by Ruskin Bond
Ganga Descends
Great Trees of Garhwal
Birdsong in the Hills
Children of India
Friends of My Youth
Some Hill Station Ghosts
Party Time in Mussoorie
The Walkers’ Club
Love Thy Critic
Those Simple Things
A Good Philosophy
Life at My Own Pace
Upon an Old Wall Dreaming
Nina
The Road to Badrinath
The Good Earth
A Night Walk Home
The Beetle Who Blundered In
Some Plants Become Friends
Rainy Day in June
The Old Gramophone
Who Kissed Me in the Dark?
Joyfully I Write
Author’s Note
SELECTED FICTION
1950s: DEHRA
The Thief’s Story
I WAS STILL a thief when I met Romi. And though I was only fifteen years old, I was an experienced and fairly successful hand. Romi was watching a wrestling match when I approached him. He was about twenty-five and he looked easy-going, kind, and simple enough for my purpose. I was sure I would be able to win the young man’s confidence.
‘You look a bit of a wrestler yourself,’ I said. There’s nothing like flattery to break the ice!
‘So do you,’ he replied, which put me off for a moment because at that time I was rather thin and bony.
Well,’ I said modestly, ‘I do wrestle a bit.’
What’s your name?’
‘Hari Singh,’ I lied. I took a new name every month, which kept me ahead of the police and former employers.
After these formalities Romi confined himself to commenting on the wrestlers, who were grunting, gasping, and heaving each other about. When he walked away, I followed him casually.
‘Hello again,’ he said.
I gave him my most appealing smile. ‘I want to work for you,’ I said.
‘But I can’t pay you anything—not for some time, anyway.’
I thought that over for a minute. Perhaps I had misjudged my man. ‘Can you feed me?’ I asked.
‘Can you cook?’
‘I can cook,’ I lied again.
‘If you can cook, then maybe I can feed you.’
He took me to his room over the Delhi Sweet Shop and told me I could sleep on the balcony. But the meal I cooked that night must have been terrible because Romi gave it to a stray dog and told me to be off.
But I just hung around, smiling in my most appealing way, and he couldn’t help laughing.
Later, he said never mind, he’d teach me to cook. He also taught me to write my name and said he would soon teach me to write whole sentences and to add figures. I was grateful. I knew that once I could write like an educated person, there would be no limit to what I could achieve.
It was quite pleasant working for Romi. I made tea in the morning and then took my time buying the day’s supplies, usually making a profit of two or three rupees. I think he knew I made a little money this way, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Romi made money by fits and starts. He would borrow one week, lend the next. He kept worrying about his next cheque, but as soon as it arrived he would go out and celebrate. He wrote for the Delhi and Bombay magazines: a strange way to make a living.
One evening he came home with a small bundle of notes, saying he had just sold a book to a publisher. That night I saw him put the money in an envelope and tuck it under the mattress.
I had been working for Romi for almost a month and, apart from cheating on the shopping, had not done anything big in my real line of work. I had every opportunity for doing so. I could come and go as I pleased, and Romi was the most trusting person I had ever met.
That was why it was so difficult to rob him. It was easy for me to rob a greedy man. But robbing a nice man could be a problem. And if he doesn’t notice he’s being robbed, then all the spice goes out of the undertaking!
Well, it’s time I got down to some real work, I told myself. If I don’t take the money, he’ll only waste it on his so-called friends. After all, he doesn’t even give me a salary.
Romi was sleeping peacefully. A beam of moonlight reached over the balcony and fell on his bed. I sat on the floor, considering the situation. If I took the money, I could catch the 10.30 express to Lucknow. Slipping out of my blanket, I crept over to the bed.
My hand slid under the mattress, searching for the notes. When I found the packet, I drew it out without a sound. Romi sighed in his sleep and turned on his side. Startled, I moved quickly out of the room.
