Several Sikhs passed us and he greeted them with "Sardarjee" which I discovered was our "How goes it?" in Malaynese. And I noticed when he mentioned their names each ended in Singh. He explained the similarity was a customary form of salutation among them; Singh being a derivation of the Sanscrit word Simba meaning lion and came into use in the early days of Sikhism.

A Sikh driven taxi rushed past us. I told him what a nuisance I had found the drivers. He laughed and said each had a number such as WED-116, MBD-308 and the one with the prefix WBD had the reputation of being the most aggressive and dissolute.

Monhan wanted me to meet Vasenden, a young Hindu with whom he shared a flat. Another western movie fan, Vasenden, came from Calicut a small town in southwest India where a group of Arabs settled some years back. They were merchants. Without women, a few married Muslim girls, but the others remained more or less aloof from society. One of these bachelors, Vasenden-he was 19 then met in a theatre lobby and they left together. Outside a gang of local toughs yelled insults at them. The Arab ran to where he lived and brought back friends. A fight ensued and the police came. The outcome was that whenever an Arab was seen with a Hindu youth under 20 he was taken to the police station and warned but with youths slightly older he was ignored. Vasenden, embittered by the experience, left Calicut and took with him his pet, Nedja a handsome white coka-

too.

On entering the flat with Monhan I saw the bird perched on a stand but Nedja spotted me first and screeched at me. "You bloddy bitch." Vasenden, very embarrassed, apologized. He explained that he once worked for a cane carrying Englishman with a skinny, parrot-voiced wife, a very talkative one. At times when her incessant chattering upset his British aplomp he yelled at her, “Shut up, you bloody bitch." Nedja for a reason known only to cockatoos, learned the three words quickly and easily and thereafter greeted everyone who entered the flat with them.

An interesting occasion happened when a missionary with his Bible came to convert Monhan and Vasenden. Although a bachelor himself, and graceful, their marital status worried him and he feared for their souls unless they separated and married women, at least he gave that as his reason for calling on them. But no sooner had he come through the door than Nedja screeched “You bloody bitch" at him. Suddenly paralized the man of God dropped his Bible. He stared at Nedja in horror for a moment then turned and tore out of the flat. Later Vasenden sold the Bible to a used book dealer and bought Nedja an aluminum drinking cup. He had dropped several glass ones to the floor and screeched when they crashed.

Monhan served us arreak, and odd tasting cookies. Both he and Vasenden asked me endless questions about the west. Time passed too quickly and it became dark before I realized it. I didn't relish the idea of taking a Sikh driven taxi back to the hotel and was glad when Monhan offered to walk with me.

After darkness dulls the heat on Calcultta's sun baked side walks they become bedrooms. The barber who sits cross legged on the ground in front of his customer, also cross legged, and shaves him without soap and water, lies inert on the cement with his precious razor clutched in his bony hands. Beside a youngish woman, weariness in her thin face, her eyes closed, is a rattan basket. All day she carries it on her head and watches for fresh piles of bull dung which she scoops up with her bare hands, drops into the basket and takes to Paddy Cake Hill-a curing bank on the river where other women neatly arrange cakes of dung they have patted and shaped to pancake thinness. Dried they are sold for fuel.

السنين

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