DIY History | Transcribe | Iowa Women’s Lives: Letters and Diaries | Eve Drewelowe's journals, volumes II-III, 1950s

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Eve Drewelowe's journals, volumes II-III, 1950s

Page 085

it transpired that I frequently was transporting wet canvases on my head from place to destination. They needed particularly to the protected form the jostling of the multitude about stations- a throng that might not always avoid brushing against a wet canvas. There are ever crowds wherever one happens to be in these Asiatic hands of dense populations. The hustle of the millions cannot be shunned even if one would; but who should choose to evade the part of panorama which thrills and fascinates me so? This is the picture one travels for to observe.

In our other excursions we joined forces and were rather more will-'o'the-wisps -- much less serious and more inclined to elastic objectives in our playing around. If we liked them, we systematically inquired into social conditions on the caste system, but we usually preferred to sit in the parks and observe the natives -- while I sketched bits of life here and there -- or we visited museums or galleries; attended jiujutsu matches; or Chinese plays; Japanese cinema; Balinese or Nautch dancing; or opera, or whatever came along that sounded interesting and appealed to us. Even the jew rickshaw rides as was the elephant ride in India, were an event and a sport. We were free to use our own judgment in mapping out our days of what to do or not to do for we had the whole world from which to choose and to amuse us. If anything temporarily came up that looked more enticing than that which we were doing we were not adverse to changing erstwhile plans and activities.

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it transpired that I frequently was transporting wet canvases on my head from place to destination. They needed particularly to the protected form the jostling of the multitude about stations- a throng that might not always avoid brushing against a wet canvas. There are ever crowds wherever one happens to be in these Asiatic hands of dense populations. The hustle of the millions cannot be shunned even if one would; but who should choose to evade the part of panorama which thrills and fascinates me so? This is the picture one travels for to observe. In our other excursions we joined forces and were rather more will-'o'the-wisps -- much less serious and more inclined to elastic objectives in our playing around. If we liked them, we systematically inquired into social conditions on the caste system, but we usually preferred to sit in the parks and observe the natives -- while I sketched bits of life here and there -- or we visited museums or galleries; attended jiujutsu matches; or Chinese plays; Japanese cinema; Balinese or Nautch dancing; or opera, or whatever came along that sounded interesting and appealed to us. Even the jew rickshaw rides as was the elephant ride in India, were an event and a sport. We were free to use our own judgment in mapping out our days of what to do or not to do for we had the whole world from which to choose and to amuse us. If anything temporarily came up that looked more enticing than that which we were doing we were not adverse to changing erstwhile plans and activities.