To revert to the Towers of Silence, one is brought very near to death everywhere in the East. We have our funeral corteges at home, with sufficient frequency, but they do not emphasize the thought of the necessary end of all things as do the swathed corpses that one meets so often being carried through the streets, on their way to this or that burning place. In Bombay I met several every day, with their bearers and followers all in white, and all moving with the curious trot that seems to be reserved for such obsequies. There were always, also, during my stay, new supplies of fire-wood outside the great Hindu burning ground in Queen's Road; and yet no epidemic was raging; the city was normal save for a strike of mill-hands. It is true that I met wedding parties almost equally often; but in India a wedding party is not, as with us, a suggestion of new life to replace the dead, for the brides so often are infants.
One of the differences between the poor of London and the poor of India may be noticed here. In the East-End a funeral is considered to be a failure unless its cost is out of all proportion to the survivors' means, while a wedding is a matter of a few shillings; whereas in India a funeral is a simple ceremony, to be hurried over, while the wedding festivities last for weeks and often plunge the family into debts from which they never recover.
The selective processes of the memory are very curious. It has been decreed that one of my most vivid recollections of Bombay should be that of the embarrassment and half-amused self-consciousness of an American business man on the platform of the railway station for Delhi. Having completed his negotiatory visit he was being speeded on his way by the native staff of the firm, who had hung him with garlands like a sacrificial bull. In the Crawford Market I had watched the florists at work tearing the blossoms from a kind of frangipani known as the Temple Flower, in order to string them tightly into chains; and now and again in the streets one came upon people wearing them; but to find a shrewd and portly commercial American thus bedecked was a shock. As it happened, he was to share my compartment, and on entering, just before the train started, he apologised very heartily for importing so much heavy perfume into the atmosphere, but begged to be excused because it was the custom of the country and he didn't like to hurt anyone's feelings. He then stood at the door, waving farewells, and directly the line took a bend flung the wreaths out of the window. I was glad of his company, for in addition to these floral offerings his Bombay associates had provided him with a barrel of the best oranges that ever were grown--sufficient for a battalion--and these we consumed at brief intervals all the way to Delhi.