by Ruskin Bond
‘Can you catch a squirrel?’ asked Kamla.
‘No, they are too quick. But I caught a snake once. I caught it by its tail and dropped it in the old well. That well is full of snakes. Whenever we catch one, instead of killing it, we drop it in the well! They can’t get out.’
Kamla shuddered at the thought of all those snakes swimming and wriggling about at the bottom of the deep well. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to return to the well with him. But she forgot about the snakes when they reached the canal.
It was a small canal, about ten metres wide, and only waist-deep in the middle, but it was very muddy at the bottom. She had never seen such a muddy stream in her life.
‘Would you like to get in?’ asked Romi.
‘No,’ said Kamla. ‘You get in.’
Romi was only too ready to show off his tricks in the water. His toes took a firm hold on the grassy bank, the muscles of his calves tensed, and he dived into the water with a loud splash, landing rather awkwardly on his belly. It was a poor dive, but Kamla was impressed.
Romi swam across to the opposite bank and then back again. When he climbed out of the water, he was covered with mud. It made him look quite fierce. ‘Come on in,’ he invited. ‘It’s not deep.’
‘It’s dirty,’ said Kamla, but felt tempted all the same.
‘It’s only mud,’ said Romi. ‘There’s nothing wrong with mud. Camels like mud. Buffaloes love mud.’
‘I’m not a camel—or a buffalo.’
‘All right. You don’t have to go right in, just walk along the sides of the channel.’
After a moment’s hesitation, Kamla slipped her feet out of her slippers, and crept cautiously down the slope till her feet were in the water. She went no further, but even so, some of the muddy water splashed on to her clean white skirt. What would she tell Grandmother? Her feet sank into the soft mud and she gave a little squeal as the water reached her knees. It was with some difficulty that she got each foot out of the sticky mud.
Romi took her by the hand, and they went stumbling along the side of the channel while little fish swam in and out of their legs, and a heron, one foot raised, waited until they had passed before snapping a fish out of the water. The little fish glistened in the sun before it disappeared down the heron’s throat.
Romi gave a sudden exclamation and came to a stop. Kamla held on to him for support.
‘What is it?’ she asked, a little nervously.
‘It’s a tortoise,’ said Romi. ‘Can you see it?’
He pointed to the bank of the canal, and there, lying quite still, was a small tortoise. Romi scrambled up the bank and, before Kamla could stop him, had picked up the tortoise. As soon as he touched it, the animal’s head and legs disappeared into its shell. Romi turned it over, but from behind the breastplate only the head and a spiky tail were visible.
‘Look!’ exclaimed Kamla, pointing to the ground where the tortoise had been lying. ‘What’s in that hole?’
They peered into the hole. It was about half a metre deep, and at the bottom were five or six white eggs, a little smaller than a hen’s eggs.
‘Put it back,’ said Kamla. ‘It was sitting on its eggs.’
Romi shrugged and dropped the tortoise back on its hole. It peeped out from behind its shell, saw the children were still present, and retreated into its shell again.
‘I must go,’ said Kamla. ‘It’s getting late. Granny will wonder where I have gone.’
They walked back to the mango tree, and washed their hands and feet in the cool clear water from the well; but only after Romi had assured Kamla that there weren’t any snakes in the well—he had been talking about an old disused well on the far side of the village. Kamla told Romi she would take him to her house one day, but it would have to be next year, or perhaps the year after, when she came to India again.
‘Is it very far, where you are going?’ asked Romi.
‘Yes, England is across the seas. I have to go back to my parents. And my school is there, too. But I will take the plane from Delhi. Have you ever been to Delhi?’
‘I have not been further than Jaipur,’ said Romi. ‘What is England like? Are there canals to swim in?’
‘You can swim in the sea. Lots of people go swimming in the sea. But it’s too cold most of the year. Where I live, there are shops and cinemas and places where you can eat anything you like. And people from all over the world come to live there. You can see red faces, brown faces, black faces, white faces!’
