e the "idols" in the shops. But a Hindu does not put his
household gods in his shop, and the flickering lamp was merely his
ordinary shop lamp, which a few years back satisfied his wants. There
are some modern inventions which Indians have taken to very readily,
and amongst these are the new ways of producing brilliant light, and
the old-fashioned flickering lamp is now hardly to be seen in Poona.

Going out in the early morning a day or so after my first arrival in
India, I met three or four men walking silently one behind each other,
and wearing what looked something like a coarse brown habit with a
cowl, which they had drawn over their heads so that their faces were
almost hidden. Having heard so often about Indian ascetics, I looked
at them with some curiosity and respect, as being probably of their
number. But in the course of the morning I met so many others of the
same type, that I began to think I must have made a mistake. The
cowl-like habit turned out to be the coarse native blanket, used for
so many purposes by rustic Indians, and which they wear in this
monastic fashion in the, sometimes chill, early mornings, or when it
is wet. Their walking in single file was not in order to assist them
in the preservation of perpetual silence, but because jungle footpaths
make this mode of progression a necessity, and country folk get so
used to walking in this fashion that when they emerge on to the
high-road they preserve the same order.

The monsoon, or rainy season, I had been led to suppose began almost
invariably on a certain date, and that rain then fell continuously for
three months until another fixed day when it left off, after which no
more rain fell till the appointed date of the next year. The
expression, "the monsoon has burst," which is often seen in the
newspapers, suggests the idea that the advent of the rain is
something akin to a deluge produced by the bursting of a great tank.
In reality there is, at times, almost as much uncertainty about
weather in India as there is in England. The most that can be said is
that there are several months in which rain, though possible, is
extremely unlikely, and outdoor festivities can be arranged for
without those anxious watchings of the heavens which is the lot of the
organiser of garden fetes in England.

But the date of the monsoon, its duration, and its quality, are most
uncertain factors and subjects of anxious speculation, and generally
of singularly incorre