Life in an Indian Outpost

by Gordon Casserly

However, Alipur Duar boasted among its public buildings that useful institution, a dâk bungalow. In little Stations and dotted every ten or fifteen miles along the highways of India, the dâk bungalow is there to shelter the European traveller whom Fate or his work leads far from cities and railways. It is a humble, one-storied building, erected by Government, and containing one two or three scantily furnished rooms. It is in charge of a native attendant, who sometimes provides food for the hungry traveller, though as a rule the latter has to bring his own with him. Luckily India is the land of tinned food.

The Alipur bungalow boasted a khansamah, or butler, who was able to furnish us with meals. We found already installed in it a native sub-judge who had come from the headquarters of the district to try some cases in Ainslie's absence. I got into conversation with him and found him a cheery, pleasant little Bengali, a follower of the new reformed Brahmo Samaj faith and consequently free from the caste prejudices of the orthodox Hindu, which do so much to keep him and the Englishman apart. Finding that our new acquaintance had no scruples about eating with Europeans, I invited him to share our dinner. He held very decided opinions on what he termed the hypocrisy of the educated Brahmins who, in public, profess to adhere strictly to the severest caste restrictions in the matter of eating with others, particularly with Europeans.

"Sir, I am not possessed of patience to endure them," he said in his quaint English. "In the town where I have the habit to reside, the Brahmin lawyers and under-official strappers invite to the farewell entertainment of a garden-party our much-to-be-regretted late Deputy-Commissioner, when being about to depart from us. They request me to pose as a host with them. I say to them: 'No; I am not willing. You ask to Mr and Mrs——, an English gentleman and lady, to come partake of your hospitality. But you put on a table in corner of tent cakes, tea and other cheering refreshments and tell them to eat alone while you turn your faces, lest to see them eat would break your caste. It is all a bosh! I have seen many of you in strange places to eat of forbidden food at the restaurants of railway stations where you sit cheek-by-jowl with unknown Englishmen. And yet you cannot indulge in cake, refreshment, etcetera, with the esteemed departing Deputy-Commissioner. It is all a bosh!'"

He more than repaid our hospitality that night by his amusing remarks and shrewd comments on Indian and European manners. He said that, never having come in contact with military officers before, he had watched us all that day and was astonished to see that we were on friendly terms with our native subordinates, knew the names of all our men, and did not treat them with disdainful hauteur, as alleged by the Bengali journals. And I thought of an untravelled Englishman who had told me in a London drawing-room that we British officers were in the habit of beating our sepoys!

Next day we visited the court-house to watch our little friend dispensing justice from the bench. We were amused to see how quickly he disposed of long-winded native lawyers who, in a case involving a matter of a few shillings, were prepared to deliver a speech in high-flown English lasting five hours. He cut them very short with his favourite phrase: "It is all a bosh!"

The pay having been disbursed that afternoon, our men asked me for leave to engage a troop of dancers and enjoy a nautch, that entertainment dear to the heart of the Indian but wearisome beyond measure to the European spectator. It was held at night on the open ground behind the dâk bungalow. As is customary in native regiments we were invited to witness it and, much against our will, went to it after dinner. The sepoys squatting in a wide circle round the performers rose to their feet; and the Indian officers welcomed us with the usual formalities. After we had shaken hands with them they hung garlands of flowers round our necks, thrust small bouquets on us and liberally besprinkled us with scent. When we sat down small plates were offered us on which, wrapped up in leaves, were various pungent and aromatic spices to chew. Then we were given cigars, cigarettes, and whiskies-and-sodas—these a concession to European tastes. The performance, interrupted by our arrival, continued. Two fat women with well-oiled hair, jewelled ornaments in their noses, gold bangles on their wrists and ankles, their toes adorned with rings, swayed their fleshy bodies and shuffled a few inches forward and back on their heels, singing the while in high falsetto voices. Wrapped from throat to ankle in voluminous coloured draperies as they were, the propriety of their costume was a reproach to the scantily clad dancers of so-called Indian dances in the English music-halls. The musicians squatted on the grass behind them, two men producing weird and monotonous sounds from strangely shaped instruments, while a third beat with his hands on a tom-tom, the native drum. And this is the famous nautch at which the Indian will gaze with rapture all night. The flaring oil-lamps shone on the ring of eager dark faces and eyes glistening with enjoyment, as the sepoys watched intently every movement of the ungainly dancers. Fortunately we were not obliged to remain long and soon took our leave of the native officers. Although we were to march at seven o'clock in the morning I heard the monotonous drumming and the shrill voices throughout the night; for the entertainment did not end before five o'clock. And it was a hollow-eyed detachment that tramped behind us on the dusty road that day. Our route lay at an angle to our former course which had been due south; for now we headed north-east towards the jungle and the hills again.