Once on the road, I began to run. I had the money stuffed into a vest pocket under my shirt. When I’d gotten some distance from Romi’s place, I slowed to a walk and, taking the envelope from my pocket, counted the money. Seven hundred rupees in fifties. I could live like a prince for a week or two!
When I reached the station, I did not stop at the ticket office (I had never bought a ticket in my life) but dashed straight on to the platform. The Lucknow Express was just moving out. The train had still to pick up speed and I should have been able to jump into one of the compartments, but I hesitated—for some reason I can’t explain—and I lost the chance to get away.
When the train had gone, I found myself standing alone on the deserted platform. I had no idea where to spend the night. I had no friends, believing that friends were more trouble than help. And I did not want to arouse curiosity by staying at one of the small hotels nearby. The only person I knew really well was the man I had robbed. Leaving the station, I walked slowly through the bazaar.
In my short career, I had made a study of people’s faces after they had discovered the loss of their valuables. The greedy showed panic; the rich showed anger; the poor, resignation. But I knew that Romi’s face when he discovered the theft would show only a touch of sadness—not for the loss of money, but for the loss of trust.
The night was chilly—November nights can be cold in northern India—and a shower of rain added to my discomfort. I sat down in the shelter of the clock tower. A few beggars and vagrants lay beside me, rolled up tight in their blankets. The clock showed midnight. I felt for the notes; they were soaked through.
Romi’s money. In the morning, he would probably have given me five rupees to go to the movies, but now I had it all: no more cooking meals, running to the bazaar, or learning to write sentences.
Sentences! I had forgotten about them in the excitement of the theft. Writing complete sentences, I knew, could one day bring me more than a few hundred rupees. It was a simple matter to steal. But to be a really big man, a clever and respected man, was something else. I should go back to Romi, I told myself, if only to learn to read and write.
I hurried back to the room feeling very nervous, for it is much easier to steal something than to return it undetected.
I opened the door quietly, then stood in the doorway in clouded moonlight. Romi was still asleep. I crept to the head of the bed, and my hand came up with the packet of notes. I felt his breath on my hand. I remained still for a few moments. Then my fingers found the edge of the mattress, and I slipped the money beneath it.
I awoke late the next morning to find that Romi had already made the tea. He stretched out a hand to me. There was a fifty-rupee note between his fingers. My heart sank.
‘I made some money yesterday,’ he said. ‘Now I’ll be able to pay you regularly.’
My spirits rose. But when I took the note, I noticed that it was still wet from the night’s rain.
So he knew what I’d done. But neither his lips nor his eyes revealed anything.
‘Today we’ll start writing sentences,’ he said.
I smiled at Romi in my most appealing way. And the smile came by itself, without any effort.
The Room on the Roof
(An Excerpt)
THE AFTERNOON WAS warm and lazy, unusually so for spring; very quiet, as though resting in the interval bet
ween the spring and the coming summer. There was no sign of the missionary’s wife or the sweeper boy when Rusty returned, but Mr Harrison’s car stood in the driveway of the house.
At sight of the car, Rusty felt a little weak and frightened; he had not expected his guardian to return so soon and had, in fact, almost forgotten his existence. But now he forgot all about the chaat shop and Somi and Ranbir, and ran up the veranda steps in a panic.
Mr Harrison was at the top of the veranda steps, standing behind the potted palms.
The boy said, ‘Oh, hullo, sir, you’re back!’ He knew of nothing else to say, but tried to make his little piece sound enthusiastic.
‘Where have you been all day?’ asked Mr Harrison, without looking once at the startled boy. ‘Our neighbours haven’t seen much of you lately.’
‘I’ve been for a walk, sir.’
‘You have been to the bazaar.’
The boy hesitated before making a denial; the man’s eyes were on him now, and to lie Rusty would have had to lower his eyes—and this he could not do...
‘Yes, sir, I went to the bazaar.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Because I had nothing to do.’
‘If you had nothing to do, you could have visited our neighbours. The bazaar is not the place for you. You know that.’
