by Ruskin Bond
‘Hullo, Mister Kapoor,’ said Rusty. ‘How are you?’
‘I am fine, just fine. Sit down, please. Will you have a drink?’
‘No thanks. I came to see you and Kishen before leaving for England. I wanted to see you again, you were very kind to me …’
‘That’s all right, quite all right. I’m very glad to see you, but I’m afraid Kishen isn’t here. By the way, the lady who just met you at the door, I haven’t introduced you yet—this is my wife, Mister Rusty … I—I married again shortly after Meena’s death.’
Rusty looked at the new Mrs Kapoor in considerable bewilderment, and greeted her quietly. It was not unusual for a man to marry again soon after his wife’s death, and he knew it, but his heart was breaking with a fierce anger. He was revolted by the rapidity of it all; hardly a month had passed, and here was Kapoor with another wife. Rusty remembered that it was for this man Kapoor—this weakling, this drunkard, this self-opinionated, selfish drunkard—that Meena had given her life, all of it, devotedly and unselfishly she had remained by his side when she could have left, when there was no more fight in him and no more love in him and no more pride in him; and, had she left then, she would be alive, and he—he would be dead …
Rusty was not interested in the new Mrs Kapoor. For Kapoor, he had only contempt.
‘Mister Rusty is a good friend of the family,’ Kapoor was saying.‘In Dehra he was a great help to Kishen.’
‘How did Meena die?’ asked Rusty, determined to hurt Kapoor—if Kapoor could be hurt …
‘I thought you knew. We had an accident. Let us not talk of it, Mister Rusty …’
‘The driver was driving, of course?’
Kapoor did not answer immediately, but raised his glass and sipped from it.
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘How did it all happen?’
‘Please, Mister Rusty, I do not want to describe it. We were going too fast, and the car left the road and hit a tree. I can’t describe it, Mister Rusty.’
‘No,of course not,’ said Rusty.‘Anyway, I am glad nothing happened to you. It is also good that you have mastered your natural grief, and started a new life. I am afraid I am not as strong as you. Meena was wonderful, and I still can’t believe she is dead.’
‘We have to carry on …’
‘Of course. How is Kishen, I would like to see him.’
‘He is in Lucknow with his aunt,’ said Kapoor.‘He wished to stay with her.’
Mrs Kapoor had been quiet till now.
‘Tell him the truth,’ she said.‘There is nothing to hide.’
‘You tell him then.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He ran away from us. As soon as his aunt left, he ran away. We tried to make him come back, but it was useless, so now we don’t try. But he is in Hardwar. We are always hearing about him. They say he is the most cunning thief on both sides of the river.’
‘Where can I find him?’
‘I don’t know. He is wanted by the police. He robs for others, and they pay him. It is easier for a young boy to steal than it is for a man, and as he is quite a genius at it, his services are in demand. And I am sure he would not hesitate to rob us too …’
‘But you must know where I can find him,’persisted Rusty. ‘You must have some idea.’
‘He has been seen along the river and in the bazaar. I don’t know where he lives. In a tree,perhaps, or in a temple, or in a brothel. He is somewhere in Hardwar, but exactly where I do not know … no one knows. He speaks to no one and runs from everyone. What can you want with him?’
‘He is my friend,’ said Rusty.
‘He will rob you too.’
‘The money I have is what he gave me.’
He rose to leave; he was tired, but he did not want to stay much longer in this alien house.
‘You are tired,’ said Mrs Kapoor,‘will you rest, and have your meal with us?’
‘No,’ said Rusty,‘there isn’t time.’
22
All hope left Rusty as he staggered down the hill, weak and exhausted. He could not think clearly; he knew he hadn’t eaten since morning, and cursed himself for not accepting Mrs Kapoor’s hospitality.
He was hungry, he was thirsty; he was tormented by thoughts of what might have happened to Kishen, of what might happen …
He stumbled down the long steps that led to the water. The sun was strong, striking up from the stone and shimmering against the great white temple that overlooked the river. He crossed the courtyard and came to the water’s edge.
Lying on his belly on the river-bank, he drank of the holy waters. Then he pulled off his shirt and sandals, and slipped into the water. There were men and women on all sides, praying with their faces to the sun. Great fish swam round them, unafraid and unmolested, safe in the sacred waters of the Ganges.
When he had bathed and refreshed himself, Rusty climbed back on to the stone bank. His sandals and shirt had disappeared.
No one was near except a beggar leaning on a stick, a young man massaging his body with oils, and a cow examining an empty, discarded basket; and, of the three, the cow was the most likely suspect; it had probably eaten the sandals.
