And then the beautiful "Salaam"!

I was sorry for the English doomed to become so used to Eastern
deference that they cease to be thrilled.




THE PASSING SHOW


It is difficult for a stranger to India, especially when paying only a
brief visit, to lose the impression that he is at an exhibition--in a
section of a World's Fair. How long it takes for this delusion to wear
off I cannot say. All I can say is that seven weeks are not enough. And
never does one feel it more than in the bazaar, where movement is
incessant and humanity is so packed and costumes are so diverse, and
where the suggestion of the exhibition is of course heightened by the
merchants and the stalls. What one misses is any vantage point--anything
resembling a chair at the Cafe de la Paix in Paris, for instance--where
one may sit at ease and watch the wonderful changing spectacle going
past. There are in Indian cities no such places. To observe the life of
the bazaar closely and be unobserved is almost impossible.

It would be extraordinarily interesting to sit there, beside some well-
informed Anglo-Indian or Indo-Anglian, and learn all the minutia of
caste and be told who and what everybody was: what the different ochre
marks signified on the Hindu foreheads; what this man did for a living,
and that; and so forth. Even without such an informant I was never tired