by Ruskin Bond
CLASSIC PLUS: FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR, HIS WORK AND HIS WORLD
WINNER OF THE JOHN LLEWELLYN RHYS MEMORIAL PRIZE
A classic story of adolescence and coming of age that has mesmerized readers for over fifty years.
Rusty, a sixteen-year-old Anglo-Indian boy, is orphaned, and has to live with his English guardian in the claustrophobic European part of town, in Dehra Dun. Unhappy with the strict ways of his guardian, Rusty runs away from home to live with his Indian friends. Plunging for the first time into the dream-bright world of the bazaar, Hindu festivals and other aspects of Indian life, Rusty is enchanted . . . and is lost forever to the prim proprieties of the European community . . . Written when the author was himself seventeen, this moving story of love and friendship, presented in an exciting new format with an evocative introduction by best-selling author Anita Nair, will be enjoyed by a whole new generation of readers.
Cover illustration by Ajanta Guhathakurta
Praise for The Room on the Roof
‘Has a special magic of its own’ — Herald Tribune Book Review
‘Considerable charm and spontaneity…’— San Francisco Chronicle
‘Very engaging…’—The Guardian
‘Moving in its simplicity and underlying tenderness…a novel of marked originality’—The Scotsman
‘Mr Bond is a writer of great gifts…’— The New Statesman
‘Like an Indian bazaar itself, the book is filled with the smells, sights, sounds, confusion and subtle organization of ordinary Indian life’—The New York Times Book Review
The Room on the Roof
RUSKIN BOND
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Andre Deutsch 1956
Published by Penguin Books India 1987
Published in Puffin by Penguin Books India 2008
Copyright © Ruskin Bond 1956, 1987, 2008
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-01-4333-079-0
This Digital Edition published 2011. e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-066-9
Digital conversion prepared by DK Digital Media, India.
This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.
Contents
Copyright
Introduction by Anita Nair
The Room on the Roof
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Introduction
The year I turned seventeen, my mother inherited her family home in Kerala. It was an old double-storied house with several rooms, passageways, alcoves, nooks, and an attic. In this old house my mother, my dog Julie and I rattled like three peas in a capacious pod made entirely of Burmese teak.
The innards of the house was cool and dark. In contrast, a steep wooden staircase led to the first floor, which was a study in lightness. There was an enormous room in the front of the house. It had huge windows on all sides with old-fashioned wooden shutters painted a brilliant blue. When I flung the shutters open, the room opened to the skies and the elements. I claimed the top floor for my own. And it became my room on the roof.
I scrounged for what I could find, and set about creating a nest. I painted mermaids frolicking through flowers on wooden crates. I turned my mother’s old chiffon sari into a riot of frills that I dressed the window with. I stuck prints on the walls and laid an old rug on the red oxide floor.
An old Philips record player sang all day, hissing and pausing at scratches … and that was how I wanted it to be. The crackle of imperfection. Only a very eccentric person or a bewildered teenager finding her own place in the world could have belonged there …
During the day, two old and dense mango trees provided live theatre of life on the branches and at night, the moon and stars lay themselves out for my amusement. In that room on the roof, I read and sang. I painted and wrote, I fell in love and dreamt of my life to come. But mostly it was also the place and a point in my life where I grappled with the question,‘who am I?’
I was at a precarious age and like Rusty, the hero of The Room on the Roof, I had to reinvent myself completely with the move to that home. My cloistered secure life had expanded to encompass a whole new world. As Rusty discovers the bazaar at Dehra, so was my entry into the Shoranur market. The friends I made were unlike the friends from my earlier life. Unsophisticated and given to speaking their minds, their worlds had nothing in common with mine. But like Somi and Ranbir, they brought a whiff of the unknown and helped me to discover a whole new dimension. It was the birthing place of who I would eventually be and the settings I would create for myself.
The Room on the Roof is a book for young adults. Of the awakening of adulthood and the bidding farewell to childhood. And as I read it, I knew again the glorious resilience of those years where hope nudged through even the most uncertain of times. Of knowing that the world lay ahead for one’s taking. Despite everything.
April 2008 Anita Nair
The Room on the Roof
1
The light spring rain rode on the wind, into the trees, down the road; it brought an exhilarating freshness to the air, a smell of earth, a scent of flowers; it brought a smile to the eyes of the boy on the road.
