Strange Men Strange Places Page 9

  MESSRS. PISTI & PELEKANOS

  104, Clive Street,

  Are now in a position to offer their customers and friends genuine Egyptian Cigarettes and choice Turkey Tobacco, fresh consignments of which are received every fortnight.

  Also Manilla, Burma, and Trichinopoly Cigars, of the best qualities, various Meerschaum Pipes, Cigar and Cigarette Holders, Russian Caviare, Italian Macaroni, Pure Ground Coffee, and finest Bath and Toilet Sponges.

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  The following are some testimonials for Darlington's Pain-Curer:

  Baboo Kunny Lal of Jumna Pershad & Co., Bankers of Muzuf-ferpore, writes: — "Please send me another dozen small bottles of Darlington's Pain-Curer. I have used it on the ringworm, and pains on the back, and it has cured them."

  Mr. Geo. Kiernander, Inspector of Customs, Calcutta, writes: — "Kindly send me a large-sized bottle of Darlington's Pain-Curer. I find its effects wonderful in relieving troublesome coughs."

  His Highness Raja Pratab Sah of Tehri Garhwal State, N.W. Provinces, writes: — "It affords me much pleasure in informing you that the two bottles of Darlington's Pain-Curer which I took from you has given me an extraordinary relief from the rheumatism I have been suffering since last 6 months. Therefore I request you to send me 2 bottles more (large size) as I wish to take this valuable medicine with me on my tour towards the Himalaya mountains."

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  THE "SOUTH INDIAN POST"

  Published Weekly.

  Rates of Subscription,

  One Rupee per Mensem.

  ADVERTISING RATES,

  One anna per line for each insertion.

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  SCOTCH WHISKEY

  "BENVORLICH WHISKEY"

  As supplied to the Houses of Parliament.

  Without doubt the finest ever imported into India,

  Rs. 24 per case.

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  AMERICAN KEROSENE OIL

  Devoe's Imperial Brilliant,

  Per case of two — (10 gallons) Rs. 4-8-0

  Special rates for 10 cases and upwards.

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  SIMPLE, SAFE AND CERTAIN:

  HOLLOWAY'S OINTMENT

  Is a certain remedy for bad legs, bad breasts, and ulcerations of all kinds. It acts miraculously in healing ulcerations, curing skin diseases, and in arresting and subduing all inflammations.

  MR. J. T. COOPER,

  in his account of his extraordinary travels in China, published in 1871, says, "I had with me a quantity of Holloway's Ointment. I gave some to the people, and nothing could exceed their gratitude, and, in consequence, milk, fowls, butter, and horse-leed poured in upon us, until at last a teaspoonful of ointment was worth a fowl and any quantity of peas, and the demand became so great that I was obliged to lock up the remaining stock."

  Sold throughout the Civilized World.

  Moderately priced.

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  HORSES.

  A. MILTON & CO.

  Have on hand for Commission Sale a large number of

  WALERS ! WALERS ! WALERS !

  Imported ex Ship Rialto and Argus by the well-known

  Shipper, MR. WM. MACKLIN.

  The Ship "Cingalese" has arrived with a shipment of 170 horses and a number of Racing Ponies, specially selected for the Calcutta Market. They are now arranged for inspection at our Horse Mart.

  CRUSHED FOOD.

  For Horses at Rs. 2-2 per maund.

  For Cattle at Rs. 1-10 per maund.

  Exclusive of tags.

  Every attention paid to Sick Horses.

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  THE AKHBAR-I-SOUDAGUR,

  SUMACHARDURPUN & BÓMBAYCHABOOK

  OR

  The Native Merchants' Daily Gazette.

  The First and the Most Widely Circulated

  Goojrathee Daily Paper in Bombay

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  DR KING'S DANDELION and QUININE

  Liver Pills (without Mercury).

  The Best Remedy for Biliousness, Stomach Derangement, Flatulence, Pains Between the Shoulders, Bad Appetite, Indigestion, Acidity, Head-Ache, Heart Burn, and all other symptoms of disordered liver and dyspepsia.

