"By God who made me, it's a protest with a vengeance. But the worst of it is, the Government won't see it and I can't explain it. Cipher telegrams won't run to it So ... peace be with you, friends!"
[THE VALUE OF A VOTE]
A SKETCH FROM LIFE
He was an old man; a very old man. A Syyed--that is, a Mahomedan who claims direct descent from the prophet--by trade a Yunani hakeem, or physician according to the Grecian system, introduced to India, doubtless, by Alexander the Great. He had a little sort of shop, close to the principal gate of the city, where he was in touch with all those who, with its ship the camel, went out, or came back from the desert beyond, and with all strangers and sojourners in the land. So all day and every day you might see wearied travellers resting on the hard wooden platform set in a dark archway, of which his shop consisted, drinking out of green glass tumblers some restorative sherbet of things hot or things cold, things dry or things wet, while he showed dimly in the background, a visionary outline of long grey beard and high white turban. In this way he heard a good deal of what was going on both inside and outside the city, and as he was of the old school of the absolutely loyal outspoken Mahomedan, who, while he holds our rule to be inferior to that of his own faith, emphatically believes it to be superior to all others, I used often to pause in riding into or out of the city for a chat with the old man; seldom without benefit to myself. One morning--I remember it so well!--the gram fields outside the city were literally drenched with dew, making the fine tufts look like diamond plumes, amongst which the wealth of tiny purple blue pea blossom showed like a sowing of sapphires--I found him sitting with a troubled look on his high, wrinkled forehead, peering through his horn spectacles at a blue printed paper.
A patient was snoring contentedly on the boards, with, tucked into the hollow of his neck, a hard roly-poly bolster which made me ache to look at. Nothing brings home to one the impossibility of any Western judging what is, or is not pleasant or convenient to an Eastern more than the ordinary rolling pin, two feet by six inches, stuffed hard with cotton wool, which the latter habitually uses as a pillow. The sight of it makes a Western neck feel stiff.
I recognised the paper at once. We were then in the throes of "Local Self Government," and a violent effort was being made to induce this little far-away town, inhabited for the most part by Pathans (exiled these centuries back from northern wilds to the Indian plain) to elect a Municipal Committee.
I had spent the better part of the day before in explaining to various Rais'es or honourable gentlemen of the city, that no insult was intended by asking them to put themselves up to auction as it were by the votes of their fellow citizens, instead of being discreetly and as ever nominated to the office of Councillor by the "hated alien." A few had gravely and dutifully given in to this new and quite incomprehensible fad of the constituted authorities, others had hesitated, but one, a fiery old Khân Bahadur, who was a retired risseldar from one of our crack native cavalry regiments, had sworn with many oaths that never would he take office from, amongst others, the perjured vote of Gunpat-Lal, pleader, who belonged to his ward, and whose evil, eloquent tongue had deliberately diddled him out of ancestral rights in a poppy field in the Huzoor's own court. No! He had served the Sirkar with distinction, he had, with his own hands, nearly killed an agitator he had found in the lines; nay, more! he had absolutely sent his daughter to school to please the sahib logue; but this was too much. It had been all I could do to prevent the hot-tempered old soldier from giving up the sword of honour with which he had been presented on retirement, as a signal of final rupture with the Government.
So, as I say, I recognised the blue paper at once as one of many voting papers which had been sent out for marking and return; for in these out of the way places in those days, the secret ballot-box was not the best blessing of the world, as it is now. And my old friend the hakeem was, I knew, on the Aga Khân's ward.
"What have you got to do with it?" I echoed, in reply to an anxious question. "Why, put a mark against the Aga Khân's name and give it back whence it came."
He salaamed profoundly. "Huzoor! that was the settled determination of this slave, thus combining new duties with old--which is the philosophy of faithful life; but, being called in last night to an indigestion in his house, which I combatted with burnt almonds, he told me that if I so much as went near his honourable name with my stylus, I should cease to be physician-in-ordinary to his household. And, father and son, we have been physicians to the Aga Khân ever since our fathers followed his fathers from Ghazni in that capacity with the Great Mahomed--on whom be peace."