It is a practical question whether you should endure the Hamal, or address yourself to the task of his reformation, and I am content to make myself singular by advocating the latter for two reasons; firstly, because he cannot be endured; secondly, because I cherish a fantastic faith in his reformability,—at least if you take him in his youth, before he has set. I believe we fail to cure him either because we do not try, or because we dismiss him before we succeed. Another great impediment to success in this enterprise is the foolish habit of getting wrathful. An untimely explosion of wrath will generally blow a sensitive Hamal’s wits quite out of his own reach, and of course, out of yours; or, if he is of the stolid sort, he will set it down as a phenomenon incidental to sahebs, but without any bearing on the matter in hand, and he will go on as before. Besides, a state of indignation is very detrimental to your own command of the language, and if you could in cold blood take your “Forbes” and study some of the sentences which you fulminated in your ebullitions of anger, you would cease to wonder that the subject of them was such an idiot.
Hum roz roz hookum day,
Tum roz roz hookum nay,
Ooswasty lukree—(whack, whack)
went home, I have no doubt, but it is the gift of few to be at once so luminous and so forcible. Try handling your Hamal in another way. Call him mildly—a mild tone thaws his understanding—and say to him, “Look here, my son. Do you see this gold writing on the backs of these books? For what purpose is it?” He will reply, “Who knows?” Then you can proceed, “That writing is the mark by which you may know the head of any book. Now consider, should a book stand on its head?” If he replies, “How should a book stand on its head?” then you are getting access to his intelligence, and may lead him on gradually to the conclusion that, whenever he puts a book into the shelves, he should make it stand so that the writing on the back of it may be uppermost. I tell you he will beam with intelligence, and rise earlier next morning to put his new learning into practice. After a few days he will forget and relapse into his old ways, but you must have patience.
After all, I think we could put up with the Hamal if only he would not try to think. This is his crowning vice. In vain I try to impress upon him that I engaged him to obey orders, and would rather do the thinking myself. Every now and then, at some particular phase of the moon, he sets his intellect in operations and the consequences are, as the Brahmin boy described the result of his examination, “appalling.” It was our Hamal’s duty to fill the filter, and at a time when the water was very bad, orders were given that it should be boiled before being filtered. One day, my wife saw the Hamal in the act of filling the filter, and it occurred to her to warn him to let the water cool first, lest he might crack the filter. “Oh yes,” said he, “I thought of that. After boiling the water, I cool it down by mixing an equal quantity of cold water with it, and then I put it into the filter.”
In Bombay, since hard times set in, the offices of Hamal and mussaul have got a little mixed, and a man will show you characters testifying that he has served in both capacities. Such a man is, properly speaking, simply a mussaul who has tried to do the Hamal’s work. The cleaner of furniture and the lighter of lamps and washer of plates and dishes cannot change places or be combined. I have read that the making of one English pin employs nine men, but it is a vain boast. The rudiments of division of labour are not understood in Europe. In this country every trade is a breed. Rama is by birth a cleaner of furniture. This kind of employment came into the country with our rule, so that the domestic Hamal, who is an offshoot of the palkee hamal, or “bearer,” has not had time to become what fanciers would call a permanent strain, and you will find that you can convert Rama into a chupprasse, a malee, or even a ghorawalla, but into a mussaul never. He is a shoodra, sprung from the feet of Brahma, and the Brahman, who sprung from the head of the same figure, despises him, but not with that depth of contempt with which he himself despises the mussaul, who is an outcast, and sprang from nowhere in particular. He cannot conceive that thirty generations of washing could purify the descendants of Mukkun so that he might touch them and not be unclean. You, his master, rank theoretically with Mukkun, and he will neither touch your meats nor the plate off which you have eaten them. He will keep your house clean, and even perform some personal services, for he has a liberal mind, and is there not also a toolsee plant in a pot on a kind of earthen altar in front of his hut, before which he performs purificatory ceremonies every morning? And does he not bathe after leaving your presence before he eats? If you pass by the clean place where he is about to cook his food in the morning, you will see a large pot of water on the fire. When this gets warm—for Rama is not a Spartan—he will stand on a smooth stone, as sparingly clad as it is possible to be, and pour the water on his head, polishing himself vigorously as it runs down his limbs; then, after dressing his long hair and tying it in a knot on the top of his head, he will sit down to eat, in a place by himself, with the feeling that he has warded off defilement from that which goeth in at his mouth. That which goeth out of his mouth gives him no concern.
The Body-guards.
I will sketch my ideal of a model Chupprassee. He is a follower of the Prophet, for your Gentoo has too many superstitions and scruples to be generally useful. He parts his short black beard in the middle and brushes it up his cheek on either side, the ends of his moustache are trimly curled, he wears his turban a little on one side, carries himself like a soldier, and is always scrupulously clean. He comes into your presence with a salutation which expresses his own dignity, while it respects yours. He wishes to know whether the protector of the poor has any commands for his slave. When you intimate your wishes he responds with a formula which is the same for all occasions—“Your Lordship’s commands shall be executed.” And they are executed. If he knows of difficulties or impossibilities, he keeps them to himself. Alas! this is an ideal, how antipodal sometimes to the real! I am thinking of the gigantic Sheikh Mahomed, with his terrible beard and womanly voice, who would convey my commands to a menial of lower degree and return in five minutes to detail the objections which that person had raised. Another type of Mahomedan Chupprassee, whom we see is to abhor, expresses his opinion of himself by letting half a yard of rag hang down from his turban behind. He calls himself a Syed and, perhaps, on account of the sanctity implied in this, forbears to wash himself or his clothes. This man is clever, officious, familiar, servile, and very fond of the position of umbrella-bearer in ordinary to your person: therefore, transfer him to the personal staff of some native dignitary, where he will be appreciated. If my model does not suit you, there are many types to choose from. We have the lofty and sonorous Purdaisee, the Rajpoot, son of kings, the Bhundaree, or hereditary climber of palm trees, the Israelite, the low caste, useful, intelligent Mahar, and many more. Even the Brahmin in this iron age becomes a Chupprassee. But three-fourths of all our belted satellites come from one little district south of Bombay, known to our fathers as Rutnagherry, re-christened Ratnagiri by the Hon. W. W. Hunter, C.I.E., A.B.C., D.E.F., etc. Every country has its own special products; the Malabar Coast sends us cocoanuts and pepper; artichokes come from Jerusalem; ducks, lace, cooks, and fiddlers from Goa. So Rutnagherry produces pineapples and Mahrattas, and the Mahrattas do not eat the pineapples. Till quite recently they employed themselves exterminating each other, burning each other’s villages and crops, and inventing new ways of torturing old men to make them confess where their money was buried. We have stopped these practices without stopping the religious arrangements for keeping up the supply of the race; so the Mahratta marries, as in duty bound, and multiplies, and then casts about for some way of maintaining his growing family; and our Chupprassee system, looked at politically, is a grand escape pipe. Pandurang Huree gives the Mahrattas the palm, as liars, over all the other races of India. He may be right, but where excellence is so universal, comparison becomes doubly odious. Some Mahrattas put rao after their names and treat themselves with much respect, especially if they can grow a little island of whisker on each cheek and run the moustache into it. These men differ from common Mahrattas in the same way as Mr. Wilberforce Jones, or Mr. Palmerston Smith, differs from the ordinary run of Joneses and Smiths.