosyllable "Whim" might fully be inscribed. It was the caprice of a rich English cotton-merchant, whose love for the feathered tribe amounted to an absorbing passion. The house was therefore designed and built at great cost to serve the double purpose of human and bird habitation. Foolish, capricious, extravagant, and incorrigible as he was called by every one, I for my part conceived an affection for this strange Englishman who built this fanciful place in which were passed the first few years of my married life.
Two fine roads led to the "Aviary," as we named the house, one of which was cut into the hillside and descended to the base of the hill, whence at low tide you might step from rock to rock away out into the bay. The other was connected with a beautiful road which winds along Malabar Hill, affording a favorite carriage-drive for the residents of the island.
As for the house, it was the most curious bit of architecture one had ever seen—so fanciful, it seemed more like something that belonged rather to the mysterious land we visit in our dreams than to an actual house made of solid stone and wood standing fast, bound to the hard, dull, practical earth.