"Where art thou going?" I said to one of the senior members of the congregation—proud to be able to address him in Marathi. "You speak like a Brahmin," was his reply. At the time I took this to be fulsome praise of my pronunciation, and it was not till long afterwards, as I recalled his words, that I understood that he meant that I was addressing him in the contemptuous way in which Brahmins speak to their inferiors. A lady worker, after struggling bravely with the intricacies of Marathi, said that at last she felt encouraged when, after conversing with some Indian women, she heard one of them say, "She speaks like a Hindu." Fortunately, or unfortunately, she did not understand the real meaning of the remark.
Indians do not readily understand or appreciate the half-jocose way in which Englishmen are wont to show friendliness to others. I saw at a railway station some rather venerable Christians from a village mission seeing off a young missionary. The new-comer was trying to be "hail-fellow-well-met" with these members of his congregation, smacking them on the back and laughing a good deal, and calling them "old chaps." The latter expression they did not understand, but they looked grave and puzzled; and probably the newly arrived missionary learnt, after a little longer experience, that all English manners and customs are not applicable to India.
The reverse is also true. There is an Indian kind of free-and-easy manner which is meant to indicate a spirit of friendliness, which is just as little understood by the Englishman, and which he not unfrequently imagines to be intentional rudeness, and resents accordingly.
CHAPTER XLIV
NIGHT ALARMS IN INDIA
Mortality caused by snake-bite. Snakes in the bungalow. The cobra; how it shows fight. An exciting contest. The night-watchman; his jingling-stick; his slumber. Village night-scare. Supposed dacoits. The village chowdi: lads sleeping in it.
It must be confessed that snakes are one of the drawbacks of country life in India, especially after dark. That they are not an imaginary source of danger is shown by the tremendous total in the annual returns of those killed by snakes in British India. Every year this amounts to about 20,000 people. The returns for the last ten years show that, in spite of the attempt to wage war against snakes, the toll of casualties does not diminish. The number of snakes killed in a recent year, for which Government gave rewards, amounted to 63,719. But in so vast a country the destruction even of so many would make little appreciable difference.
Although the cobra is an object of worship, Indians do not become reconciled to snakes. The cry of sarp—"snake"—makes almost as great excitement as the cry of "fire." You never can be sure where you may not find a snake. Once when I was coming home in the dark, there was just light enough to enable me to see a snake travelling up the steps of the verandah into the bungalow, and I was in time to kill it before it hid up. The most uncomfortable situation is when you see a snake go into the house and you cannot find out where he has located himself. A krait, the most deadly snake in India, in the middle of the day came in at the door of the room in which I was sitting reading. It seemed surprised to see me, and retired behind the door, where I quickly slew him. It was remarkable to see the horror of a cat, who came in just afterwards and saw the dead body of the snake, and for a week or two afterwards she would not pass through that room. As we entered the refectory one evening for dinner we saw a large snake vanish out of the back door, and we found it curled up behind the water-butt.