Under the Big Dipper
9781465627278
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
INDIA the wonderful—India the home of Buddha and the land of mystery and misery. The country of glorious traditions and unsatisfied desires! What ambitions have not been dreamed, what visions not conjured in your cause! Assyrian and Greek, Mongol and Parsee, Portuguese rover, Dutch trader, Russian diplomat and English merchant prince—all have sought thee and thy wealth, all have fought and striven, chicaned and murdered, sneaked and schemed—for thy gold and dominion over thy people. And the result? A land teeming with beings abject and low; a land where Paradise might have been nestling amongst the giant hills of the North, now laid waste and desolated of its ancient splendors—a land of dreams, but a land of unfulfilled desires. The country of caste and the grave of unborn ambitions; the country of dirt and superstition; the cradle of plagues and epidemics and famines; the land of the noblest palaces and temples, as well as of the meanest hovels which serve as dwellings for its sad-eyed patient inhabitants. And over all rises and sets the sun of the tropics, over all shine the moon of Gautama and the stars of Zoroaster. Over all there rest the curses of disease, dirt and ignorance, the ready tools of greed and lust of power, the outcome of lack of coherence and the terrible rule of classes. This cradle of humanity is still a couch of prodigious productiveness—and to our eternal shame be it confessed—these all-enduring, passive, gazelle-like creatures are really white—white like we are, of the same color as are the gay crowds of Hyde Park, or the Boulevards of Paris, Rome or Vienna, New York or Boston! And older as race and nearer to Eden than any of these. They pray to Brahma and many-armed Shiva, to Buddha and Mohammed, to the sun and fire of Zoroaster—and even to the cobra of the jungle; but forlorn and without hope as they seemingly are, they are still human beings. Along the dusty highway leading from Madras to Pondisherry, well inland and therefore removed from the life-giving breezes of the Coromandel coast and the Bay of Bengal, under a straggling group of ficus, a native dwelling on low stilts raises its squalid roof above the yellow grime of its surroundings. From the distant hills resounds the shrill blast of the locomotive; every once in a while the contour of gently rolling land permits a glimpse of a curious looking behatted smokestack, copied after the model of early Pacific days, belching soot and smoke, and pulling noisily amidst groans and creaks their little dingy cars. Along the highway the ungainly telegraph poles with their odd crosspieces copied after the favorite gallows-construction of remote rural England, bear witness to the encroaching hand of western civilization on the land. Even India is now but another source of supply for trade and commerce. Near this native structure, in the shade of a clump of hybiscus and a few doleful fig trees, some saddle-horses and donkeys are tethered; sprawling in the deep weed-like grass and scrubby undergrowth a number of natives with swathed limbs and streaky, greasy turbans are contemplating with expressionless mien the cloudless sky in which float and soar buzzards and vultures upon seeming motionless wings. At some distance from this group and seated on a well-filled saddle-bag, a European is smoking a cigarette, as if unaware of the proximity of his humbler companions.
