Fage
THE CHINA MAIL, SÅTURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1958.
CRIKE PIVISIONAL INSPECTOR
Benares is sprawling, dusty, 'and · stench-ridden. Yet it is the most important town in India... a place of pilgrimage for the hundreds of thousands of Hindus who go there every year to bathe in the sacred waters of the River Ganges.
Where peasants meet princes on equal terms
THE road to Benares, the great religious centre of India, is narrow and straight. It is lined with ragged, dust-choked trees. As we travelled down it in what must have been one of the first buses known to man, an enormous cloud of dust billowed behind us.
Benares is surrounded by
land to porched and so poor that
it amounts almost to a desert,
Wo
passed lumbering
elephants and tired camels,
ladon with produce, on way to the town,
their
occasional
As we passed an collection_of_hovely around a well women ruimd shawls across their faces But selin WAS
there any life to be seen nothing but miles of flat, brown lund, cracked like crazy-paving by the heat, stretching away to the huge, blazing sun,
The town itself is low-built and straggles for miles in a dis- organised fashion. In parts the desert seems to penetrate right through it.
A blessing
It is a city in the middle of dusty, nowhere sprawling, stench-ridden.
the centre of the It is also Hindu religion, on which India, the only Hindu nation, is founded.
INSIDE
NEHRU'S INDIA
by BRIAN GARDNER
loin-cloth, and his hair almost reached his wafal. His. legs were and be leaned mucialed heavily on his staff.
I hired a boat and slowly wo drifted downstream, with one of the great religious rititals of the East laid out before my eyes lice n play.
on
Tiers of palaces and temples climb up the left bank for three miles. Bullinga are bulli buildings domes and minarets jumble with broad, Indian-style Some buildings have spires. sunk, and are half submerged in the water. Others are bulit over them.
of the Innes of Along one
Mingled with these, and below Bonarca I came to the Vish them, steps descend Into the wanath Temple the city's river. These are packed with of Hindus. Honds most important surmounted thousands with elaborately carved spires. bob about in the water Rself.
From inside came the steady The backbone
beat of a gone. People swarmed
in through a narrow door, many of them leuding garlanded cows, which
are sacred to the Hindus.
Those steps are called chats. Originally they were constructed by princes who Save their names to the sections they and Most people had markings their families supported. Now painted on their foreheads, they are maintained and some signifying various seeis. Many are being magnificently renewed,
He seemed in a kind Of carried flowers, which are by the Government of India. exhausted trance. Each step offered Inside the bemused- was a slow, nightmare process. looking cows. Flowers in barren He staggered against me, and I Indid are an offering of great helped him along.
Mixed, often inextricably, with throng are hundreds of
thic
extravagance.
bicycle rickshaws. The drivers Into the past
of these ail ring their
bolls
incessantly. So above the hum
There is the sound of splash- ing, and from the temples above come the monotonous, Incessant sounds of gongs and bells being
We drifted on. The whole scene was encased in a haze of beat, giving an added air of unreality. There was an extra- ordinary foeling of penco,
"Right. The Chief Inspector wants two volunteers for a dangerous undercover job in a Soho strip club.'
"
London Express Marilee
CAN ANY BOSS EVER BE
WORTH £770 A WEEK?
THE boss's pay packet, TH
like a woman's age, beaten to a rhythmic. steady is one of the most de-
me.
the licate subjects in world. You may often think about it. But you do not talk of it. And you never-or should not-ask any questions.
So when They
Bank. Barclays revealed recently that Mr Anthony Tuke was paid £8,500 a year for being its chairman, eyebrows were raised every whem." It was the first time that a big bank and Barclays is Britain's biggest had ever mentioned such a thing.
ALEXANDER THOMSON LOOKS INTO SOME BUMPER - PAY PACKETS
irica.
United States,
The bosses there are not so shy as ours about the salaries they earn.
can
vir Arthur Homer drew a solary of £222,000 or £4,200 a week-last year as president of Bethlehem Steel, one of tho
of America, Ho giants claim to be the highest-paid executive in the world.
