by Ruskin Bond
While he waited for the cup of tea to appear, his mind wandered from one thought to another prompted by sights of various objects in the room. At the far end of the room was a bed that he used in summer; he preferred to sleep there rather than in the bedroom. The bed was covered with a spread of kalamkari art work. He remembered how a couple of years ago he bought this beautiful piece hurriedly from a shop in Delhi. The shop had already closed its sale for the day, but Virendra was about to leave the city, and he desperately needed a bed-spread as there were guests expected, and the cover they were using did not have the approval of anybody in the house. Virendra pleaded with the shopkeeper through the already-closed door about his predicament; the shopkeeper was kind, and that resulted in this purchase. The original deep brown colour of the lines had considerably faded after many a wash, and the intricacies of the design no longer attracted such attention as they did at one time. Yet Virendra continued to like it; he was a firm believer of the view that what was originally good remained so almost forever. Even faded remains of something of prime quality were far better than unblemished mediocrity.
He looked at the bookcases to his left lining the wall. All of them were nearly full. In some ways he was an undisciplined person, yet within the confines of that basic limitation he kept his books reasonably well organised, mostly from a vested interest; when he needed a particular book he wanted to lay his hands on it quickly. Virendra's eyes scanned through the books on the shelves. So many different kinds of books standing next to each other. Besides the fact that almost no two books looked even physically alike, they all had their own personalities. Virendra's collection consisted mostly of technical books, but even then the attributes were so vastly different. What a difference between two books by two masters; the only common quality between them was the quality itself.
Yet both were basically made of paper and printing ink, with only the letters of the alphabet in different order. Or more crudely, smudges of printing ink in different forms. Surely, Virendra mused, it took a genius to provide an outstanding smudge. His mind also quickly went past the thought about how human civilisation had learned to transact its business through sets of highly specialised symbols which we call writing; unless one knew how to interpret them one was totally lost. In his mind the Harappan seals with their still unbroken messages flashed for a second, but it was interrupted by Parvati's appearance with the cup of tea.
Although Parvati usually served food of fairly standardised attributes, the temperature of tea was not among them. It varied from piping hot to something that was barely warm, and despite Virendra's frequent criticism and urgings she had remained unperturbed. Virendra's taste buds were very sensitive to heat, and he could not take very hot drinks. However, this tea was remarkably just at the right temperature, just tolerably hot to sip at an enjoyable frequency. Further, Virendra could smell a trace of the fragrance he loved, and he felt delighted. For the remaining minutes as he drank the tea, he did not think much of anything; he closed his eyes from time to time to concentrate on the enjoyment. When he was finally through, he looked straight ahead without any movement of the body, and his eyes seemed to indicate that the external world at that point was not making any impression on him.
He remained in that state for several minutes, and then got up. He decided it was now time to go, although it was considerably before time for the office hours. He walked to his reading table, examined the papers lying on the table to see whether he needed any of them to take with him. He seemed to find nothing of relevance. He opened the left-side desk drawer, sifted through the papers there, and again did not seem to find anything he wanted. He closed the drawer and turned towards the centre of the room. He pondered for a moment and then walked into the room where Parvati was working, told her that he was leaving. Sometimes when he was in a hurry he would take to the university the bicycle that was left by his son, but today he was much ahead of time, so he felt no such need. He walked to the main door, opened it by turning the latch clockwise, went out and pulled the door behind him.
As he got out of the house, his first feeling was that the outside air was still much cooler than inside, but he knew that it would not remain so for very long. Still there was a gentle breeze, still the branches of the large trees were swaying, and despite the fact that the sun was considerably above the horizon, there was still no sign of any heat. As he turned into the main road and started walking into the breeze, he felt refreshingly cool, he realised that part of the reason was that his hair was still somewhat damp from the fresh bath. He was walking unhurriedly, but his steps were not casual; they seemed purposeful. It did not, however, seem from his face that he was tense; he was looking around as he was walking, and he did not appear to be in any deep thought.
Soon after he got out of his house he passed the campus primary school to his left. This was the time for summer vacation, so no one was expected there. The campus high school was also within the same compound, so the picture was the same there. In session, the premises were full of children of all ages in navy blue and white uniform, playing, running around, going from one place to another; before the classes started and whenever there was free time the place bustled with activity. Vendors of small goodies, which children had endorsed for decades, lined up with push-carts near the fences. During the midday recess a few pariah kites could be seen flying low over the school compound with the hope of picking up tidbits of lunches of those children who stayed back in the school. And shortly before the midday recess and at the end of the day one found many parents waiting on the streets for the bell to ring so that they could collect their wards. Virendra had been watching that scene for the past twenty years. That spanned a period which started before his own son began his schooling here to a time when he finished his studies and was gone; his daughter was still there. The faces of individual children had changed; but the overall picture had not changed at all.