  —————

  INFALLIBLE, SUCCESSFUL and SURE CURE

  For CHOLERA

  Parties are requested to inform MRS. LUCAS, at 254 and 255, Bow-Bazar Street, without delay and loss of time. Charges according to the circumstances of patients.

  Mrs. Lucas begs to state that no surgical operations will be performed but simply a few drops of her most valuable medicine will be administered.

  GLORIES OF THE HOOKAH

  HE MUSIC OF ITS SOUND puts the warbling of the nightingale to shame, and the fragrance of its perfume brings a blush to the cheek of the rose."

  It was with these words that a Persian poet went into rhapsodies over the hookah, the smoking of which had become fashionable with the nobles of Akbar's court shortly after tobacco, "the fragrant weed," had been introduced into India. Akbar himself did not smoke; but hookah-smoking was considered a cool and wholesome habit, and when the Persian fashion took India by storm, Maharajas and Nawabs found in the hookah a new object of luxury, and one capable of endless decoration. They opened up a new field for artistic talent. Silver State Hookahs were of considerable height, running to three feet, with coils of tubing which terminated in a silver mouthpiece. Some of copper gilt, with a very rich deep blue and enamel, were works of great beauty. The "Chillum", or upper bowl which contained the tobacco, was itself a work of art.

  There have been many variants of the hookah, from Sind to Tanjore, and a South Indian variant is the "Narghile", which has a bowl made of a real coconut, usually mounted in silver.

  The "hubble-bubble" — as the hookah was sometimes called by Europeans — became very popular with Englishmen who came out to India during the second half of the eighteenth century. This was a period when Englishmen readily took to Indian customs and pastimes, a happy attitude that was to disappear with the advent, in the following century, of Victorian prudery and Christian evangelicism. After 1857, few Englishmen smoked hookhas. But in Warren Hastings' time, the hookah was a respectable household article in both Indian and European households. When Mrs. Hastings was sending out invitations to a concert, she begged that no servants be brought, with the sole exception of "hukka-bardars" — men responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of their masters' hookahs.

  "It is chiefly in Bengal", wrote de Grandpre in 1789, "when smoking after meals is customary that the hukka is in use. Every hukka-bardar prepares separately that of his master in an adjoining apartment, and entering together with the dessert, they range around the table. It is scarcely possible to see through the clouds of smoke which fill the apartment. The rage of smoking extends even to the ladies, and the highest compliment they can pay a man is to give him preference by smoking his hukka. In this case it is a point of politeness to take off the mouthpiece he is using and substitute a fresh one; which he presents to the lady with his hukka, who soon returns it."

  The hukka-bardar's chief duty was to have the hookah ready whenever his master wanted it. His duties were not as light, as they might seem. The "snake" of the hookah — a flexible tube some fifteen feet long — had to be kept clean. Mixing the tobacco with cinnamon and molasses, and adding musk or rose-water to the bowl, were time-consuming duties. In order that the smoke might pass easily through the "snake", this had to be kept moist. And to prevent the clothes of the smoker from getting wet, it was usual to wrap a cloth round the part of the pipe near the mouthpiece.

  Some smokers expected their hukka-bardars to make all the necessary purchases of tobacco, spices, molasses, fireballs, chil-lums and pipes. The best tobacco was reputed to come from Bilsa in the Bombay area, but only a small portion of it, was used in the mix. The average hukka-bardar used to make something for himself out of supplying tobacco. More 'Bilsa tobacco' was sold than was ever grown!


  When the hukka-bardar brought the hookah to his master, he usually brought along with it a small carpet of some pleasing design. The pleasures of smoking were enhanced by a background of soothing colour and design. It was considered a grave offence to step over someone else's hookah-carpet while he was smoking. On one occasion this resulted in a duel with pistols, but the adversaries missed each other completely.