‘I saw a red face once,’ said Romi. ‘He came to the village to take pictures. He took one of me sitting on the camel. He said he would send me the picture, but it never came.’
Kamla noticed the flute lying on the grass. ‘Is it your flute?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Romi. ‘It is an old flute. But the old ones are best. I found it lying in a field last year. Perhaps it was the God Krishna’s! He was always playing the flute.’
‘And who taught you to play it?’
‘Nobody. I learnt by myself. Shall I play it for you?’
Kamla nodded, and they sat down on the grass, leaning against the trunk of the mango tree, and Romi put the flute to his lips and began to play.
It was a slow, sweet tune, a little sad, a little happy, and the notes were taken up by the breeze and carried across the fields. There was no one to hear the music except the birds and the camel and Kamla. Whether the camel liked it or not, we shall never know; it just kept going round and round the well, drawing up water for the fields. And whether the birds liked it or not, we cannot say, although it is true that they were all suddenly silent when Romi began to play. But Kamla was charmed by the music, and she watched Romi while he played, and the boy smiled at her with his eyes and ran his fingers along the flute. When he stopped playing, everything was still, everything silent, except for the soft wind sighing in the wheat and the gurgle of water coming up from the well.
Kamla stood up to leave.
‘When will you come again?’ asked Romi.
‘I will try to come next year,’ said Kamla.
‘That is a long time. By then you will be quite old. You may not want to come.’
‘I will come,’ said Kamla.
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
Romi put the flute in her hands and said, ‘You keep it. I can get another one.’
‘But I don’t know how to play it,’ said Kamla.
‘It will play by itself,’ said Romi.
She took the flute and put it to her lips and blew on it, producing a squeaky little note that startled a lone parrot out of the mango tree. Romi laughed, and while he was laughing, Kamla turned and ran down the path through the fields. And when she had gone some distance, she turned and waved to Romi with the flute. He stood near the well and waved back at her.
Cupping his hands to his mouth, he shouted across the fields, ‘Don’t forget to come next year!’
And Kamla called back, ‘I won’t forget.’ But her voice was faint, and the breeze blew the words away and Romi did not hear them.
Was England home? wondered Kamla. Or was this Indian city home? Or was her true home in that other India, across the busy Trunk Road? Perhaps she would find out one day.
Romi watched her until she was just a speck in the distance, and then he turned and shouted at the camel, telling it to move faster. But the camel did not even glance at him; it just carried on as before, as India has carried on for thousands of years, round and round and round the well, while the water gurgled and splashed over the smooth stones.
Calypso Christmas
y first Christmas in London had been a lonely one. My small bed-sitting-room near Swiss Cottage had been cold and austere, and my landlady had disapproved of any sort of revelry. Moreover, I hadn’t the money for the theatre or a good restaurant. That first English Christmas was spent sitting in front of a lukewarm gas-fire, eating beans on toast, and drinking cheap sherry. My one consolation was the row of Christmas cards on the mantelpiec
e—most of them from friends in India.
But the following year I was making more money and living in a bigger, brighter, homelier room. The new landlady approved of my bringing friends—even girls—to the house, and had even made me a plum pudding so that I could entertain my guests. My friends in London included a number of Indian and Commonwealth students, and through them I met George, a friendly, sensitive person from Trinidad.
George was not a student. He was over thirty. Like thousands of other West Indians, he had come to England because he had been told that jobs were plentiful, that there was a free health scheme and national insurance, and that he could earn anything from ten to twenty pounds a week—far more than he could make in Trinidad or Jamaica. But, while it was true that jobs were to be had in England, it was also true that sections of local labour resented outsiders filling these posts. There were also those, belonging chiefly to the lower middle-classes, who were prone to various prejudices, and though these people were a minority, they were still capable of making themselves felt and heard.