The long road wound round the hills, rose and fell and twisted down to Dehra; the road came from the mountains and passed through the jungle and valley and, after passing through Dehra, ended somewhere in the bazaar. But just where it ended no one knew, for the bazaar was a baffling place, where roads were easily lost.
The boy was three miles out of Dehra. The further he could get from
Dehra, the happier he was likely to be. Just now he was only three miles out of Dehra, so he was not very happy; and, what was worse, he was walking homewards.
He was a pale boy, with blue-grey eyes and fair hair; his face was rough and marked, and the lower lip hung loose and heavy. He had his hands in his pockets and his head down, which was the way he always walked, and which gave him a deceptively tired appearance. He was a lazy but not a tired person.
He liked the rain as it flecked his face, he liked the smell and the freshness; he did not look at his surroundings or notice them—his mind, as usual, was very far away—but he felt their atmosphere, and he smiled.
His mind was so very far away that it was a few minutes before he noticed the swish of bicycle wheels beside him. The cyclist did not pass the boy, but rode beside him, studying him, taking in every visible detail, the bare head, the open-necked shirt, the flannel trousers, the sandals, the thick hide belt round his waist. A European boy was no longer a common sight in Dehra, and Somi, the cyclist, was interested.
‘Hullo,’ said Somi, giving his bell a tinkle. The boy looked up and saw a young, friendly face wrapped untidily in a turban.
‘Hullo,’ said Somi, ‘would you like me to ride you into town? If you are going to town?’
‘No, I’m all right,’ said the boy, without slackening his pace, ‘I like to walk.’
‘So do I, but it’s raining.’
And to support Somi’s argument, the rain fell harder.
‘I like to walk in the rain,’ said the boy.‘And I don’t live in the town, I live outside it.’
Nice people didn’t live in the town …
‘Well, I can pass your way,’ persisted Somi, determined to help the stranger.
The boy looked again at Somi, who was dressed like him except for short pants and a turban. Somi’s legs were long and athletic, his colour was an unusually rich gold, his features were fine, his mouth broke easily into friendliness. It was impossible to resist the warmth of his nature.
The boy pulled himself up on the cross-bar, in front of Somi, and they moved off.
They rode slowly, gliding round the low hills, and soon the jungle on either side of the road began to give way to open fields and tea-gardens and then to orchards and one or two houses.
‘Tell me when you reach your place,’said Somi.‘You stay with your parents?’
The boy considered the question too familiar for a stranger to ask, and made no reply.
‘Do you like Dehra?’ asked Somi.
‘Not much,’ said the boy with pleasure.
‘Well, after England it must seem dull . . .’
There was a pause and then the boy said,‘I haven’t been to England. I was born here. I’ve never been anywhere else except Delhi.’
‘Do you like Delhi?’
‘Not much.’
They rode on in silence. The rain still fell, but the cycle moved smoothly over the wet road, making a soft, swishing sound.
Presently a man came in sight—no, it was not a man, it was a youth, but he had the appearance, the build of a man— walking towards town.
‘Hey, Ranbir,’ shouted Somi, as they neared the burly figure,‘want a lift?’
Ranbir ran into the road and slipped on to the carrier, behind Somi. The cycle wobbled a bit, but soon controlled itself and moved on, a little faster now.
Somi spoke into the boy’s ear, ‘Meet my friend Ranbir. He is the best wrestler in the bazaar.’
‘Hullo, mister,’ said Ranbir, before the boy could open his mouth.
‘Hullo, mister,’ said the boy.
Then Ranbir and Somi began a swift conversation in Punjabi, and the boy felt very lost; even, for some strange reason, jealous of the newcomer.
Now someone was standing in the middle of the road, frantically waving his arms and shouting incomprehensibly.
‘It is Suri,’ said Somi.
It was Suri.
Bespectacled and owlish to behold, Suri possessed an almost criminal cunning, and was both respected and despised by all who knew him. It was strange to find him out of town, for his interests were confined to people and their privacies; which privacies, when known to Suri, were soon made public.
He was a pale, bony, sickly boy, but he would probably live longer than Ranbir.
‘Hey, give me a lift!’ he shouted.
‘Too many already,’ said Somi.
‘Oh, come on Somi, I’m nearly drowned.’
‘It’s stopped raining.’
‘Oh, come on …’
So Suri climbed on to the handlebar, which rather obscured Somi’s view of the road and caused the cycle to wobble all over the place. Ranbir kept slipping on and off the carrier, and the boy found the cross-bar exceedingly uncomfortable. The cycle had barely been controlled when Suri started to complain.
