by Ruskin Bond
Uncle Bill looked thoughtful for a few moments, then said, ‘Well, let’s have some more luck,’ and turned the tray around again.
‘Now you’ve spoilt it,’ I said. ‘You’re not supposed to keep revolving it! That’s bad luck. I’ll have to turn it about again to cancel out the bad luck.’
The tray swung round once more and Uncle Bill had the glass that was meant for me.
‘Cheers!’ I said and drank from my glass.
It was good sherry.
Uncle Bill hesitated. Then he shrugged, said ‘Cheers’ and drained his glass quickly.
But he did not offer to fill the glasses again.
Early next morning he was taken violently ill. I heard him retching in his room and I got up and went to see if there was anything I could do. He was groaning, his head hanging over the side of the bed. I brought him a basin and a jug of water.
‘Would you like me to fetch a doctor?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, I’ll be all right. It must be something I ate.’
‘It’s probably the water. It’s not too good at this time of the year. Many people come down with gastric trouble during their first few days in Fosterganj.’
‘Ah, that must be it,’ he said and doubled up as a fresh spasm of pain and nausea swept over him.
He was better by evening—whatever had gone into the glass must have been by way of the preliminary dose and a day later he was well enough to pack his suitcase and announce his departure. The climate of Fosterganj did not agree with him, he told me.
Just before he left, I said: ‘Tell me, Uncle, why did you drink it?’
‘Drink what? The water?’
‘No, the glass of sherry into which you’d slipped one of your famous powders.’
He gaped at me, then gave a nervous whinnying laugh. ‘You will have your little joke, won’t you?’
‘No, I mean it,’ I said. ‘Why did you drink the stuff? It was meant for me, of course.’
He looked down at his shoes, then gave a little shrug and turned away.
‘In the circumstances,’ he said, ‘it seemed the only decent thing to do.’
I’ll say this for Uncle Bill: he was always the perfect gentleman.
The Last Time I Saw Delhi
I’D HAD THIS old and faded negative with me for a number of years and had never bothered to make a print from it. It was a picture of my maternal grandparents. I remembered my grandmother quite well, because a large part of my childhood had been spent in her house in Dehra after she had been widowed; but although everyone said she was fond of me, I remembered her as a stern, somewhat aloof person, of whom I was a little afraid.
I hadn’t kept many family pictures and this negative was yellow and spotted with damp.
Then last week, when I was visiting my mother in hospital in Delhi, while she awaited her operation, we got talking about my grandparents, and I remembered the negative and decided I’d make a print for my mother.
When I got the photograph and saw my grandmother’s face for the first time in twenty-five years, I was immediately struck by my resemblance to her. I have, like her, lived a rather spartan life, happy with my one room, just as she was content to live in a room of her own while the rest of the family took over the house! And like her, I have lived tidily. But I did not know the physical resemblance was so close—the fair hair, the heavy build, the wide forehead. She looks more like me than my mother!
In the photograph she is seated on her favourite chair, at the top of the veranda steps, and Grandfather stands behind her in the shadows thrown by a large mango tree which is not in the picture. I can tell it was a mango tree because of the pattern the leaves make on the wall. Grandfather was a slim, trim man, with a drooping moustache that was fashionable in the 1920s. By all accounts he had a mischievous sense of humour, although he looks unwell in the picture. He appears to have been quite swarthy. No wonder he was so successful in dressing up ‘native’ style and passing himself off as a street vendor. My mother tells me he even took my grandmother in on one occasion, and sold her a basketful of bad oranges. His character was in strong contrast to my grandmother’s rather forbidding personality and Victorian sense of propriety; but they made a good match.
So here’s the picture, and I am taking it to show my mother who lies in the Lady Hardinge Hospital, awaiting the removal of her left breast.
It is early August and the day is hot and sultry. It rained during the night, but now the sun is out and the sweat oozes through my shirt as I sit in the back of a stuffy little taxi taking me through the suburbs of Greater New Delhi.
