At Delhi/Chapter 1
AT DELHI. I.
THE ROAD THITHER.
December 11.
ONE hears alarming things about the vicissitudes of a journey to Delhi just now. I can only speak of my own experience. I travelled by the express which left Bombay at four o'clock on Tuesday afternoon. We were due at Delhi last night at midnight, and arrived only fifty minutes late. Those fifty minutes were lost during the last twenty miles. Throughout the whole of the run on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway and Indian Midland Railway to Tundla, we were almost invariably punctual. If we lost a few minutes on one section, we made it up on the next. The stories told about the interminable delays appear to relate almost exclusively to the East Indian Railway, which is undoubtedly becoming more muddled every day. Traffic from the Bombay side continues to be handled with promptitude and smartness. If goods get swept into the congested mass that now gluts Ghaziabad Junction, a few miles from Delhi, that is not the fault of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. At the same time, it would be unwise to assume that my good fortune may continue to be typical. The authorities are plainly apprehensive of increasing delay as Christmas approaches. The best advice that can be offered to people proposing to attend the Durbar is : Start as soon as you can, unless you are fortunate enough to have a seat in a special train. To consignors of goods one would say : Send your packages off at once if you wish them to arrive at all.
After leaving Bombay, it does not take long to realise that one is moving northward. You reach for your overcoat as the train slowly climbs the Thai Ghaut in the gathering twilight, and when you turn in for the night, you see to it that there are not too many open windows in the carriage. Next morning you waken to find that you are passing through the thick jungles of the Vindhya Range, and have reached a climate where beer off the ice ceases to be a joy. The people on the wayside platforms are swathed in blankets and shawls, and look as miserable as the Hindu usually contrives to appear in chilly weather. All day long the monotonous plains of Central India are traversed. They are dreary enough now, while still green after the late rains; but one rather wishes that the troops of visitors from England might have to cross them once during the torrid desolation of May. In the course of the morning Bina is reached; and the sole discernible attraction about Bina is that it is the place where you breakfast. Then on until the shadows begin to lengthen, past the great grim fort of Jhansi; past Gwalior, set in the midst of leafy groves, on a plain dominated by a fort-crowned hill; past many a little nameless stronghold, whose narrow loopholes tell of the days of strife before peace settled upon the land. Last and best scene of all, in the misty sunset, a glimpse of a river, gleaming red far away to the point where its waters merge with the advancing darkness.
Presently the train steams past mighty battlemented walls, and pulls up in a station blazing with light and thronged with people. It is Agra, but you look in vain as you approach for a glimpse of the Taj. For Agra is bathed in white fog, which even the moonlight fails to pierce; it remains a picture of huge vague structures, with here and there a lamp shining warmly. And the cold grows more intense every hour, until at last, when you plunge into the long tunnel-like station at Tundla, where the fog lingers and the air is absolutely biting, you feel that this place is not the India you know; it is the Underground Railway on a November night.
From Tundla onwards the pace is slower, and there are frequent stoppages. You drowsily wonder whether the engine is affected by the still falling thermometer. By this time even the expedient of closing every window fails to exclude the all-pervading chilliness; even inanimate steel, you think, must feel the temperature. Finally, there is a faint peep of a broad river bed, more fortifications loom before you, and you alight in another great station a few minutes before one. The first feeling is one of intense surprise. Where are the mountains of luggage, the pyramids of packages piled from floor to ceiling, the babel and the inextricable confusion, of which you have read so much? The platform is as clear as a billiard table, and only a few porters are visible. The parcel office contains just the ordinary collection of boxes and bundles neatly packed on racks, but with ample room for more. Upon a table is a huddled heap covered by a blanket. You lift the blanket, and reveal a solitary clerk, who may be sleeping the sleep of the overworked, but does not look it. You see your baggage packed upon a tonga, and are driving along the roads of Imperial Delhi in a few minutes. There is no noise, no confusion, and certainly no visible muddle. So far as that placid and orderly station was concerned, there might have been no Durbar toward at all. I write of things as I found them. Yet honest gentlemen, whose word may be relied on, assure me that a few hours before I arrived, the station was still in the appalling condition described with strict accuracy in your columns last Monday.*[1] And there is a clue to the marvellous transformation. It is said that Some One sent a Telegram; and then, in the mysterious way things happen in India, the whole place was cleared. If this be true, one wonders why Some One does not send one of these wonder-working Telegrams to Ghaziabad; for rumour declares that there are nine hundred trucks full of goods at that bewildered junction, and that they seem likely to stay there.
The Delhi tongas are in notable contrast with the Bombay hackney carriages in point of speed. You are rattled along at a rapid pace, which becomes almost embarrassing when you suddenly collide with an electric lamp post and your baggage is pitched out on the road. The installation of the electric light in the city seems a little belated. The posts are there, in the very middle of the thoroughfare, as you ruefully discover if one of their warning lanterns gets blown out; but Delhi still awaits the discerning beams of the new illuminant. You drive along a road or two, where there are houses, and then emerge upon dim, open tree-clad spaces. There is nothing to be seen, and if there were you would not care. The present writer once arrived in Venice at three o'clock on a freezing December morning. That was, despite the weather, a novel and unforgettable experience. But Delhi in the small hours in December! B-r-r-r! The only thing you are conscious of is the cold. For a moment the mind is roused to other things when you notice the shadowy outline of rising ground on your right. Can that little slope be the famous Ridge, you ask yourself. But daylight will serve to answer that question, and in the meantime you are wishing that you owned all the blankets Witney ever produced. Another half-mile and you are suddenly aware of great arc lights, shining amid a perfect wilderness of tents. You plunge into the maze. You enter a tent flooded with the electric light. Delhi can wait until the dawn. But here, at least, are the blankets.
- ↑ * The station again relapsed into confusion a day or two afterwards, and remained in a muddle until the middle of January.