[1] Gardener.
[2] Was this narrative of feminine sagacity invented by some old woman, who felt aggrieved at the general contempt entertained for her sex?
THE NARRATOR’S NARRATIVE.
MY grandfather’s family were of the Lingaet caste, and lived in Calicut; but they went and settled near Goa at the time the English were there. It was there my grandfather became a Christian. He and his wife, and all the family, became Christians at once, and when his father heard it he was very angry, and turned them all out of the house. There were very few Christians in those days. Now you see Christians everywhere, but then we were very proud to see one anywhere. My grandfather was Havildar[3] in the English army, and when the English fought against Tippo Sahib, my grandmother followed him all through the war. She was a very tall, fine, handsome woman, and very strong; wherever the regiment marched she went, on, on, on, on (great deal hard work that old woman done). Plenty stories my granny used to tell about Tippo and how Tippo was killed, and about Wellesley Sahib, and Monro Sahib, and Malcolm Sahib, and Elphinstone Sahib.[4] Plenty things had that old woman heard and seen. Ah, he was a good man, Elphinstone Sahib! My granny used often to tell us how he would go down and say to the soldiers, “Baba,[5] Baba, fight well. Win the battles, and each man shall have his cap full of money; and after the war is over I’ll send every one of you to his own home.” (And he did do it.) Then we children plenty proud, when we heard what Elphinstone Sahib had said. In those days the soldiers were not low-caste people like they are now. Many, very high-caste men, and come from very far, from Goa, and Calicut, and Malabar to join the English.
My father was a tent lascar,[6] and when the war was over my grandfather had won five medals for all the good he had done, and my father had three; and my father was given charge of the Kirkee stores.[7] My grandmother and mother, and all the family, were in those woods behind Poona at time of the battle at Kirkee.[8] I’ve often heard my father say how full the river was after the battle—baggage and bundles floating down, and men trying to swim across—and horses and all such a bustle. Many people got good things on that day. My father got a large chattee,[9] and two good ponies that were in the river, and he took them home to camp; but when he got there the guard took them away. So all his trouble did him no good.
We were poor people, but living was cheap, and we had plenty comfort.
In those days house rent did not cost more than half a rupee[10] a month, and you could build a very comfortable house for a hundred rupees. Not such good houses as people now live in, but well enough for people like us. Then a whole family could live as comfortably on six or seven rupees a month as they can now on thirty. Grain, now a rupee a pound, was then two annas a pound. Common sugar, then one anna a pound, is now worth four annas a pound. Oil which then sold for six pice a bottle, now costs four annas. Four annas’ worth of salt, chillies, tamarinds, onions and garlic, would then last a family a whole month; now the same money would not buy a week’s supply. Such dungeree[11] as you now pay half rupee a yard for, you could then buy from twenty to forty yards of, for the rupee. You could not get such good calico then as now, but the dungeree did very well. Beef then was a pice a pound, and the vegetables cost a pie a day. For half a rupee you could fill the house with wood. Water also was much cheaper. You could then get a man to bring you two large skins full, morning and evening, for a pie; now he would not do it under half a rupee or more. If the children came crying for fruit, a pie would get them as many guavas as they liked in the bazaar. Now you’d have to pay that for each guava. This shows how much more money people need now than they did then.[12]
The English fixed the rupee to the value of sixteen annas, in those days there were some big annas, and some little ones, and you could sometimes get twenty-two annas for a rupee.
I had seven brothers and one sister. Things were very different in those days to what they are now. There were no schools then to send the children to; it was only the great people who could read and write. If a man was known to be able to write he was plenty proud, and hundreds and hundreds of people would come to him to write their letters. Now you find a pen and ink in every house! I don’t know what good all this reading and writing does. My grandfather couldn’t write, and my father couldn’t write, and they did very well; but all’s changed now.