On either side of the road are the houses of well-to-do Punjabis who came to Delhi as refugees in 1947 and now make up more than half the capital’s population. Industrious, flashy, go-ahead people. Thirty years ago, fields extended on either side of this road as far as the eye could see. The Ridge, an outcrop of the Aravallis, was scrub jungle, in which the blackbuck roamed. Feroz Shah’s fourteenth-century hunting lodge stood here in splendid isolation. It is still here, hidden by petrol pumps and lost in the sounds of buses, cars, trucks and scooter rickshaws. The peacock has fled the forest, the blackbuck is extinct. Only the jackal remains. When, a thousand years from now, the last human has left this contaminated planet for some other star, the jackal and the crow will remain, to survive for years on all the refuse we leave behind.
It is difficult to find the right entrance to the hospital, because for about a mile along the Panchkuian Road the pavement has been obliterated by tea shops, furniture shops, and piles of accumulated junk. A public hydrant stands near the gate, and dirty water runs across the road.
I find my mother in a small ward. It is a cool, dark room, and a ceiling fan whirrs pleasantly overhead. A nurse, a dark, pretty girl from the South, is attending to my mother. She says, ‘In a minute,’ and proceeds to make an entry on a chart.
My mother gives me a wan smile and beckons me to come nearer. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, due possibly to fever, otherwise she looks her normal self. I find it hard to believe that the operation she will have tomorrow will only give her, at the most, another year’s lease on life.
I sit at the foot of her bed. This is my third visit since I flew back from Jersey, using up all my savings in the process; and I will leave after the operation, not to fly away again, but to return to the hills which have always called me back.
‘How do you feel?’ I ask.
‘All right. They say they will operate in the morning. They’ve stopped my smoking.’
‘Can you drink? Your rum, I mean?’
‘No. Not until a few days after the operation.’
She has a fair amount of grey in her hair, natural enough at fifty-four. Otherwise she hasn’t changed much; the same small chin and mouth, lively brown eyes. Her father’s face, not her mother’s.
The nurse has left us. I produce the photograph and hand it to my mother.
‘The negative was lying with me all these years. I had it printed yesterday.’
‘I can’t see without my glasses.’
The glasses are lying on the locker near her bed. I hand them to her. She puts them on and studies the photograph.
‘Your grandmother was always very fond of you.’
‘It was hard to tell. She wasn’t a soft woman.’
‘It was her money that got you to Jersey, when you finished school. It wasn’t much, just enough for the ticket.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘The only person who ever left you anything. I’m afraid I’ve nothing to leave you, either.’
‘You know very well that I’ve never cared a damn about money. My father taught me to write. That was inheritance enough.’
‘And what did I teach you?’
‘I’m not sure... Perhaps you taught me how to enjoy myself now and then.’
She looked pleased at this. ‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed myself between troubles. But your father didn’t know how to enjoy himself. That’s why we quarrelled so
much. And finally separated.’
‘He was much older than you.’
‘You’ve always blamed me for leaving him, haven’t you?’
‘I was very small at the time. You left us suddenly. My father had to look after me, and it wasn’t easy for him. He was very sick. Naturally I blamed you.’
‘He wouldn’t let me take you away.’
‘Because you were going to marry someone else.’
I break off; we have been over this before. I am not here as my father’s advocate, and the time for recrimination has passed.
And now it is raining outside, and the scent of wet earth comes through the open doors, overpowering the odour of medicines and disinfectants. The dark-eyed nurse comes in again and informs me that the doctor will soon be on his rounds. I can come again in the evening, or early morning before the operation.
‘Come in the evening,’ says my mother. ‘The others will be here then.’
‘I haven’t come to see the others.’
‘They are looking forward to seeing you.’ ‘They’ being my stepfather and half-brothers.
‘I’ll be seeing them in the morning.’
‘As you like...’