Virendra now turned left onto the main road of the campus, the one that to the right went to the gate. This was the busiest road of the campus; even then its traffic was minuscule compared to that on a regular city street. And, at this time of the day, even this road had no traffic at all. As Virendra continued walking, he passed the campus shopping centre to the right. Here one could find a few shops that stocked everyday necessities, but none of them opened before ten in the morning. Next to the street, however, were three tin shacks which did a good business of bicycle repair. Further down the cycle shops there was a larger wooden box-like room which housed a barber shop. This was the one Virendra patronised, not because the service was any superior, but it was more easily accessible than the one in the regular shopping centre. At this time of the day nobody was around there; there were only a few people on the street, most of them on bicycles going towards the gate – people who lived in the villages west of the campus area but cut through the campus to reach the road at the main gate. But in the evenings this place was fairly crowded. Housewives, sometimes entire families, came for shopping, and one could always find students on various errands. There was a restaurant also in the shopping centre, and it served as a hangout for some.
Virendra reached the intersection of the main road and a major side road, which to the left went to the Guest House, the Health Centre, and some faculty housing area, and to the right went to the main gate of the university which provided access to the academic buildings. There was a time, about ten years ago, when the academic area was accessible from all directions. Then came a vice-chancellor who in order presumably to ward off theft of university property, rather than tighten security measures internally, built a six-foot high and a mile long brick wall around the academic area. Not that the security increased by any perceivable extent, but the openness of the academic area was lost forever. Sometimes one found security guards at the gate, sometimes not; sometimes one could find them sitting there and dozing, sometimes they were over-alert, asking for credentials of everyone who attempted to negotiate the gate, particularly pouncing on tho
se who looked most docile. At this intersection, Virendra turned right.
This also was quite a wide road, and at the end of the road one could see from a long distance the gate of the university's horticultural section. To the left ran the university wall, an open-brick structure crested with a wrought-iron grille. Behind the wall, the back of some of the university buildings were visible. To the right were various nondescript areas with barbed-wire fencing: one of them acted as stores for the university's works department, another down the road the future site of a community hall, and so on. Virendra sort of enjoyed walking on this street. Most of the time it had little traffic and the entire street was lined on either side with huge trees which had grown over the years. The trees were now so large that at several places branches of trees from the two sides fell on each other at the top. Since this was a north-south road, even during summer there was always some shade, except perhaps during high noon.
And the trees were of several varieties. There were a number of seven-leaves, mango, and margosa trees, a couple of acacias, a couple of rain trees, and right near the intersection Virendra just passed, a couple of kadambas. So, almost in every season there was something unusual from some of those trees; for instance, in the rainy season the fragrance from the golden balls of flowering kadambas filled the place.
Besides the flora, at certain times of the day one could expect to find on this street some unusual fauna, foremost among them were monkeys. At the beginning of the settlement there were none; suddenly one day everyone noticed they were here, but no one could definitely say when exactly they arrived. There were two varieties of them: pink-faced rhesus and black-faced langurs. The former were numerous; the latter were distinguished by their size, the length of their leaps, and their somewhat transitory presence. Numbers of both the groups waxed and waned, the waning was mostly due to monkey-catching squads which appeared from the city from time to time. The two groups fought among themselves occasionally, but over the years they seemed to have come to some understanding of peaceful coexistence. Virendra remembered seeing at one time a langur mother, who probably had lost a newborn, bring up a rhesus baby.
During the day they seemed to have their own set of routines and courses; however, at the end of the day they were almost near the back of the academic area where the workshops were, and where most of their patrons were. During a good part of the midday a number of them sat on the railings immediately in front of the central library, so to enter the library one needed some courage besides a need or urge to read books. There was a time when the students used to find it uneasy moving through squads of monkeys on walkways, and the monkeys would react sensitively; but over the years the tensions had eased, and except visiting outsiders no one seemed to worry about them very much. In general they seemed to have difficulty in finding food; Virendra had never seen anyone feeding them; but somehow they continued to live around here; perhaps like the faculty, the students, and the staff of the university, they also found the place a sanctuary. Summer was a particularly difficult time for them; Virendra had seen some of them surviving on leaves, buds, and flowers of the trees and other plants they could find in the academic area.
Early in the morning Virendra had often seen them roam on this street. Groups of them seemed to appear from some-where on the right side, cross the street, climb the academic area wall, and then move into the academic area. That seemed to be their early morning routine; a couple of hours later they would no longer be visible there. After turning into the street, today also Virendra found about a couple of dozens of them of various sizes on different parts of the road. There were a number of them on the wall; among them Virendra noticed a baby monkey testing out its jumping skills across the iron grille while its mother sitting next to it was keeping a watchful eye on the road. This was a potentially dangerous combination; Virendra decided to walk along the right side of the road.
Further down the road there was a stout one picking something from the ground and nibbling and chewing. Virendra's path would have gone too close past him; Virendra chose to veer to the centre of the road again. It looked up, and finding Virendra move away, went back to its business. Incidents of assaults were very rare, and except for a couple of times when Virendra experienced situations where some odd monkey took an attacking posture and showed its teeth, he did not face a situation of real concern, but one felt nervous nonetheless. Amusement came when the intervening distance was safe.