‘It hurts,’ he whimpered.
‘I haven’t got a cushion,’ said Somi.
‘It is a cycle,’ said Ranbir bitingly,‘not a Rolls Royce.’
Suddenly the road fell steeply, and the cycle gathered speed.
‘Take it easy, now,’ said Suri,‘or I’ll fly off!’
‘Hold tight,’ warned Somi. ‘It’s downhill nearly all the way. We will have to go fast because the brakes aren’t very good.’
‘Oh, Mummy!’ wailed Suri.
‘Shut up!’ said Ranbir.
The wind hit them with a sudden force, and their clothes blew up like balloons, almost tearing them from the machine. The boy forgot his discomfort and clung desperately to the cross-bar,too nervous to say a word. Suri howled and Ranbir kept telling him to shut up, but Somi was enjoying the ride. He laughed merrily, a clear, ringing laugh, a laugh that bore no malice and no derision but only enjoyment, fun …
‘It’s all right for you to laugh,’ said Suri. ‘If anything happens, I’ll get hurt!’
‘If anything happens,’ said Somi,‘we all get hurt!’
‘That’s right,’ shouted Ranbir from behind.
The boy closed his eyes and put his trust in God and Somi—but mainly Somi …
‘Oh, Mummy!’ wailed Suri.
‘Shut up!’ said Ranbir.
The road twisted and turned as much as it could, and rose a little only to fall more steeply the other side. But eventually it began to even out, for they were nearing the town and almost in the residential area.
‘The run is over,’ said Somi, a little regretfully.
‘Oh, Mummy!’
‘Shut up.’
The boy said, ‘I must get off now, I live very near.’ Somi skidded the cycle to a standstill, and Suri shot off the handlebar into a muddy side-track. The boy slipped off, but Somi and Ranbir remained on their seats, Ranbir steadying the cycle with his feet on the ground.
‘Well, thank you,’ said the boy.
Somi said,‘Why don’t you come and have your meal with us, there is not much further to go.’
The boy’s shyness would not fall away.
‘I’ve got to go home,’ he said.‘I’m expected. Thanks very much.’
‘Well, come and see us some time,’ said Somi.‘If you come to the chaat shop in the bazaar, you are sure to find one of us. You know the bazaar?’
‘Well, I have passed through it—in a car.’
‘Oh.’
The boy began walking away, his hands once more in his pockets.
‘Hey!’ shouted Somi.‘You didn’t tell us your name!’
The boy turned and hesitated and then said,‘Rusty …’
‘See you soon, Rusty,’ said Somi, and the cycle pushed off.
The boy watched the cycle receding down the road, and Suri’s shrill voice came to him on the wind. It had stopped raining, but the boy was unaware of this; he was almost home, and that was a miserable thought. To his surprise and disgust, he found himself wishing he had gone into Dehra with Somi.
He stood in the side-track and stared down the empty road; and, to his surprise and disgust, he felt immeasurably lonely.
2
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When a large white butterfly settled on the missionary’s wife’s palatial bosom, she felt flattered, and allowed it to remain there. Her garden was beginning to burst into flower, giving her great pleasure—her husband gave her none—and such fellow-feeling as to make her tread gingerly among the caterpillars.
Mr John Harrison, the boy’s guardian, felt only contempt for the good lady’s buoyancy of spirit, but nevertheless gave her an ingratiating smile.
‘I hope you’ll put the boy to work while I’m away,’ he said. ‘Make some use of him. He dreams too much. Most unfortunate that he’s finished with school.I don’t know what to do with him.’
‘He doesn’t know what to do with himself,’ said the missionary’s wife. ‘But I’ll keep him occupied. He can do some weeding, or read to me in the afternoon. I’ll keep an eye on him.’
‘Good,’ said the guardian. And, having cleared his conscience, he made quick his escape.
Overlunch he told the boy,‘I’m going to Delhi tomorrow. Business.’
It was the only thing he said during the meal. When he had finished eating, he lighted a cigarette and erected a curtain of smoke between himself and the boy. He was a heavy smoker. His fingers were stained a deep yellow.
‘How long will you be gone, sir?’ asked Rusty, trying to sound casual.
Mr Harrison did not reply. He seldom answered the boy’s questions, and his own were stated, not asked; he probed and suggested, sharply, quickly, without ever encouraging loose conversation. He never talked about himself; he never argued: he would tolerate no argument.