In Kali's Country: Tales from Sunny India
Emily Churchill Thompson Sheets
9781465659729
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The five years will be up to-morrow. When the sun rises next upon the festival of Kali I shall have completed my vow. Scarcely had the holy man been able to say his prayers or repeat his sacred texts the whole day long, for there had been constantly before his mind the knowledge that this was the last day of his self-imposed sacrifices and that the next day he would be free from all restraints to do—what? Over and over had the thought repeated itself in the man's mind until now, unconsciously, he had given utterance to it and the stout, sleek priest of Kali who chanced to be standing beside his shelter, looked down upon him in surprise. "What vow, most holy one?" he courteously inquired. "For many years thou hast sat here at the ghat, the most honoured and revered of all the holy men this side the temple of our Goddess Kali. Was this thy vow—to sit thus in ashes?" The fakir started at the priest's voice, for his own remarks had been unconscious, and, looking up at his interrogator, he seemed slowly to comprehend that he had spoken aloud and that the priest had heard his words. "Yes, Priest of Kali," he said, dropping his eyes and poking the little fire before him with his sacred tongs. "Perhaps you of the holy priesthood can answer a question for me," he added slowly after a moment, without looking up. The fat, half-naked priest, not loath to take advantage of any opportunity to do nothing, especially when at the same time he was being religious by talking with a holy man, dropped lazily to the pavement beside the fakir's rude shelter of a bit of thatch on four poles and, waving for a hookah from the rest-house across the narrow street, settled himself to listen in comfort. But before the holy man propounded his question, for a few minutes he seemed to have forgotten about it. His keen, dark eyes, after turning thoughtfully from one side to the other of the small paved square in front of him, looked across the sluggish brown stream at the foot of the steps to the opposite bank where a few people were bathing in the water, and beyond to where were crowded close together the small mud houses of the native section of a great Indian city. While he gazed thus, the young priest took several puffs at the long pipe, leering lazily the while at two pretty girls who had come from the street into the square and, pausing before the fakir, timidly had placed a few pice on the dirty cloth spread out before him, but, seeing the leer of the priest, hastened to pull their saris over their faces and pass hurriedly down the steps to the sacred Ganges. The holy man had not noticed the girls, nor did he seem to see the rest of the crowd of people who walked back and forth through the little square, having come to throw flowers upon the river or to bathe in its waters or, having bathed, to lie down and rest in Indian fashion in the roofed verandas charitably provided by rich and merit-seeking Hindus. He did not seem to see any of them, although so many of them brought their offerings of fruit and pice to him that his begging cloth was almost overflowing. Nor did he notice the presence of an American tourist who had stepped into the square and who, with a Murray under one arm and an umbrella under the other, was endeavouring to keep an immense sola, topi, from falling over on his nose while he took a picture of the "freak"; for how else could a globe-trotting American classify a man who, naked all but for a small loin cloth, sat cross-legged upon a deer's skin, his long hair, matted with filth into ropes, wound in a scraggy knot upon his head and his body smeared with ashes from the small fire that burned before him, the marks of white upon his forehead, intelligible only to the Hindu, making his bearded face almost frightful.