In any case, London is a lonely place, especially for the stranger. And for the happy-go-lucky West Indian, accustomed to sunshine, colour and music, London must be quite baffling.
As though to match the grey-green fogs of winter, Londoners wore sombre colours, greys and browns. The West Indians couldn’t understand this. Surely, they reasoned, during a grey season the colours worn should be vivid reds and greens—colours that would defy the curling fog and uncomfortable rain? But Londoners frowned on these gay splashes of colour; to them it all seemed an expression of some sort of barbarism. And then again Londoners had a horror of any sort of loud noise, and a blaring radio could (quite justifiably) bring in scores of protests from neighbouring houses. The West Indians, on the other hand, liked letting off steam; they liked holding parties in their rooms at which there was much singing and shouting. They had always believed that England was their mother country, and so, despite rain, fog, sleet and snow, they were determined to live as they had lived back home in Trinidad. And it is to their credit, and even to the credit of indigenous Londoners, that this is what they succeeded in doing.
George worked for British Railways. He was a ticket collector at one of the underground stations. He liked his work, and received about ten pounds a week for collecting tickets. A large, stout man, with huge hands and feet, he always had a gentle, kindly expression on his mobile face. Amongst other accomplishments he could play the piano, and as there was an old, rather dilapidated piano in my room, he would often come over in the evenings to run his fat, heavy fingers over the keys, playing tunes that ranged from hymns to jazz pieces. I thought he would be a nice person to spend Christmas with, so I asked him to come and share the pudding my landlady had made, and a bottle of sherry I had procured.
Little did I realize that an invitation to George would be interpreted as an invitation to all George’s friends and relations—in fact, anyone who had known him in Trinidad— but this was the way he looked at it, and at eight o’clock on Christmas Eve, while a chilly wind blew dead leaves down from Hampstead Heath, I saw a veritable army of West Indians marching down Belsize Avenue, with George in the lead.
Bewildered, I opened my door to them; and in streamed George, George’s cousins, George’s nephews and George’s friends. They were all smiling and they all shook hands with me, making complimentary remarks about my room (‘Man, that’s some piano!’ ‘Hey, look at that crazy picture!’ ‘This rocking chair gives me fever!’) and took no time at all to feel and make themselves at home. Everyone had brought something along for the party. George had brought several bottles of beer. Eric, a flashy, coffee-coloured youth, had brought cigarettes and more beer. Marian, a buxom woman of thirty-five, who called me ‘darling’ as soon as we met, and kissed me on the cheeks saying she adored pink cheeks, had brought bacon and eggs. Her daughter Lucy, who was sixteen and in the full bloom of youth, had brought a gramophone, while the little nephews carried the records. Other friends and familiars had also brought beer; and one enterprising fellow produced a bottle of Jamaican rum.
Then everything began to happen at once.
Lucy put a record on the gramophone, and the strains of ‘Basin Street Blues’ filled the room. At the same time George sat down at the piano to hammer out an accompaniment to the record. His huge hands crushed down on the keys as though he were chopping up hunks of meat. Marian had lit the gas-fire and was busy frying bacon and eggs. Eric was opening beer bottles. In the midst of the noise and confusion I heard a knock on the door—a very timid, hesitant sort of knock—and opening it, found my landlady standing on the threshold.
‘Oh, Mr Bond, the neighbours—’ she began, and glancing into the room was rendered speechless.
‘It’s only tonight,’ I said. ‘They’ll all go home after an hour. Remember, it’s Christmas!’
She nodded mutely and hurried away down the corridor, pursued by something called ‘Be Bop A-Lula’. I closed the door and drew all the curtains in an effort to stifle the noise; but everyone was stamping about on the floorboards, and I hoped fervently that the downstairs people had gone to the theatre. George had started playing calypso music, and Eric and Lucy were strutting and stomping in the middle of the room, while the two nephews were improvising on their own. Before I knew what was happening, Marian had taken me in her strong arms and was teaching me to do the calypso. The song playing, I think, was ‘Banana Boat Song’.
