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Updated: June 7, 2025
He became sure of this when, at length, his curiosity roused, he went to the window and peered out between the wooden slats of the blind. The little company was squatting in a circle round the fire, and a bottle was passing from hand to hand. He turned back, puzzled, to find the khansamah calmly seated at the table and enjoying one of Amber's choicest cigarettes.
"A billiard room for the Sahibs who built the Railway. I was khansamah then in the big house where all the Railway-Sahibs lived, and I used to come across with brandy-shrab. These three rooms were all one, and they held a big table on which the Sahibs played every evening. But the Sahibs are all dead now, and the Railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul."
The khansamah completely lost his head on my arrival. He had served a Sahib once. Did I know that Sahib? He gave me the name of a well-known man who has been buried for more than a quarter of a century, and showed me an ancient daguerreotype of that man in his prehistoric youth.
It stood on a bypath largely used by native Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from Finance to Forests; but real Sahibs were rare. The khansamah, who was nearly bent double with old age, said so. When I arrived, there was a fitful, undecided rain on the face of the land, accompanied by a restless wind, and every gust made a noise like the rattling of dry bones in the stiff toddy-palms outside.
Here come the children flying, followed patiently by the old khansamah with a spoon in one hand and a bottle of cod-liver-oil emulsion in the other. I had better finish this letter and get the ink out of their reach. Baratah, Thursday, Feb. 21. ... Now we are really camping out, and I sit outside my tent even as Abraham did of old. I have a whole long day before me to write.
"But if, on taking thought, I find you've lied to me ... Go now and hold yourself fortunate in this, that I am not a man of hasty judgment." "Hazoor!" Like a shadow harried by a wind of night, the khansamah scurried from the room. But on the threshold he paused long enough to lay a significant finger upon his lips and nod toward the table.
I had seen a steel engraving of him at the head of a double volume of Memoirs a month before, and I felt ancient beyond telling. The day shut in and the khansamah went to get me food. He did not go through the, pretense of calling it "khana" man's victuals. He said "ratub," and that means, among other things, "grub" dog's rations. There was no insult in his choice of the term.
"A billiard-room for the Sahibs who built the Railway. I was khansamah then in the big house where all the Railway-Sahibs lived, and I used to come across with brandy-shrab. These three rooms were all one, and they held a big table on which the Sahibs played every evening. But the Sahibs are all dead now, and the Railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul."
Not for everything in Asia would I have dropped the door-bar and peered into the dark of the next room. When the morning came, I considered that I had done well and wisely, and inquired for the means of departure. "By the way, khansamah," I said, "what were those three doolies doing in my compound in the night?" "There were no doolies," said the khansamah.
I had seen a steel engraving of him at the head of a double volume of Memoirs a month before, and I felt ancient beyond telling. The day shut in and the khansamah went to get me food. He did not go through the pretence of calling it "khana" man's victuals. He said "ratub," and that means, among other things, "grub" dog's rations. There was no insult in his choice of the term.
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