It is usually the custom to commence the day with a very light meal, consisting of a cup of tea or coffee and a scrap of toast, which is usually brought to the bedside; but, if one’s work is of a character to keep one away from home for the greater part of the morning, it is better to supplement this with something more substantial, such as an egg, and to eat this after dressing, instead of before. Those whose work takes them into the open had best go straight to it, and trust for morning exercise to the riding and walking that are involved in the superintendence of the work under their charge; but those whose occupations are of a sedentary character, will come to them all the fresher for half an hour’s canter, or a spin on the ever useful “bike.” Exercise at this time of the day should never, however, be carried to the extent of producing fatigue, or the quality of the work done after it will be sure to suffer.
At one time it was a very common custom, on coming in from the morning ride, to have a plunge in the swimming bath, and the writer has pleasant memories of the al fresco meal of fruit and hot tea beside the big station bath, in company with most of the assembled male members of the post. A very pleasant custom it undoubtedly was, but I suspect we did ourselves more harm than good, for the first feeling of freshness was very apt to be succeeded by one of increased fatigue; and I believe this is generally recognised in India; for the fine old swimming baths are everywhere going to ruin from disuse, and this would hardly be the case if they were found as beneficial as they undoubtedly are pleasant. If a plunge bath be taken at all, the best time of the day is probably after the evening game of racquets or tennis—not immediately, of course, but after having given oneself time to cool down somewhat.
If practicable, the backbone of the day’s work should be broken by noon, and this is the time adopted by probably the majority for a meal, which is generally, but rather inappropriately, called breakfast; after which it is a very comforting and, the writer believes, healthy custom to make up for the short, and perhaps disturbed night, by what sailors call a “dog’s snooze”[4] of a couple of hours, after which and a bath, a couple of hours more work can be got in before the sun is low enough to admit of sallying forth, on exercise and recreation bent. After this perhaps another bath, dinner, and bed.
[4] The “dog watches” at sea last two hours.
This programme, it will be observed, admits of an eight hours’ working day, and if anyone is asked to work more than this in a hot climate, the most appropriate advice that can be given them, of course strictly from the point of view of hygiene, is—to strike. This arrangement of meal times is of course very much that obtaining on the Continent, and on this account many find it difficult to accustom themselves to it, and retain the nine o’clock English breakfast and early afternoon luncheon, but this breaks up the morning’s work awkwardly, and makes the number of substantial meals too large to suit most people under the altered conditions of life. Comparatively few people find it advisable to persevere in the use of the cold bath in hot climates, for, strange as it may appear, but few people find it “agree” with them as well as is commonly the case in Europe. This is especially so in the case of those who have suffered much from malarial fever, as most residents of any standing have; for in such persons any sudden shock is apt to give an opportunity to the germs of the disease lying latent in the system, and so to bring about a relapse of fever. Personal experience can of course alone serve as a guide in such a matter, but those who have recently suffered from a malarious attack will do well to be cautious.
With regard to the question of light and ventilation of the house; in places on the coast, where really excessive heat is rarely experienced, all that is necessary is to get as much air as possible without admitting the direct rays of the sun. Inland, however, where the thermometer may stand in or above the nineties for months together, a certain amount of management is required to keep the heat inside the house down as much as possible. To effect this, it is above all essential that every door and opening should be thrown open at night so that the cooler air may get the best possible chance to reduce the temperature of the heated walls. Unfortunately, owing to the uniform peccability of human nature, it is not always practicable to do this, if one wishes to retain one’s ownership of movable property; as in most parts of the world, it is scarcely possible to keep all doors and windows open unless they are protected with bars, a precaution which lends a very forbidding and prison-like aspect to a house. Fortunately, as a rule the native burglar is not a very desperate character; and prefers to work by stealth to attempting to get through any obstacle that might make a noise in the opening. But for this, and the fact that a certain awe usually attaches to the person of an European, robberies could hardly fail to be much more common than they are, for as a rule the bolts and bars of a tropical villa are contrived with a child-like simplicity, which would raise a smile on the face of Mr. William Sykes and his pals.
