Working my Way Around the World

by Harry Alverson Franck; Lena M. Franck

The temple proved to be a great stone building surrounded by a massive wall. Four thousand statues of Hindu gods—so our guide-book told us—adorned each gateway. They were hideous-faced idols, each pouring down from four pairs of hands his blessings on the half-starved humans who crawled and lay flat on the ground to worship them.

Inside the gates swarmed crowds of pilgrims wearing rags as a punishment for their sins. A sunken-eyed youth wormed his way through the crowd and offered to guide us through the temple for a coin or two. We followed him down a narrow passage to a lead-colored pond in which not very neat pilgrims washed away their sins. Then he led us out upon an open space from which we could see the golden roofs.

“High up within one of those domes lives a god,” whispered the youth, while Marten translated. But when I asked him to lead us up so that we could see the god, he said that white men were never allowed to enter the temple.

He took us, instead, to see the sacred elephants. Seven of the monsters, each chained by a foot, thrashed about over their supper of hay in a roofless stable. They were as ready to accept a tuft of fodder from a heathen sahib as from the dust-covered native pilgrim who had tramped many a burning mile to offer it, so that the holy beast would forgive him his sins. Children played in and out among the animals. The largest was amusing himself by setting the little ones, one by one, on his back.

In a far corner stood an elephant that even the clouted keepers avoided. He was the most sacred of them all, our guide said, for he was mad, and he visited a terrible punishment on any who came within reach of his angrily twisting trunk. Yet the sunken-eyed youth explained to us that if a man were killed by one of these holy animals he was very fortunate: for “if a coolie is killed in that way he will be a farmer when he is born again,” he said; “the peasant will become a shop-keeper, the merchant a warrior, in his next life.” But those present must have been satisfied to remain what they were in life, for we noticed that even the despised sudra was careful to keep away from that far corner.

“And how about a white man?” asked Haywood, when our guide had finished his explanation.

“A sahib,” said our guide, “when he dies, becomes a crow. Therefore are white men afraid to die.”

We rode all night, and arrived at the station of Trichinopoly early the next morning. The city was some miles distant from the station. We called out to the driver of a bullock-cart, offering four annas for the trip to town. (An anna is equal to a cent.) The cart was a heavy two-wheeled affair. When two of us tried to climb in behind, we almost lifted the tiny, raw-boned bullock in mid-air. A screech from the driver called our attention to the danger his beast was in. We jumped down, and allowed him to tell us how to board the cart. While Haywood and the driver went to the front of the vehicle Marten and I stayed at the back. Then, drawing ourselves up on both ends of it, all at the same time, we managed to keep it balanced until we were aboard. The wagon was about four feet long and three wide, with an arched roof. It was too short to lie down in, and too low to sit up in. Haywood crouched beside the driver, sitting on the knife-like edge of the board in front. With his knees drawn up on a level with his eyes, he held on by clinging desperately to the edge of the roof. Marten and I lay on our backs under the roof, with our legs extending out at the rear.

At first the bullock would not move; but after much shouting from the driver he set out with little mincing steps, like a man in a sack race—a lame man at that. The driver screamed shrilly, struck the animal a dozen heavy whacks with his long pole, and forced him into a trot that lasted just four paces. Then the animal slowly shook his head from side to side, and fell again into a walk. This was repeated several times during the trip—always with the same result. The cart had no springs, and the road was like an empty stone-quarry. We were bounced up and down during the whole trip, until we fancied our bones rattled.

We grew very hungry, and Marten ordered the driver to take us to an eating-shop. The native grinned to himself and drove toward a sahib hotel. We called out to him, telling him that that place was too high-priced for us. He shook his head mournfully, and said that he knew of no native shop where white men were allowed to enter. We bumped by more than a dozen restaurants, but all bore the sign, “For Hindus Only.”