Storia do Mogor 74.3

74.3

These are sufficiently commodious, with a special apartment for the women and another for receiving visitors. Among others is a fairly handsome room, where are drawers, such as worn by Mahomedan women, and a chemise, the whole placed upon a rope. If any Hindu woman turns up, after hearing her requests, should her face please him the make-believe saint retires as if going to prayers. Then, taking some provocative drug (of which they have no lack), he comes back and orders the woman to remove her shirt. Ordinarily they do this at once, out of the esteem in which they hold these accursed men, under the supposition that they are receiving a great favour. Promises are made of securing what they want. If at times a woman, being of an honourable degree, is hurt at such an extraordinary proposal put forward by the holy man, the latter falls into a rage, saying that she is a woman with an evil conscience, that he never told her to take off her shirt, but to bring the one hanging on the rope, in order to give her some letters or some other thing lying in the pocket thereof, as a means of obtaining her desire. Then he bundles her out with abuse, as if it had never entered his mind to do her any wrong. Thus the woman withdraws in great confusion, for two reasons: because she has put a wrong interpretation upon the words of the holy man, and because, through her own fault, she did not obtain the remedy she wanted and hoped for.