  When the Persian fashion took India by storm, Maharajahs and Nawabs found in hookahs a new object of luxury and one capable of intricate decoration. It opened up a new field for artistic talent. These silver State Hookahs were of considerable height, running to three feet, with coils of tubing which terminate in a silver mouth-piece. The one in the illustration is 30 inches high. Some, of copper gilt with a very rich deep blue and green enamel, were works of great beauty. The "Chillum", or upper bowl which contained the tobacco, was itself a work of art. (See opposite page).

  Great Indian Hookah

  Hookah-smoking went completely out of fashion with Europeans in the nineteenth century. Mrs. Fenton, describing her first dinner in Calcutta, made the sad observation that "dinner terminated in cheroot-smoking by all but myself." Women did not take as kindly to the cheroot as they had to the hookah. For one thing, sharing a cheroot with one's admirer wasn't a very elegant procedure. At Madras, in 1860, we are told there were only a handful of Europeans who smoked the hookah. These were elderly gentlemen who had come out to India some forty years back, and who refused to break with their old habits.

  The general decline of hookah-smoking probably had something to do with the advent of more strenuous living conditions. The "hubble-bubble" was always a time-consuming apparatus: ideal in days when an official did not have too much work, when books and newspapers were scarce, when there were no railways, no cars, no clubs, no radios, no cinemas — and when home-leave was taken, at the most, once in the course of a man's service, as compared to the frequent transfers within and without the country that became a feature of life in India during the nineteenth century. Douglas Dewar informs us that some Englishmen did take hookahs back to England; but, without the right tobacco, spices and molasses, the mere ornament in the home, a "hubble-bubble" soon became a curiosity, smoked only by the philosophizing Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland.

  In India today, the red earthenware hookah is still a feature of village life; but it is losing ground in the cities, where it is smoked only by a few of the older generation. I do not know of any teenagers who smoke a hookah — a pity, because it is certainly cleaner and healthier than most other smokes.

  But the hookah really belongs to another age — an age when men took their pleasures ceremoniously, when Time was not worshipped, and when the minutes were, somehow, slower in passing than they are today.

  GRANDFATHER'S EARTHQUAKE

  F EVER THERE'S A CALAMITY," Grandmother used to say, "it will find Grandfather in his bath." Grandfather loved his bath — which he took in a large round aluminium tub — and sometimes spent as long as an hour in it, 'wallowing' as he called it, and splashing around like a boy.

  He was in his bath during the earthquake that convulsed Bengal and Assam on 12 June 1897 — an earthquake so severe that even today the region of the great Brahmaputra river basin hasn't settled down. Not long ago it was reported that the entire Shillong plateau had moved an appreciable distance away from the Brahmaputra towards the Bay of Bengal. According to the Geological Survey of India, this shift has been taking place gradually over the past eighty years.

  Had Grandfather been alive, he would have added one more clipping to his scrapbook on the earthquake. The clipping goes in anyway, because the scrapbook is now with his children. More than newspaper accounts of the disaster, it was Grandfather's own letters and memoirs that made the earthquake seem recent and vivid; for he, along with Grandmother and two of their children (one of them my father), was living in Shillong, a picturesque little hill station in Assam, when the earth shook and the mountains heaved.

  As I have mentioned, Grandfather was in his bath, splashing about, and did not hear the first rumbling. But Grandmother was in the garden, hanging out or taking in the washing (she could never remember which) when, suddenly, the animals began making a hideous noise — a sure intimation of a natural disaster, for animals sense the approach of an earthquake much more quickly than humans.

  The crows all took wing, wheeling wildly overhead and cawing loudly. The chickens flapped in circles, as if they were being chased. Two dogs siting on the verandah suddenly jumped up and ran out with their tails between their legs. Within half a minute of her noticing the noise made by the animals, Grandmother heard a rattling, rumbling noise, like the approach of a train.

  The noise increased for about a minute, and then there was the first trembling of the ground. The animals by this time all seemed to have gone mad. Treetops lashed backwards and forwards, doors banged and windows shook, and Grandmother swore later that the house actually swayed in front of her. She had difficulty in standing straight, though this could have been due more to the trembling of her knees than to the trembling of the ground.

