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Very patiently and tactfully she put forward every redeeming argument in his favour without avail. Mrs Elton broadly had the right on her side; and the gods had denied her the gift of discrimination. She saw India as a vast, confused jumble of Rajahs and bunnias and servants and coolies all steeped in varying depths of dirt and dishonesty, greed and shameless ingratitude.
The room was large, and round the four sides of it ran a very broad, very low, and very filthy divan, intended for the rest and repose of portly bunnias, seths, brokers, shopkeepers and others of the commercial fraternity, what time they assembled to chew pan and exchange lies and truths anent money and the markets.
Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims and potters all the world going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood. And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred miles such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world.
A pariah tore along beside the vehicle barking; crows flew up from the dung in the road by half-dozens, protesting shrilly; a pedlar of blue bead necklaces just escaped being knocked down. Little groups of baboos and bunnias stood looking after, laughing and speculating; a native policeman, staring also, gave them sharp orders to disperse, and they said to him, "Peace, brother."
The bunnias, and the oilmen, and the keepers of cookshops hid their wares and crept into dark places to hide. The flickering oil lamps were blotted out; but some of the Pindaris had fastened torches to their long spears, and the fluttering lights waved and circled like shooting stars.
"The talk in the bazaars did little harm, for the fat bunnias know well whose rule has given them their pickings. They talk for the love of words, but they trade for the love of money, and the government protects their money. Nay, it was not the bunnias who mattered.
This is child's talk and senseless. It was I who suffered at the hands of the landholder, and I am come to make ready the case. Where is my brother Ram Dass? But Jowar Singh shook his head, and a woman cried: 'What lie is here? What quarrel had the landholder with you, bunnia? It is only a shameless one and one without faith who profits by his brother's smarts. Have these bunnias no bowels?
It still held a sombre quietude; the murder had not been discovered. He had mapped this route out carefully in the day and knew just how to avoid the patrolling guards, and he was back in the narrow chouk of the town that was a struggling stream of swaggering Pindaris, and darker skinned Marwari bunnias and shopkeepers.
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