by Ruskin Bond
‘You can be my guest, dear. Old school pals and all that.’
‘How long ago was it? You were very pretty.’
‘I don’t like your use of the past tense.’
‘Forgive me. You’ve gone from being pretty to being ravishingly beautiful. Like Elizabeth Taylor. She was pretty in National Velvet, beautiful in Raintree County, and when she played a real queen, in Cleopatra, she was a bit—’ I hesitated, searching for the right word.
‘Ravishing?’
‘No, a bit dowdy, actually.’
For this observation I received a clip across the ear. She pushed me into an easy chair, or rather sofa, and plonked herself down beside me.
‘So, are you calling me dowdy?’
‘No, I’m comparing you to Elizabeth Taylor. One of the world’s most beautiful women. And a fine actress.’
She joined me on the sofa. ‘I wasn’t such a bad actress, was I?’
‘No, in that school play, The Merchant of Venice, you caught everyone’s attention. And I bet you can still act.’
‘I’m acting all the time. Acting for my husband, acting for my children, acting for the servants. It’s only with someone like you that I can feel a bit free.’
‘Down to earth. That’s your true nature.’
She was silent for some time. I could hear voices outside, and the occasional plaint of a seagull, but the veranda was bathed in silence.
‘Most of the world’s troubles are created by impotent men,’ she said, quite unexpectedly. ‘Hitler, Napoleon, Julius Caesar—none of them were any good in bed—so they made up for it by imposing their will on the rest of mankind—making sure that everyone was under their thumbs since they couldn’t be under their dicks! Do I shock you?’
‘Not at all. You represent a good convent education. I presume you include your husband, the Maharaja, among the impotent elite.’
‘Shut up. And come closer. You’re not afraid of me, are you?’
‘Your manager is staring at us from the lobby. And your dog has a firm grip on my ankle.’
‘Yes, he’s very protective.’
‘The manager or the peke?’
‘Both. And he’s not my manager. He’s the father of the boy who saved me from drowning.’
‘He must have been a brave boy and a good swimmer. I’d like to meet him.’
‘You can’t. He drowned.’
Neena was always full of surprises. Her every action seemed to set off a chain of actions and reactions that affected others more than it did her.
‘What happened?’
‘I swam too far out.’
I looked out across the Beach Road. People were strolling about, but no one was bathing.
‘Do people swim here?’
‘Of course not, stupid. Early morning it’s just a public toilet. You have to go out to Serenity Beach if you want to swim.’
‘And you’re a good swimmer.’
‘Well, I used to be. Before I gave birth to a couple of monsters. Anyway, I swam too far, tired myself out, started drifting with the current. I went under a couple of times. I was quite helpless. Then this boy came along. He was from one of the fishing boats. He held me up until one of the boats came along and the men fished me out of the water. But they couldn’t get to him. A strong current swept him away. I didn’t see him drown, thank god. They told me afterwards.’
‘You were very lucky. You’re a cat with nine lives.’
‘Are you calling me a cat?’
‘Well, bitches aren’t so lucky. Cats can get away with almost anything.’
‘I suppose that’s true. Do you know, when I was a toddler I almost drowned in a bucket of water.’
‘That must have been difficult.’
‘Not at all. Someone had left a bucket of water on the veranda steps and I tumbled into it, head first. I was just two at the time. One of my cousins, a little older than me, saw me in the bucket with feet waving in the air. He pulled me out.’
‘He deserved a medal.’
‘He got a beating from our parents. They thought he’d pushed me in.’
‘Didn’t you tell them how it happened?’
‘How could I? I was only two. All I could do was point at him and cry, “Vijay, Vijay!” That was his name.’
‘Poor Vijay. For the rest of his life he would be unwilling to help a damsel in distress. What became of him?’
‘He became a vet.’
‘Ah! Saving animals was obviously more rewarding than saving little princesses.’
Neena invited me to accompany her to a spiritual discourse at the Aurobindo Ashram. She was already showing an interest in ‘spirituality’ as a sort of balance to the more physical side of her nature. Over the years she was to flirt with religion, spirituality, even the philosophy of such mental disciplinarians as the Theosophists and Gurdjieff; but always her physicality, her sensuous nature, her enjoyment of the good things of life, overcame her brief periods of renunciation and austerity.
I had never suffered from a conflict of bodily and spiritual interests—being quite happy to go along with the physical and mental make-up that had come to me with my genes—and I had no hesitation in declining the invitation to self-improvement.
As I descended the steps of the hotel, I passed two youngsters accompanied by their nanny. They weren’t more than five years old, with just over a year’s difference in their ages. The younger one was quite cocky, making faces at passers-by, including me. The other had an abnormally large head, with large, protruding eyes. I recalled that Neena had married her first cousin, which may have accounted for the abnormalities. Marriages amongst cousins were not uncommon in princely families. After all, there were only a certain number of kingdoms in the land. If you wanted to forge a link with another State through your son or daughter, there was always the chance that they would be marrying a relative.
