The Eyes of Asia

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Rudyard Kipling. The Eyes of Asia

A RETIRED GENTLEMAN

THE FUMES OF THE HEART

THE PRIVATE ACCOUNT

A TROOPER OF HORSE

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Scene. Pavilion and Dome Hospital, Brighton – 1915.

What talk is this, Doctor Sahib? This Sahib says he will be my letter-writer? Just as though he were a bazar letter-writer at home?.. What are the Sahib's charges? Two annas? Too much! I give one… No. No! Sahib. You shouldn't have come down so quickly. You've forgotten, we Sikhs always bargain… Well; one anna be it. I will give a bond to pay it out of my wound-pension when I get home. Sit by the side of my bed…

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What talk is this, Doctor Sahib? This Sahib says he will be my letter-writer? Just as though he were a bazar letter-writer at home?.. What are the Sahib's charges? Two annas? Too much! I give one… No. No! Sahib. You shouldn't have come down so quickly. You've forgotten, we Sikhs always bargain… Well; one anna be it. I will give a bond to pay it out of my wound-pension when I get home. Sit by the side of my bed…

This is the trouble, Sahib. My brother who holds his land and works mine, outside Amritsar City, is a fool. He is older than I. He has done his service and got one wound out of it in what they used to call war – that child's play in the Tirah years ago. He thinks himself a soldier! But that is not his offence. He sends me postcards, Sahib – scores of postcards – whining about the drouth or the taxes, or the crops, or our servants' pilferings or some such trouble. He doesn't know what trouble means. I want to tell him he is a fool… What? True! True! One can get money and land but never a new brother. But for all that, he is a fool… Is he a good farmer? Sa-heeb! If an Amritsar Sikh isn't a good farmer, a hen doesn't know an egg… Is he honest? As my own pet yoke of bullocks. He is only a fool. My belly is on fire now with knowledge I never had before, and I wish to impart it to him – to the village elders – to all people. Yes, that is true, too. If I keep calling him a fool, he will not gain any knowledge… Let me think it over on all sides! Aha! Now that I have a bazar-writer of my own I will write a book – a very book of a letter to my fool of a brother… And now we will begin. Take down my words from my lips to my foolish old farmer-brother: —

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