ON TRAIN FROM BOMBAY TO BARODA
Forest solitudes begin where Bombay ends.
Flights of parrots escort the train.Monkeys hurry chattering along the rails and make us laugh at their antics.O you fortunate creatures of the sun,who are not condemned to waste away in the meagre light of the North !
Over the horizon, the dusty,sun-scorched tableland of Central India comes into view.Even deeper the railway bores its way into the hills.
But not even here,do we leave all traces of civilization behind us.Aggressive advertisement boards of the Taj-Mahal Hotel pursue us into the interior.Like naughty boys who mischievously deface respectable trees with their sign-manual,a parsee has callously desecrated the romantic atmosphere of the landscape here.
For my travelling companions I had a married couple from the Land of Illimitable Possibilities.He was a major,and she was in command.You clever,pretty American women,what other arrangement would be conceivable?
Mrs. B was pleased to recount her triumphs in Bombay.In honour of her,the Governor gave a ball; an Indian Croesus plunged into the expenses of a wedding;an eminent Parsee arranged his own burial.An extra-special performance in Pingra-Pol,the well known Hindoo veterinary hospital.Here necessitous poor coined their blood into cash by giving themselves up at a price to be cupped by fleas and bugs.Everywhere the Bostonian was the focus of admiration.how well worth while India seemed to her: an American Vicereine,Governors of ancient lineage,coloured millionaires,fire-worshippers doomed to vultures! An asylum of sickly cows,of broken-down horses,of hens suffering from cataract,of apes covered by ulcers,birds lame of wing,of half-dead flies,of dying insects.And once again,she rapturously recalled the happy fate of the bugs.
Our train stopped at many little stations,and the American patroness of pur dumb friends conscientiously made use of every stop to keep her servant on the trot.
She facetiously called him Twelve,because he was her twelfth within three weeks.
Poor Twelve ! you too will soon be about ready for the Pingra-Pol !
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