A Bengali Lady in England

A Bengali Lady in England
Author(s): Krishnabhavini Das and Sayantan Dasgupta

Source: Indian Literature , November/December 2014, Vol. 58, No. 6 (284)
(November/December 2014), pp. 14-23
Published by: Sahitya Akademi
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44479158
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CLASSIC
A Bengali Lady in England
Kiishnabhavini Das
"London" and "Around London," are two extracts from Englandey

Bangamahila (A Bengali Lady in England), which was perhaps the first
full-length travelogue written by a woman in Bengali. It was published
anonymously in 1885. Krishnabhavini Das (1864-1919) accompanied her
husband to England at a time when crossing the kalapani or the dark
waters was considered taboo by the orthodox Hindu society. Englandey
Bangamahila is based on her sojourn in England and offers a fascinating
narrative of the reception of colonial English culture by an Indian
woman.
Englandey Bangamahila offers far more than a mere

visited by the author; it carries her observations an
the English people, their lifestyles, the status of wom
marriage and English domestic life, and English politi
In each case, Krishnabhavini' s own cultural backgrou
index against which English culture is measured as she t
alterity into familiar spaces. It is thus an important his
for understanding the dynamics of the Indian recep
in the 19th century.
London
(Chapter 6)
London is a huge city; you won t find a city this big anywhere in the
world. It is almost five krosh in length and four krosi i in breadth. London
is almost four times the size of Kolkata and the population of London
is eight times that of Kolkata - forty lakh people- live here. One can see
all of London if one travels the length and breadth of the city by car
continuously for five or six days, but it is easy to get lost here. London

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Krishnabhavini Das
is so big, yet it is still growing; wherever you go, you will see new houses
being constructed and villages on the outskirts being integrated into
the city. The fields one used to encounter on the outskirts of London
five years ago now sport rows of houses instead of clumps of grass; one
finds it impossible to believe that this was little more than a village only
a few years back.
People in our country may not understand the concept of 'getting a

room'. Many people rent a house and then sub-let individual rooms of
the house; many families, too, let out two or three rooms, sometimes
furnishing them. Those who let out furnished rooms provide other
facilities as well - they cook for the tenants, clean the rooms, make the
beds and so on. You use their belongings, eat out of their utensils and
sleep on their beds. Whenever you feel like eating something, all you
have to do is tell your landlady and she will do the needful. You just
have to pay her the rent and the money for the food at the end of every
week. The woman in charge of the rented house is called the landlady.
The kind of rooms you get would depend on the money you pay. For
twenty-five shillings (around fourteen rupees) a week, you can get two
furnished first-floor rooms in a decent neighbourhood. The bedroom
would have a comfortable bed, bedding, a washbasin, a cupboard to keep
your clothes in, a mirror and a few pictures as well. The sitting room
would have a table, four or five small cushioned chairs, a couple of large
cushioned chairs, a couch, a big mirror and a few pictures. You can expect
both rooms to be carpeted. Furnished rooms are also sometimes available
for less, but they are not as comfortable, nor would they be in a decent
locality. Unfurnished rooms are available at half the price of furnished
rooms, but renting an unfurnished room entails buying all the
abovementioned furniture and utensils and also employing a maid, which
is why a furnished room is always a better option for foreigners and for
those who have just arrived. Such furnished rooms are available not only
in London but in all of England and even in most other countries in
Europe. Taking such rooms on rent saves a lot of money and labour;
within an hour of reaching here after a long and exhausting journey,
you can sit comfortably in the privacy of your own room and have
your food. True, there are hotels in almost all countries of the
world, but staying at a hotel would cost almost twice as much as a rented
room.

