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176
WINTER INDIA

raja, and we stopped to watch the passing of the handsome young Hindu in his white and gold turban, a becoming red chudda wound around his shoulders. He stopped in front of us, bowed inquiringly, and Chaturgam Lal, in his flowered dressing-gown, introduced us by name, as democratically as any constituent might stop and introduce one to his congressman on the court-house steps. After a short conversation on lines of democratic equality, the maharaja asked us to return and see more rooms of the palace and take a cup of tea; but it was then sunset, darkness soon to follow, and we had instead to hurry around to the mud-bank landing, and drift back to the ghats by twinkling lamplights, a last dull glow indicating where the domri were burning the bodies of the poorest believers.