Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 4 August 1887.

Attribution: In Scrapbooks 3 (28/3, p. 138) and 4 (28/4, p. 142).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: This is the first of RK's stories to appear as a ‘turnover’, beginning on the just remodelled front page of the CMG and ‘turning over’ to the second page. The cutting in Scrapbook has been lightly corrected by RK.

Reprinted in Kipling's India: Uncollected Sketches.

A woman had died and a child had been born in it, but these are accidents which may overtake the most respectable establishments. No sensible man would think of regarding them. Indeed, so sound is my common sense, that I sleep in the room of the death and do my work in the room of the birth; and have no fault to find with either apartment. My complaint is against the whole house; and my grievance, so far as I can explain it in writing, is that there are far too many tenants in the eight, lime-washed rooms for which I pay seventy-five rupees a month.

They trooped in after the great heats of May as snakes seek bathrooms through drought. Personally I should prefer the snakes, the visible, smashable snakes, to the persons who have quartered themselves upon me for the past ten weeks. They take up no space and are almost noiseless, like the Otto Gas Engines – but they are there and they trouble me. In the very early morning when I climb on to the roof to catch what less heated breeze may be abroad, I am conscious that some one has preceded me up the narrow steps, and that there is some one at my heels. You will concede, will you not, that this is annoying, particularly when I know that I am officially the sole tenant. No man, visible or invisible, has a right to spy on my outgoings or incomings. At breakfast, in the full fresh daylight, I am conscious that some one who is not the khitmutgar is watching the back of my head from the door that leads into my bedroom; when I turn sharply, the purdah is dropped and I only see it waving gently as though shaken by the wind.