“That’s a Bengali,” Sir Edward said. “He’s wearing what they call the dhoti. All-purpose white garment. Sometimes it hangs almost to the ground like a sarong, or sometimes they tuck it up like that chap, like a loincloth. Sometimes the bounders wear a waistcoat with it, sometimes a shirt with the tails flopping outside. Silly-looking bunch of monkeys, don’t you think?”
A girl whom Julian would have thought no more than ten years of age came alongside and clawed at his arm. In spite of her age, she was carrying a baby. She was grubby, barefoot, and wore a single dirty rag.
She whined, “No mama, no papa. Hungry, hungry, hungry. Money, money, money.”
Julian stared at her, even as they continued to walk.
“Ignore the bloody little bitch,” Sir Edward commanded.
“But she looks like she’s half starving,” Julian said.
“Jolly well be better if she did, you know. Professional. Whole caste of them here in India. Parents were beggars, grandparents, all the way back to the days of Alexander the Great or whoever, don’t you know? See that baby? She probably rented it this morning.”
The child was still tagging along with her burden. “No mama, no papa…” Julian was embarrassed, and looked out of the side of his eyes to see how the passersby were taking the scene.
“Rented it?” he said.
“Why, yes. And sometimes beggar parents take their children and maim them. Twist their legs or arms around, blind them, or whatever, to gain sympathy. Bloody heathens.”
Julian felt slightly nauseated at the idea. He had changed a twenty-dollar traveler’s check at the hotel, and now had a pocketful of rupees and naye paise. He had gotten nearly five rupees to the dollar, to the Englishman’s disgust, and had been informed that on the black market, which Sir Edward offered to direct him to, he could have gotten half again as much. Julian had told him that it wasn’t important.
But, at any rate, he was now in a position to give the ten-year-old a coin or so.
Sir Edward snickered. “You think she is starving? Look at that gold ring in her ear. She’s a professional beggar, specializing in we whites. Some of the other beggars specialize in pilgrims and hang around the temples. Supposedly, the pilgrims gain merit in the eyes of the gods by giving to them. And they usually give one naye paise, about one twentieth of one of your Yankee cents.”
The child beggar followed them at least three or four blocks. In spite of his embarrassment, Julian continued to ignore her. After she dropped away, back into the teeming mob of pedestrians, another beggar, an unbelievably old man, took up the pursuit, whining in some language Julian had never heard before.
The Englishman snorted cynically. “That’s the end of her beat, dear boy. If she continued to follow us, the others would give her a bit of a show at the end of the day. Do you know what would happen if you gave this bloody nigger something?”
Julian said, “Well, no, but he seems to be very old.”
“He’d pass the information along, don’t you know, to his, ah, colleagues. Within ten minutes, you’d have half a dozen of the blighters trailing you.”
Before them reared an enormous Indian building, as large as a cathedral. It must have cost millions, Julian decided, but somehow, for him, it lacked beauty in a country so rich in beggars.
“Mumbadevi Temple,” his guide said. “The town’s jolly well overrun with temples. Hindu temples, Moslem temples, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Jain-ian… I dare say there are hundreds in all. The Zoroastrians have an interesting bit. They don’t believe in either burial or cremation. Up in the Hanging Gardens they have several of what they call Towers of Silence. When one of them dies, his body is put on the top of one of the towers and buzzards come and eat the corpse. After a week or so of exposure, the bones are taken down and thrown into the tower’s well. Bloody gruesome, eh? You can watch the buzzards at work from a nearby hill.”
Julian’s nausea was not diminishing. “I… I don’t think I’d like that.”
He looked at the ornate, towering temple.
A cadaverously thin, barefooted, ragged man who seemingly was about to enter the temple gate suddenly staggered, his eyes popping in horror. Blood gushed from his mouth, spewing out onto the sidewalk. He staggered again, fell forward onto his face.
Julian automatically started forward.
Sir Edward quickly took his arm. “He’s beyond help, dear boy. Probably dead by now. The meat wagon will undoubtedly be along shortly. Besides, how would you like to catch whatever he had?”
The other pedestrians walked around the fallen man, ignoring him.
“Meat wagon?” Julian repeated, unable to keep his eyes from the body. He had never seen a person die before. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting.
Sir Edward hurried him on. “Every night, several hundred of the street people die. City trucks come around and pick up the bodies, don’t you know?” He added musingly, “Fewer seem to die during the day hours, but you see the corpses around from time to time.”
“Street people?”
“I dare say there are some half a million niggers here in Bombay that have no homes. They live on the streets, sleep on the streets at night. There are more than six-hundred thousand in Calcutta.”
The boy was appalled. “Can’t the government do something about them?”
“Dear boy, between a third and a half of the population of India goes to bed hungry every night. Probably some fifty million are starving to death, at a greater or slower pace. What would you expect the government to do? It’s deeply in debt as it is. My own concern is selling them tanks and armored cars, and most of it has to go on the cuff, as you Yankees call it.”
The Britisher indicated a smaller street. “We can cut through here to the Crawford Market. Largest in town, I wouldn’t wonder. What do the tourist ads always say? Picturesque and all that rot.”
They were in little more than an alley with tiny shacks on each side. Colored saris hung from some of the windows to dry and a few of the dwellings had plants suspended from the walls in old tin cans.
Halfway down the alley, Julian came to a halt. In a broken wheelbarrow were two tiny children, breathing heavily, their eyes very round. Both were naked, with arms and legs so thin as to be not much thicker than a piece of chalk; both had bellies swollen up to the size of watermelons.
He looked wildly at his companion, “Have they been abandoned by their parents?”
The other took him by the arm to lead him on. “Possibly. Come, there’s nothing you can do.”
Julian pulled away. “We can take them… take them to a hospital. See they’re fed. Have a doctor—”
Sir Edward said impatiently, “I told you there were some fifty million starving in India at any one time. You could drop the whole West fortune into this bottomless pit, and it wouldn’t have any noticeable effect whatsoever.”
He took Julian by the arm again and led him to the end of the alleyway and the wider street beyond.
Julian wrenched his arm away once more. “I… I don’t want to see any more. I want to go back to the ship.”
The other was miffed. He looked at his watch. “Very well. I had planned to take you to lunch. Charming restaurant called The Other Room, at the Ambassador Hotel, don’t you know? European cuisine, none of this bloody nigger stuff.”
The boy looked at him. “How many of these Indians could eat on what it would cost us there for a single meal?”
The other laughed his short, humorless laugh. “Hundreds of them, I shouldn’t wonder. Dear boy, the average Indian doesn’t spend in a year what it would cost us to lunch at The Other Room.”
Julian shook his head. “I’m going back to the ship.”
“Very well. No point in mucking around. Just head down this street. You’ll come out on the Frere Road. Turn right for about a mile and you’ll come to the Old Customs House and the government dockyard. You’ll be able to rent a boat there to return you to the cruise ship, I wouldn’t wonder.” Sir Edward was obviously mildly irritated.