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Updated: June 24, 2025
"At peril of his head," said Wali Dad in English to me, "Thanks to your Government, all our heads are protected, and with the educational facilities at my command" his eyes twinkled wickedly "I might be a distinguished member of the local administration. Perhaps, in time, I might even be a member of a Legislative Council." "Don't speak English," said Lalun, bending over her sitar afresh.
Nor did it strike me that Wali Dad was the man who should have convoyed him across the City, or that Lalun's arms round my neck were put there to hide the money that Nasiban gave to Kehm Singh, and that Lalun had used me and my white face as even a better safeguard than Wali Dad who proved himself so untrustworthy.
Wali Dad seemed to be in a very bad temper. Lalun looked out of the window and smiled into the dust-haze. I went away thinking about Khem Singh who had once made history with a thousand followers, and would have been a princeling but for the power of the Supreme Government aforesaid.
'Though I have lost every belief in the world, said he, 'and try to be proud of my losing, I cannot help hating a Jew. Lalun admits no Jews here. 'But what in the world do all these men do? I asked. 'The curse of our country, said Wali Dad. 'They talk. It is like the Athenians always hearing and telling some new thing.
But Lalun began to sing, and for the rest of the time there was no hope of getting a sensible answer from her or Wall Dad. When the one stopped, the other began to quote Persian poetry with a triple pun in every other line.
He composed songs about her, and some of the songs are sting to this day in the City from the Street of the Mutton-Butchers to the Copper-Smiths' ward. One song, the prettiest of all, says that the beauty of Lalun was so great that it troubled the hearts of the British Government and caused them to lose their peace of mind.
So now you know as much as you ought about Wali Dad, the educational mixture, and the Supreme Government. Lalun has not yet been described. She would need, so Wali Dad says, a thousand pens of gold and ink scented with musk. She has been variously compared to the Moon, the Dil Sagar Lake, a spotted quail, a gazelle, the Sun on the Desert of Kutch, the Dawn, the Stars, and the young bamboo.
Nasiban, her maid, said that her jewelry was worth ten thousand pounds, and that, some night, a thief would enter and murder her for its possession; but Lalun said that all the City would tear that thief limb from limb, and that he, whoever he was, knew it.
Some of it was not strictly proper, but it was all very funny, and it only came to an end when a fat person in black, with gold pince-nez, sent up his name to Lalun, and Wali Dad dragged me into the twinkling night to walk in a big rose-garden and talk heresies about Religion and Governments and a man's career in life.
That is the way the song is sung in the streets; but, if you examine it carefully and know the key to the explanation, you will find that there are three puns in it on "beauty," "heart," and "peace of mind," so that it runs: "By the subtlety of Lalun the administration of the Government was troubled and it lost such and such a man."
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