  The first shock lasted for about a minute and a half. "I was in my tub having a bath," Grandfather wrote for posterity, "which for the first time in the last two months I had taken in the afternoon instead of in the morning. My wife and children and the ayah were downstairs. Then the shock came, accompanied by a loud rumbling sound under the earth and a quaking which increased in intensity every second. It was like putting so many shells in a basket, and shaking them up with a rapid sifting motion from side to side.

  "At first I did not realize what it was that caused my tub to sway about and the water to splash. I rose up, and found the earth heaving, while the wash-stand, basin, ewer, cups and glasses danced and rocked about in the most hideous fashion. I rushed to the inner door to open it and search for wife and children, but could not move the dratted door as boxes, furniture and plaster had come up against it. The back door was the only way of escape. I managed to burst it open, and, thank God, was able to get out. Sections of the thatched roof had slithered down on the four sides like a pack of cards and blocked all the exits and entrances.

  "With only a towel wrapped around my waist, I ran out into the open to the front of the house, but found only my wife there. The whole front of the house was blocked by the fallen section of thatch from the roof. Through this I broke my way under the iron railings and extricated the others. The bearer had pluckily borne the weight of the whole thatched roof section on his back as it had slithered down, and in this way saved the ayah and children from being crushed beneath it."

  After the main shock of the earthquake had passed, minor shocks took place at regular intervals of five minutes or so, all through the night. But during that first shake-up the town of Shillong was reduced to ruin and rubble. Everything made of masonry was brought to the ground. Government House, the post office, the jail, all tumbled down. When the jail fell, the prisoners, instead of making their escape, sat huddled on the road waiting for the Superintendent to come to their aid.

  "The ground began to heave and shake," wrote a young girl in a newspaper called The Englishman. "I stayed on my bicycle for a second, and then fell off and got up and tried to run, staggering about from side to side of the road. To my left I saw great clouds of dust, which I afterwards discovered to be houses falling and the earth slipping from the sides of the hills. To my right I saw the small dam at the end of the lake torn asunder and the water rushing out, the wooden bridge across the lake break in two and the sides of the lake falling in; and at my feet the ground cracking and opening. I was wild with fear and didn't know which way to turn."

  The lake rose up like a mountain, and then totally disappeared, leaving only a swamp of red mud. Not a house was left standing. People were rushing about, wives looking for husbands, parents looking for children, not knowing whether their loved ones were alive or dead. A crowd of people had collected on the cricket ground, which was considered the safest
place; but Grandfather and the family took shelter in a small shop on the road outside his house. The shop was a rickety wooden structure, which had always looked as though it would fall down in a strong wind. But it withstood the earthquake.

  And then the rain came and it poured. This was extraordinary, because before the earthquake there wasn't a cloud to be seen; but, five minutes after the shock, Shillong was enveloped in cloud and mist. The shock was felt for more than a hundred miles on the Assam-Bengal Railway. A train was overturned at Shamshernagar; another was derailed at Mantolla. Over a thousand people lost their lives in the Cherrapunji Hills, and in other areas, too, the death roll was heavy.

  The Brahmaputra burst its banks and many cultivators were drowned in the flood. A tiger was found drowned. And in North Bhagalpur, where the earthquake started, two elephants sat down in the bazaar and refused to get up until the following morning.

  Over a hundred men who were at work in Shillong's Government printing press were caught in the building when it collapsed, and, though the men of a Gurkha regiment did splendid rescue work, only a few were brought out alive. One of those killed in Shillong was Mr McCabe, a British official. Grandfather described the ruins of Mr McCabe's house: "Here a bedpost, there a sword, a broken desk or chair, a bit of torn carpet, a well-known hat with its Indian Civil Service colours, battered books, all speaking reminiscences of the man we mourn."

  While most houses collapsed where they stood, Government House, it seems, 'fell backwards'. The church was a mass of red stones in ugly disorder. The organ was a tortured wreck.