Karachi, India

OK Wednesday Friday, April 10 10, 1929 Wednesday, April 10, 1929

Beginning to get used to bugs and mosquitoes now and they don’t keep me awake much. Two new additions to make to the menagerie that inhabits our palace—

16. Horseflies

17. Cat

18. 2 Lice

19. Mouse

This addition—2 lice—found on Mort, and picked up in the streetcar probably, is the greatest since the bedbugs.

Tonight the proprietor’s brother, who has just received his A.B. degree at Sikh University in Amritsar, just east of Lahore. He says this school is a very large one. He also claims that it is of no use to get a master’s degree (in two years) for there is no good work available in India for Indians. The British have monopolized government positions and stifled manufacturing so they can unload their products in India. England’s policies, he says, are not adverse to the fighting between Hindus and Mohammedans. As in Ireland, Palestine, and Egypt, India is much dissatisfied with the English rule. A new law has been passed in India raising the marriage age limit for women from twelve to sixteen. A man can marry at twenty. The families arrange the marriage and the participants never see each other till the day they are married. There is no such thing as divorce.

We are getting food cheaper now—a dozen bananas for 9¢, a dozen rolls for 4¢.

It is interesting to see the different styles of wearing hair, etc. Some have long wooly hair that straggles out in all directions. These wigs are of a hideous reddish-brown. Others wear their fine black hair done up in a knot on the top of their head, and down the sides of their face it sticks out in all directions, but not so bad as the notable sketch here would lead one to believe. The poorer class wear the wigs or else have their head shaved. Many are a la European. I have seen a number who braid their beard. And such poise and grace as have the women! Some men go about practically naked, clothed—if a loin cloth two inches wide can qualify as clothing.

Yesterday I got some beans down in the bazaar. Hot!! Pepper, curry, garlic, and what-not. Anything to scorch your innards. Big red splotches on sidewalks and in streets give testimony to the fact that the natives here chew betel-nut.

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