Most of the feet are bare and all are silent: dark strangers overtake
one like ghosts.
Both in the cities and the country some one is always walking. There are
carts and motorcars, and on the roads about Delhi a curious service of
camel omnibuses, but most of the people walk, and they walk ever. In the
bazaars they walk in their thousands; on the long, dusty roads, miles
from anywhere, there are always a few, approaching or receding.
It is odd that the only occasion on which Indians break from their walk
into a run or a trot is when they are bearers at a funeral, or have an
unusually heavy head-load, or carry a piano. Why there is so much piano-
carrying in Calcutta I cannot say, but the streets (as I feel now) have
no commoner spectacle than six or eight merry, half-naked fellows,
trotting along, laughing and jesting under their burden, all with an
odd, swinging movement of the arms.
One of one's earliest impressions of the Indians is that their hands are
inadequate. They suggest no power.
Not only is there always some one walking, but there is always some one
resting. They repose at full length wherever the need for sleep takes
them; or they sit with pointed knees. Coming from England one is struck
by so much inertness; for though the English labourer can be lazy enough
he usually rests on his feet, leaning against walls: if he is a land
labourer, leaning with his back to the support; if he follows the sea,
leaning on his stomach.
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