The naked toddy wallahs, generally half-caste
Portuguese, modestly adorned with a single coral necklace, fetch
this beverage twice a day, climbing the hundred and fifty feet
high trunks like squirrels. The crows mostly build their nests
on the tops of the cocoa-nut palms and drink incessantly out of
the open pumpkins. The result of this is the chronic intoxication
of the birds. As soon as we went out in the garden of our new
habitation, flocks of crows came down heavily from every tree.
The noise they make whilst jumping about everywhere is indescribable.
There seemed to be something positively human in the positions
of the slyly bent heads of the drunken birds, and a fiendish light
shone in their eyes while they were examining us from foot to head.
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We occupied three small bungalows, lost, like nests, in the garden,
their roofs literally smothered in roses blossoming on bushes
twenty feet high, and their windows covered only with muslin,
instead of the usual panes of glass. The bungalows were situated
in the native part of the town, so that we were transported, all
at once, into the real India. We were living in India, unlike
English people, who are only surrounded by India at a certain distance.
We were enabled to study her character and customs, her religion,
superstitions and rites, to learn her legends, in fact, to live
among Hindus.
Everything in India, this land of the elephant and the poisonous
cobra, of the tiger and the unsuccessful English missionary, is
original and strange.
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