CHAPTER VII
CALCUTTA IN CHRISTMAS WEEK
NOTHER winter I took heed and reached Calcutta betimes, making sure of hotel accommodations for Christmas week, the gala season of the Anglo-Indian year, when all the fifteen hundred civilians who rule India, and all the officers who can be spared from cantonments, seek the capital.
Going from and returning to Singapore there was opportunity to stop in Burma, politically a province of India, but a country quite unique, where the life and the people are so distinct from those of India that one cannot class it with Hindustan any more than Siam. A different religion has made the Burmese a different people, and the absence of caste, the freedom, the equality, in fact, the acknowledged superiority of the attractive, capable, Burmese women have evolved a wholly different social order. There is light, and laughter and gaiety among its people, and the Burman is Malay enough to enjoy a life of leisure. The Chinese come and do the trading, and the Madrasi come to do the work, and the Burmese woman keeps the shop, rules the family,
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