SEER AND SAHIB
By D. MacOLURE
iT happened on the beach at Juhu, a pleasant seaside haunt with excellent bathing facilities, fifteen miles from the shimmering heat of Bombay City. Anne and I walked along the wide stretch of sand, and watched the white-flecked breakers hurl themselves in- shore. There was something soothing about the noise they made, suggesting that the remains of the day would be spent in peaceful, untroubled solitude. We rested, lying on the soft, light-brown sand at the foot of the coconut palms. The beach, deserted, stretched away in a graceful curve on either side. The air was vibrant with the slow incessant pounding of the sea. It was heaven to lie there in the tingling sun, with shaded eyes and languid limbs, content in each other's silent company. Not another soul in sight. Not one unit of India's four hundred millions along that three-mile stretch of golden sand. What relief to be far from the madding crowd, away from the myriads of dark Indian faces and the chatter of voluble tongues! We both smiled in sheer content. The sea breeze played hide-and-seek around us, and the drowsy monotone of the sea in- duced a trance-like lethargy.
"Salaam, sahib! Salaam!" An ingratiating cough, followed by
a nervous shuffling of bare feet in the sand. Of course, it was just imagination. What an incredibly blue sky! Even through dark glasses it was still blue. One would have thought its perpetual blue- ness would tire after a few weeks. But it was not so. "Sahib have fortune told? Sahib have one hundred lalchs of rupees in eight years. One fortune one rupee." Another maddening cough and more shuffling. I closed my eyes and shut out the blueness. I also closed my lips in a tight despairing line. It just wasn't possible! It couldn't be possible! Only five minutes ago I had looked to the right and looked to the left, and for miles and miles along that beach was nothing but sand, sea and coconut palms. Yet here, profaning the sweet sea air, was a voice—an unpleasant voice, a whining voice, the voice of one who took fiendish pride in his unscrupulous task of extracting rupees from impoverished sahibs by false pretences.
I opened my eyes and turned my head. Anne sat up. "Go away,"
she said. "We don't want our fortunes told. We just want to go to sleep." She sighed and relaxed at full length on the sand again. I transfixed the ihtruder with a malevolent eye. I had never seen anyone quite so dirty and disreputable. The would-be fortune- teller stood shuffling his feet in the sand. A sickly grin demon- strated to perfection a set of fangs in the very last stages of decay. A greasy black fez hid the top part of his head, and a ragged red- stained beard exempted him from washing the lower part. His dhoti was in shreds- and heavy with the dust of centuries, yet he was wearing a Harris-tweed sports jacket that I myself would have been loath to part with. True, it was a little shabby and had already collected a modicum of uncleanliness, but at least the seams were holding together and the cut of the coat still struggled to retain its dignity. The history of that coat, I thought, if ever truthfully told, might prove rather interesting.
The fortune-teller tried again. " Memsahib's fortune tell," he said. "Memsahib have six children, all boys. Memsahib very, very lucky. One fortune tell for one rupee." Another cough in which a faint note of anxiety struggled to hide itself. Anne sat up again and gazed at the unwashed seer. "Six children," she said. "All boys? I'm interested." "Tell one fortune for one rupee," announced the seer, already beginning to rub his hands. "How much will you tell two fortunes for?" said Anne. He gave her a searching look. "Two fortunes two rupees," he said hopefully ; then, shrug- ging his shoulders like Shylocic: "I am a poor man."
"Are you in debt?" I asked him. "In debt? Oh no, sahib. Me good man. Being in debt very bad." "Then if you are not
in debt you can lend me SOITle money?" (I had previously found this method of "turning the tables" most successful in such circum- stances, but this time it failed completely.) He gave me a decayed grin. "Oh no, sahib," he said. "Me fortune-teller, not money- lender. I call money-lender if sahib wishes." He pointed vaguely into space. "Do you mean to tell me there's a money-lender around here too?" "Oh yes, sahib. He wait till I finish." I carefully scanned the beach and the palm trees on all sides. Not a soul in sight. I produced a rupee. "If you can produce a money-lender out of thin air, you can have this." I was anxious to know how both a fortune- teller and a money-lender can remain invisible on a stretch of smooth open beach. The seer salaamed and pocketed the rupee. Then he put his hands to his mouth and made a noise like a saxophone. A few seconds passed ; then an amazing thing happened. As though they had miraculously emerged from out of the sea itself, not one but nine human -figures appeared about fifty yards away and came towards us. I suddenly realised how it was done. If one looked towards the blazing sun about a hundred yards away where the breakers spent themselves on the shore, there was a shimmering haze which was in effect a blind spot to the eye. In fact the eye would instinctively avoid it because the heat waves and refraction caused an unpleasant distortion. The fortune-teller and the figures now approaching had cunningly chosen this blind spot so that they could observe us without themselves being observed.
Speechless we watched as the newcomers, all of them mendicants, solemnly ranged themselves in a semi-circle before us and squatted down in the sand. Like the fortune-teller, all of them were dis- reputable and desperately in need of much soap and water. Each had something at his feet. Three had baskets with coconuts piled high inside them. One was accompanied by a small grubby boy, practically naked, and he also possessed a basket in which a slumbering cobra was coiled. Another fondly caressed what ap- peared to be a large helping of mud, to which he gravely added water in small quantities from an earthenware flagon. I knew that if we stayed long enough he would demonstrate his capabilities as a magician, and, hypnotising us in no time at all, would cause a young coconut palm to sprout forth from the mud. Yet another had no accoutrements save a small tobacco-tin thrust before him. He possessed no clothing to speak of. His skeleton-like body smeared all over with grey ash, and long white hair down to his shoulders, he gazed vacantly into space and held out a withered scrawny hand. Another squatted behind a basket of luscious fruit, k but the most enterprising of them all was the money-lender, who looked most incongruous in a felt hat and loin-cloth. He carried a battered brief-case evidently containing wealth, but as a side-line he also proudly displayed a small show-case containing cheap fountain pens, razor blades, brilliantine and ladies' underwear.
"Ten vultures in human form," said Anne, "all waiting to pounce." A little dazed, we stood up, resigned to strategic retreat. The mendicants stood up too. We started off, back along the beach, and the mendicants followed, all talking at once to impress upon us the worth of their wales and the excellence of their qualifications. For two miles they shadowed us, till we reached the station waggon. That was the end of our peaceful afternoon at Juhu. We were thankful when we reached the comparative quiet of thriving Bombay.
Previous page
