The Bheestee The malee has an ally called the Bheestee. If you ask, Who is the Bheestee? I will tell you. Behisht in the Persian tongue means Paradise, and a Bihishtee is, therefore, an inhabitant of Paradise, a cherub, a seraph, an angel of mercy. He has no wings; the painters have misconceived him; but his back is bowed down with the burden of a great goat-skin swollen to bursting with the elixir of life. He walks the land when the heaven above him is brass and the earth iron, when the trees and shrubs are languishing and the last blade of grass has given up the struggle for life, when the very roses smell only of dust, and all day long the roaring “dust devils” waltz about the fields, whirling leaf and grass and corn stalk round and round and up and away into the regions of the sky; and he unties a leather thong which chokes the throat of his goat-skin just where the head of the poor old goat was cut off, and straight-way, with a life-reviving gurgle, the stream called thunda panee gushes forth, and plant and shrub lift up their heads and the garden smiles again. The dust also on the roads is laid and a grateful incense rises from the ground, the sides of the water chatty grow dark and moist and cool themselves in the hot air, and through the dripping interstices of the khuskhus tattie a chilly fragrance creeps into the room, causing the mercury in the thermometer to retreat from its proud place. Nay, the seraph finds his way to your very bath-room, and discharging a cataract into the great tub, leaves it heaving like the ocean after a storm. When you follow him there, you will thank that nameless poet who gave our humble Aquarius the title he bears. Surely in the world there can be no luxury like an Indian “tub” after a long march, or a morning’s shooting, in the month of May. I know of none. Wallace says that to eat a durian is a new sensation, worth a voyage to the East to experience. “A rich, butterlike custard, highly flavoured with almonds, gives the best general idea of it, but intermingled with it come wafts of flavour which call to mind cream cheese, onion sauce, brown sherry, and other incongruities.” If this is true, then eating a durian must, in its way, be something like having a tub. That certainly is a new sensation. I cannot tell what gives the best general idea of it, but there are mingled with it many wafts of a vigorous enjoyment, which touch you, I think, at a higher point in your nature than cream cheese or onion sauce. There is first the enfranchisement of your steaming limbs from gaiter and shooting boot, buckskin and flannel; then the steeping of your sodden head in the pellucid depth, with bubaline snortings and expirations of satisfaction; then, as the first cold stream from the “tinpot” courses down your spine, what electric thrills start from a dozen ganglia and flush your whole nervous system with new life! Finally, there is the plunge and the wallow and the splash, with a feeling of kinship to the porpoise in its joy, under the influence of which the most silent man becomes vocal and makes the walls of the narrow ghoosulkhana resound with amorous, or patriotic, song. A flavour of sadness mingles here, for you must come out at last, but the ample gaol towel receives you in its warm embrace and a glow of contentment pervades your frame, which seems like a special preparation for the soothing touch of cool, clean linen, and white duck, or smooth khakee. And even before the voice of the butler is heard at the door, your olfactory nerves, quickened by the tonic of the tub, have told you what he is going to say.

Some people in India always bathe in hot water, not for their sins, but because they like it. At least, so they say, and it may be true, for I have been told that you may get a taste even for drinking hot water if you keep at it long enough.

The well

The Bheestee is the only one of all our servants who never asks for a rise of pay on account of the increase of his family. But he is not like the other servants. We do not think of him as one of the household. We do not know his name, and seldom or never speak to him; but I follow him about, as you would some little animal, and observe his ways. I find that he always stands on his left leg, which is like an iron gate-post, and props himself with his right. I cannot discover whether he straightens out when he goes home at night, but when visible in the daytime, he is always bowed, either under the weight of his mussuk or the recollection of it. The constant application of that great cold poultice must surely bring on chronic lumbago, but he does not complain. I notice, however, that his waist is always bound about with many folds of unbleached cotton cloth and other protective gear. The place to study him to advantage is the bowrie, or station well, in a little hollow at the foot of a hill. Of course there are many wells, but some have a bad reputation for guineaworm, and some are brackish, and some are jealously guarded by the Brahmins, who curse the Bheestee if he approaches, and some are for low caste people. This well is used by the station generally, and the water of it is very “sweet.” Any native in the place will tell you that if you drink of this well you will always have an appetite for your meals and digest your food. It is circular and surrounded by a strong parapet wall, over which, if you peep cautiously into the dark abyss, you may catch a sight of the wary tortoise, which shares with a score or so of gigantic frogs the task of keeping the water “sweet.” It was introduced for the purpose by a thoughtful Bheestee: the frogs fell in. Wild pigeons have their nests in holes in the sides of the well. Here, morning and evening, you will find the Bheestees of the station congregated, some coming and some going, like bees at the mouth of a hive, but most standing on the wall and letting down their leather buckets into the water. As they begin to haul these up again hand over hand, you will look to see them all topple head foremost into the well, but they do not as a rule. It makes an imaginative European giddy to look down into that Tartarean depth; but then the Bheestee is not imaginative. As the hot season advances, the water retreats further and further into the bowels of the earth, and the labour of filling the mussuk becomes more and more arduous. At the same time, the demand for water increases, for man is thirsty and the ground parched. So the toils of the poor Bheestee march pari passu with the tyranny of the climate, and he grows thin and very black. Then, with the rain, his vacation begins. Happy man if his master does not cut his pay down on the ground that he has little to do. We masters sometimes do that kind of thing.

I believe the mussuk bearer is the true and original Bheestee, but in many places, as wealth and luxury have spread, he has emancipated his own back and laid his burden on the patient bullock, which walks sagaciously before him, and stops at the word of command beside each flower-pot or bush. He treats his slave kindly, hanging little bells and cowries about its neck. If it is refractory he does not beat it, but gently reviles its female ancestors. I like the Bheestee and respect him. As a man, he is temperate and contented, eating bajree bread and slacking his thirst with his own element. The author of Hobson Jobson says he never saw a drunken Bheestee. And as a servant he is laborious and faithful, rarely shirking his work, seeking it out rather. For example, we had a bottle-shaped filter of porous stoneware, standing in a bucket of water, which it was his duty to fill daily; but the good man, not content with doing his bare duty, took the plug out of the filter and filled it too! And all the station knows how assiduously he fills the rain gauge. But what I like best in him is his love of nature. He keeps a tame lark in a very small cage, covered with dark cloth that it may sing, and early in the morning you will find him in the fields, catching grasshoppers for his little pet. I am speaking of a Mahomedan Bheestee. You must not expect love of nature in a Hindoo.

His little pet