by Ruskin Bond
He had served the Rani well, and what he was most aware of now was that he was without a job and without any money. The Raja had his own personal amusements and did not want a wrestler who was beginning to sag a little about the waist.
Times had changed. Hassan’s father was dead, and there was no longer a living to be had from making kites; so Hassan returned to doing what he had always done: wrestling. But there was no money to be made at the akhara. It was only in the professional arena that a decent living could be made. And so, when a travelling circus of professionals—a Negro, a Russian, a Cockney-Chinese and a giant Sikh—came to town and offered a hundred rupees and a contract to the challenger who could stay five minutes in the ring with any one of them, Hassan took up the challenge.
He was pitted against the Russian, a bear of a man, who wore a black mask across his eyes; and in two minutes Hassan’s Dehra supporters saw their hero slung about the ring, licked in the head and groin, and finally flung unceremoniously through the ropes.
After this humiliation, Hassan did not venture into competitive bouts again. I saw him sometimes at the akhara, where he made a few rupees giving lessons to children. He had a paunch, and folds were beginning to accumulate beneath his chin. I was no longer a small boy, but he always had a smile and a hearty backslap reserved for me.
I remember seeing him a few days before I went abroad. He was moving heavily about the akhara; he had lost the lightning swiftness that had once made him invincible. Yes, I told myself.
The garlands wither on your brow;
They boast no more your mighty deeds…
That had been over three years ago. And for Hassan to have been reduced to begging was indeed a sad reflection of both the passing of time and the changing times. Fifty years ago, a popular local wrestler would never have been allowed to fall into a state of poverty and neglect. He would have been fed by his old friends, and stories would have been told of his legendary prowess. He would not have been forgotten. But those were more leisurely times, when the individual had his place in society, when a man was praised for his past achievement, and his failures were tolerated and forgiven. But life had since become fast and cruel and unreflective, and people were too busy counting their gains to bother about the idols of their youth.
It was a few days after my last encounter with Hassan that I found a small crowd gathered at the side of the road, not far from the clock tower. They were staring impassively at something in the drain, at the same time keeping a discreet distance. Joining the group, I saw that the object of their disinterested curiosity was a corpse, its head hidden under a culvert, legs protruding into the open drain. It looked as though the man had crawled into the drain to die, and had done so with his head in the culvert so the world would not witness his last unavailing struggle.
When the municipal workers came in their van, and lifted the body out of the gutter, a cloud of flies and bluebottles rose from the corpse with an angry buzz of protest. The face was muddy, but I recognized the beggar who was Hassan.
In a way, it was a consolation to know that he had been forgotten, that no one present could recognize the remains of the man who had once looked like a young god. I did not come forward to identify the body. Perhaps I saved Hassan from one final humiliation.
A Guardian Angel
I can still picture the little Dilaram Bazaar as I first saw it twenty years ago. Hanging on the hem of Aunt Mariam’s sari, I had followed her along the sunlit length of the dusty road and up the wooden staircase to her rooms above the barber’s shop.
There were a number of children playing on the road and they all stared at me. They must have wondered what my dark, black-haired aunt was doing with a strange child who was fairer than most. She did not bother to explain my presence and it was several weeks before the bazaar people learned something of my origins.
Aunt Mariam, my mother’s younger sister, was at that time about thirty. She came from a family of Christian converts, originally Muslims of Rampur. My mother had married an Englishman who died while I was still a baby. She herself was not a strong woman and fought a losing battle with tuberculosis while bringing me up.
My sixth birthday was approaching when she died, in the middle of the night, without my being aware of it. And I woke up to experience, for a day, all the terrors of abandonment.
But that same evening Aunt Mariam arrived. Her warmth, worldliness and carefree chatter gave me the reassurance I needed so badly. She slept beside me that night and the next morning, after the funeral, took me with her to her rooms in the bazaar. This small flat was to be my home for the next year and a half.
