and my father had three; and my father was given charge of the Kirkee stores.[1] My grandmother and mother, and all the family, were in those woods behind Poona at time of the battle at Kirkee.[2]I've often heard my father say how full the river was after the battle—baggage and bundles floating down, and men trying to swim across—and horses and all such a bustle. Many people got good things on that day. My father got a large chattee, and two good ponies that were in the river, and he took them home to camp; but when he got there the guard took them away. So all his trouble did him no good.
We were poor people, but living was cheap, and we had 'plenty comfort.'
In those days house rent did not cost more than half a rupee[3]a month, and you could build a very comfortable house for a hundred rupees. Not such good houses as people now live in, but well enough for people like us. Then a whole family could live as comfortably on six or seven rupees a month as they can now on thirty. Grain, now a rupee a pound, was then two annas a pound. Common sugar, then one anna a pound, is now worth four annas a pound. Oil which then sold for six pice a bottle now costs four annas. Four annas' worth of salt, chillies, tamarinds, onions, and garlic, would then last a family a whole month, now the same money would not buy a week's supply. Such dungeree[4] as you now pay half rupee a yard for, you could then buy from twenty to forty yards of for the rupee. You could not get such good calico then as now, but the dungeree did very well. Beef then was a pice a pound, and the vegetables cost a pie a day. For half a rupee you could fill the house with wood. Water also was much cheaper. You could then get a man to bring you two large skins full, morning and evening, for a pie, now he would not do it under half a rupee or more. If the children came crying for fruit, a pie would get them as many guavas as they liked in the
- ↑ The Field Arsenal at Kirkee (near Poona).
- ↑ The battle which decided the fate of the Deccan, and led to the downfall of Bajee Row, Peishwa, and extinction of Mahratta rule. Fought 13th November 1817. (See Note A.)
- ↑ The following shows the Narrator's calculation of currency:—
1 Pie = ⅛ of an English penny.
3 Pie = 1 Pice.
4 Pice = 1 Anna.
16 Annas = 1 Rupee = 2 shillings. - ↑ A coarse cotton cloth.