Mr Harlow Curtice, who rotired on September 1, was paid £200,000 a year for lead- His job is said to be worth them. £40,000 a year—or £770 a A £40,000-a-year man, for the gigantic General Motor week. It sounds a lot. But
who is married but Corporation, whose world-wide rxample, under Sir Alexander's care 18 whose children have grown up. Vauxhall Motors.
interests take in Britain's own A# organization that solis has to pay £33,001 in taxation. £469 million worth of goods Se all he is left with at present tax rates for his working year is
£6,969.
One of Britain's highest-pnici In each case, the top imen in business executives in Sir Alex- these Cown lend a life better than
ander Fleck, the 08-year-olt. nimost certainly and murmur of the crowd is a
great businesses would
Ret consider high-pitched choir of bicycle the majority of the citizens in
Scot who is chairman of the ably more than the average. Spiritually, Benares is the most bells.
the great eitlos. When their
But these bumper pay packets important town in India to
Narrow lanes lead off this working days are over; they are
yet Imperial Chemical Indus-
are sadly trimmed after the tax Hindus. And, in India, spiritual
the streels, directions like left to wander in
collector has token a swipe of matters are still more important street in all
of tentacles, hundreds
These, and are keked after and fed than political.
jornmed 100, are
with people by everyone. one of the making their way to the various Dlso Benares is greatest sights in the world. temples in this maze of a city. Once seen, it is engraved on the memory for ever.
These inney are so narrow that even a cyclist ranne! got down pleasantly them. But they are
over sun is only cool, na the
every the them for a few minutes
It is situated on the left bank
of the great River Ganges. I is not difcult to see why Ganges is sacred in India-t day, brings life to nearly half the coundtry.
Like the Ganges, they are sacred because of their basin. tire-giving quailly to a people who have been boor all their history.
These
cows
go where they wish. And people, as they puss, run their hands lovingly across
are lined with their bacles. The lanes "shops." These are like shelves
o
I was not allowed in the lem- A bathe in its walers is con- let back into the walls on which sidered a kind of blessing, but the shopkeeper sits surrounded ple at Benores, but I could feel wages. These "shops the strange, mystle atmosphere. expecially at Benares. Every by his year hundreds of thousands of sell cloth (in six-yard lengths A visit to Benares is like Üladus make the pilgrimage the size of a sarf), tobacco (for journey into the past. to Benares to bathe in The hubble-bubble), vegetables and
fruit, sacred river.
cheap knickkusek The morning dip is token by nonsense from Europe and most of the inhabitants as well Japon, and religious idols,
as the pilgrima. And as I approached the river the lanes became even more crowded.
In trance
Princes
a
come
In one of these
cupboard-
Fancy goods of the penkite and bangle variety are sold to with their the pilgrims, as at the scoside retinues, in Convoys of cars. in Britain. City-dwellers come by numerous trains. Foor
trek people hundreds of miles with nothing but a few rogs and a staff across the plains and mountains of India, often spending months. on their journey.
shops I saw a large painting
Monotonons
Men sat motionless on the roofs of temples, arms folded, heads bowed, facing the great red globo of the sun. were sun-worshippers, We passed the Temple of the Goddess of Smalipox. Those who pray there seck cures for their stricken relatives.
Delween the shats are the laundries. Rowa of men and women bent clothes against stones to a continuous rhythm. They chant as they work. The clothes are rashod with clay. Beyond then
Top pay
a year.
1ts 13,000 products range from zip-fastenera and Terylene to vital raw materials for our factorles,
Sir Walker Shepherd, who and Newall
Of course, Mr Tuke's £8,500 runs the Turner there are more is not the whole story.
He also usbestos combine that takes in ghits, including the famous shares in management pay the Ferodo brake-tining business, burning ghat. Here the bodies which for Barclays full-time is another man high up in the of the dead are laid on pyres of directors totalled £140,000 last industrial pay scale. wood, ready for burning.
On the steps are people pour- ing water from brass bowls in It is n front of their bodies. blessing for the rays of the sun
them to reach
through the water of the Ganges. Others sit in the water chanting.
This is Hinduism -- the very heart and core of India. It is the foundation on which modern India is built, and the backbone of Its anelent civilisation.
year.