And then I am on the road again, standing on the pavement, on the fringe of a chaotic rush of traffic, in which it appears that every vehicle is doing its best to overtake its neighbour. The blare of horns can be heard in the corridors of the hospital, but everyone is conditioned to the noise and pays no attention to it. Rather, the sick and the dying are heartened by the thought that people are still well enough to feel reckless, indifferent to each other’s safety! In Delhi there is a feverish desire to be first in line, the first to get anything... This is probably because no one ever gets round to dealing with second-comers.
When I hail a scooter rickshaw and it stops a short distance away, someone elbows his way past me and gets in first. This epitomizes the philosophy and outlook of the Delhiwallah.
So I stand on the pavement waiting for another scooter, which doesn’t come. In Delhi, to be second in the race is to be last.
I walk all the way back to my small hotel, with a foreboding of having seen my mother for the last time.
The Blue Umbrella
1
‘NEELU! NEELU!’ CRIED Binya.
She scrambled barefoot over the rocks, ran over the short summer grass, up and over the brow of the hill, all the time calling ‘Neelu, Neelu!’
Neelu—Blue—was the name of the blue-grey cow. The other cow, which was white, was called Gori, meaning Fair One. They were fond of wandering off on their own, down to the stream or into the pine forest, and sometimes they came back by themselves and sometimes they stayed away—almost deliberately, it seemed to Binya.
If the cows didn’t come home at the right time, Binya would be sent to fetch them. Sometimes her brother, Bijju, went with her, but these days he was busy preparing for his exams and didn’t have time to help with the cows.
Binya liked being on her own, and sometimes she allowed the cows to lead her into some distant valley, and then they would all be late coming home. The cows preferred having Binya with them, because she let them wander. Bijju pulled them by their tails if they went too far.
Binya belonged to the mountains, to this part of the Himalayas known as Garhwal. Dark forests and lonely hilltops held no terrors for her. It was only when she was in the market town, jostled by the crowds in the bazaar, that she felt rather nervous and lost. The town, five miles from the village, was also a pleasure resort for tourists from all over India.
Binya was probably ten. She may have been nine or even eleven, she couldn’t be sure because no one in the village kept birthdays; but her mother told her she’d been born during a winter when the snow had come up to the windows, and that was just over ten years ago, wasn’t it? Two years later, her father had died, but his passing had made no difference to their way of life. They had three tiny terraced fields on the side of the mountain, and they grew potatoes, onions, ginger, beans, mustard and maize: not enough to sell in the town, but enough to live on.
Like most mountain girls, Binya was quite sturdy, fair of skin, with pink cheeks and dark eyes and her black hair tied in a pigtail. She wore pretty glass bangles on her wrists, and a necklace of glass beads. From the necklace hung a leopard’s claw. It was a lucky charm, and Binya always wore it. Bijju had one, too, only his was attached to a string.
Binya’s full name was Binyadevi, and Bijju’s real name was Vijay, but everyone called them Binya and Bijju. Binya was two years younger than her brother.
She had stopped calling for Neelu; she had heard the cowbells tinkling, and knew the cows hadn’t gone far. Singing to herself, she walked over fallen pine needles into the forest glade on the spur of the hill. She heard voices, laughter, the clatter of plates and cups, and stepping through the trees, she came upon a party of picnickers.
They were holiday-makers from the plains. The women were dressed in bright saris, the men wore light summer shirts, and the children had pretty new clothes. Binya, standing in the shadows between the trees, went unnoticed; for some time she watched the picnickers, admiring their clothes, listening to their unfamiliar accents, and gazing rather hungrily at the sight of all their food. And then her gaze came to rest on a bright blue umbrella, a frilly thing for women, which lay open on the grass beside its owner.
Now Binya had seen umbrellas before, and her mother had a big black umbrella which nobody used any more because the field rats had eaten holes in it, but this was the first time Binya had seen such a small, dainty, colourful umbrella and she fell in love with it. The umbrella was like a flower, a great blue flower that had sprung up on the dry brown hillside.