But Rusty no longer cared what happened to his things. His money was in the leather purse attached to his belt; and, as long as he had the belt, he had both money and pyjamas.
He rolled the wet pyjamas up to his thighs; then, staring ahead with unseeing eyes, ignoring the bowls that were thrust before him by the beggars, he walked the length of the courtyard that ran parallel to the rising steps.
Children were shouting at each other, priests chanting their prayers; vendors, with baskets on their heads—baskets of fruit and chaat—gave harsh cries; and the cows pushed their way around at will. Steps descended from all parts of the hill; broad, clean steps from the temple, and narrow, winding steps from the bazaars; and a maze of alleyways zigzagged about the hill, through the bazaar, round the temples, along the river, and were lost amongst themselves and found again and lost …
Kishen, barefooted and ragged and thin, but with the same supreme confidence in himself, leant against the wall of an alleyway, and watched Rusty’s progress along the river-bank.
He wanted to shout to Rusty, to go to him, to embrace him, but he could not do these things. He did not understand the reason for his friend’s presence, he could not reveal himself for fear of a trap. He was sure it was Rusty he watched, for who else was there with the same coloured hair and skin who would walk half-naked in Hardwar. It was Rusty, but why … was he in trouble, was he sick? Why, why …
Rusty saw Kishen in the alleyway. He was too weak to shout. He stood in the sun, and looked up the steps at Kishen standing in the alleyway.
Kishen did not know whether to run to Rusty, or run away. He too stood still, at the entrance of the alley.
‘Hullo, Rusty,’ he called.
And Rusty began to walk up the steps, slowly and painfully, his feet burning, his head reeling, his heart thundering with conflicting emotions.
‘Are you alone?’ called Kishen.‘Don’t come if you are not alone.’
Rusty advanced up the steps, until he was in the alleyway facing Kishen. Despite the haze before his eyes, he noticed Kishen’s wild condition; the bones protruded from the boy’s skin, his hair was knotted and straggly, his eyes danced, searching the steps for others.
‘Why are you here, Rusty?’
‘To see you …’
‘Why?’
‘I am going away.’
‘How can you go anywhere? You look sick enough to die.’
‘I came to see you, anyway.’
‘Why?’
Rusty sat down on a step; his wrists hung loose on his knees, and his head drooped forward.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said.
Kishen walked into the open, and approached a fruit-vendor. He came back with two large watermelons.
‘You have money?’ asked Rusty.
‘No.Just credit. I b
ring them profits, they give me credit.’
He sat down beside Rusty,produced a small but wicked-looking knife from the folds of his shirt, and proceeded to slice the melons in half.
‘You can’t go away,’ he said.
‘I can’t go back.’
‘Why not?’
‘No money, no job, no friends.’
They put their teeth into the watermelon, and ate at terrific speed. Rusty felt much refreshed; he put his weakness and fever down to an empty stomach.
‘I’ll be no good as a bandit,’ said Rusty.‘I can be recognized at sight, I can’t go around robbing people, I don’t think it’s very nice anyway.’
‘I don’t rob poor people,’ objected Kishen, prodding his nose.‘I only rob those who’ve got something to be robbed. And I don’t do it for myself, that’s why I’m never caught. People pay me to do their dirty work. Like that, they are safe because they are somewhere else when everything happens, and I am safe because I don’t have what I rob, and haven’t got a reason for taking it anyway … so it is quite safe. But don’t worry, bhai, we will not do it in Dehra, we are too well-known there. Besides, I am tired of running from the police.’
‘Then what will we do?’
‘Oh we will find someone for you to give English lessons. Not one, but many. And I will start a chaat shop.’
‘When do we go?’ said Rusty; and England and fame and riches were all forgotten, and would soon be dreams again.
‘Tomorrow morning,early,’ said Kishen.‘There is a boat crossing the river. We must cross the river, on this side I am known, and there are many people who would not like me to leave. If we went by train, I would be caught at the station, for sure. On the other side no one knows me, there is only jungle.’
Rusty was amazed at how competent and practical Kishen had become; Kishen’s mind had developed far quicker than his body, and he was a funny cross between an experienced adventurer and a ragged urchin. A month ago he had clung to Rusty for protection; now Rusty looked to Kishen for guidance.
I wonder, thought Rusty, will they notice my absence in Dehra? After all, I have only been away a day, though it seems an age … The room on the roof will still be vacant when I return, no one but me could be crazy enough to live in such a room … I will go back to the room as though nothing had happened, and no one will notice that anything has.
