Travel Reference
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He leaned toward an unpaned window and, after a good rasping
hawk, spat through it.
I had no wish to be impolite. Reluctantly I forced the
excruciatingly mushy lumps down. Throughout, various other men
kept ambling over to the windows and spitting tumultuously out
or blowing noses with their fingers and flinging the wobbling results
down into the street below. No wonder people outside covered their
heads. When I'd finally swallowed the last lump, I felt an arm like a
whip with fingers dart from behind and swab at my mouth with a
damp, fetid old towel.
'You
see
!' the rajkumar exclaimed. '
Now
he is happy, this old man.'
The manservant scooped up the bowl and shuffled out. If not happy,
he certainly looked more content with things. I mentioned that I
might like to freshen up, since I'd been travelling since 4:00 a.m.
through a fog of dried mud in 120-degree heat. The rajkumar, now
looking my way as if he vaguely recalled me from somewhere,
announced, 'You can stay in my son's bedroom - he is away.' He
made this sound like an incomparable honour. There was, however,
he added, one drawback: That bedroom was located in the
purdah
area of the palace. All the women of the family lived there, and they
had not only never left the palace in their lives, but had also never
before met a man they weren't related to. I would have to be led
through the area by a eunuch who could warn any loitering women
to clear out of my way. 'And,' the rajkumar added magnanimously,
'you can use my personal bathroom.'
This
is more like it, I thought.
The old deaf-mute led me down various terminally wrecked and
begrimed corridors and more decomposing staircases until we
reached a huge wooden door in what I guessed was the subbasement
level. He struggled with a bolt as thick as my arm and eventually
heaved open the door to reveal what I assumed was a stable of some
kind. Beckoning me inside with a squeak, he indicated a barrel full
of water, a hole in the mud floor flanked by two footprintlike
indentations, a gnawed plastic jug, and a teeny wooden stool upon
which lay a couple of tattered towels. He smiled paternally; gesturing
at all the facilities, then left, hauling the door closed behind him.
I stood assessing things for a few moments.
This
was a maharaja's