She moved forward a few paces so that she could see the umbrella better. As she came out of the shadows into the sunlight, the picnickers saw her.
‘Hello, look who’s here!’ exclaimed the older of the two women. ‘A little village girl!’
‘Isn’t she pretty?’ remarked the other. ‘But how torn and dirty her clothes are!’ It did not seem to bother them that Binya could hear and understand everything they said about her.
‘They’re very poor in the hills,’ said one of the men.
‘Then let’s give her something to eat.’ And the older woman beckoned to Binya to come closer.
Hesitantly, nervously, Binya approached the group. Normally she would have turned and fled, but the attraction was the pretty blue umbrella. It had cast a spell over her, drawing her forward almost against her will.
‘What’s that on her neck?’ asked the younger woman.
‘A necklace of sorts.’
‘It’s a pendant—see, there’s a claw hanging from it!’
‘It’s a tiger’s claw,’ said the man beside her. (He had never seen a tiger’s claw.) ‘A lucky charm. These people wear them to keep away evil spirits.’ He looked to Binya for confirmation, but Binya said nothing.
‘Oh, I want one too!’ said the woman, who was obviously his wife.
‘You can’t get them in shops.’
‘Buy hers, then. Give her two or three rupees, she’s sure to need the money.’
The man, looking slightly embarrassed but anxious to please his young wife, produced a two-rupee note and offered it to Binya, indicating that he wanted the pendant in exchange. Binya put her hand to the necklace, half afraid that the excited woman would snatch it away from her. Solemnly she shook her head. The man then showed her a five-rupee note, but again Binya shook her head.
‘How silly she is!’ exclaimed the young woman.
‘It may not be hers to sell,’ said the man. ‘But I’ll try again. How much do you want—what can we give you?’ And he waved his hand towards the picnic things scattered about on the grass.
Without any hesitation Binya pointed to the umbrella.
‘My umbrella!’ exclaimed the young woman. ‘She wants my umbrella. What cheek!’
‘Well, you want her pendant, don’t you?’
‘T
hat’s different.’
‘Is it?’
The man and his wife were beginning to quarrel with each other.
‘I’ll ask her to go away,’ said the older woman. ‘We’re making such fools of ourselves.’
‘But I want the pendant!’ cried the other, petulantly. And then, on an impulse, she picked up the umbrella and held it out to Binya. ‘Here, take the umbrella!’
Binya removed her necklace and held it out to the young woman, who immediately placed it around her own neck. Then Binya took the umbrella and held it up. It did not look so small in her hands; in fact, it was just the right size.
She had forgotten about the picnickers, who were busy examining the pendant. She turned the blue umbrella this way and that, looked through the bright blue silk at the pulsating sun, and then, still keeping it open, turned and disappeared into the forest glade.
2
Binya seldom closed the blue umbrella. Even when she had it in the house, she left it lying open in a corner of the room. Sometimes Bijju snapped it shut, complaining that it got in the way. She would open it again a little later. It wasn’t beautiful when it was closed.
Whenever Binya went out—whether it was to graze the cows, or fetch water from the spring, or carry milk to the little tea shop on the Tehri road—she took the umbrella with her. That patch of sky-blue silk could always be seen on the hillside.
Old Ram Bharosa (Ram the Trustworthy) kept the tea shop on the Tehri road. It was a dusty, unmetalled road. Once a day, the Tehri bus stopped near his shop and passengers got down to sip hot tea or drink a glass of curd. He kept a few bottles of Coca-Cola too, but as there was no ice, the bottles got hot in the sun and so were seldom opened. He also kept sweets and toffees, and when Binya or Bijju had a few coins to spare, they would spend them at the shop. It was only a mile from the village.
Ram Bharosa was astonished to see Binya’s blue umbrella.
‘What have you there, Binya?’ he asked.
Binya gave the umbrella a twirl and smiled at Ram Bharosa. She was always ready with her smile, and would willingly have lent it to anyone who was feeling unhappy.