‘But nothing happened to me...’
‘That is not the point,’ said Mr Harrison, and now his normally dry voice took on a faint shrill note of excitement, and he spoke rapidly. ‘The point is, I have told you never to visit the bazaar. You belong here, to this house, this road, these people. Don’t go where you don’t belong.’
Rusty wanted to argue, longed to rebel, but fear of Mr Harrison held him back. He wanted to resist the man’s authority, but he was conscious of the supple malacca cane in the glass cupboard.
‘I’m sorry, sir...’
But his cowardice did him no good. The guardian went over to the glass cupboard, brought out the cane, flexed it in his hands. He said, ‘It is not enough to say you are sorry, you must be made to feel sorry. Bend over the sofa.’
The boy bent over the sofa, clenched his teeth and dug his fingers into the cushions. The cane swished through the air, landing on his bottom with a slap, knocking the dust from his pants. Rusty felt no pain. But his guardian waited, allowing the cut to sink in, then he administered the second stroke, and this time it hurt, it stung into the boy’s buttocks, burning up the flesh, conditioning it for the remaining cuts.
At the sixth stroke of the supple malacca cane, which was usually the last, Rusty let out a wild whoop, leapt over the sofa and charged from the room.
He lay groaning on his bed until the pain had eased.
But the flesh was so sore that he could not touch the place where the cane had fallen. Wriggling out of his pants, he examined his backside in the mirror. Mr Harrison had been most accurate: a thick purple welt stretched across both cheeks, and a little blood trickled down the boy’s thigh. The blood had a cool, almost soothing effect, but the sight of it made Rusty feel faint.
He lay down and moaned for pleasure. He pitied himself enough to want to cry, but he knew the futility of tears. But the pain and the sense of injustice he felt were both real.
A shadow fell across the bed. Someone was at the window, and Rusty looked up.
The sweeper boy showed his teeth.
‘What do you want?’ asked Rusty gruffly.
‘You hurt, chotta sahib?’
The sweeper boy’s sympathies provoked only suspicion in Rusty.
‘You told Mr Harrison where I went!’ said Rusty.
But the sweeper boy cocked his head to one side, and asked innocently, ‘Where you went, chotta sahib?’
‘Oh, never mind. Go away.’
‘But you hurt?’
‘Get out!’ shouted Rusty.
The smile vanished, leaving only a sad frightened look in the sweeper boy’s eyes.
Rusty hated hurting people’s feelings, but he was not accustomed to familiarity with servants; and yet, only a few minutes ago, he had been beaten for visiting the bazaar where there were so many like the sweeper boy.
The sweeper boy turned from the window, leaving wet fingermarks on the sill; then lifted his buckets from the ground and, with his knees bent to take the weight, walked away. His feet splashed a little in the water he had spilt, and the soft red mud flew up and flecked his legs.
Angry with his guardian and with the servant and most of all with himself, Rusty buried his head in his pillow and tried to shut out reality; he forced a dream, in which he was thrashing Mr Harrison until the guardian begged for mercy.
In the early morning, when it was still dark, Ranbir stopped in the jungle behind Mr Harrison’s house, and slapped his drum. His thick mass of hair was covered with red dust and his body, naked but for a cloth round his waist, was smeared green; he looked like a painted god, a green god. After a minute he slapped the drum again, then sat down on his heels and waited.
Rusty woke to the sound of the second drum-beat, and lay in bed and listened; it was repeated, travelling over the still air and in through the bedroom window. Dhum! ... A double-beat now, one deep, one high, insistent, questioning... Rusty remembered his promise, that he would play Holi with Ranbir, meet him in the jungle when he beat the drum. But he had made the promise on the condition that his guardian did not return; he could not possibly keep it now, not after the thrashing he had received.
Dhum-dhum, spoke the drum in the forest; dhum-dhum, impatient and getting annoyed...
‘Why can’t he shut up,’ muttered Rusty, ‘does he want to wake Mr Harrison...’