Virendra succeeded in negotiating the monkeys without any incidents, and walked on to reach the main gate, turned left and entered the academic area. Two security guards in their khakis were sitting in the open air on two steel chairs taken out of the guards' room; Virendra noticed that they appeared remarkably fresh for having done a whole night's watchman duty remaining awake; and one of them who sported a moustache had his hair very neatly combed and the oil shone. They looked up and saw Virendra, but did not react. This was a coveted time for them, because soon at eight o'clock the guards of the next shift would show up.
Virendra looked in front, along the wide road that led straight to the six-storey building, the tallest one in the academic area. Most academic departments were located there, and most faculty members had a place to sit somewhere near the department they belonged to; Virendra had an office on the fourth floor. Many years ago Virendra saw this road getting laid: layers of crushed brick, gravel, coal tar, and pitch. He used to watch the progress from the corridor of the fourth floor, and one day it was done. From there during those days one could see far out, all the way to Ganga; the trees on the campus were still not very tall.
As he continued to walk, Virendra looked down at an angle to the left where there was a nondescript flowerbed in which a few roses were planted last year. Very little care was taken, and they were pruned very severely; out of the four plants three were already dead, but on the surviving one Virendra noticed today an untimely rose, cream-coloured petals with salmon edges; a defiant bloom.
This road Virendra was walking on was lined on both sides with deodars which were trimmed to a conical shape, and they were interspersed with bougainvilleas cropped as shrubs. On the right, behind the deodars were several rows of conifers which appeared to have been planted in an unplanned manner and further behind stood the university's computer centre. It was an interesting building architecturally, with a dominant inclined cuboid at its crest. On the left, right behind the deodars, was a landscaped mound on which a variety of shrubs had grown. Behind the mound was a wooded region on which stood a number of large trees; through their gaps one could see some of the buildings behind including a facet of the library.
If Virendra had continued straight ahead he would have reached the portico of the main building; to his left would have been a parking lot and behind that would have been the rear facet of the library building. Just in front of the portico one would have encountered a moderately-sized rectangular grassy plot on which a flowerbed had been dug in the senseless design of a square cross, neither attractive nor utilitarian. They changed the variety of the plants on the bed from time to time, but Virendra did not recall ever having seen the bed with any blooms. During most of the year it lay very barren. Virendra usually preferred to take the staircase at the right side of the building, so rather than go straight ahead he decided to go around by the right side. He left the main road to take a small brick path to the right which at one time was meant only for pedestrians.
To ward off other kinds of traffic, at the entrance there were a few concrete poles. Those barriers had disappeared one by one, and at present there were none left. Bicycles intruded first, then in time scooters and motorbikes, and nowadays one saw even cars getting in and using this path to get to the back of the academic area.
This short length of the pathway, however, was heavily used by the staff and faculty. With the parking norms destroyed, most people who travelled by cycle, scooter, or motorbike, brought their vehicles in by that way and parked wherever they found some space beside the building. T
he official parking area was the two corrugated tin sheds right next to the main building; but since that was hopelessly inadequate, most people parked their vehicles right on the path connecting the adjacent buildings. Relatively few students brought their cycles in, and those who did, used one of the other gates to get in and out, as those were closer to their hostels.
The area Virendra was now approaching was a sort of an enclosure between the main building and an adjacent two-storey building that housed some of the science laboratories. The brick path first turned somewhat towards the right, then to the left, which was then parallel to the side of the main building, and then went straight. A little further down the way, it branched off sharply to the left, and that led to the one of the staircases of the building. From here one could see to the right some of the engineering department buildings; so people going to those buildings also crossed this area.
There were several large trees in this area: a couple of seven-leaves, a couple of rain trees, and a jamun tree. On both sides of the path there were a couple of landscaped mounds which were populated randomly with some shrubs. The area was mostly unkempt, presenting an overall untidiness; only once in a while one noticed that someone had pruned all the shrubs to their bones; Virendra had felt that this was mostly done more to collect firewood than to trim the appearance of the plants; at the end of the day it was not an uncommon sight to see some employees of the horticultural section carrying home the stems of those trees at the back of their bicycles.
But that was not all. The ground-floor rooms at this side of the building belonged to the university accounts section, and throughout the day there was a constant traffic of all kinds of university staff going in and coming out of those offices. Lately some of those offices had started throwing their waste paper outside on the mounds, and sometimes if they did not want them to drift all over the place, they burned them right there. On the mounds, at several spots one could see the accumulated ash. They added to the general ugliness, but nobody seemed to be bothered by such trivialities. In fact, as one went around this academic area, it struck an observant person that the ambience of the place had much potential, but only in very few cases had it been realised; most of the place was unkempt because of utter indifference and neglect.