SCENE: Pavilion and Dome Hospital, Brighton 1915.
What talk is this, Doctor Sahib? This Sahib says he will be my letter writer? Just as though he were a bazar letter writer? … What are the Sahib’s charges? Two annas? Too much; I give one. . . . No! No! Sahib! You shouldn’t have come down so quickly. You’ve forgotten; we Sikhs always bargain … Well, one anna be it. I will give a bond to pay it out of my wound-pension when I get home. Sit by the side of my bed …
This is the trouble, Sahib: My brother, who holds his land and works mine outside Amritsar City, is a fool. He is older than I. He has done his service and got one wound out of it in what they used to call war that child’s play in the Tirah. He thinks himself a soldier! But that is not his offense. He sends me post cards, Sahib scores of post cards whining about the drouth, or the taxes, or the crops, or our servants’ pilferings, or some such trouble. He doesn’t know what trouble means. I want to t