Thousands of people in Bombay sleep on the sidewalk at night. They completely cover their head and face, placing a piece of old cloth under them—if so fortunate as to have something of that sort—lie down, and sleep until morning. One wonders they do not die of suffocation.
Usually the temperature is cooler at night than by day, but such is not the case in Bombay, the weather being hotter at night during the summer season than in the daytime, when a breeze generally blows, and ceases at sundown. Then perspiration seems just to boil out of one's body. Bombay being built on an island, with water on all sides, one would naturally think air would be noticeably stirring at night, but instead the bays at this time of year are usually as calm as a mill pond. We reached this country the end of September, and for three weeks following the weather would not permit of even a sheet covering at night. The weather is indeed hot in India.
The monsoons, or rains, begin the latter end of May, and continue until the first of September. The rain comes in showers, the sun shining between, when steam continually rises from the ground. White women go to the mountains before the monsoons, on account of the trying nature of the weather, and also after the monsoons have ceased. The weather in India is very depressing to white women.
Were one to walk about with bare arms on a cloudy day they would become blistered. If one walked ten feet without head covering, he would be apt to fall from sunstroke as quickly as if felled by a blow.
Bombay, the fourth city of the British Empire, has a population of a million, 15,000 of whom are said to be Europeans, but it is doubtful if there be that number of full-blooded whites in the city. Of this population, it would be interesting to know what percentage wear shoes. Some Parsis do so, others wear sandals; but no Hindus or Mohammedans wear shoes, and but a small minority are seen with sandals. These are worn only while walking, for it is the custom to leave their sandals outside the entrance of a building or home and enter in bare feet. No matter where they may be, the sandals are discarded at all times when they are not actually walking, and when sitting down their feet are partly concealed under them.
Hindus and Mohammedans do not eat pork, as they consider the meat unclean; neither is beef eaten by Hindus. This is the reason why beef sells for five cents a pound. A cow is considered a sacred animal by the Hindu, and therefore not to be eaten. A shoemaker or saddler, or any one working with leather, is of very low caste, according to Hindu social rating.
In the Five Towers of Silence, located on Malabar Hill, the Parsi dead are disposed of, the method employed being one of the strangest customs practiced. A long, stone stairway leads to where the bodies are placed on an iron grating, which takes four men to carry it. Here are five cylinders, of three compartments each, 276 feet around and 25 feet high, resembling a circular gridiron, with a depression toward the center. Under the depressed portion of the cylinder is a well. Bodies are laid on the grating naked—adult males on the outside compartment, women on the center, and children near the well. Bald-headed vultures being numerous in the trees growing about the Towers, half an hour after a corpse has been placed on the gridiron every particle of flesh will be stripped from the bones by these vultures. The skeleton remains on the grating, exposed to sun and wind, until it has become dry; then the body-carriers, with tongs, remove the bones into the well. This method of disposing of bodies, instead of by cremation, is due to the Parsis regarding fire as too sacred to be polluted by burning the dead, and water and earth are equally revered. The bones and dust going into the same well is in keeping with one of the tenets of their religion—namely, that rich and poor must meet in death. The Parsis are followers of Zoroaster, who is said to have brought sacred fire from heaven, which is still kept burning in consecrated spots, while some of the temples are built over subterranean furnaces.
Bhisti (Water-Carrier).
India.
See page [293].