by Ruskin Bond
Sita was alone once more. But there was no time to feel lonely. Everything was in motion—up and down and sideways and forwards. ‘Any moment,’ thought Sita, ‘the tree will turn right over and I’ll be in the water!’
She saw a turtle swimming past—a great river turtle, the kind that feeds on decaying flesh. Sita turned her face away. In the distance she saw a flooded village and people in flat-bottomed boats, but they were very far away.
Because of its great size, the tree did not move very swiftly on the river. Sometimes, when it passed into shallow water, it stopped, its roots catching in the rocks; but not for long—the river’s momentum soon swept it on.
At one place, where there was a bend in the river, the tree struck a sandbank and was still.
Sita felt very tired. Her arms were aching and she was no longer upright. With the tree almost on its side, she had to cling tightly to her branch to avoid falling off. The grey weeping sky was like a great shifting dome.
She knew she could not remain much longer in that position. It might be better to try swimming to some distant rooftop or tree. Then she heard someone calling. Craning her neck to look upriver, she was able to make out a small boat coming directly towards her.
The boat approached the tree. There was a boy in the boat who held on to one of the branches to steady himself, giving his free hand to Sita.
She grasped it, and slipped into the boat beside him.
The boy placed his bare foot against the tree trunk and pushed away.
The little boat moved swiftly down the river. The big tree was left far behind. Sita would never see it again.
She lay stretched out in the boat, too frightened to talk. The boy looked at her, but he did not say anything, he did not even smile. He lay on his two small oars, stroking smoothly, rhythmically, trying to keep from going into the middle of the river. He wasn’t strong enough to get the boat right out of the swift current, but he kept trying.
A small boat on a big river—a river that had no boundaries but which reached across the plains in all directions. The boat moved swiftly on the wild waters, and Sita’s home was left far behind.
The boy wore only a loincloth. A sheathed knife was knotted into his waistband. He was a slim, wiry boy, with a hard flat belly; he had high cheekbones, strong white teeth. He was a little darker than Sita.
‘You live on the island,’ he said at last, resting on his oars and allowing the boat to drift a little, for he had reached a broader, more placid stretch of the river. ‘I have seen you sometimes. But where are the others?’
‘My grandmother was sick,’ said Sita. ‘So Grandfather took her to the hospital in Shahganj.’
‘When did they leave?’
‘Early this morning.’
Only that morning—and yet it seemed to Sita as though it had been many mornings ago.
‘Where have you come from?’ she asked. She had never seen the boy before.
‘I come from…’ he hesitated, ‘…near the foothills. I was in my boat, trying to get across the river with the news that one of the villages was badly flooded, but the current was too strong. I was swept down past your island. We cannot fight the river, we must go wherever it takes us.’
‘You must be tired. Give me the oars.’
‘No. There is not much to do now, except keep the boat steady.’
He brought in one oar, and with his free hand he felt under the seat where there was a small basket. He produced two mangoes, and gave one to Sita.
They bit deep into the ripe fleshy mangoes, using their teeth to tear the skin away. The sweet juice trickled down their chins. The flavour of the fruit was heavenly—truly this was the nectar of the gods! Sita hadn’t tasted a mango for over a year. For a few moments she forgot about the flood—all that mattered was the mango!
The boat drifted, but not so swiftly now, for as they went further away across the plains, the river lost much of its tremendous force.
‘My name is Krishan,’ said the boy. ‘My father has many cows and buffaloes, but several have been lost in the flood.’
‘I suppose you go to school,’ said Sita.
‘Yes, I am supposed to go to school. There is one not far from our village. Do you have to go to school?’
‘No—there is too much work at home.’
It was no use wishing she was at home—home wouldn’t be there any more—but she wished, at that moment, that she had another mango.
Towards evening, the river changed colour. The sun, low in the sky, emerged from behind the clouds, and the river changed slowly from grey to gold, from gold to a deep orange, and then, as the sun went down, all these colours were drowned in the river, and the river took on the colour of the night.
The moon was almost at the full and Sita could see across the river, to where the trees grew on its banks.
‘I will try to reach the trees,’ said the boy Krishan. ‘We do not want to spend the night on the water, do we?’
And so he pulled for the trees. After ten minutes of strenuous rowing, he reached a turn in the river and was able to escape the pull of the main current.
Soon they were in a forest, rowing between tall evergreens.
They moved slowly now, paddling between the trees, and the moon lit their way, making a crooked silver path over the water.
‘We will tie the boat to one of these trees,’ said Krishan. ‘Then we can rest. Tomorrow we will have to find our way out of the forest.’
He produced a length of rope from the bottom of the boat, tied one end to the boat’s stern and threw the other end over a stout branch which hung only a few feet above the water. The boat came to rest against the trunk of the tree.
It was a tall, sturdy toon tree—the Indian mahogany—and it was quite safe, for there was no rush of water here; besides, the trees grew close together, making the earth firm and unyielding.
But the denizens of the forest were on the move. The animals had been flooded out of their holes, caves and lairs, and were looking for shelter and dry ground.
Sita and Krishan had barely finished tying the boat to the tree when they saw a huge python gliding over the water towards them. Sita was afraid that it might try to get into the boat; but it went past them, its head above water, its great awesome length trailing behind, until it was lost in the shadows.
Krishan had more mangoes in the basket, and he and Sita sucked hungrily on them while they sat in the boat.
A big sambur stag came thrashing through the water. He did not have to swim; he was so tall that his head and shoulders remained well above the water. His antlers were big and beautiful.
‘There will be other animals,’ said Sita. ‘Should we climb into the tree?’
‘We are quite safe in the boat,’ said Krishan. ‘The animals are interested only in reaching dry land. They will not even hunt each other. Tonight, the deer are safe from the panther and the tiger. So lie down and sleep, and I will keep watch.’
Sita stretched herself out in the boat and closed her eyes, and the sound of the water lapping against the sides of the boat soon lulled her to sleep. She woke once, when a strange bird called overhead. She raised herself on one elbow, but Krishan was awake, sitting in the prow, and he smiled reassuringly at her. He looked blue in the moonlight, the colour of the young god Krishna, and for a few moments Sita was confused and wondered if the boy was indeed Krishna; but when she thought about it, she decided that it wasn’t possible. He was just a village boy and she had seen hundreds like him—well, not exactly like him; he was different, in a way she couldn’t explain to herself…
And when she slept again, she dreamt that the boy and Krishna were one, and that she was sitting beside him on a great white bird which flew over mountains, over the snow peaks of the Himalayas, into the cloud-land of the gods. There was a great rumbling sound, as though the gods were angry about the whole thing, and she woke up to this terrible sound and looked about her, and there in the moonlit glade, up to his belly in water, stood a young elephant,
his trunk raised as he trumpeted his predicament to the forest—for he was a young elephant, and he was lost, and he was looking for his mother.
He trumpeted again, and then lowered his head and listened. And presently, from far away, came the shrill trumpeting of another elephant. It must have been the young one’s mother, because he gave several excited trumpet calls, and then went stamping and churning through the flood water towards a gap in the trees. The boat rocked in the waves made by his passing.
‘It’s all right now,’ said Krishan. ‘You can go to sleep again.’
‘I don’t think I will sleep now,’ said Sita.
‘Then I will play my flute for you,’ said the boy, ‘and the time will pass more quickly.’
From the bottom of the boat he took a flute, and putting it to his lips, he began to play. The sweetest music that Sita had ever heard came pouring from the little flute, and it seemed to fill the forest with its beautiful sound. And the music carried her away again, into the land of dreams, and they were riding on the bird once more, Sita and the blue god, and they were passing through clouds and mist, until suddenly the sun shot out through the clouds. And at the same moment, Sita opened her eyes and saw the sun streaming through the branches of the toon tree, its bright green leaves making a dark pattern against the blinding blue of the sky.
Sita sat up with a start, rocking the boat. There were hardly any clouds left. The trees were drenched with sunshine.
The boy Krishan was fast asleep in the bottom of the boat. His flute lay in the palm of his half-open hand. The sun came slanting across his bare brown legs. A leaf had fallen on his upturned face, but it had not woken him, it lay on his cheek as though it had grown there.
Sita did not move again. She did not want to wake the boy. It didn’t look as though the water had gone down, but it hadn’t risen, and that meant the flood had spent itself.
The warmth of the sun, as it crept up Krishan’s body, woke him at last. He yawned, stretched his limbs, and sat up beside Sita.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said with a smile.
‘So am I,’ said Sita.
‘The last mangoes,’ he said, and emptied the basket of its last two mangoes.
After they had finished the fruit, they sucked the big seeds until these were quite dry. The discarded seeds floated well on the water. Sita had always preferred them to paper boats.
‘We had better move on,’ said Krishan.
He rowed the boat through the trees, and then for about an hour they were passing through the flooded forest, under the dripping branches of rain-washed trees. Sometimes they had to use the oars to push away vines and creepers. Sometimes drowned bushes hampered them. But they were out of the forest before noon.
Now the water was not very deep and they were gliding over flooded fields. In the distance they saw a village. It was on high ground. In the old days, people had built their villages on hilltops, which gave them better defence against bandits and invading armies. This was an old village, and though its inhabitants had long ago exchanged their swords for pruning forks, the hill on which it stood now protected it from the flood.
The people of the village—long-limbed, sturdy Jats—were generous, and gave the stranded children food and shelter. Sita was anxious to find her grandparents, and an old farmer who had business in Shahganj offered to take her there. She was hoping that Krishan would accompany her, but he said he would wait in the village, where he knew others would soon be arriving, his own people among them.
‘You will be all right now,’ said Krishan. ‘Your grandfather will be anxious for you, so it is best that you go to him as soon as you can. And in two or three days, the water will go down and you will be able to return to the island.’
‘Perhaps the island has gone forever,’ said Sita.
As she climbed into the farmer’s bullock cart, Krishan handed her his flute.
‘Please keep it for me,’ he said. ‘I will come for it one day.’ And when he saw her hesitate, he added, his eyes twinkling, ‘It is a good flute!’
It was slow going in the bullock cart. The road was awash, the wheels got stuck in the mud, and the farmer, his grown son and Sita had to keep getting down to heave and push in order to free the big wooden wheels. They were still in a foot or two of water. The bullocks were bespattered with mud, and Sita’s legs were caked with it.
They were a day and a night in the bullock cart before they reached Shahganj; by that time, Sita, walking down the narrow bazaar of the busy market town, was hardly recognizable.
Grandfather did not recognize her. He was walking stiffly down the road, looking straight ahead of him, and would have walked right past the dusty, dishevelled girl if she had not charged straight at his thin, shaky legs and clasped him around the waist.
‘Sita!’ he cried, when he had recovered his wind and his balance. ‘But how are you here? How did you get off the island? I was so worried—it has been very bad these last two days…’
‘Is Grandmother all right?’ asked Sita.
But even as she spoke, she knew that Grandmother was no longer with them. The dazed look in the old man’s eyes told her as much. She wanted to cry, not for Grandmother, who could suffer no more, but for Grandfather, who looked so helpless and bewildered; she did not want him to be unhappy. She forced back her tears, took his gnarled and trembling hand, and led him down the crowded street. And she knew then that it would be on her shoulder that Grandfather would have to lean in the years to come.
They returned to the island after a few days, when the river was no longer in spate. There was more rain, but the worst was over. Grandfather still had two of the goats; it had not been necessary to sell more than one.
He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw that the tree had disappeared from the island—the tree that had seemed as permanent as the island, as much a part of his life as the river itself. He marvelled at Sita’s escape. ‘It was the tree that saved you,’ he said.
‘And the boy,’ said Sita.
Yes, and the boy.
She thought about the boy, and wondered if she would ever see him again. But she did not think too much, because there was so much to do.
For three nights they slept under a crude shelter made out of jute bags. During the day she helped Grandfather rebuild the mud hut. Once again, they used the big rock as a support.
The trunk which Sita had packed so carefully had not been swept off the island, but the water had got into it, and the food and clothing had been spoilt. But Grandfather’s hookah had been saved, and, in the evenings, after their work was done and they had eaten the light meal which Sita prepared, he would smoke with a little of his old contentment, and tell Sita about other floods and storms which he had experienced as a boy.
Sita planted a mango seed in the same spot where the peepul tree had stood. It would be many years before it grew into a big tree, but Sita liked to imagine sitting in its branches one day, picking the mangoes straight from the tree, and feasting on them all day. Grandfather was more particular about making a vegetable garden and putting down peas, carrots, gram and mustard.
One day, when most of the hard work had been done and the new hut was almost ready, Sita took the flute which had been given to her by the boy, and walked down to the water’s edge and tried to play it. But all she could produce were a few broken notes, and even the goats paid no attention to her music.
Sometimes Sita thought she saw a boat coming down the river and she would run to meet it; but usually there was no boat, or if there was, it belonged to a stranger or to another fisherman. And so she stopped looking out for boats. Sometimes she thought she heard the music of a flute, but it seemed very distant and she could never tell where the music came from.
Slowly, the rains came to an end. The flood waters had receded, and in the villages people were beginning to till the land again and sow crops for the winter months. There were cattle fairs and wrestling matches. The days were warm and sultry. The water in the river was no longer muddy,
and one evening Grandfather brought home a huge mahseer fish and Sita made it into a delicious curry.
Grandfather sat outside the hut, smoking his hookah. Sita was at the far end of the island, spreading clothes on the rocks to dry. One of the goats had followed her. It was the friendlier of the two, and often followed Sita about the island. She had made it a necklace of coloured beads.
She sat down on a smooth rock, and, as she did so, she noticed a small bright object in the sand near her feet. She stooped and picked it up. It was a little wooden toy—a coloured peacock—that must have come down on the river and been swept ashore on the island. Some of the paint had rubbed off, but for Sita, who had no toys, it was a great find. Perhaps it would speak to her, as Mumta had spoken to her.
As she held the toy peacock in the palm of her hand, she thought she heard the flute music again, but she did not look up. She had heard it before, and she was sure that it was all in her mind.
But this time the music sounded nearer, much nearer. There was a soft footfall in the sand. And, looking up, she saw the boy Krishan standing over her.
‘I thought you would never come,’ said Sita.
‘I had to wait until the rains were over. Now that I am free, I will come more often. Did you keep my flute?’
‘Yes, but I cannot play it properly. Sometimes it plays by itself, I think, but it will not play for me!’
‘I will teach you to play it,’ said Krishan.
He sat down beside her, and they cooled their feet in the water, which was clear now, reflecting the blue of the sky. You could see the sand and the pebbles of the riverbed.
‘Sometimes the river is angry, and sometimes it is kind,’ said Sita.
‘We are part of the river,’ said the boy. ‘We cannot live without it.’
It was a good river, deep and strong, beginning in the mountains and ending in the sea. Along its banks, for hundreds of miles, lived millions of people, and Sita was only one small girl among them, and no one had ever heard of her, no one knew her—except for the old man, the boy and the river.