CHAPTER XXII

THE CAPITAL OF THE DECCAN

HAIDARABAD, the capital of the Deccan, is perhaps of all the cities of India the one regarding which the visitor's expectant attention is raised to the highest point by the allegations of travellers, and it is unquestionably the one which most copiously disappoints that expectation. There must be something in the air of the place which breeds exaggeration, as it seems also to breed in its proprietors a false sense of importance, for there is nothing else to do it, save it be the distended size of the city and its suburbs, eighteen miles through in one direction and fourteen miles in the other, so they tell you, and the more than half million of its people which make it the fourth largest of India, in a State which is as big as France. But with its size ends all its claim to note. It is true that one may see in its streets a queer mixture of races, Rohillas still reminiscent of French occupation in their baggy red tunics and cutaway coats, Arabs who might have come as they stand from the desert, and coal-black negro faces under the fez. But where in any living city of the

East will you not find mixtures as unexpected and even more remarkable? And what are its buildings but mere straggling aggregations of undistinguished stone? The Nizam's Palace, which covers close on half a square mile, almost a quarter of the walled city, and which is really a nest of nobles, each with his own half-disciplined retainers, is so inconspicuous that it would be impossible from any of the hills round to pick out its position among the multitudinous roofs without the help of other landmarks. The new Palace, in which the Royal party was lodged, magnificently placed on a crest of a ridge just south of the city, is a pile of whitewashed stucco without style or distinction, and nothing better can be said of any of the great glaring buildings which stand out with such effect in the curiously theatrical landscape in which Haidarabad lies; a surf of rocky rose-red hills amid lakes of blue water and levels of emerald-green rice.

Then, too, the sights of which the traveller tells, the men who are walking armouries, and who "draw" at the slightest provocation, take so much seeking that one gives them up in despair; and the truculent and reckless tendencies. of the mob are just as difficult to discover. The wild riding through the streets of the chiefs' retainers does furnish scenes which are occasionally amusing, as when three of them the other day, galloping madly to pick up the rest of their

un

escort, were suddenly held up by a jutka which had turned at right angles across their path. A jutka is something like a long coster's cart with a piece of linoleum bent over to form an arched roof to it. It is generally horsed by an broken rat of a pony, who is uncertain on the level, and jibs and shies when asked to go up or down hill. This particular specimen had spun away from the slope as the three impetuous swashbucklers were hard behind and about to pass it, and the sudden swerve put the whole length of the jutka against their horses' noses. The horses had to stop, but the three riders continued their flying career, lance in hand, over the top of the jutka, which, struck by the breasts. of the charging steeds, turned completely over, with the driver and his family upside down inside, the pony upside down between the shafts, with protesting hoofs in the air, and the three horses on top of them all, scrambling and slithering amid the still revolving wheels to get on to firm ground again. No one emerged from the incident without some alteration, the jutka especially was affected, the lancers' facings had disappeared and one of their lances was broken; but there appeared no disposition, even on the pony's part, to take the affair seriously; it did not seem to strike any one as outside the ordinary Haidarabad routine.

Still, save in these small light-hearted ways,