Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
We separated for a few moments, and I despatched my servant to the manager of the hotel to ascertain the name of the strange gentleman who looked like an Italian and spoke like a fellow of Balliol. Having discovered that he was a "Mr. Isaacs," I wended my way through verandahs and corridors, preceded by a chuprassie and followed by my pipe-bearer, till I came to his rooms.
Through this refracting medium the people of India see their rulers. The chuprassie paints his master in colours drawn from his own black heart. Every lie he tells, every insinuation he throws out, every demand he makes, is endorsed with his master's name. He is the arch-slanderer of our name in India.
He had a theory that the small pay we gave them accounted for their evil courses. A chuprassie gets about eight pounds sterling a year. He added that if we saw a chuprassie on seven rupees a month living overtly at the rate of a thousand, we ought immediately to appoint him an attaché or put him in gaol.
We give the following in his own words: I shall now relate a circumstance, proving that the natives of India apply mesmeric power to the removal of diseases with the utmost success. I had in my establishment at Lucknow a chuprassie, who was a martyr to the most deplorable chronic rheumatism.
I make a simple rule in my own establishment of dismissing a chuprassie as soon as he begins to wax fat. A native cannot become rich without waxing fat, because wealth is primarily enjoyed by the mild Gentoo as a means of procuring greasy food in large quantities. His secondary enjoyment is to sit upon it.
We are lucky! No sooner have we returned to the hotel than a gorgeous man, over six feet high, dressed in white, with a red sash, in which is stuck a tasselled dagger, greets us. He is a chuprassie, or messenger, and has come from Government House with a note inviting us to a garden-party there this afternoon. What a day of it!
The successful place-hunter pays him a feudal relief on receiving office or promotion, and benevolences flow in from all who have anything to hope or fear from those in power. In the Native States the chuprassie flourishes rampantly.
Early on Thursday morning came an indignant chit from an irate General, complaining that my servants were trying to seize his ponies, for which he had paid an advance of two rupees, and would I be good enough to investigate the affair. Here was the murder out. His chuprassie had obviously bribed my pony wallahs, and a letter, stating my case pretty clearly, produced the ponies and an apology.
Another soldier host we had in India in Delhi a Fettesian by the way; in his palace we studied the Red Chuprassie and received an inkling of how States are governed, and how the hot-bed of Mohammedan and Hindoo revolution is kept in order. Five to five were his office hours, you advocates of eight hour bills!
The red chuprassie is ubiquitous; he is in the verandah of every official's house in India, from the Governor-General downwards; he is in the portico of every Court of Justice, every Treasury, every Public Office, every Government School, every Government Dispensary in the country.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking