by Ruskin Bond
Harold was quite happy in his cell, and felt no urge for freedom. He was putting on weight and a philosophy of his own. Then something happened to change the course of his life.
One afternoon he was awakened from his siesta by a loud thumping on the wall, a sound quite different from that made by his parents. Soon the wall gave way, and there was something large and yellow and furry staring at him—not his parents’ bills, but the hungry eyes of a civet cat.
Before Harold could be seized, his parents flew at the cat, both roaring lustily and striking out with their great bills. In the ensuing mêlèe, Harold tumbled out of his nest and landed on our garden path.
Before the cat or any predator could get to him, Grandfather picked him up and took him to the sanctuary of the veranda.
Harold had lost some wing feathers and did not look as though he would be able to survive on his own, so we made an enclosure for him on our front veranda. Grandfather and I took over the duties of his parents.
Harold had a simple outlook, and once he had got over some early attacks of nerves, he began to welcome the approach of people. Grandfather and I meant the arrival of food and he greeted us with craning neck, quivering open bill, and a loud, croaking, ‘Ka-ka-kaee!’
Fruit, insect or animal food and green leaves were all welcome. We soon dispensed with the enclosure, but Harold made no effort to go away; he had difficulty flying. In fact, he asserted his tenancy rights, at least as far as the veranda was concerned.
One afternoon a veranda tea party was suddenly and alarmingly convulsed by a flash of black and white and noisy flapping. And behold, the last and only loaf of bread had been seized and carried off to his perch near the ceiling.
Harold was not beautiful by Hollywood standards. He had a small body and a large head. But he was good-natured and friendly, and he remained on good terms with most members of the household during his lifetime of twelve years.
Harold’s best friends were those who fed him, and he was willing even to share his food with us, sometimes trying to feed me with his great beak.
While I turned down his offers of beetles and similar delicacies, I did occasionally share a banana with him. Eating was a serious business for Harold, and if there was any delay at mealtimes he would summon me with raucous barks and vigorous bangs of his bill on the woodwork of the kitchen window.
Having no family, profession or religion, Harold gave much time and thought to his personal appearance. He carried a rouge pot on his person and used it very skilfully as an item of his morning toilet.
This rouge pot was a small gland situated above the roots of his tail feathers; it produced a rich yellow fluid. Harold would dip into his rouge pot from time to time and then rub the colour over his feathers and the back of his neck. It would come off on my hands whenever I touched him.
Harold would toy with anything bright or glittering, often swallowing it afterwards.
He loved bananas and dates and balls of boiled rice. I would throw him the rice balls, and he would catch them in his beak, toss them in the air, and let them drop into his open mouth.
He perfected this trick of catching things, and in time I taught him to catch a tennis ball thrown with some force from a distance of fifteen yards. He would have made a great baseball catcher or an excellent slip fielder. On one occasion he seized a rupee coin from me (a week’s pocket money in those days) and swallowed it neatly. Only once did he really misbehave. That was when he removed a lighted cigar from the hand of an American cousin who was visiting us. Harold swallowed the cigar. It was a moving experience for Harold, and an unnerving one for our guest.
Although Harold never seemed to drink any water, he loved the rain. We always knew when it was going to rain because Harold would start chuckling to himself about an hour before the first raindrops fell.
This used to irritate Aunt Ruby. She was always being caught in the rain. Harold would be chuckling when she left the house. And when she returned, drenched to the skin, he would be in fits of laughter.
As storm clouds would gather, and gusts of wind would shake the banana trees, Harold would get very excited, and his chuckle would change to an eerie whistle.
‘Wheee…wheee,’ he would scream, and then, as the first drops of rain hit the veranda steps, and the scent of the fresh earth passed through the house, he would start roaring with pleasure.
The wind would carry the rain into the veranda, and Harold would spread out his wings and dance, tumbling about like a circus clown. My grandparents and I would come out on the veranda and share his happiness.
Many years later, I still miss Harold’s raucous bark and the banging of his great bill. If there is a heaven for good hornbills, I sincerely hope he is getting all the summer showers he could wish for, and plenty of tennis balls to catch.
Henry: A Chameleon
THIS IS the story of Henry, our pet chameleon. Chameleons are in a class by themselves and are no ordinary reptiles. They are easily distinguished from their nearest relatives, the lizards, by certain outstanding features. A chameleon’s tongue is as long as its body. Its limbs are long and slender and its fingers and toes resemble a parrot’s claws. On its head may be any of several ornaments. Henry had a rigid crest that looked like a fireman’s helmet.
Henry’s eyes were his most remarkable feature. They were not beautiful, but his left eye was quite independent of his right. He could move one eye without disturbing the other. Each eyeball, bulging out of his head, wobbled up and down, backward and forward. This frenzied movement gave Henry a horrible squint. And one look into Henry’s frightful gaze was often enough to scare people into believing that chameleons are dangerous and poisonous reptiles.
One day, Grandfather was visiting a friend, when he came upon a noisy scene at the garden gate. Men were shouting, hurling stones, and brandishing sticks. The cause of the uproar was a chameleon that had been discovered sunning itself on a shrub. Someone claimed that the chameleon could poison people twenty feet away, simply by spitting at them. The residents of the area had risen up in arms. Grandfather was just in time to save the chameleon from certain death—he brought the little reptile home.
That chameleon was Henry, and that was how he came to live with us.
When I first visited Henry, he would treat me with great caution, sitting perfectly still on his perch with his back to me. The eye nearer to me would move around like the beam of a searchlight until it had me well in focus. Then it would stop and the other eye would begin an independent survey of its own. For a long time Henry trusted no one and responded to my friendliest gestures with grave suspicion.
Tiring of his wary attitude, I would tickle him gently in the ribs with my finger. This always threw him into a great rage. He would blow himself up to an enormous size as his lungs filled up with air, while his colour changed from green to red. He would sit up on his hind legs, swaying from side to side, hoping to overawe me. Opening his mouth very wide, he would let out an angry hiss. But his threatening display went no further. He did not bite.
Henry was a harmless fellow. If I put my finger in his mouth, even during his wildest moments, he would simply wait for me to take it out again. I suppose he could bite. His rigid jaws carried a number of finely pointed teeth. But Henry seemed convinced that his teeth were there for the sole purpose of chewing food, not fingers.
Henry was sometimes willing to take food from my hands. This he did very swiftly. His tongue performed like a boomerang and always came back to him with the food, usually an insect, attached to it.
Although Henry didn’t cause any trouble in our house, he did create somewhat of a riot in the nursery down the road. It started out quite innocently.
When the papayas in our orchard were ripe, Grandmother sent a basketful to her friend Mrs Ghosh, who was the principal of the nursery school. While the basket sat waiting, Henry went searching for beetles and slipped in among the papayas, unnoticed. The gardener dutifully carried the basket to the school and left it in Mrs Ghosh’s office.
When Mrs Ghosh returned after making her rounds, she began examining and admiring the papayas. And out popped Henry.
Mrs Ghosh screamed. Henry squinted up at her, both eyes revolving furiously. Mrs Ghosh screamed again. Henry’s colour changed from green to yellow to red. His mouth opened as though he, too, would like to scream. An assistant teacher rushed in, took one look at the chameleon, and joined in the shrieking.
Henry was terrified. He fled from the office, running down the corridor and into one of the classrooms. There he climbed up on a desk while children ran in all directions—some to get away from Henry, some to catch him. Henry finally made his exit through a window and disappeared in the garden.
Grandmother heard about the incident from Mrs Ghosh but didn’t mention that the chameleon was ours. It might have spoiled their friendship.
Grandfather and I didn’t think Henry would find his way back to us, because the school was three blocks away. But a few days later, I found him sunning himself on the garden wall. Although he looked none the worse for his adventure, he never went abroad again. Henry spent the rest of his days in the garden, where he kept the insect population well within bounds.
Monkey Trouble
GRANDFATHER BOUGHT Tutu from a street entertainer for the sum of ten rupees. The man had three monkeys. Tutu was the smallest, but the most mischievous. She was tied up most of the time. The little monkey looked so miserable with a collar and chain that Grandfather decided it would be much happier in our home. Grandfather had a weakness for keeping unusual pets. It was a habit that I, at the age of eight or nine, used to encourage.
Grandmother at first objected to having a monkey in the house. ‘You have enough pets as it is,’ she said, referring to Grandfather’s goat, several white mice, and a small tortoise.
‘But I don’t have any,’ I said.
‘You’re wicked enough for two monkeys. One boy in the house is all I can take.’
‘Ah, but Tutu isn’t a boy,’ said Grandfather triumphantly. ‘This is a little girl monkey!’
Grandmother gave in. She had always wanted a little girl in the house. She believed girls were less troublesome than boys. Tutu was to prove her wrong.
She was a pretty little monkey. Her bright eyes sparkled with mischief beneath deep-set eyebrows. And her teeth, which were a pearly white, were often revealed in a grin that frightened the wits out of Aunt Ruby, whose nerves had already suffered from the presence of Grandfather’s pet python. But this was my grandparents’ house, and aunts and uncles had to put up with our pets.
Tutu’s hands had a dried-up look, as though they had been pickled in the sun for many years. One of the first things I taught her was to shake hands, and this she insisted on doing with all who visited the house. Peppery Major Malik would have to stoop and shake hands with Tutu before he could enter the drawing room, otherwise Tutu would climb onto his shoulder and stay there, roughing up his hair and playing with his moustache.
Uncle Benji couldn’t stand any of our pets and took a particular dislike to Tutu, who was always making faces at him. But as Uncle Benji was never in a job for long, and depended on Grandfather’s good-natured generosity, he had to shake hands with Tutu, like everyone else.
Tutu’s fingers were quick and wicked. And her tail, while adding to her good looks (Grandfather believed a tail would add to anyone’s good looks!), also served as a third hand. She could use it to hang from a branch, and it was capable of scooping up any delicacy that might be out of reach of her hands.
On one of Aunt Ruby’s visits, loud shrieks from her bedroom brought us running to see what was wrong. It was only Tutu trying on Aunt Ruby’s petticoats! They were much too large, of course, and when Aunt Ruby entered the room, all she saw was a faceless white blob jumping up and down on the bed.
We disentangled Tutu and soothed Aunt Ruby. I gave Tutu a bunch of sweetpeas to make her happy. Granny didn’t like anyone plucking her sweetpeas, so I took some from Major Malik’s garden while he was having his afternoon siesta.
Then Uncle Benji complained that his hairbrush was missing. We found Tutu sunning herself on the back veranda, using the hairbrush to scratch her armpits.
I took it from her and handed it back to Uncle Benji with an apology; but he flung the brush away with an oath.
‘Such a fuss about nothing,’ I said. ‘Tutu doesn’t have fleas!’
‘No, and she bathes more often than Benji,’ said Grandfather, who had borrowed Aunt Ruby’s shampoo to give Tutu a bath.
All the same, Grandmother objected to Tutu being given the run of the house. Tutu had to spend her nights in the outhouse, in the company of the goat. They got on quite well, and it was not long before Tutu was seen sitting comfortably on the back of the goat, while the goat roamed the back garden in search of its favourite grass.
The day Grandfather had to visit Meerut to collect his railway pension, he decided to take Tutu and me along to keep us both out of mischief, he said. To prevent Tutu from wandering about on the train, causing inconvenience to passengers, she was provided with a large black travelling bag. This, with some straw at the bottom, became her compartment. Grandfather and I paid for our seats, and we took Tutu along as hand baggage.
There was enough space for Tutu to look out of the bag occasionally, and to be fed with bananas and biscuits, but she could not get her hands through the opening and the canvas was too strong for her to bite her way through.
Tutu’s efforts to get out only had the effect of making the bag roll about on the floor or occasionally jump into the air—an exhibition that attracted a curious crowd of onlookers at the Dehra and Meerut railway stations.
Anyway, Tutu remained in the bag as far as Meerut, but while Grandfather was producing our tickets at the turnstile, she suddenly poked her head out of the bag and gave the ticket collector a wide grin.