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Indian Literature: 284
The eastern part of London is totally different from the rest of the city.
The houses are small and dingy and the roads, narrow and dirty - mosdy
litde more than narrow bylanes. There are fewer shops here and these
shops only stock merchandise of inferior quality. This region is home
to labourers, porters and other members of the working class; there
are also many ports and factories here. You won t see a single gentleman
or wealthy person here; only the wretched live here. 'Wretched', and
not 'poor' is the more appropriate word to describe people who do not
have money in this country. The poor in our country, as indeed in other
European countries, are meek and ingratiating, but the poor of England,
and particularly of London, are like beasts. When you are in this section
of the city, you may find it difficult to believe that there is even a single
gendeman in London, or indeed that England is a civilised country. This
section is so large that it seems never-ending; the rows of small and
poorly maintained houses seem to stretch on endlessly. A small house
may often be shared between several families; every such family has four
or five male members. No more than one or two rooms falls to the
lot of each family and as there are no courtyards or open spaces for men
here as there are in our country, seven or eight people sometimes end
up living like catde, cramped into one or two rooms. Just as London
is home to the rich, so it is to the poor as well. Nowhere else in the
world will you see so many rich people living side by side with so many
poor men and women. Brawls and even murders are quite common in
this part of London, and of how these people behave when they are
drunk and what state they are reduced to, I shall write later. The roads
here are so narrow, dark and dirty, not to mention stinking, that one
finds it difficult to muster enough courage to walk down them. One
foreigner had, I have heard, expressed his desire to approach their
dwellings in order to find out more about the lives of the people who
lived in this part of London, but the police forbade him from doing so,
for these people are like wretched beasts and when they get drunk, they
lose all sense of propriety and a foreigner approaching them may end
up putting himself in grave danger.
There are many things in England that grab our attention for being new
to us but there is one thing in particular that I find really novel. I have
heard that all foreigners, in fact, are stunned to see London on a Sunday.
People do not get up before eight or nine on Sundays; some sleep on
till even later. The city wallows in silence; the lustre of the shops is
missing today for they are all closed. Even the vendors, who otherwise

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Krishnabhavini Das
go around advertising their wares at the top of their voices, are silent
today. One fails to catch even a shred of that terrible cacophony that
characterises London - it is as if everybody has abandoned London and
run away All places of entertainment are closed; it is no fun going out
today for everything looks desolate. As the day wears on, one begins
to hear fragments of conversation; it seems London is finally beginning
to wake up from its long slumber. After a while, the bells start tolling
in the churches; it is now time for people to go to church. Sunday is
the day of worship for Christians; almost everybody dresses up smartly
and goes to attend the service. Everybody, rich and poor, has a special
set of clothes set aside for Sundays, just as people set aside special clothes
for festivals in our country. Women, in particular, take great care with
their Sunday attire. From old women to young girls, everyone busies
herself trying to look her best, and unmarried young women vie with
each other to look the most attractive in their group. All the people
here dress up in smart, fresh clothes on Sunday and go out.
The church bells can be heard tolling in the distance; one also
hears people walking down the street now. Women walk by in diverse
attire; there is less variety in the mens clothes - they all wear black.
Many women have the habit of dressing extravagantly in much the same
way in which so many men in our country dress up like a dandy before
going out. Men do not care much about perfume or swanky clothes
here. Women outnumber men on the streets. All over the world, it is
women who are more deeply involved in worship and religious rites;
they are also more orthodox than men are. Many women here go to
church merely to make a show of their piety, and many women who
are still single go to church only in the hope of attracting prospective
husbands with their fine attire. After a while, everybody has left for church
with the exception of the servants; for these women, there is still no
respite.
If the weather is good, people go outdoors on Sunday evening. The

main roads teem with people; maidservants and poor people can also
be found crowding around certain areas. The gardens are all very crowded;
people seem desperate to derive as much pleasure and happiness as possible
from this single day of the week. Everybody is dressed in fresh and clean
clothes today. It is a holiday for everybody; even servants and maidservants
have a few hours free for themselves on Sunday evenings. So many people
walk the streets now, dressed in so many different kinds of clothes! It
is almost impossible to separate the gentlefolk from the wretched. All

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shops remain closed today barring liquor and tobacco shops. Liquor shops
are open for a short while during the daytime and all evening after that.
What a strange race! To keep the liquor shops open of all the shops.
In the morning it is the church people flock to, and in the evening,
it is the bar they rush to!
Around London
Chapter 9
Look around and you will be captivated by the gleaming shops on both
sides - shops that have glass panels at the front and whose interiors where
various kinds of objects are tastefully laid out can therefore be seen.
Details such as the name of the shopowner, the address and the kind
of goods the shop stocks are embossed in large letters on signboards
of polished wood or brass. The roads are absolutely spie and span and
nicely paved with hard stone and have paved footpaths on both sides for
pedestrians. Hundreds march on along these footpaths - men, women,
boys, girls, natives and foreigners all march on in step with each other.
It is only occasionally that snatches of conversation reach your ears -
in those snatches of conversation, you sometimes also encounter a few
foreign words. So many different kinds of vehicles trundle down the
road - Brougham,1 Barouche,2 Phaeton,3 cab, omnibus, shopowners' cars
etcetera - everything is in motion, there is no rest, no respite. Crossing
the road is a risky affair - one has to look around carefully and then cross
when the traffic is thin. There are no palanquins or bullock carts in this
country and the noise of cars on the road drowns out the drone of
conversation. White faces of people dressed mostly in black - everybody
is well-dressed; no bare arms or legs are visible.
Again, you will find roads where the sound of vehicles is less and
where peddlers hawk their merchandise, which they carry in wicker
baskets or in hand-pushed carts. They are always on the move, shouting
at the top of their voices - their cries seem to rend the very skies. They
wander around from eight in the morning to the evening, sometimes
even till eight or nine at night. At first, one finds it difficult to make
sense of the cacophony; one may see a hawker carrying something
around but may still find it difficult to make head or tail of what he
shouts.
After staying a few months here, one gradually starts understanding

the words - a man shouts "Mackerel, mackerel!" as he pushes his cart
loaded with fish, another yells, "Get your tin items repaired" or "Get

