Sitting at the bottom of the sand-trap, the memory of Watson's Hotel, with its
swinging punkahs, white-robed attendants, and the sallow-faced Armenian, rose
up in my mind as vividly as a photograph, and I burst into a loud fit of
laughter. The contrast was too absurd!
Gunga Dass, as he bent over the unclean bird, watched me curiously. Hindus
seldom laugh, and his surroundings were not such as to move Gunga Dass to any
undue excess of hilarity. He removed the crow solemnly from the wooden spit
and as solemnly devoured it. Then he continued his story, which I give in his
own words:
"In epidemics of the cholera you are carried to be burned almost before you
are dead. When you come to the riverside the cold air, perhaps, makes you
alive, and then, if you are only little alive, mud is put on your nose and
mouth and you die conclusively. If you are rather more alive, more mud is put;
but if you are too lively they let you go and take you away. I was too lively,
and made protestation with anger against the indignities that they endeavored
to press upon me. In those days I was Brahmin and proud man.
Now I am dead man and eat"--here he eyed the well-gnawed breast bone with the
first sign of emotion that I had seen in him since we met--"crows, and other
things.
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