and new sights at every stride - castes he knew and castes that
were altogether out of his experience.

They met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented Sansis with baskets
of lizards and other unclean food on their backs, their lean dogs
sniffing at their heels. These people kept their own side of the
road', moving at a quick, furtive jog-trot, and all other castes
gave them ample room; for the Sansi is deep pollution. Behind them,
walking wide and stiffly across the strong shadows, the memory of
his leg-irons still on him, strode one newly released from the
jail; his full stomach and shiny skin to prove that the Government
fed its prisoners better than most honest men could feed
themselves. Kim knew that walk well, and made broad jest of it as
they passed. Then an Akali, a wild-eyed, wild-haired Sikh devotee
in the blue-checked clothes of his faith, with polished-steel
quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban, stalked
past, returning from a visit to one of the independent Sikh States,
where he had been singing the ancient glories of the Khalsa to
College-trained princelings in top-boots and white-cord breeches.
Kim was careful not to irritate that man; for the Akali's temper is
short and his arm quick. Here and there they met or were overtaken
by the gaily dressed crowds of whole villages turning out to some
local fair; the women, with their babes on their hips, walking
behind the men, the older boys prancing on sticks of sugar-cane,
dragging rude brass models of locomotives such as they sell for a
halfpenny, or flashing the sun into the eyes of their betters from
cheap toy mirrors. One could see at a glance what each had bought;
and if there were any doubt it needed only to watch the wives
comparing, brown arm against brown arm, the newly purchased dull
glass bracelets that come from the North-West. These merry-makers