Life in an Indian Outpost

by Gordon Casserly

Sixty or eighty miles west of Buxa Duar and seven thousand feet above the sea is the pleasant Himalayan Hill Station of Darjeeling. Less than a day's journey by rail from Calcutta, it attracts to it the fortunate mortals who, in the summer months, can escape from the heat of that crowded city and the Bengal plains and plunge into a whirl of gaieties on the cool heights of the Pleasure Colony. To it I had my first change from Buxa. About a year after my arrival I got fourteen days' leave to Darjeeling in order to meet the officer of my regiment commanding our detachment at Gantok in Sikkim, who was coming there to appear at one of the many examinations that plague the soldier's soul. The month was October, perhaps the unpleasantest time of the year in India, when the Rains are almost ended and the heat is intensified by the dampness of earth and atmosphere.

To reach my destination required a very round-about journey by rail. First from Buxa Road to the junction at Gitaldaha, where I could get on to the main line which took me to Siliguri at the foot of the mountains again; thence up the toy Himalayan Railway which crawled in spirals and zigzags up the face of the giant hills. The Indian first-class railway carriage is very unlike an English one. It is divided into two compartments, each entered by a door at the end and containing along each side a broad, leather-covered couch, used as a seat by day, a bed by night. Above each is a hanging bed, hooked up until it is required for use. There is thus sleeping accommodation for four in the compartment, off which is a lavatory, which on some lines contains a bath, a luxury much needed on a long journey in India. In the hot weather the carriages are fitted with electric fans, which only serve to stir the heated air, and hardly cool the perspiring occupants. Every traveller carries his roll of bedding, which his servant spreads down at night and in the morning ties up and stows out of the way. Until comparatively recently restaurant cars were unknown; and the trains halted three times a day for half an hour to allow their passengers to descend at stations where meals could be obtained. For long journeys, and in India three or four days in a train is not unusual, the type of carriage I have described is more comfortable than the corridor carriages which are now being introduced. This change is greatly due to the number of running-train thefts and the murder of a Eurasian girl; for of course in the corridor system travellers are less isolated. Recent occurrences have somewhat scared ladies travelling alone. To reassure them the railway companies allow them to have their ayahs or native female servants to share the carriage, the window-shutters have been provided with bolts, and the guards have instructions to lock the doors of their compartments.

As my train rolled along through the level country I was surprised to note the number of rivers we crossed. These were the streams which vanish at the foot of the hills and reappear above ground farther south. The country we passed through was typical of Bengal—level plains well cultivated and dotted with clumps of bamboos, numerous villages and prosperous-looking farms.

In the early morning we reached Siliguri where we had to change to the Himalayan Railway. A crowd of sleepy passengers descended and entered the refreshment-room in search of breakfast, while their servants gathered their luggage together. Then we took our seats in the tiny open carriages of the small train which climbs the steep slopes of the mighty mountains. At first it plunged into forest between huge trees clothed with orchids, walled in by dense undergrowth; for we were in the Terai again. Then it wound among the jungle-clad foot-hills and climbed ever higher, while the forest grew thinner and sparser. Anon it emerged on the sides of the open bare mountains; and we looked down on the dark belt of trees and the plains spread like a map below us. We could trace for miles the winding course of the Tista, the wide river that flows down through the hills from Sikkim. Here and there we passed by long stretches of tea gardens. In one place the railway forms a complete circle, looping the loop; so that, with a long train, the engine would be crossing over a bridge while the last carriage was still under it. Beside the line ran the mountain road, by which heavily laden coolies toiled between the villages of rough wooden huts. At last the greatest elevation was reached at the small station of Goom; and the train ran down for a thousand feet and ended its journey in Darjeeling.

Mark Twain was enraptured by the beauties and marvels of engineering of this Himalayan Railway. But to me it seemed far less wonderful and lovely than the lines over the Rocky Mountains of his own country. I have crossed them by the Denver and Rio Grande route, where in broad Pullmans and big-windowed observation-cars we sat in comfort, and at an elevation of ten thousand feet gazed at the snow-clad peaks towering above us or, lower down in the deep gorges, strove to see the tops of the sheer, two-thousand feet high walls of the Grand Canyon, painted in brilliant colours by the lavish hand of Nature.

