Page 141 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

cloths. Some of them are diseased; some of them are fifty
years old. For miles on end they trot in the sun or rain, head
down, dragging at the shafts, with the sweat dripping from
their grey moustaches. When they go too slowly the pas-
senger calls them BAHINCHUT. They earn thirty or forty
rupees a month, and cough their lungs out after a few years.
The gharry ponies are gaunt, vicious things that have been
sold cheap as having a few years’ work left in them. Their
master looks on the whip as a substitute for food. Their
work expresses itself in a sort of equation—whip plus food
equals energy; generally it is about sixty per cent whip and
forty per cent food. Sometimes their necks are encircled by
one vast sore, so that they drag all day on raw flesh. It is still
possible to make them work, however; it is just a question of
thrashing them so hard that the pain behind outweighs the
pain in front. After a few years even the whip loses its vir-
tue, and the pony goes to the knacker. These are instances
of unnecessary work, for there is no real need for gharries
and rickshaws; they only exist because Orientals consider it
vulgar to walk. They are luxuries, and, as anyone who has
ridden in them knows, very poor luxuries. They afford a
small amount of convenience, which cannot possibly bal-
ance the suffering of the men and animals.
Similarly with the PLONGEUR. He is a king compared
with a rickshaw puller or a gharry pony, but his case is
analogous. He is the slave of a hotel or a restaurant, and
his slavery is more or less useless. For, after all, where is
the REAL need of big hotels and smart restaurants? They
are supposed to provide luxury, but in reality they provide

1 0 Down and Out in Paris and London