The nanny was unusual—not an ayah or a conventional nanny, but a nun, tall and stately, attired in a spotless white habit. I couldn’t see much of her face, but I got the impression that she was middle-aged, fair complexioned. She swept past without a look in my direction. Long strides like a man’s. I remembered the story of the nun who had nursed the first Maharani, right up to the end. Could she have been the same person?
5
After some time, even the strongest of ties begin to fray. That’s one of the sad things about life—our human inability to sustain our love for each other with the same abiding intensity. Time takes its toll. We remember each other with affection but we are no longer prepared to dash across continents to hold the hand of friend or former lover—unless it happens to be one’s own offspring. And even then …
In any case, Neena and I were never lovers or inseparable friends. Just two people who had been attracted to each other, who found each other interesting, thought the world a funny place to live in, had some things in common, kept in touch in a haphazard way, but did not miss each other very much. What Neena wanted out of life was something very different from what I wanted out of life.
And what did I want of life? I had promised myself much, but achieved little. A few years in Delhi had all but extinguished my creative spark. All I could write about were old tombs and monuments, and after some time I felt as dead as those who had been interred in these handsome cenotaphs. Living in the new capital, I felt like an outsider—often I was made to feel like one—for I had not been through the upheaval experienced by the refugees from western Punjab. Model Town, Rajouri Garden, Patel Nagar’s east, south and west were their citadels, and I lived there on sufferance. I felt at home only in Old Delhi, in the Civil Lines, Kashmere Gate, and the leafy lanes of Lutyens’ New Delhi where, as a small boy, I had lived with my father in barracks or in rented rooms on Atul Grove Lane. I had given up on Dehra Dun, my ‘hometown’, but I felt drawn to the hills, where living seemed a little more meaningful and resonant.
To wake at dawn and watch the rosy glow of approaching daybreak before the sun stroked its way over the mo
untains was, for me, a never-ending delight. And still is, forty years later.
That move to the hills did lead to a rejuvenation, at least as far as my writing went. In the cottage I rented there was a window seat looking out upon a sociable gathering of trees: maple, oak, rhododendron, long-leaved pine—providing a recreation ground for long-tailed blue magpies, bulbuls, minivets and the occasional paradise flycatcher—and here I spent the mornings, turning out stories, poems, essays, children’s tales, anything that came to mind, some of these compositions bringing in a few cheques from time to time. And here, my interest in dendrology came to fruition.
I was entirely on my own, eating out of tins or experimenting with omelettes—some day I must write my bestselling cookery book, 100 Failed Omelettes—and occasionally taking a meal at a dhaba near the bus stand. I went for long walks—I did a lot of walking in those days—and some of these walks took me up to the heights of Landour or down to the vale of Barlowganj or out to Happy Valley, where the Tibetan refugees had been resettled.
Barlowganj, once the property of a long-forgotten General Barlow, now a straggling bazaar on the old Kipling Road, leading down past several large estates and princely villas, was empty for most of the year. Summer homes for the rich and famous.
Some of the buildings had survived for over a century, and some of the names too. ‘Seven Oaks’ (the original owner must have come from Kent), ‘Arundel’ (shades of Sir Walter Scott), ‘Wynberg’ (a South African connection), and ‘Bala Hissar’ (an Afghan connection).
The old Bala Hissar estate is now a school, and not many know that it was once the residence-in-exile of an Afghan king, deposed and replaced by the British after the Afghan wars of the 1840s. But I was more interested in a house some way below its ramparts, a quaint rambling building that went by the name of ‘Hollow Oak’. Didn’t an English king hide from his pursuers in the hollow of a giant oak until he was discovered and beheaded? I peered over the iron gate trying to see if there were any giant or hollow oaks on the premises. There were none. Perhaps they had been done away with to make room for more buildings. But trailing over the old stone wall was a branch of wisteria, its heady perfume pervading the vicinity.
In the garden two children were playing—a slim boy who must have been thirteen or fourteen and a girl of ten or eleven. The girl was on a swing, singing to herself. The boy sat on a stone bench, looking bored. While the girl looked pretty and vivacious, the boy had a sullen, brooding beauty, accentuated by the shifting shadows of maple leaves which played about his face. The oaks were in new leaf, their tender milky green catching the soft late afternoon sunlight, while the Japanese maples were sending out leaf buds in flame orange turning to red and then dark green as they unfolded. The boy looked up at me, his eyes in the sunlight an unusual shade of green, sheltered by long, dark lashes. He had been cutting pictures out of a magazine. Intent on this work, he gave me no more than a glance. The girl saw me but took no notice. She was used to seeing strangers at the gate.
From the house came sounds of music and merriment. Someone was singing, tunelessly, in an effort to outdo the pop group whose latest record was being played at full volume, its sentiments somehow diminished by the surrounding mountains.
A window opened, a hand beckoned. Was I being invited to join the party?
I was in no mood to join an afternoon dance party, and I was still a stranger in those parts, unsure of my neighbours, so I returned the wave with a friendly wave of my own, and continued on my walk.
