The village putwarries and head men are all there with their voluminous accounts.  Your rent-collector, called a tehseeldar, has been busy in the villages with the tenants and putwarries, collecting rent for the great Pooneah day.  There is a constant chink of money, a busy hum, a scratching of innumerable pens.  Under every tree, ’neath the shade of every hut, busy groups are squatted round some acute accountant.  Totals are being totted up on all hands.  From greasy recesses in the waistband a dirty bundle is slowly pulled forth, and the desired sum reluctantly counted out.

From early morn till dewy eve this work goes on, and you judge your Pooneah to have been a good or bad one by the amount you are able to collect.  Peons, with their brass badges flashing in the sun, and their red puggrees shewing off their bronzed faces and black whiskers, are despatched in all directions for defaulters.  There is a constant going to and fro, a hurrying and bustling in the crowd, a hum as of a distant fair pervading the place, and by evening the total of the day’s collections is added up, and while the sahib and his friends take their sherry and bitters, the omlah and servants retire to wash and feast, and prepare for the night’s festivities.

During the day, at the houses of the omlah, culinary preparations on a vast scale have been going on.  The large supplies of grain, rice, flour, fruit, vegetables, &c., which were brought in as salamee or tribute, supplemented by additions from the sahib’s own stores, have been made into savoury messes.  Curries, and cakes, boiled flesh, and roast kid, are all ready, and the crowd, having divested themselves of their head-dress and outer garments, and cleaned their hands and feet by copious ablutions, sit down in a wide circle.  The large leaves of the water-lily are now served out to each man, and perform the office of plates.  Huge baskets of chupatties, a flat sort of ‘griddle-cake,’ are now brought round, and each man gets four or five doled out.  The cooking and attendance is all done by Brahmins.  No inferior caste would answer, as Rajpoots and other high castes will only eat food that has been cooked by a Brahmin or one of their own class.  The Brahmin attendants now come round with great dekchees or cooking-pots, full of curried vegetables, boiled rice, and similar dishes.  A ladle-full is handed out to each man, who receives it on his leaf.  The rice is served out by the hands of the attendants.  The guests manipulate a huge ball of rice and curry mixed between the fingers of the right hand, pass this solemnly into their widely-gaping mouths, with the head thrown back to receive the mess, like an adjutant-bird swallowing a frog, and then they masticate with much apparent enjoyment.  Sugar, treacle, curds, milk, oil, butter, preserves, and chutnees are served out to the more wealthy and respectable.  The amount they can consume is wonderful.  Seeing the enormous supplies, you would think that even this great crowd could never get through them, but by the time repletion has set in, there is little or nothing left, and many of the inflated and distended old farmers could begin again and repeat ‘another of the same’ with ease.  Each person has his own lotah, a brass drinking vessel, and when all have eaten they again wash their hands, rinse out their mouths, and don their gayest apparel.