Oil Giant
Trimmed
This means that his pay packet of £770 a werk is shaved down to a much less' lofty £138,
In other countries, the boss does very much better,
Remember, 100,
that
the
value on their industrial leaders, The Americans set a super
and pay them accordingly.
I often think reason why the become so dominating renty in the world,
that is one
dollar
bas
a cur
-London Express Service),
Tortoises Are Costly When They Slim
In hip boardroom, the aver- A £10,000-a-year man here, So bi toin) pay packet age pay packet works out of warried and with two chiktiren, would be considerably more £31,000 a year, It is the highest has £4,000 left alter paying his than the sim paid to him in I know. And you can be sure taxes. In West Germany he his capacity as chairman of that Sir Walker, who has a would have more than £5,000 the board.
home in Mayfair and a Thames to spend, In Canada, nearly
And in the Unlied 700 officials in Montreal All the same, the disclosure ide farm, gets more than the £7,000. average.
States comething like £7,300 aro probably set you wondering
scratching their what the heads of our other
boss's job often does not finish heads over two glant tor grent enterprises get for the work
when the office closes He can- talsés Avoir and Dupois. of Nehru and Nasser-clasp. Near the river were hundreds
they do. They are the "key"
not relax in front of the Somewhere Not far behind is Sir Foster television at night, or nod in his train journey between Montreal on the 40-mile ing each other round the neck, of wretched beggars, many of
men in Deltaln. They form the over the e United We them terribly deformed. There,
plans and make the decisions Robinson and the directors of armchair.
and New York the tortoises lost of old too, were thousands Stand.
that keep the factories hum- the E. S. & A. Robinson paper people, just sitting about waiting For above the ghats, -on the mind, and help provide steady end cardboard firm, one of the
The next day's business and 76lbs, in weight between them. wall of a bulding, i saw a lone jobs for 28 million people.
And Montreal The walls (including those of io die.
targ
great businesses of Bristol. They plans for next year and perhaps advertisement looking down on
It la thoir brains and idean averaged nearly £30,000 in pay for several years after that are paid for them at the Benares is the best ploce. In the ancient scene below. It was
Seldom out of his mind.
nearly £1 lb. adelergent advertisement..
that help us pay our way in last year.
Otherwise, we shoulti soon be 11 in. long. In India, where the India in which to die, because
In New York Avoir weighed the world. Politiciads could There is one main street.
In Lord Woolton's old firm, falling behind our rivals in the in at 33316, and his mate Dupois leads from the outskirts to the life of a human being is worth if you die there you go straight
And from the distance, above talk their heads off. but that about as much as the last fly to heaven. Old women sit there
of gengs camó the would not get us very for the Lewis's stores group that markets of the world, and that at 2081b,
also includes Oxford would pretty soon land uş in u Several days later.in Mont- you swatted with a newspaper, patiently puffing away at their the sound
lubes from familiar wall of a factory hooter. unless the big industrialists W
Street's Selfridges, pay packets me old mess.
real Avoir had trimmed down Along it I jostled with all insect and animal life is hubble-bubble
swoter-filed bowls.
were always on their toes.
Gre around the £23,000 line. For the jobs they do, and the to.2301b. and Dupo's to LESIO. thousands of pilgrims. A thick, respected. struggling mas some con7-
At last reached the Ganges, Some Hindu sects will not verging on the river, others
kill bed-bugs. This is pleasant moving slowly to the sea coming away.
for the Insects, but it hardly miles away. It was a dull green case India's vast colour, and about a quarter of a
Even when you cannot see it, you are always conscious of the Ganges in Benares,
river bank.
the bedroom in my hotel) are
ali crawling with lizarda about
A young man struggled along helps to beside me. He was dressed in a problem of disease.
mile wide,
600
city counell
rato of
In the Shell off giant, where heavy lond of responsibility they Zoo oftieleis, while trying to By law, the companies have to disclose only the fatal pay of Lord Godber is chairman, they carry, the bosses are cheap at fotten them up again, conclude their directors. How they split average £12,800. And in the the price. Their rewards are that, pound for pound, the cliy It up among themselves is their Dunlop tyre and rubber business, trining alongside those of the will lose about £13 on the deal
the figuré is £20,000 a year.
leaders Big Business
of the eventually.
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