But Darjeeling was unique in my experience; for I had visited no other Himalayan Hill Station. A town on the mountain-tops, a town of pretty villas, large hotels, clubs and churches, of big English shops with plate-glass windows, of jumbled native bazaars thronged with thousands of men and women of a dozen different hill races. Broad, well-kept roads run along the ridges and up and down the steep hill-sides, lined with lovely gardens, in which stand fascinating European houses like the villas of Trouville and Deauville under the shade of giant orchid-clad trees. English ladies in smart frocks go by in rickshaws or reclining in chairs carried on the shoulders of strong coolies. Officers and civilians on well-groomed ponies trot past groups of sturdy-limbed Bhuttias or rosy-cheeked Lepcha women hung with turquoise and silver ornaments. British soldiers in khaki stop to chat with small, cheery Gurkha policemen by the roadside. Pig-tailed Sikkimese and Tibetan lamas fingering their rosaries stare into the plate-glass windows of shops that would not be out of place in Oxford Street and which display to the bewildered heathen Paris fashions or the latest pattern of coloured shirts and smart waistcoats.

The central point of Darjeeling is the cross roads at the Chaurasta. Here on one side the ground rises a thousand feet or more to the summit of Jalapahar, crowded with barracks and European bungalows. To the other the hill-sides slope steeply away covered with tea gardens. Along the ridge the road runs by a trim English Church in pretty grounds, the straggling building of the Amusement Club with tennis courts terraced one above the other, and on to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal's summer residence set in a lovely park. To the north the ground falls sharply another thousand feet; and one looks down on the roofs of the bungalows and British Infantry Barracks of Lebong, with its race-course around the polo ground and the rifle-range, seeming like a toy station set out far beneath. Below, the deep valley; and beyond it rises a jumble of mountains on mountains in bewildering profusion. And at dawn and evening above the clouds hangs high in air the long line of the Everlasting Snows. Over it towers Kinchinjunga, twenty-eight thousand feet high, with its jagged white peaks gleaming in the morning or pink-flushed in the rosy light of sunset; forty miles away, yet so clear and distinct that the beholder imagines he would be able to see a man on it, if some climber could scale its untrodden heights.

The abrupt change from the sweltering heat of the Bengal plains, seven thousand feet below, to the cool climate and refreshing breezes of Darjeeling is marvellous. In less than twenty-four hours the English dwellers in the hot and crowded city of Calcutta are borne to this gay Hill Station, which must seem another world to them. In the brisk mountain air the jaded visitors from the Plains revive and are filled with renewed energy; and one and all plunge feverishly into social gaieties. In India only in such places as this does one find the Englishman unoccupied by work; for in the East there is no leisured class of Europeans. Even the Viceroys and Governors are busy mortals, and perhaps the hardest-worked individuals in the dominions they rule. Every white man in India has his employment; for he is a soldier, a civil servant, a judge, a lawyer, a railwayman or a merchant. Each has his work and his place in the scheme of things. But in the Hills, save for those at the military or civil headquarters, he is on leave, and has come to enjoy a well-earned rest.

The life in an Indian Hill Station is unlike anything that we have in England. Gaiety reigns supreme. Games, races, dances, theatricals, and all such entertainments abound. To take Darjeeling as an example. In the mornings and forenoons the roads are thronged with riders or with ladies in chairs or rickshaws, going to pay calls or on their way to luncheon-parties. In the afternoons on the polo ground of Lebong the players on their agile little ponies jostle each other, or race after the ball. The tennis courts in the grounds of the Amusement Club are full. The skating rink inside the Club is thronged in the mornings, and when dusk falls, the lamps are lighted and the tea-tables are set out beside the polished floor. The nights are never dull; dinner-parties in the bungalows, restaurants and hotels, dances and theatricals at the Club, fill them.

In these Hill Stations the summer residents in the bungalows, the visitors at the hotels or boarding-houses, though they come from places in the Plains far apart, are of the same class in life and know each other or of each other. For, except for the lawyers and merchants, the names of all are set forth in either of the two great books of India, the Civil Service or the Army List. And they are linked by the bond of a similar profession. All are members of the Club and see each other there every day. To all are sent invitations to each big festivity. The Lieutenant-Governor of the province has his summer residence in its Hill Station and gives a series of official entertainments to which are asked all those who have written their names in the book which, guarded by red-coat servitors, lies on a table in the veranda of Government House. He is constrained by his position to give dances, dinners, and garden-parties, regardless of his private inclinations. For he is a very important personage, and lives in almost regal state. He has his military aides-de-camp, his military or police guard; the Union Jack flies from a flagstaff on his lawn as a sign of his dignity. He rules over a province as big as England and is supreme in his dominions unless the Viceroy chances to visit them. Think what a change it must be for such a proconsul when he has to retire and takes up his abode in a London suburb or a small country town, where he is unknown to fame, and unhonoured!