I WAS NOT, in spite of these grave responsibilities and pressures, without comedians to lighten my progress.  New dynasties in the East have always attracted fresh sycophants and resurrected old favourites, of which my court had its share. 
My bungalow verandah was the 'audience' area for these meetings, and quite early in my stay, the local witchdoctor called to pay his respects.  In common with his type, his intelligence was above average, which enabled him to practise his chicanery on his fellows.  I asked him if he minded my practising in his area, at which he laughed merrily and assured me I could call him in for consultation any time I needed it. 
These witch-doctors were known as baids , and had a traditional cataract operation of their own, nearly always disastrous.  First described by the Roman physician Celsius in the first century AD, it continued to be practised until just over two hundred years ago in Europe, when Jacque Daviel first extracted a lens from an eye.  Baids and Celsius only 'couched' or dislocated the lens with a needle down out of the line of sight, and left it within the eye. Sight was restored for a time, then permanent blindness followed. 

A more harmless daily visitor to my verandah was Bhado, an aged pensioned Santal preacher, who suffered from religious mania.  Dressed in tattered European clothes eked out in places with pieces of discarded tents, his trousers were too long and tied tight below the knees with string, his socks feet-less; a veritable blood-brother to the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.  Over his shoulder was an old opened umbrella, most of its ribs missing, and in his hands, an opened dog-eared bible, the pages of which he turned feverishly to draw attention to a text he always just failed to find.  Some tenuous thread of surviving sanity told him he must justify his pension, but since no-one listened to him, he preached all day to the jungle trees and stones.  With him was an almost naked four-year-old grandson, looking after grandad, or vice versa.  Each morning, before I set out for hospital, he pronounced a benediction in the Santali language over me, with raised apostolic hands. 

A third local character was a mad girl of about eighteen, whom, since she was harmless, it had been impossible to secure admission to any mental home.  Since she was believed by the Santals to be possessed by a bonga (a devil), everyone gave her food to pacify it, so that she was the roundest maiden in the neighbourhood. She wore only a minimum of clothes, tearing off everything the charitable gave her.  On summer moonlit nights she was most restless and her cries could be heard in the jungle , like an animal's. 

Almost a Somerset Maughan character.  My Santal munshi (language teacher) Paulus Pundit was in a class of his own. He was supposed to teach me Urdu as this was widely spoken, and would be more useful to me than Santali.  But his knowledge of was minimal, so I learned by the direct method.  He had served in an Indian Army Labour Corps in France in World War I, and began each lesson during the hot afternoons with a recital on his fingers of 'many Sahibs have I taught', and concluded with a graphic tale of his capture of three German officers who were drunk. 
The direct method however had some disadvantages. At work in hospital I picked up phrases the meaning of which I had no idea, but which produced certain desired actions with alacrity. On asking Paulus what they meant, he showed deep distress, and told me that they were very, very basic indeed. In these early days, too, Paulus leapt into quite disastrous importance in my entourage as my interpreter. I had sometimes to summon mystified or offended people to my bungalow in the evenings, and with his aid put right the misunderstandings of the day. Or, my verandah might be invaded by angry disputants carrying long-handled axes and with cut, bleeding heads, who were less anxious for medical aid than that I should side with one or the other, and declare in writing that his wound was a 'grievous hurt', thus assuring his opponent a long stay in prison. With measuring-tape round my neck like a tailor, I noted length and depth of scalp wounds, then settled down to an enquiry with Paulus's help. My brief questions requiring in answer a simple 'yes' or 'no' would be followed by so long and earnest conversation between them, that I became suspicious they were bargaining over the relative money value of each possible answer.

This Catalogue of 'Bats in my Belfry' would be incomplete without mentioning an old Santal woman whom I had noticed for sometime about my bungalow.  Barefooted and silently, she seemed solely employed in emptying my cigar ash from the numerous small brass dishes in the various rooms and in arranging cosmos and zinnia blooms in little country-made flower vases.  She was rather ill-tempered and was expert at scattering groups of Santal small boys who crept up to watch me typing on the verandah. A single venomous hiss was sufficient, and I reflected she only lacked a broom-stick to make an excellent witch. 
I discovered later that she was a witch, having been driven from her village as one many years before. I gave her additional duties as nurse receptionist for female private patients.. 

So to give the jungle practice tone, the doctor sahib now had a real live witch on his pay-roll.