Instead of the party lasting an hour, it lasted three hours. We ate innumerable fried eggs and finished off all the beer. I took turns dancing with Marian, Lucy and the nephews. There was a peculiar expression they used when excited. ‘Fire!’ they shouted. I never knew what was supposed to be on fire, or what the exclamation implied, but I too shouted ‘Fire!’ and somehow it seemed a very sensible thing to shout.
Perhaps their hearts were on fire, I don’t know; but for all their excitability and flashiness and brashness they were lovable and sincere friends, and today, when I look back on my two years in London, that Christmas party is the brightest, most vivid memory of all, and the faces of George and Marian, Lucy and Eric, are the faces I remember best.
At midnight someone turned out the light. I was dancing with Lucy at the time, and in the dark she threw her arms around me and kissed me full on the lips. It was the first time I had been kissed by a girl, and when I think about it, I am glad that it was Lucy who kissed me.
When they left, they went in a bunch, just as they had come. I stood at the gate and watched them saunter down the dark, empty street. The buses and tubes had stopped running at midnight, and George and his friends would have to walk all the way back to their rooms at Highgate and Golders Green.
After they had gone, the street was suddenly empty and silent, and my own footsteps were the only sounds I could hear. The cold came clutching at me, and I turned up my collar. I looked up at the windows of my house, and at the windows of all the other houses in the street. They were all in darkness. It seemed to me that we were the only ones who had really celebrated Christmas.
The Story of Madhu
met little Madhu several years ago, when I lived alone in an obscure town near the Himalayan foothills. I was in my late twenties then, and my outlook on life was still quite romantic; the cynicism that was to come with the thirties had not yet set in.
I preferred the solitude of the small district town to the kind of social life I might have found in the cities; and in my books, my writing and the surrounding hills, there was enough for my pleasure and occupation.
On summer mornings I would often sit beneath an old mango tree, with a notebook or a sketch pad on my knees. The house which I had rented (for a very nominal sum) stood on the outskirts of the town; and a large tank and a few poor houses could be seen from the garden wall. A narrow public pathway passed under the low wall.
One morning, while I sat beneath the mango tree, I saw a young girl of about nine, wearing torn clothes, darting about on the pathway and along
the high banks of the tank.
Sometimes she stopped to look at me; and, when I showed that I noticed her, she felt encouraged and gave me a shy, fleeting smile. The next day I discovered her leaning over the garden wall, following my actions as I paced up and down on the grass.
In a few days an acquaintance had been formed. I began to take the girl’s presence for granted, and even to look for her; and she, in turn, would linger about on the pathway until she saw me come out of the house.
One day, as she passed the gate, I called her to me.
‘What is your name?’ I asked. ‘And where do you live?’
‘Madhu,’ she said, brushing back her long untidy black hair and smiling at me from large black eyes. She pointed across the road: ‘I live with my grandmother.’
‘Is she very old?’ I asked.
Madhu nodded confidingly and whispered: ‘A hundred years…’
‘We will never be that old,’ I said. She was very slight and frail, like a flower growing in a rock, vulnerable to wind and rain.
I discovered later that the old lady was not her grandmother but a childless woman who had found the baby girl on the banks of the tank. Madhu’s real parentage was unknown; but the wizened old woman had, out of compassion, brought up the child as her own.
My gate once entered, Madhu included the garden in her circle of activities. She was there every morning, chasing butterflies, stalking squirrels and myna, her voice brimming with laughter, her slight figure flitting about between the trees.
Sometimes, but not often, I gave her a toy or a new dress; and one day she put aside her shyness and brought me a present of a nosegay, made up of marigolds and wild blue-cotton flowers.
‘For you,’ she said, and put the flowers in my lap.
‘They are very beautiful,’ I said, picking out the brightest marigold and putting it in her hair. ‘But they are not as beautiful as you.’