Holi, the Festival of Colours, the arrival of spring, the rebirth of the new year, the awakening of love, what were these things to him, they did not concern his life, he could not start a new life, not for one day...and besides, it all sounded very primitive, this throwing of colour and beating of drums...
Dhum-dhum!
The boy sat up in bed.
The sky had grown lighter.
From the distant bazaar came a new music, many drums and voices, faint but steady, growing in rhythm and excitement. The sound conveyed something to Rusty, something wild and emotional, something that belonged to his dream-world, and on a sudden impulse he sprang out of bed.
He went to the door and listened; the house was quiet, he bolted the door. The colours of Holi, he knew, would stain his clothes, so he did not remove his pyjamas. In an old pair of flattened rubber-soled tennis shoes, he climbed out of the window and ran over the dew-wet grass, down the path behind the house, over the hill and into the jungle.
When Ranbir saw the boy approach, he rose from the ground. The long hand-drum, the dholak, hung at his waist. As he rose, the sun rose. But the sun did not look as fiery as Ranbir who, in Rusty’s eyes, appeared as a painted demon, rather than as a god.
‘You are late, mister,’ said Ranbir, ‘I thought you were not coming.’
He had both his fists closed, but when he walked towards Rusty he opened them, smiling widely, a white smile in a green face. In his right hand was the red dust and in his left hand the green dust. And with his right hand he rubbed the red dust on Rusty’s left cheek, and then with the other hand he put the green dust on the boy’s right cheek; then he stood back and looked at Rusty and laughed. Then, according to the custom, he embraced the bewildered boy. It was a wrestler’s hug, and Rusty winced breathlessly.
‘Come,’ said Ranbir, ‘let us go and make the town a rainbow.’
And truly, that day there was an outbreak of spring.
The sun came up, and the bazaar woke up. The walls of the houses were suddenly patched with splashes of colour, and just as suddenly the trees seemed to have burst into flower; for in the forest there were armies of rhododendrons, and by the river the poinsettias danced; the cherry and the plum were in blossom; the snow in the mountains had melted, and the streams were rushing torrents; the new leaves on the trees were full of sweetness, the young gras
s held both dew and sun, and made an emerald of every dewdrop.
The infection of spring spread simultaneously through the world of man and the world of nature, and made them one.
Ranbir and Rusty moved round the hill, keeping in the fringe of the jungle until they had skirted not only the European community but also the smart shopping centre. They came down dirty little side-streets where the walls of houses, stained with the wear and tear of many years of meagre habitation, were now stained again with the vivid colours of Holi. They came to the Clock Tower.
At the Clock Tower, spring had really been declared open. Clouds of coloured dust rose in the air and spread, and jets of water—green and orange and purple, all rich emotional colours—burst out everywhere.
Children formed groups. They were armed mainly with bicycle pumps, or pumps fashioned from bamboo stems, from which was squirted liquid colour. The children paraded the main road, chanting shrilly and clapping their hands. The men and women preferred the dust to the water. They too sang, but their chanting held a significance, their hands and fingers drummed the rhythms of spring, the same rhythms, the same songs that belonged to this day every year of their lives.
Ranbir was met by some friends and greeted with great hilarity. A bicycle pump was directed at Rusty and a jet of sooty black water squirted into his face.
Blinded for a moment, Rusty blundered about in great confusion. A horde of children bore down on him, and he was subjected to a pumping from all sides. His shirt and pyjamas, drenched through, stuck to his skin; then someone gripped the end of his shirt and tugged at it until it tore and came away. Dust was thrown on the boy, on his face and body, roughly and with full force, and his tender, under-exposed skin smarted beneath the onslaught.
Then his eyes cleared. He blinked and looked wildly round at the group of boys and girls who cheered and danced in front of him. His body was running mostly with sooty black, streaked with red, and his mouth seemed full of it too, and he began to spit.
Then, one by one, Ranbir’s friends approached Rusty.