There are certain clubs in the city where a man may purchase nightly
oblivion for the modest sum of two or three annas; and hither come
regularly, like homing pigeons at nightfall, the human flotsam and jetsam,
which the tide of urban life now tosses into sight for a brief moment and
now submerges within her bosom. Halt in that squalid lane which looks out
upon the traffic of one of the most crowded thoroughfares and listen, if
you will, for some sign of life in the dark, ungarnished house which towers
above you. All is hushed in silence; no voice, no cry from within reaches
the ear; the chal must be tenanted only by the shadows. Not so! At the far
end of a passage, into which the sullage water drips, forming ill-smelling
pools, a greasy curtain is suddenly lifted for a minute, disclosing several
flickering lights girt about with what in the distance appear to be
amorphous blocks of wood or washerman's bundles. Grope your way down the
passage, push aside the curtain with your stick--it is far too foul to
touch with the hand--and the mystery is made plain. The room with its
tightly-closed shutters and smoke-blackened walls is filled with recumbent
men, in various stages of _deshabille_, all sunk in the sleep which
the bamboo-pipe and the little black pellets of opium ensure. The room is
not a large one, for the habitual smoker prefers a small apartment, in
which the fumes of the drug hang about easily; and its reeking walls are
unadorned save with a chromo plan of the chief buildings at Mecca, a crude
portrait of a Hindu goddess, and oleographs of British royalty. It were all
the same if these were absent; for the opium-smoker comes not hither to see
pictures, save those which the drugged brain fashions, and cares not for
distinctions of race, creed or sovereignty. The proprietor of the club may
be a Musalman; his patrons may be Hindus, Christians or Chinese; and the
dreams which riot across the semi-consciousness of the latter are not
concerned as a rule with heroes of either the spiritual or temporal kind.