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Krishnabhavini Das
your knives and scissors sharpened", yet another declares he is selling

coal. Or, you might hear someone crying, "Get your beds and umbrellas
patched up!" or a Jew shouting "Old clothes!" as he scouts for old clothes
he can buy Again, you might just hear the enticing words, "Roast
potatoes - piping hot!" as the cold evening sends shivers down your spine.
The peddlers thus shout out loud the details of the goods or services
they have on offer. There are also the milkmen who pull their carts
from house to house, delivering milk and crying "Milk, milko, ko, ku"
from six in the morning to five in the evening.
Though I have sometimes seen a couple of well-built Irish women
lugging heavy loads of milk, people do not usually carry loads on their
shoulders or on their heads here as we do in our country. Almost every
shopowner has his own horse-carriage or handcart, which he uses to
transport his merchandise. Still, you will sometimes see a man carrying
a box on his head and walking down the road in the evening, ringing
a bell he carries in his hand. Instead of shouting, he rings the bell to
inform people that he carries muffins, a sweet delicacy somewhat akin
to the siddha pitha of our country. You may also encounter an old lady
carrying a wicker basket on her head or at her waist and crying "Watercress,
cresses!" as she goes around selling a kind of green leaf that is eaten
uncooked here.
There are many other sounds one hears on the streets of London
apart from these; of all these sounds, the cries of the newspaper boys
catch one's ears most frequently. Fom seven to eleven in the morning,
they stand on all the main thoroughfares and at all the major crossings
and stations, shouting, "Paper, paper." "Sir, do you want Daily News or
Daily TelegrapĶ Standard or Chronicle , which one do you want?" they ask
as they try to sell papers to passers-by. Again you can find little boys
manning every major road and crossing in the evening, crying "Echo",
"Globe" and " Standard " as they try to sell the evening papers. There is
no dearth of newspapers, nor is there a dearth of readers; newspapers
are cheap and anyone can buy them here. On almost every road in London,
you will encounter a melancholic music; this music comes from an
instrument called the 'organ'. Many poor Italians who have come to
this country wander about the streets playing the organ; people who
like their music toss them a penny or two and sometimes people give
them some money simply because they are moved by their plight.
Sometimes the organ-player asks for money by touching his hat or by
making other such gestures. Begging is against the law in this country,
so beggars have to resort to novel tricks in asking for money. If you try
to escape the clamour of the main road and take resort to one of the

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lanes, there too, you will be greeted by these poor Italians and the grating,
annoying music of their organs.
Right on the edge of the footpath stand five, six, sometimes even seven-
storeyed houses, towering over you; there are shops in every building
and the upper floors are used for storing goods. One can get an idea
of the opulence and wealth of England merely by walking from one
end of Oxford Street to the other. This stretch has every kind of
merchandise conceivable - jewellery, clothes, furniture, glass crockery,
books, food - everything one can need is available here; even the occasional
tavern stands conspicuously in the midst of all this. You will see rich
wives clad in expensive clothes alight from their cars and enter the
jewellers' shops; four or five young female employees immediately
approach her, asking, "Can I help you, m'am?" and begin showing her
the pieces she is interested in. Some time later, the rich woman leaves,
climbs into her carriage and goes her way. Little boys and girls stand
awestruck, staring at her splendid horses, smartly dressed coachman and
servant. Again, somewhere down the road, you will see a group of
workers, clad in tattered clothes and tired out after the day's work, enter
a tavern. Some of them sit inside, nursing their drink, and some others
can be seen leaving after finishing their drink; one feels great sorrow
and sympathy for them.
Inside Kensington Garden stands the Albert Memorial dedicated to the

memory of Prince Albert, deceased husband of Queen Victoria. There
is a huge statue of Prince Albert here; it is one of the important sights
of London. The statue is wrought out of metal and stands under a stone
canopy splendidly designed and decorated. It is surrounded by statues
of the most famous poets, singers, sculptors, thinkers and scientists of
Europe. At the four comers stand four pieces of sculpture representing
Asia, Europe, Africa and America. In one, we see a woman in Indian
attire, seated on an elephant, trying to cover her face with the end of
her saree. She is flanked by a Chinese on one side and by a Muslim
on the other. Together, this represents Asia. Likewise, the sculpture that
represents Europe shows a European man sitting on horseback, Africa
is represented by a Negro on a camel, and America, by an American sitting
atop a cow. One look at these four sculptures is enough to tell you what
kind of clothes people used to wear in each of these continents; sartorial
tastes have remained just the same in Asia and Africa, but how they have

