A tall Sikh, with his great red turban awry and his brown kaki uniform torn and soiled, pushed through the bamboo chicks and into my presence.
He was dragging a small bit of naked humanity by the folds of its faded cotton sarong.
The powerful soldier was hot and flushed, and a little stream of blood trickling from his finger tips showed where they had come in contact with his captive’s teeth. It was as though an elephant had been worried by a pariah cur.
Baboo and the Sikh
“It was as though an elephant had been worried by a pariah cur”
“Your Excellency,” he said, salaaming and gasping for breath.
“It is Baboo, the Harimau-Anak!”
Baboo wrenched from the guard’s grasp and glided up to my desk. The back of his open palm went to his forehead, and his big brown eyes looked up appealingly into mine.
“What is it, Tiger-Child?” I asked, bestowing on him the title the Malays of Kampong Glam had given him as a perpetual reminder of his famous adventure.