The Upcountry Journal of Sir Muttonchop G. Buddha

What follows is the journal of a strange and mysterious figure known only as Sir Muttonchop G. Buddha to the Sri Lankan highlands around Nuwara Eliya, ostensibly to inspect his substantial holdings in the nearby tea estates, though even this detail is considered murky. More puzzling still is the impossibility of discerning if the journal was written in 1872 or 2010, but no matter.


Sept. 22, Nuwara Eliya

Aaah! and what a lovely day it is for a sortie in the tea fields of Ceylon! The day grants us an invigorating mist to shield us from the slothful Colonial sun, and a fine steed to ride about the curling plantation byways, visiting upon my estate managers and imposing the proper image of an industriously working man upon the natives...

I'm residing for the time being in the abode of a Ceylonese lady by the name of Miss Teresa. Of course, the name she was given at birth is unpronounceable and in all likelihood barbarous, with a lamentable pagan note to it, so I've given her a Christian name and hope that a Christian heart shall soon follow. No more fit for cultured tongues is the name of this town, Nuwara Eliya. It sounds like the name of a Rajah's daughter fallen to ill repute, offering the delights of her cinnamon-hued flesh to any slobbering member of the petty gentry with a half-purse of silver. Such salacious tales as these fill the pages of the obscene and lascivious "histories" by C.W. Chesterworth, which in turn fill the uppermost of my bookshelves.

I must confess, however, that these volumes -not that I've ever browsed them with more than a catalogist's aloof eye- are opened most rarely these days, as my advancing years and the thinness of the air in these regions do make it a test upon my constitution to read of "...sweat clouding the topaz jewels betwixt the Rani's trembling bosom...". Nuwara Eliya is situated temperately, though I dare say dizzyingly, at a height of over six thousands of feet, which may be a fine altitude for the local Asiatics or an uncouth, hemp-favoring Yankee adventurer, but it is no place for the refined breath of an English gentleman, to say nothing of the English ladyfolk. Alas that such fine grounds cannot be found in lower and less Equatorial climes! Without question, the rumpled seas of verdant, aromatic, and eminently profitable beverage-bound leaf amidst the skyward-striving montane trees hereabouts is indeed most pleasing to the tropic-tired eye. No less a delight is to behold the well-tended vegetables in the coolies' gardens, looking for all the world like my Aunt Perriwin's tomato patch on the Fline of Twee. I gaze upon my estate's laborers plucking fine English cabbages from their humble (though magnanimously granted!) Oriental plots, and I thank our Saviour for shewing to me that, yes, the myriad races of the Empire may yet be Redeemed.  Of course, these particular toils are beneath me. It is no place of mine to pluck a cabbage -save perhaps if I were given the chance to pluck the fresh cabbage of Miss Priscilla Upworth, if you take my figuration! But, oh! I must retire. The air remains thin, and I shall require all my energies to sustain and endure my tempestuous nightly dream of caressing Miss Priscilla's auburn locks and siring an heir.

~~Interlude of Repose~~

Up before dawn for Miss Teresa's smashing eggs and toast with jam, and I think I shall head straight to the links. Blessed are we mightily to have a golf course bisecting the very center of town. There is never a wrong time to play a few holes on such fine and spacious grounds. These open spaces, I must admit, are to me the game's only real merit. Placing the ball in the distant cup is devilish hard, but in a full morning's play you may see no more people than are typically balanced on a single Ceylonese motor-bicycle. My caddy awaits me, as he always does whether I send ahead for him or not. He knows well that my munificence is greatest immediately after a display of utmost punctiliousness. He has even abandoned the cult of Shiva at the calling of St. James, or so he told me as he listed the numerous heathen practices that he has forsworn since last I withheld his salary as tithe.

My interactions with the locals of late have been most heartwarming. It is recently reported that Ceylon is the eighth-most personable land upon the Earth, and this shows in the honest warmth of its native peoples. However, I must sadly repeat here that Ceylon is also also ranked firstly among the nations in addiction to the wicked vice of strong drink. And aye, if ever you had beheld the liquor-scented gloom and insensate brawling within a Ceylonese arrack den, you too would know how the isle's reputation for friendliness falls seven places short of its promise. I, of course, do not frequent such establishments. I prefer instead to take my gin alone, in dim candle's light, at the empty and bare tables of my hosts.

I have been staying in many a family guesthouse on this tour of the hill country, which is both comfortable and economic, though my gentle and endearing manner seems to inspire a confidence in the minds of my hosts that is perhaps unwarranted. Too often have I been made a confidant in both sides of a marital spat, or been variously subjected to long and meandering discourses on the difficulties of broken households, the "evils" (so they proclaim!) of Western society, and the obscure vagaries of Ceylonese political affairs. I have even been left to sup with orphans. Orphans, I say. Worst of all, however, my hosts place in me a strange trust they do not grant to other strangers, and leave me unchaperoned with daughters of such age that they are too youthful for any but the most stringently chaste dialog to be desirable or acceptable, yet too mature for both parties not to perceive the awkwardness of the situation. And to think that in some less advantaged corners of this country such girls would be thought to be of marriageable age...

Pardon. Again I must retire. Curse the thinness of this air.

~~Interlude of Repose~~

After this interlude follow a series of impassioned scrawlings, writ so haphazardly across the subsequent dozen leaves of the folio that it is difficult at best to extract any cogency therefrom; nor is it the task of the responsible historian to conjecture. Beyond those pages the journal seems to have fallen into disuse -save, apparently, for absorbing spillages of gin.