Here again is another direction in which the adoption of the system of metallic gauze protection against mosquitoes will tend to make tropical life more tolerable; for the stuff is much stronger than it looks, and would form a quite adequate protection against ordinary thieves; besides which, the gauze, for those troubled with nerves, might be easily strengthened by supplementing it with a layer of the strong wire netting used for fowl runs, &c., without making the place look like a jail, or appreciably diminishing the freedom of ventilation. It would be easy, too, by attaching to some part of the frames, inaccessible from the outside, bells hung on springs such as used to be used in houses before the adoption of the electric mechanism, to render the frames a very difficult obstacle to open without rousing the inmates, even for light-fingered gentry much more skilful than those with whom one has usually to deal. An obstruction that will keep out a mosquito may easily be modified to exclude men, and only those who have passed a hot weather in towns where it is dangerous to sleep with open doors, can appreciate what a benefit it would be to be able to dispense with the use of solid doors and sashes. Strengthened with wire netting, the gauze would form a far more formidable obstacle than any ordinary window, for a little reflection will convince anyone that even the gauze alone would be far more difficult to dispose of than the simple panes of thin glass on which we have been accustomed to rely. Usually the house may be kept open with advantage until eight or nine in the morning; but after this the thermometer begins to rise rapidly, and it becomes necessary to close up everything, while in very extreme climates it may be desirable to supplement the doors by the addition of thick, wadded curtains, but this should never be carried to the extent of making the rooms difficult to see in, for a fair amount of light is absolutely essential to health. Besides this various other expedients may be adopted, a very useful one being the sprinkling of the verandahs with a watering can as soon as the heat of the day is over, a process which may be very advantageously extended to the roof, where this is of the terraced form, always assuming that cheap labour is available. The coolness produced by the evaporation of water is also utilised by means of “tatties,” as well as in a machine known as the thermantidote.
Tatties are thick, loosely-woven mats, made by binding a thatch formed of short lengths of a scented grass (known as khaskhas) to a frame-work of bamboo, which are constructed to fit the frames of the windward doors and windows, and are kept constantly wet by a man, who goes from one to the other throwing water on them. Their efficiency depends entirely on the amount of wind, and to maintain a good current it is of course necessary that one or more of the leeward doors should be also kept open, a fact of which it is often difficult to convince the ladies, who, in their intense eagerness to shut out the heat at all costs, not unfrequently succeed in shutting it in instead. Given a fairly good breeze, and a waterman who does his work well, it is possible to produce a very marked amelioration of the temperature; and the free passage of air through the room goes far to neutralise the dangers of dampness. Of course neither these appliances, nor the thermantidote, can act except in dry heat, so that their usefulness is quite confined to the dry months of inland climates.
The thermantidote, in its usual form, is a large wooden drum, within which revolves a system of fans, one of the upper quadrants of its circumference being removed and replaced by a horizontal tube, which projects through an opening in a temporary screen into the room to be cooled. The sides of the drum, through which the axle projects, are replaced, in the middle, by small tatties, and the effect of driving the fans (which work like those of a paddle boat, and not on the principle of the screw) is to draw air through these small wet mats and drive it into the room. Some of the more elaborate sort are provided with a miniature pump, which delivers water on to the mats from a trough below, the pump being driven from the same multiplying wheel as the fan. In thoroughly dry weather, it is quite possible to reduce the temperature of a room by fully ten degrees by means of these machines, but they are treacherous arrangements, especially for those who allow themselves to be tempted to sit in the full force of the current, and are responsible for a great number of chills and rheumatic twinges of all sorts, so that I believe it is better to endure the heat without them. The labour of driving them, too, is rather severe, so that relays of strong young coolies must be entertained if they are to be worked efficiently; whereas in the case of the punkah a certain knack is required, rather than mere brute strength and stupidity, so that the work is very suitable for men who are past their prime. The best punkah wallah I ever had was an old blind man, and the work seems particularly suitable for the blind, as sight is in no way required, but, in the East, these unfortunates generally prefer to resort to their traditional employment of mendicancy. The little art of pulling a punkah lies in never checking it as it swings away from you; and in making the pull just as it begins to lose way on its return; but simple as this may appear, the men often require a good deal of training before they do it well. The original punkah is said to have been invented by a bored clerk in a Calcutta office, over whose head, it happened, the spare leaf of a table had been hung to keep it out of the way of the white ants. In an idle moment he began to make the suspended plank swing to and fro, and finding the resulting breeze very comforting, proceeded to make fast a cord, and set a coolie to pull it. The contrivance, at any rate, dates only from the English occupation of India, and the original flat plank has never been improved on, as the less unsightly pole punkah and frill is in every way inferior to it. The broad, flat punkah of course is usually also fitted with a frill, but a light, single cloth, about the substance of a bath towel, really acts far better than the usual heavy frill, as it gives a peculiar flick at the top of its stroke which is extremely effectual.
It is a not uncommon misapprehension to imagine that a punkah cools the air within a room, though this, of course, is an obvious impossibility, but the current of air produced by it promotes the rapid evaporation of the moisture of the skin, and the body is thereby cooled, which for practical purposes is much the same thing.