*
The afternoon ripened into evening.
As the sun sank, the temple changed from white to gold, from gold to orange, from orange to pink, and from pink to crimson, and all these colours were in turn reflected in the surrounding waters.
The noise subsided gradually, the night came on.
Kishen and Rusty slept in the open, on the temple steps. It was a warm night, the air was close and heavy. In the shadows lay small bundles of humanity, the roofless and the homeless, sleeping only to pass the time of night. Rusty slept in spasms, waking frequently with a nagging pain in his stomach; poor stomach, it couldn’t stand the unfamiliar strain of emptiness.
23
Before the steps and the river-bank came to life, Kishen and Rusty climbed into the ferry-boat. It would be crossing the river all day, carrying pilgrims from temple to temple, charging nothing. And though it was very early, and this the first crossing, a free passage across the river made for a crowded boat.
The people who climbed in were even more diverse than those Rusty had met on the train: women and children, bearded old men and wrinkled women, strong young peasants—not the prosperous or mercantile class, but the poor—who had come miles, mostly on foot, to bathe in the sacred waters of the Ganges, Ganga-Mai to Hindus.
On shore, the steps began to come to life. The previous day’s cries and prayers and rites were resumed with the same monotonous devotion, at the same pitch, in the same spirit of timelessness; and the steps sounded to the tread of many feet, sandalled, slippered and bare.
The boat floated low in the water, it was so heavy, and the oarsmen had to strain upstream in order to avoid being swept down by the current. Their muscles shone and rippled under the grey iron of their weather-beaten skins. The blades of the oars cut through the water, in and out; and between grunts, the oarsmen shouted the time of the stroke.
Kishen and Rusty sat crushed together in the middle of the boat. There was no likelihood of their being separated now, but they held hands.
The people in the boat began to sing.
It was a low hum at first, but someone broke in with a song, and the voice—a young voice, clear and pure— reminded Rusty of Somi; and he comforted himself with the thought that Somi would be back in Dehra in the spring.
They sang in time to the stroke of the oars, in and out, and the grunts and shouts of the oarsmen throbbed their way into the song, becoming part of it.
An old woman, who had white hair and a face lined with deepruts, said,‘It is beautiful to hear the children sing.’
‘Then you too should sing,’ said Rusty.
She smiled at him, a sweet, toothless smile.
‘What are you my son, are you one of us? I have never, on this river, seen blue eyes and golden hair.’
‘I am nothing,’ said Rusty.‘I am everything.’
He stated it bluntly, proudly.
‘Where is your home, then?’
‘I have no home,’ he said, and felt proud of that too.
‘And who is the boy with you?’ asked the old woman, a genuine busybody. ‘What is he to you?’
Rusty did not answer; he was asking himself the same question: what was Kishen to him? He was sure of one thing, they were both refugees—refugees from the world … They were each other’s shelter, each other’s refuge, each other’s help. Kishen was a jungli, divorced from the rest of mankind, and Rusty was the only one who understood him—because Rusty too was divorced from mankind. And theirs was a tie that would hold, because they were the only people who knew each other and loved each other.
Because of this tie, Rusty had to go back. And it was with relief that he went back. His return was justified.
He let his hand trail over the side of the boat: he wanted to remember the touch of the water as it moved past them, down and away: it would come to the ocean, the ocean that was life.
He could not run away. He could not escape the life he had made, the ocean into which he had floundered the night he left his guardian’s house. He had to return to the room; his room; he had to go back.
The song died away as the boat came ashore. They disembarked, walking over the smooth pebbles; and the forest rose from the edge of the river, and beckoned them.
Rusty remembered the forest on the day of the picnic, when he had kissed Meena and held her hands, and he remembered the magic of the forest and the magic of Meena.
‘One day,’ he said,‘we must live in the jungle.’
‘One day,’ said Kishen, and he laughed.‘But now we walk back.We walk back to the roomon the roof! It is our room, we have to go back!’
They had to go back: to bathe at the water-tank and listen to the morning gossip, to sit in the fruit trees and eat in the chaat shop and perhaps make a garden on the roof; to eat and sleep; to work; to live; to die.
Kishen laughed.
‘One day you’ll be great, Rusty. A writer or an actor or a prime minister or something. Maybe a poet! Why not a poet, Rusty?’
Rusty smiled. He knew he was smiling, because he was smiling at himself.
‘Yes,’ he said,‘why not a poet?’
So they began to walk.
Ahead of them lay forest and silence—and what was left of time …
e(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share