The bullock cart crawled on. The coolie ran screaming into the hut and reappeared with three banana leaves, a wife, and a multitude of naked urchins, all but the youngest of whom carried a cocoanut shell filled with water or curries. These being deposited within reach, the native spread the leaves before us, and his better half dumped in the center of each a small peck of rice that burned our over-eager fingers. The meal over, we rose to depart; but the native shrieked with dismay and insisted that we carry the leaves and shells away with us, as no member of his family dared touch them.
We wandered on through the bazaars towards the towering rock at the summit of which sits Tommy Atkins, puffing drowsily at his pipe, in utter indifference to the approach of that day when his soul, in punishment for eating of the flesh of the sacred cow, shall take up its residence in the body of a pig. Our dinner had been more abundant than substantial. Within an hour I caught myself eyeing the food spread out in the open booths on either side. There were coils of rope-like pastry fried in oil, lumps, balls, cakes of sweetmeats, chappatties—bread-sheets smaller and more brittle than those of the Arab—pans of dark red chillies, potatoes cut into small cubes and covered with a green curry sauce. The Hindu is as much given to nibbling as the Mohammedan. By choice, perhaps, he would eat seldom and heartily, but he lives the most literally from hand to mouth of any human creature, and no sooner earns a half-anna than he hurries away to sacrifice it to his ever-unsatisfied hunger. The coolie is rarely permitted to enter a Hindu restaurant, the white man never; and brief were the intervals during my wanderings in India that I lived on other fare than that of the low-caste native. The prices could not have been lower, but to eat of the messes displayed under the ragged awnings of Indian shops requires an imperturbable temperament, an unrestrainable appetite, and a taste for edible fire acquired only by Oriental residence.
There are caste rules, too, of which I was supremely ignorant when I dropped behind my companions and aroused a shopkeeper asleep among his pots and pans. For months I had been accustomed, in my linguistic ignorance, to pick out my own food; but no sooner had I laid hand on a sweetmeat than the merchant shot into the air with an agonized scream that brought my fellow-countrymen running back upon me.
“What’s the nigger bawling about, Marten?” demanded Haywood.
“Oh, Franck’s gone and polluted his pan of sweets.”
“But I only touched the one I picked up,” I protested, “and I’m going to eat that.”
“These fool niggers won’t see it that way,” replied Marten; “if you put a finger on one piece, the whole dish is polluted. He’s sending for a low-caste man now to carry the panful away and dump it. Nobody’ll buy anything while it stays here.”
The keeper refused angrily to enter into negotiations after this disaster and we moved on to the next booth. Under the tutelage of Marten, I stood afar off and pointed a respectful finger from one dish to another. The proprietor, obeying my orders of “ek annika do, cheh pisika da” (one anna of that, six pice of this) filled several canoe-shaped sacks made of leaves sewn together with thread-like weeds, and, motioning to me to stand aloof, dropped the bundles into my hands, taking care to let go of each before it had touched my palm.
Go where we would, the cry of pollution preceded us. The vendor of green cocoanuts entreated us to carry away the shells when we had drunk the milk; passing natives sprang aside in terror when we tossed a banana skin on the ground. The seller of water melons would have been compelled to sacrifice his entire stock if one seed of the slice in our hands had fallen on the extreme edge of the banana leaf that covered his stand.
As we turned a corner in the crowded market place, Haywood, who was smoking, accidentally spat on the flowing gown of a turbaned passer-by.