The poor man was taken aback. But, with great presence of mind and much to Grandfather’s annoyance, he said, ‘Sir, you have a dog with you. You’ll have to buy a ticket for it.’
‘It’s not a dog!’ said Grandfather indignantly. ‘This is a baby monkey of the species Macacus mischievous, closely related to the human species Homus horriblis! And there is no charge for babies!’
‘It’s as big as a cat,’ said the ticket collector. ‘Cats and dogs have to be paid for.’
‘But, I tell you, it’s only a baby!’ protested Grandfather.
‘Have you a birth certificate to prove that?’ demanded the ticket collector.
‘Next, you’ll be asking to see her mother,’ snapped Grandfather.
In vain did he take Tutu out of the bag. In vain did he try to prove that a young monkey did not qualify as a dog or a cat or even as a quadruped. Tutu was classified as a dog by the ticket collector, and five rupees were handed over as her fare.
Then Grandfather, just to get his own back, took from his pocket the small tortoise that he sometimes carried about, and said: ‘And what must I pay for this, since you charge for all creatures great and small?’
The ticket collector looked closely at the tortoise, prodded it with his forefinger, gave Grandfather a triumphant look, and said, ‘No charge, sir. It is not a dog!’
Winters in north India can be very cold. A great treat for Tutu on winter evenings was the large bowl of hot water given to her by Grandfather for a bath. Tutu would cunningly test the temperature with her hand, then gradually step into the bath, first one foot, then the other (as she had seen me doing) until she was in the water up to her neck.
Once comfortable, she would take the soap in her hands or feet and rub herself all over. When the water became cold, she would get out and run as quickly as she could to the kitchen fire in order to dry herself. If anyone laughed at her during this performance, Tutu’s feelings would be hurt and she would refuse to go on with the bath.
One day Tutu almost succeeded in boiling herself alive. Grandmother had left a large kettle on the fire for tea. And Tutu, all by herself and with nothing better to do, decided to
remove the lid. Finding the water just warm enough for a bath, she got in, with her head sticking out from the open kettle.
This was fine for a while, until the water began to get heated. Tutu raised herself a little. But finding it cold outside, she sat down again. She continued hopping up and down for some time, until Grandmother returned and hauled her, half-boiled, out of the kettle.
‘What’s for tea today?’ asked Uncle Benji gleefully. ‘Boiled eggs and a half-boiled monkey?’
But Tutu was none the worse for the adventure and continued to bathe more regularly than Uncle Benji.
Aunt Ruby was a frequent taker of baths. This met with Tutu’s approval—so much so that, one day, when Aunt Ruby had finished shampooing her hair, she looked up through a lather of bubbles and soap suds to see Tutu sitting opposite her in the bath, following her example.
One day Aunt Ruby took us all by surprise. She announced that she had become engaged. We had always thought Aunt Ruby would never marry—she had often said so herself—but it appeared that the right man had now come along in the person of Rocky Fernandes, a schoolteacher from Goa.
Rocky was a tall, firm-jawed, good-natured man, a couple of years younger than Aunt Ruby. He had a fine baritone voice and sang in the manner of the great Nelson Eddy. As Grandmother liked baritone singers, Rocky was soon in her good books.
‘But what on earth does he see in her?’ Uncle Benji wanted to know.
‘More than any girl has seen in you!’ snapped Grandmother. ‘Ruby’s a fine girl. And they’re both teachers. Maybe they can start a school of their own.’
Rocky visited the house quite often and brought me chocolates and cashew nuts, of which he seemed to have an unlimited supply. He also taught me several marching songs. Naturally, I approved of Rocky. Aunt Ruby won my grudging admiration for having made such a wise choice.
One day I overheard them talking of going to the bazaar to buy an engagement ring. I decided I would go along, too. But as Aunt Ruby had made it clear that she did not want me around, I decided that I had better follow at a discreet distance. Tutu, becoming aware that a mission of some importance was under way, decided to follow me. But as I had not invited her along, she, too, decided to keep out of sight.