Читать книгу The Temple of Ill Omens - James Baehler - Страница 4

FOREWORD

Heat. India is heat. It is hot in the summer. It is hot in the winter. It is hot during the monsoon. It is hot during the day. It is hot at night. And burning beneath the heat of the sun is the heat of passion. The passion of sexual emotions repressed. The passion of religious hatred. The passion of a subjugated people chafing under the rule of their masters. But to the British rulers of India the only heat visible was that of the sun, burning overhead, baking the land and enervating the people. Those who could, sought shelter during the day, remaining indoors under punkahs, ceiling fans propelled by native boys, and sipping drinks cooled by ice shipped to India from far away Boston or brought down from the Himalayas and preserved in ice houses.

In the hottest months when English ladies could not leave their homes for fear of sunstroke they corresponded by chits – notes carried from house to house by native boys. Many opted for the relative coolness of the hill stations on the slopes of the Himalayas. Those too poor or too overworked to escape endured the heat with gin, gambling and infidelity.

Unknown to the British Raj there was to be no escape from the heat surging in the hearts of the Indian natives who served him in his home and in his army. One day that heat would burst forth and spread throughout Bengal, sweeping all before it, laying waste to the countryside and bringing death to tens of thousands. Those few who foresaw the tempest to come were helpless to forestall it; like Cassandra, their warnings were ever true and ever fated to be disbelieved. The price of that disbelief in lives and property would never be fully measured.