Before my mother’s death I had seen very little of my aunt. From the remarks I occasionally overheard, it appeared that Aunt Mariam had, in some indefinable way, disgraced the family. My mother was cold towards her and I could not help wondering why, because a more friendly and cheerful extrovert than Aunt Mariam could hardly be encountered.
There were other relatives, but they did not come to my rescue with the same readiness. It was only later, when the financial issues became clearer, that innumerable uncles and aunts appeared on the scene.
The age of six is the beginning of an interesting period in the life of a boy, and the months I spent with Aunt Mariam are not difficult to recall. She was a joyous, bubbling creature—a force of nature rather than a woman—and every time I think of her, I am tempted to put down on paper some aspect of her conversation, or her gestures, or her magnificent physique.
She was a strong woman, taller than most men in the bazaar, but this did not detract from her charms. Her voice was warm and deep, her face was a happy one, broad and unlined, and her teeth gleamed white in the dark brilliance of her complexion.
She had large, soft breasts, long arms and broad thighs. She was majestic and at the same time graceful. Above all, she was warm and full of understanding, and it was this tenderness of hers that overcame resentment and jealousy in other women.
She called me ladla, her darling, and told me she had always wanted to look after me. She had never married. I did not, at that age, ponder on the reasons for her single status. At six I took all things for granted, and accepted Mariam for what she was—my benefactress and guardian angel.
Her rooms were untidy compared with the neatness of my mother’s house. Mariam revelled in untidiness. I soon grew accustomed to the topsy-turviness of her rooms and found them comfortable. Beds (hers a very large and soft one) were usually left unmade, while clothes lay draped over chairs and tables.
A large watercolour hung on a wall, but Mariam’s bodice and knickers were usually suspended from it, and I cannot recall the subject of the painting. The dressing table was a fascinating place, crowded with all kinds of lotions, mascaras, paints, oils and ointments.
Mariam would spend much time sitting in front of the mirror running a comb through her long black hair or preferably having young Mulia, a servant girl, comb it for her. Though a Christian, my aunt retained several Muslim superstitions, and never went into the open with her hair falling loose.
Once, Mulia came into the rooms with her own hair open. ‘You ought not to leave your hair open. Better knot it,’ said Aunt Mariam.
‘But I have not yet oiled it, Aunty,’ replied Mulia. ‘How can I put it up?’
‘You are too young to understand. There are Jinns—aerial spirits—who are easily attracted by long hair and pretty, black eyes like yours.’
‘Do Jinns visit human beings, Aunty?’
‘Learned people say so. Though I have never seen a Jinn myself, I have seen the effect they can have on one.’
‘Oh, do tell me about them,’ said Mulia.
‘Well, there was once a lovely girl like you who had a wealth of black hair,’ said Mariam. ‘Quite unaccountably she fell ill, and in spite of every attention and the best medicines she kept getting worse. She grew as thin as a whipping post, her beauty decayed, and all that remained of it till her dying day was her wonderful head of hair.’
/> It did not take me long to make friends in Dilaram Bazaar. At first I was an object of curiosity, and when I came down to play in the street, both women and children would examine me as though I was a strange marine creature.
‘How fair he is,’ observed Mulia.
‘And how black his aunt,’ commented the washerman’s wife, whose face was riddled with the marks of smallpox. ‘His skin is very smooth,’ pointed out Mulia, who took considerable pride in having been the first to see me at close quarters. She pinched my cheeks with obvious pleasure. ‘His hair and eyes are black,’ remarked Mulia’s ageing mother. ‘Is it true that his father was an Englishman?’
‘Mariam-bi says so,’ said Mulia. ‘She never lies.’
‘True,’ said the washerman’s wife. ‘Whatever her faults—and there are many—she has never been known to lie.’
My aunt’s other ‘faults’ were a deep mystery to me. Nor did anyone try to enlighten me about them.
