Author: William T. Meadows

Cited by

• Tabish Khair (1)
  • IN: The Thing About Thugs (2010) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The man who stood in front of me in that hospital room was a fine specimen of the Asiatic type: compactly-built, of average height, with dark brown hair and limpid mascara-touched eyes. He had a sharp moustache and wore a loose turban; he was dressed in an embroidered kurtah and pyjama, both rather dirty, and he was barefoot, either because he did not wear slippers of because he had taken them off, as is the custom in these parts, before entering the building. He obviously belonged to one of the higher castes, for his complexion was almost fair; he might even have passed for an Italian back home. But this man was no child of the Enlightenment. No, the deities he worshipped were different. His religion was terror; his goddess was terrible. From his cradle, he had been brought up to rob and muder and terrorise. In front of me there finally stood, gentle reader, that most dreaded of men in India, that relentless practioner of terror and muder and deceit, a Thug.
    FROM: Notes on a Thug: Character and Circumstances, (1840), NULL, NULL