A certain writer, who laid the scene of a romance in India, when not quite so well known as at present, describes our hero, I have been told, as sailing in a bungalow on the broad and placid surface of the Ganges, which, by a slight geographical error, is made to traverse the vale of Kashmere. Now, though I give my reader credit for knowing something more of the matter than this, a slight description of a bungalow may not be unacceptable, nevertheless.
The houses occupied by Europeans in India are of two descriptions; the pucka house—havilee, or kottee—and the bungalow. The former of brick or stone, is flat roofed, and, excepting in Calcutta, almost always of one story; i.e. the rooms are all on the ground floor, though considerably raised from the ground; they have green Venetian windows, and are encompassed, wholly or partially, by a terrace, covered with cement, shaded by a verandah or awning.
The bungalow partakes more of the cottage, or, I should perhaps rather say, the barn, being, in nineteen cases out of twenty, covered with a ponderous thatch, requiring frequent renewal, the operations of the white ants and periodical rains soon converting it into a cake of mud, through which pactolean rills frequently find their way to the interior, meandering down the walls.
The bungalow is invariably of one story, and constructed on the principle of a single or double-poled tent, or routie, according to the size; the resemblance to tents occupied by officers is indeed striking, though which is the original and which the copy I cannot say. It has usually double walls, though in some cases that which answers to the outer is little more than a range of pillars.
The space between, called the verandah, is occupied by master’s palankeen, camp equipage, &c.; there, too, the bearers, or cahars, lie and snore during the sultry hours, till roused from their slumbers by a kick from master’s foot; there, too, the patient dirgee, or snip, sits cross-legged, hard at work on the beebee sahib’s ball-dress, or the sahib’s nether garments, which he holds on with his great toe and the next one to it with all the skill of the Order Quadrumana, to the astonishment of the griffinish beholder.
Talk of our “light fantastic toes,” indeed; what are they to a black fellow’s,—adorned, too, with a fine silver great-toe-ring to boot! Mais revenons. The ceilings, instead of lath and plaster, are composed of coarse cotton cloth, whitewashed, and tied with numerous tags or strings to a framework of bamboo running round the apartment, and concealed from view by the projecting cornice; between this and the rafters is a dark void, the airy hall of the rats and bandicoots, who sometimes hold their soirées dansantes and conversazione in it, careering over the cloth with lively and varied squeakings. Purdahs, chicks (blinds), and jhamps (frames of straw and bamboo), and sometimes glass doors, serve to close the entrances; the latter are, indeed, pretty common, except at very uncivilized and out-of-the-way stations.
Furniture harbours reptiles and is expensive to carry about; officers’ bungalows are, consequently, but slenderly supplied with moveables. A couch, one or two tables, half a dozen chairs, a book-shelf, a settrinjie (or cotton carpet, with blue and white stripes, and which also serves for the tent when marching), and a few wall-shades &c., generally constitute the adornments of an Indian officer’s residence.
In the abodes of civilians, whose lots are cast in pleasanter places, and who lead less erratic lives than the military, and have far longer purses, things approximate more nearly to the English standard of luxury and comfort.
At military stations, puckha flat-roofed houses are rare, and generally occupied by the general commanding, or some other exalted functionary in the receipt of large allowances.
My friend’s bungalow was a regular Indian sub’s abode, and fell wofully below my standard of comfort, though in his opinion, formed on more experienced views of Indian life, it was quite as it should be.