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Krishnabhavini Das
changed in Europe and America! Europeans used to wear a pugree on

their heads and wooden shoes on their feet and used to be clad in clothes
quite like ours, but how different their clothes are today! And see how
the sartorial transformation has been accompanied by advances in
knowledge and science in their case.
Of all the wonderful sights of London, the one that appears most fantastic
to us is the London that exists under the ground. There is a London
you see on ground level; again, below the ground there lies another
London that sits, moves, eats and sleeps in a subterranean world of its
own. It is not surprising that people in our country would be astonished
to hear that there are rooms below the ground here and would expect
the rooms to be very dark and terrifying. Every house here has a floor
below ground level; these basement rooms are mostly used only as
kitchens, laundry rooms and rooms for storing coal. Washing of clothes,
cooking and such things are done in the basement rooms and coal and
foodstuff are therefore stored here. The poor also sometimes use these
rooms for sleeping. As there is usually some open space in front and
a window or two as well, these rooms are fairly well-lit and breezy. In
any case, even these rooms here are cleaner than many kitchens in our
country, which are built above the ground.
London has an 'underground railway'; trains travel continuously
under the streets, sometimes even under the houses, linking various
parts of London. No other country has such an amazing thing. True,
our train had passed through quite a few huge tunnels on our way to
England, but the idea of burrowing around in the dark in the heart of
the city was something I found completely novel. There is no fun or
pleasure in riding on this train; the whole journey takes place inside
the tunnels and the all-encompassing darkness is punctuated only by brief,
fleeting glimpses of the sky and of dimly lit stations. It is true that they
have tried to ensure that the smoke is dispersed and fresh air circulated
in the underground railway, but spend a few minutes on the train and
you will find yourself choking on the fumes. Still, one gets used to
it after a while. Thousands of people travel from one place to another
in London using these trains. If one has to travel from one part of the
city to another, taking the underground railway turns out cheaper and
faster than hiring a horse-carriage. The stations are located underground,
so one has to climb down the stairs before getting onto a train. The
stations are not very far apart - you would find two or three stations
within a krosh. So many people and so many different kinds of vehicles

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rush on above you, and here, under the ground, the train rushes on in
the subterranean darkness - it is mind-boggling to us, but men, women,
boys and girls here use the underground railway quite nonchalantly
Apart from these modes of public transport, London has around five
thousand four-wheel carriages and around six and a half thousand two-
wheel carriages that can be hired when you want to travel from one
place to another. Both kinds of carriages are pulled by a single horse.
The four-wheel carriages are somewhat like the palanquins of our
country. We do not have two-wheel carriages in Bengal but I have seen
them in Bombay. Such a carriage can accommodate only two passengers
and is open at the front; when it rains, the glass windows in the carriage
are closed. The coachman sits not in the front but at the back of the
coach, and from there he controls the horse. And apart from these,
London has so many different kinds of cars - private cars, shopowners'
cars, cars belonging to the railway company, breweries' cars and hand-
pulled cars. Who knows how many of them ply on the streets of London
every day!
Gas lights are most extensively used here. They are to be found
on the roads, in shops, in playhouses and almost every important place;
most houses in London also use gas lights. These days, one sees electric
lights in one or two big shops and in some playhouses, museums and
stations; while these are more powerful and safer than gas lights, they
work out to be more expensive and therefore, are yet to catch on
everywhere. In any case, electric lights keep flickering all the time and
are thus inconvenient in their own way. The important roads of London
are lit up brightly in the evenings reminding one of the temple in our
country. The light from the street and the light inside the shop bounce
off the glass fixtures in the shop and the articles on display and illuminate
the surroundings even more brightly. That is why in winter it is more
fun walking around in London in the night as opposed to during the
day.
Translated from Bengali by Sayantan Dasgupta
Notes
1. The Brougham was a light, four-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage with spac

two passengers.

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Krishnabhavini Das
2. The Barouche was a four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage with two double seats
at the back.
3. The Phaeton was a sporty, 19th century horse-drawn carriage characterised by

extravagantly large wheels.
Glossary
Siddha pitha : A traditional sweetmeat popular in Bengal.

Krosh: A unit of measurement; it is equivalent to a little more than two miles.

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A Bengali Lady in England

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Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44479158

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