To the Ends of the Earth by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online

Bengali pilgrims (all of them sound asleep, snoring, their faces turned up), the civil servant, the postman, and me. The next stop was Solon Brewery, where the air was pungent with yeast and hops, and after that wepassed through pine forests and cedar groves. On one stretch a baboon the size of a six-year-old crept off the tracks to let us go by. I remarked on the largeness of the creature.
    The civil servant said, “There was once a
saddhu
—a holy man—who lived near Simla. He could speak to monkeys. A certain Englishman had a garden, and all the time the monkeys were causing him trouble. Monkeys can be very destructive. The Englishman told this
saddhu
his problem. The
saddhu
said, ‘I will see what I can do.’ Then the
saddhu
went into the forest and assembled all the monkeys. He said, ‘I hear you are troubling the Englishman. That is bad. You must stop; leave his garden alone. If I hear that you are causing damage I will treat you very harshly.’ And from that time onward the monkeys never went into the Englishman’s garden.”
    “Do you believe the story?”
    “Oh, yes. But the man is now dead—the
saddhu
. I don’t know what happened to the Englishman. Perhaps he went away, like the rest of them.”
    A little farther on, he said, “What do you think of India?”
    “It’s a hard question,” I said. I wanted to tell him about the children I had seen that morning pathetically raiding the leftovers of my breakfast, and ask him if he thought there was any truth in Mark Twain’s comment on Indians: “It is a curious people. With them, all life seems to be sacred except human life.” But I added instead, “I haven’t been here very long.”
    “I will tell you what I think,” he said. “If all the people who are talking about honesty, fair play, socialism, and so forth—if they began to practice it themselves, India will do well. Otherwise there will be a revolution.”
    He was an unsmiling man in his early fifties and had the stern features of a Brahmin. He neither drank nor smoked, and before he joined the civil service he had been a Sanskrit scholar in an Indian university. He got up at five every morning, had an apple, a glass of milk, and some almonds; he washed and said his prayers and after that took a long walk. Then he went to his office. To set an example for hisjunior officers he always walked to work, he furnished his office sparsely, and he did not require his bearer to wear a khaki uniform. He admitted that his example was unpersuasive. His junior officers had parking permits, sumptuous furnishings, and uniformed bearers.
    “I ask them why all this money is spent for nothing. They tell me to make a good first impression is very important. I say to the blighters, ‘What about
second
impression?’ ”
    Blighters
was a word that occurred often in his speech. Lord Clive was a blighter and so were most of the other viceroys. Blighters ask for bribes; blighters try to cheat the Accounts Department; blighters are living in luxury and talking about socialism. It was a point of honor with this civil servant that he had never in his life given or received
baksheesh:
“Not even a single paisa.” Some of his clerks had, and in eighteen years in the civil service he had personally fired thirty-two people. He thought it might be a record. I asked him what they had done wrong.
    “Gross incompetence,” he said, “pinching money, hanky-panky. But I never fire anyone without first having a good talk with his parents. There was a blighter in the Audit Department, always pinching girls’ bottoms. Indian girls from good families! I warned him about this, but he wouldn’t stop. So I told him I wanted to see his parents. The blighter said his parents lived fifty miles away. I gave him money for their bus fare. They were poor, and they were quite worried about the blighter. I said to them, ‘Now I want you to understand that your son is in deep trouble. He is causing annoyance to the lady members of