Ch. 5: The Finances of the Gods

(1891)

The evening meal was ended in Dhunni Bhagat's Chubara and the old
priests were smoking or counting their beads. A little naked child
pattered in, with its mouth wide open, a handful of marigold flowers in
one hand, and a lump of conserved tobacco in the other. It tried to
kneel and make obeisance to Gobind, but it was so fat that it fell
forward on its shaven head, and rolled on its side, kicking and gasping,
while the marigolds tumbled one way and the tobacco the other. Gobind
laughed, set it up again, and blessed the marigold flowers as he
received the tobacco.

'From my father,' said the child. 'He has the fever, and cannot come.
Wilt thou pray for him, father?'

'Surely, littlest; but the smoke is on the ground, and the night-chill
is in the airs, and it is not good to go abroad naked in the autumn.'

'I have no clothes,' said the child, 'and all to-day I have been
carrying cow-dung cakes to the bazar. It was very hot, and I am very
tired.' It shivered a little, for the twilight was cool.

Gobind lifted an arm under his vast tattered quilt of many colours, and
made an inviting little nest by his side. The child crept in, and Gobind
filled his brass-studded leather waterpipe with the new tobacco. When I
came to the Chubara the shaven head with the tuft atop, and the beady
black eyes looked out of the folds of the quilt as a squirrel looks out
from his nest, and Gobind was smiling while the child played with his
beard.

I would have said something friendly, but remembered in time that if the
child fell ill afterwards I should be credited with the Evil Eye, and
that is a horrible possession.

'Sit thou still, Thumbling,' I said as it made to get up and run away.
'Where is thy slate, and why has the teacher let such an evil character
loose on the streets when there are no police to protect us weaklings?
In which ward dost thou try to break thy neck with flying kites from the
house-tops?'

'Nay, Sahib, nay,' said the child, burrowing its face into Gobind's
beard, and twisting uneasily. 'There was a holiday to-day among the
schools, and I do not always fly kites. I play ker-li-kit like the
rest.'

Cricket is the national game among the schoolboys of the Punjab, from
the naked hedge-school children, who use an old kerosene-tin for wicket,
to the B.A.'s of the University, who compete for the Championship belt.

'Thou play kerlikit! Thou art half the height of the bat!' I said.

The child nodded resolutely. 'Yea, I DO play. PERLAYBALL OW-AT! RAN,
RAN, RAN! I know it all.'

'But thou must not forget with all this to pray to the Gods according to
custom,' said Gobind, who did not altogether approve of cricket and
western innovations.