the footpath being a favourite dormitory--in Japan no one is ever doing
nothing, and no one appears to be weary or poor.

India, save for a few native politicians and agitators, strikes one as a
land destitute of ambition. In the cities there are infrequent signs of
progress; in the country none. The peasants support life on as little as
they can, they rest as much as possible and their carts and implements
are prehistoric. They may believe in their gods, but fatalism is their
true religion. How little they can be affected by civilisation I learned
from a tiny settlement of bush-dwellers not twenty miles from Bombay,
close to that beautiful lake which has been transformed into a
reservoir, where bows and arrows are still the only weapons and rats are
a staple food. And in an hour's time, in a car, one could be telephoning
one's friends or watching a cinema!




THE SAHIB


I did not have to wait to reach India for that great and exciting moment
when one is first called "Sahib." I was addressed as "Sahib," to my
mingled pride and confusion, at Marseilles, by an attendant on the
steamer which I joined there. Later I grew accustomed to it, although
never, I hope, blase; but to the end my bearer fascinated me by alluding
to me as Master--not directly, but obliquely: impersonally, as though it
were some other person that I knew, who was always with me, an _alter
ego_ who could not answer for himself: "Would Master like this or
that?" "At what time did Master wish to be called?"