On the left hand lay the ragged fringe of the forest stretching east and west beyond the limit of vision; and high above it towered the long rampart of the mountains. Far away as we were we could see the white specks of the Picquet Towers at Buxa. And back among the jagged peaks rose up the snow-clad summit of a mountain in Bhutan, its gleaming crest seeming to float like a cloud in air above the darker hills. Over the level plain we spread out in fighting formation, one company forming an advanced guard and driving back the skirmishing line of the other which acted as the rear guard of a retreating enemy. And here and there the peasants working in the fields, knowing nothing of the harmlessness of blank cartridges, fled in terror at the sound of the firing.

We halted for our bivouac near a village in a mission settlement of Santals, a wild tribe recently civilised by hard-working missionaries and taught the dignity of labour and the joys of agriculture. We met the clergyman and his wife who were in charge of the settlement and invited them to dinner with us. They showed us a large iron church in the village, the materials of which had been purchased by money willingly subscribed by the Santals, who had erected the building with their own hands. Our guests told us that their half-tamed flock, when they saw us marching in, had deserted the village and fled into the jungle. They explained to their wondering pastor that we were soldiers, and soldiers were folk whose one object in life was to kill people—and who easier to slay than the poor Santals? It took him hours to induce them to return to their homes. But before night they had lost all fear and flocked inquisitively round our bivouac.

Next day we marched through outlying patches of jungle, the advanced guards of the great forest; and we hailed the trees as old friends. After an attack by one company on the other in position on a low hill, we found our way barred by an unfordable river. Along the banks lay logs and trunks of trees swept down from the forest; so we turned to to make rafts, binding the timber together with the men's putties and puggris—for their head-gear is made of strips of cloth nine yards long. On these rafts the few non-swimmers, the rifles, clothing and accoutrements were placed; and the swimmers towed and pushed them across the stream. With the same rude materials we made an excellent flying bridge which, moved by the swift current, floated backwards and forwards across the river on ropes made from the puggris and putties. The men revelled in the work. Stripped to their loin-cloths they sported like dolphins in the clear, cold water flowing down from the melting snows of the Himalayas.

Then we marched on again until I halted the column on the outskirts of a tea garden and sent Creagh galloping to ask the manager's permission to encamp on it and draw water for my men from the wells. While awaiting his return, I stretched myself along a squared log of timber and, despite my hard couch, fell asleep, awaking with a start to find Khartoum standing over me staring at me with curiosity out of her little eyes, as she flapped her big ears and brushed away the flies from her sides with a branch. For a second I fancied I was in the forest under the feet of a wild elephant; and I sprang up hastily. Then Creagh returned with a cheery, hospitable Englishman, who invited me to consider the tea garden my own. In a few minutes the fires were going, the bhistis fetching water from the wells, and the cooks rolling up the balls of dough, deftly patting them out into thin cakes and spreading them on the convex iron griddle over the flames. Sentries posted and guards mounted, the rest of the men piled arms, took off their accoutrements; and, while some hungrily watched the cooks, others lay down on the ground and slept contentedly until food was ready. The coolies gathered to see the novel sight of soldiers; and the inevitable pariah dogs hung about the cooking places and quarrelled over the scraps thrown to them. At every bivouac some of these four-footed recruits joined us; and when we reached Buxa again I found that at least a dozen nondescript curs had adopted the detachment and marched into the fort with the air of veterans.