Elephant dance (1937)

Traditional implements, and behind all these the temple musiWedding c[2nS and dancing girls keeping up a continuous droning chant, drumming and fiddling and dancing. Dancing Temple dancing girls sound so romantic. I have ^ms always thought of them as the fairest and choicest of their sex. But these were both old and not shapely. They danced with their hands much like the Samoans. The sweet, heavy scent of the jasmine flowers was like Samoa. But the bride, besides flowers, had fine jewels and a costly sari woven of gold and rose colour. She was very lovely, demure, eyes downcast. She had been to England more than once and was 'well educated', our I.G.F. repeatedly assured us. But that, most obviously, was going to make little difference to her now that she was about to become a purdah wife. There were two women there who were thoroughly westernized and emancipated. One little body looked like anything but what she was, Mysore's first woman B.A. The other, with more apparent distinction, was the head of the Maternity Hospital here. Both in saris, for only the half-caste discards this badge of beauty. Another The Borrodailes, too, stumbled into a wedding of Wedding lower caste and were eagerly pressed to join the guests. The host claimed to be a barrister, but their description of the sanitary horrors they had to witness and even, out of politeness not refuse to swallow, 66