Leaves from a Field Note-Book by John Hartman Morgan
page 35 of 229 (15%)
page 35 of 229 (15%)
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"Because we cannot come nigh unto them. But I, I have slain many men."
"And what is your village?" asks my friend, Major D----, of the I.M.S. "Chorah." "Why, I was there in the Tirah campaign." "Even so, sahib." The Ghurkhas looked on in silence at our symposium, their broad Mongolian faces inscrutable. But Shiva Lal, a Brahmin surgeon, who all this while has been eager to speak, for he is a pundit, and loves the sound of his own voice, here thrust forward his quaint countenance, whose walrus-like moustache conceals a row of teeth projecting like the spokes of a wicker-basket. Softly he rubs his hands and thus he speaks in English: "Sahib, I had charge of a German sahib--wounded. And I said unto him, 'How is it that you, who are Christians, treat the Tommies so? We' (Major D---- looks at me with the hint of a twinkle in his eye--for has he not told me at mess of that surprising change in the Indian vernacular whereby their speech is no longer of "Goora-log" and "Sahib-log" but of "We," which fraternal pronoun is significant of much)--'we shave you and feed you, we wash you and dress your wounds, even as one of ourselves, and you kill our wounded Tommies, yea, and do these things and worse even unto women. Are you not Christians? We' (there is a return to old habits of speech)--'we are only Indians, but I have read in your Bible that if one smite on the one cheek'"--here Shiva Lal, who has now what he loves most in the world, an audience, and is easily histrionic, smites his face mightily on the right side--"'one should turn to him the other. Why is this?'" |
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