Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/305

Rh Islam, get up a frightful caricature of the proceeding. They look upon Hussan and Hussein (Anglicè, Hobson, Dobson) as pretenders. If you speak to the Sooni of the premature death of the brother-heroes, he will reply in mock sympathy "Pity they died not earlier." This is mortal offence to the parties concerned, but as "the dead feel no resentment," their friends the Moguls and other Shehás take up the cudgels for them. Hence bleeding noses, broken pates, and other paraphernalia of carnage. The hatred the two sects bear each other is imperishable. The Sooni's idea of the holiday is to make merry at his rival's expense. He keeps up mad revels all these days exactly in proportion to the intensity of the Shehá's mourning. He will become a monkey, a bear, a tiger, an old hag, a mock Mohlá, a pious dust-begrimed Darvish, a street dancer, a bairági, and anything and everything, in fact, except a respectable human being. If he is well-to-do, and middle-aged, he enters on a career of indiscriminate hospitality, where the invitation to the guest is in the golden language of the ancients, "Drink or depart." I need not say many prefer the former alternative. When he comes out into the street with his very much