Working my Way Around the World

by Harry Alverson Franck; Lena M. Franck

The cook of an eating-shop offered, for three annas, to wash all that I owned except my shoes and helmet. In a colder land I should have had to go to bed until the task was done. But not so in India. The roadsters gathered in the dining-room of the shop saw nothing strange in my costume as I sat down to pass the time in writing letters.

From the back yard, for a time, came the shrieks of my maltreated garments. Then all was silent. In fear and trembling, I stole out to take a look at the remains. But as a dhoby the cook was a failure. There were a few tears in the garments hanging in the blazing sunshine, a button was missing here and there; but that was all. An hour’s work with a ship’s needle sufficed to heal the wounds, though not the scars, of battle.

We left Madras on the train early the next morning. Two days later we were on our way to Puri, the city of the god Juggernaut. Puri lies on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, about two hundred miles south of Calcutta. It is here that the car of the god makes its yearly trip from one temple to another about two miles distant. The car, weighing many tons, is set up outside the temple, and the god Juggernaut, a hideous-faced idol is placed on his throne within. Hundreds of natives rush around the place, screaming and struggling for a chance to pull at the long ropes attached to the car; and, to the sound of strange prayer and song, the procession starts. The great road, fully an eighth of a mile wide, stretches away straight and level to the smaller temple. There was a time, it is said, when natives threw themselves and their children under the great car and let it crush them to death, so that they might win favor with the god; but such events were probably accidents.

We left the train at Khurda Road, and bought tickets to the sacred city. The long train that we boarded was so crowded with natives that there was scarcely room for us.

Night was falling when we stepped off at Puri. The station stood in the open country, and we started off on a tramp to the city fully two miles away. Natives, coming upon us in the darkness along the road of sacrifice, sprang aside in terror and shrieked a long-drawn “Sahib hai!” to warn others to keep away from us. Nearer the city, a hundred families who had come from far had pitched their tents at the edge of the great road.

In the city we were hardly able to buy food. Merchants cried out in anger when they saw us coming toward their tumble-down shacks, and only with much coaxing could we draw one of them out into the street to sell us sweetmeats and fruits. Half the shops sold nothing but dude, which is to say, milk—of bullocks and goats, of course; for the cow is a sacred animal in India. The Hindu thinks the soul of a human being lives in the body of the cow.

We stopped at one shack to buy some of this dude. A wicked-looking youth took our coin cautiously and filled two dishes that looked like flower-pots. I drank the liquid in mine, and stepped forward to put it back on the worm-eaten board that served as counter. The youth sprang at me with a scream of rage and fear; but before the pot had touched the counter Marten knocked it out of my hand and shattered it to pieces on the cobblestones, then smashed his own beside it.

There was not a native hut in Puri that we could enter, and we had nowhere to spend the night. We returned to the station, and asked the agent if we could sit in the two wicker chairs in the waiting-room. He would not let us, but told us of an empty car near the station. We stumbled off through the railway yards, and came upon a first-class coach on a side-track. It was the best “hotel” of our Indian trip—a parlor car containing great couches covered with the softest leather. There were bright copper lamps that we could light after the heavy curtains had been drawn, large mirrors, and running water. No wonder we slept late the next morning.

We were not allowed to go inside the great temple built to house the god Juggernaut, but much could be seen from without. The temple rises in seven domes one above another like the terraced vineyards of the Alps. The steps that wind up and around these domes are half hidden by the horrible-looking statues of gods and misshapen animals. Above them towers the Juggernaut’s throne-room, looking like a cucumber standing on end. Perhaps the builder, when his task was completed, was doomed to lose his hands, like so many successful architects of Asia, so that he could not build anything more wonderful for others.

While we were walking around the temple we came upon one of the sacred bulls starting out on his morning walk past the straw-roofed shops of Puri. He was a sleek, plump beast, with short, stumpy horns and a hump. He seemed as harmless as a child’s pet poodle. We kept him company.