Some nights she had me sleep with her, other nights (I often wondered why) she gave me a bed in an adjoining room, although I much preferred remaining with her—especially since, on cold January nights, she provided me with considerable warmth.
I would curl up into a ball just below her soft tummy. On the other side, behind her knees, slept Leila, an enchanting Siamese cat given to her by an American businessman, whose house she would sometimes visit. Every night, before I fell asleep, Mariam would kiss me, very softly, on my closed eyelids. I never fell asleep until I had received this phantom kiss.
At first, I resented the nocturnal visitors that Aunt Mariam frequently received. Their arrival meant that I had to sleep in the spare room with Leila. But when I found that these people were impermanent creatures, mere ships that passed in the night, I learned to put up with them.
I seldom saw those men, though occasionally I caught a glimpse of a beard or an expensive waistcoat or white pyjamas. They did not interest me very much, though I did have a vague idea that they provided Aunt Mariam with some sort of income, thus enabling her to look after me.
Once, when one particular visitor was very drunk, Mariam had to force him out of the flat. I glimpsed this episode through a crack in the door. The man was big but no match for Aunt Mariam.
She thrust him out on to the landing, and then he lost his footing and went tumbling downstairs. No damage was done and the man called on Mariam again a few days later, very sober and contrite, and was readmitted to my aunt’s favours.
Aunt Mariam must have begun to worry about the effect these comings and goings might have on me, because after a few months, she began to make arrangements for sending me to a boarding school in the hills.
I had not the slightest desire to go to school, and raised many objections. We had long arguments in which she tried vainly to impress upon me the desirability of receiving an education.
‘To make a living, my Ladla,’ she said, ‘you must have an education.’
‘But you have no education,’ I said, ‘and you have no difficulty in making a living!’
Mariam threw up her arms in mock despair. ‘Ten years from now, I will not be able to make such a living. Then who will support and help me? An illiterate young fellow or an educated gentleman? When I am old, my son, when I am old.’
Finally, I succumbed to her arguments and agreed to go to a boarding school. And when the time came for me to leave, both Aunt Mariam and I broke down and wept at the railway station.
I hung out of the window as the train moved away from the platform, and saw Mariam, her bosom heaving, being helped from the platform by Mulia and some of our neighbours.
My incarceration in a boarding school was made more unbearable by the absence of any letters from Aunt Mariam. She could write little more than her name.
I was looking forward to my winter holidays and my return to Aunt Mariam and Dilaram Bazaar, but this was not to be. During my absence, there had been some litigation over my custody, and my father’s relatives claimed that Aunt Mariam was not a fit person to be a child’s guardian.
And so when I left school, it was not to Aunt Mariam’s place that I was sent, but to a strange family living in a railway colony near Moradabad. I remained with these relatives until I finished school. But that is a different story.
I did not see Aunt Mariam again. Dilaram Bazaar and my beautiful aunt and the Siamese cat all became part of the receding world of my childhood.
I would often think of Mariam, but as time passed, she became more remote and inaccessible in my memory. It was not until many years later, when I was a young man, that I visited Dilaram Bazaar again. I knew from my foster parents that Aunt Mariam was dead. Her heart, it seemed, had always been weak.
I was anxious to see Dilaram Bazaar and its residents again, but my visit was a disappointment. The place had disappeared. Or rather, it had been swallowed up by a growing city. It was lost in the complex of a much larger market, which had sprung up to serve a new govermnent colony. The older people had died, and the young ones had gone to colleges or factories or offices in different towns. Aunt Marianm’s rooms had been pulled down.
I found her grave in the little cemetery on the town’s outskirts. One of her more devoted admirers had provided a handsome gravestone surmounted by a sculptured angel. One of the wings had broken off and the face was chipped, which gave the angel a slightly crooked smile.
But in spite of the broken wing and the smile, it was a very ordinary stone angel and could not hold a candle to my Aunt Mariam, the very special guardian angel of my childhood.
