ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



CHAPTER I 



Duties and pleasures of a Forest Officer — Vernaculars of Southern 

 India — Story about the ■ boy ' — The cook — A new toast-rack — The 

 tunny-ketch and 'little Master Cyril' — Cook and the soup — The 

 cook's pulli — The durzai. 



By way of preface to these notes of experiences shared some 

 years ago with my husband, a Forest Officer in Southern 

 India, I should like to say that every word entered here is 

 literally true. All the incidents recorded were seen and 

 heard by ourselves as we travelled from one district to 

 another through that fascinating land, excepting the few 

 relating to personal friends, and are not made up from mere 

 hearsay. 



People can only speak or write from their own point 

 of view ; ours was always an unconventional one. Not 

 ours the ordinary station life of India, bubbling over with 

 gossip, commonly called 'gup.' Our house at headquarters, 

 wherever that happened to be, was really more a place for 

 the storing of our belongings than a home. Once on the 

 road, whether under tents, or in jungle-huts, then we were 

 at home directly, and the friends one makes under such 

 rather rough and tumble circumstances are friends for a 

 lifetime. Not that the life is of necessity a rough one ; 

 those used to it contrive very luxurious, or at any rate 

 comfortable, makeshifts, which are not to be called hard- 

 ships. Equally with my husband I found station life very 

 flat when we returned to it — which had to be now and again, 

 — and entirely devoid of verve or even interest. As to what 



A 



