But I shall always
remember the sounds of the distant, approaching or receding, snake-
charmers' piping, heard through the heat, as it so often is on Sundays
in Calcutta. To my inward ear that is India's typical melody; and it has
relationship to the Punch and Judy allurement of our childhood.
It was in Bombay that I saw my first fakir, and in Harrison Road,
Calcutta, my last. There had been so long a series in between that I was
able to confirm my first impression. I can now, therefore, generalise
safely when saying that all these strange creatures resemble a blend of
Tolstoi and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Imagine such a hybrid, naked save for a
loin cloth, and smeared all over with dust, and you have a holy man in
the East. The Harrison Road fakir, who passed on his way along the
crowded pavement unconcerned and practically unobserved, was white with
ashes and was beating a piece of iron as a wayward child might be doing.
He was followed by a boy, but no effort was made to collect alms. It is
true philosophy to be prepared to live in such a state of simplicity.
Most of the problems of life would dissolve and vanish if one could
reduce one's needs to the frugality of a fakir. I have thought often of
him since I returned, in London, to all the arrears of work and duty and
the liabilities that accumulate during a long holiday; but never more so
than when confronted by a Peace-time tailor's bill.
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