The Zigzag Walk
Uncle Ken always maintained that the best way to succeed in life was to zigzag. ‘If you keep going off in new directions,’ he declared, ‘you will meet new career opportunities!’
Well, opportunities certainly came Uncle Ken’s way, but he was not a success in the sense that Dale Carnegie or Deepak Chopra would have defined a successful man…
In a long life devoted to ‘muddling through’ with the help of the family, Uncle Ken’s many projects had included a chicken farm (rather like the one operated by Ukridge in Wodehouse’s Love Among the Chickens) and a mineral water bottling project. For this latter enterprise, he bought a thousand old soda-water bottles and filled them with sulphur water from the springs, five miles from Dehra. It was good stuff, taken in small quantities, but drunk one bottle at a time it proved corrosive—‘sulphur and brimstone’ as one irate customer described it—and angry buyers demonstrated in front of the house, throwing empty bottles over the wall into grandmother’s garden.
Grandmother was furious—more with Uncle Ken than with the demonstrators—and made him give everyone’s money back.
‘You have to be healthy and strong to take sulphur water,’ he explained later.
‘I thought it was supposed to make you healthy and strong,’ I said.
Grandfather remarked that it did not compare with plain soda-water, which he took with his whisky. ‘Why don’t you just bottle soda-water?’ he said, ‘there’s a much bigger demand for it.’
But Uncle Ken believed that he had to be original in all things.
‘The secret to success is to zigzag,’ he said.
‘You certainly zigzagged round the garden when your customers were throwing their bottles back at you,’ said Grandmother.
Uncle Ken also invented the zigzag walk.
The only way you could really come to know a place well, was to walk in a truly haphazard way. To make a zigzag walk you take the first turning to the left, the first to the right, then the first to the left and so on. It can be quite fascinating provided you are in no hurry to reach your destination. The trouble was that Uncle Ken used this zigzag method even when he had a train to catch.
When Grandmother asked him to go to the station to meet Aunt Mabel and her children, who were arriving from Lucknow, he zigzagged through the town, taking in the botanical gardens in the west and the limestone factories to the east, finally reaching the station by way of the goods yard, in ord
er as he said, ‘to take them by surprise’.
Nobody was surprised, least of all Aunt Mabel who had taken a tonga and reached the house while Uncle Ken was still sitting on the station platform, waiting for the next train to come in. I was sent to fetch him.
‘Let’s zigzag home again,’ he said.
‘Only on one condition, we eat chaat every fifteen minutes,’ I said.
So we went home by way of all the most winding bazaars, and in North Indian towns they do tend to zigzag, stopping at numerous chaat and halwai shops, until Uncle Ken had finished his money. We got home very late and were scolded by everyone; but as Uncle Ken told me, we were pioneers and had to expect to be misunderstood and even maligned. Posterity would recognize the true value of zigzagging.
‘The zigzag way,’ he said, ‘is the diagonal between heart and reason.’
In our more troubled times, had he taken to preaching on the subject, he might have acquired a large following of dropouts. But Uncle Ken was the original dropout. He would not have tolerated others.
Had he been a space traveller, he would have gone from star to star, zigzagging across the Milky Way.
Uncle Ken would not have succeeded in getting anywhere very fast, but I think he did succeed in getting at least one convert (myself ) to see his point: ‘When you zigzag, you are not choosing what to see in this world but you are giving the world a chance to see you!’
The India I Carried with Me
Am now going back in time, to a period when I was caught between East and West, and had to make up my mind just where I belonged. I had been away from India for barely a month before I was longing to return. The insularity of the place where I found myself (Jersey, in the Channel Islands) had something to do with it, I suppose. There was little there to remind me of India or the East, not one brown face to be seen in the streets or on the beaches. I’m sure it’s a different sort of place now; but fifty years ago it had nothing to offer by way of companionship or good cheer to a lonely, sensitive boy who had left home and friends in search of a ‘better future’.