That evening, growing restless, I went to the cinema. In those days, before television entered every home, people went to the pictures, and the hill station boasted of at least five cinema halls, albeit small theatres.
The Picture Palace was showing a slapstick comedy, an amalgam of silent shorts featuring Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, the Keystone Kops, and my old friends Laurel and Hardy. I loved these comic geniuses of another era, and though I was a little late for the evening show, I slipped in and took a seat about midway down the hall. Already a bit short-sighted, I avoided the more expensive seats at the back. The seats up front were in poor shape, very uncomfortable, and often infested with fleas, but at least they gave me a clear view of the action on screen.
As much as I was enjoying the picture, the customer on the seat just in front of me was enjoying it even more. He giggled, laughed out loud, squirmed in his seat, even jumped up and down with delight whenever the custard pies started flying‚ as they did with increasing frequency. Those custard-pie fights were always great to watch—the timing was perfect, complete anarchy transformed into ballet, as everyone on the set entered into the spirit of the thing, flinging pies in all directions. In today’s movies, cars pile up in crazy contortions—not always funny—and I suppose cars are expendable in the way custard pies were expendable in the silent era. Cars colliding with each other make a horrible sound. Twisted metal and broken bones. Throwing a custard pie was an art in itself. The tradition should be revived.
When the lights came on I found that my fellow connoisseur of silent comedy was just a boy—the same boy I had seen in the Barlowganj garden earlier that day.
He passed me on his way out, and gave me a conspiratorial smile—as though to say, ‘You shared in my happiness. I heard your laughter too.’
6
In the sixties and early seventies they were still using hand-pulled rickshaws in the hill station. These rickshaws could seat two adults and one or two small children. Two men pulled, two pushed. The Maharajas and their consorts—and there were several who made Mussoorie their playground or pleasure resort—had their own well-maintained rickshaws, drawn by liveried footmen, and it was one of these that stopped outside my creaking wooden gate early that summer.
The footmen wore turbans and uniforms but were barefooted. These poor, uneducated hillmen from the interior came to the hill station to earn a living and often ended up as rickshaw-pullers. The healthier village boys went into the army; the discards pulled rickshaws. Little grew on the rocky mountain soil, and they and their families had to eat. The soles of their feet were hard and calloused. They were strong in the arms and legs, but their lungs were weak and many of them suffered from tuberculosis, dying before they were thirty.
The young man who alighted from this rickshaw was an apparition in clashing colours—pink T-shirt, green trackpants, embroidered Ladakhi boots. He had rings on all his fingers—they glowed with emeralds, rubies and sapphires; even a thumb was encased in a gold ring. He looked like a caricature of an old-time prince, except that he was a real prince and most anxious to let you know it.
‘I’m Prince Kartik of Mastipur,’ he announced. ‘My mother sent me to see you. She wants you to come to dinner. Tomorrow night. Quite informal, of course.’
‘Do I know your mother?’
‘You’re Mr Bond, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right, Ruskin.’
‘Funny name.’
‘Well, have a good laugh. They say it’s good for the heart.’
He frowned, unsure as to whether or not he should feel offended. Obviously a sense of humour was not one of his attributes.
‘I’ll try to come,’ I said. ‘But where’s the palace?’
‘It’s called Hollow Oak. Not far from here.’
‘I think I know it. I passed by the other day. There was a party going on.’
‘We have lots of parties. My mother gives great parties.’
For Neena, H.H., life was one long party—or so it seemed.
Her bejewelled brat of a son got on to his rickshaw and waved his flunkeys on. The only thing that was missing was a whip.
I wasn’t feeling very sociable at the time—I had come to the hills to write, to wander, to be far from the city—and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to see Neena again. But I went anyway.
Well, she still kept pekes—the breed I disliked most—as I discovered when I opened the gate of Hollow Oak and walked up the driveway, only to be set upon by three yapping, snapping, bug
-eyed members of this unappealing species of canine ill breeding. One snapped at my ankles; one tore at my trousers; the third appeared to be having a cataleptic fit as it endeavoured to get between my legs and trip me up.
I was rescued by a couple of urchins‚ the chowkidar’s grandchildren, as it turned out—who drove them off and led me to the front door.
The party was in full swing and I entered with some trepidation.
Rock music was bouncing off the walls, and several unidentifiable persons of indeterminate ages were gyrating around the room, totally oblivious to my presence.
‘Hello!’ I called, stepping into the room. ‘Good evening!’
No one paid me the slightest attention.
I was on the point of turning around and leaving when a large-bosomed, broad-bottomed lady in red grabbed hold of me, gathered me in her arms, and swept me across the floor to the far end of the long room. She then took off with another partner.
And then I found Neena. She had a glass of whisky in one hand, and a half empty bottle of whisky balanced on her head.
She was pacing up and down in front of a makeshift bar, the bottle on her head.
When she saw me she gave a cry of recognition. She sprang forward and the bottle fell to the floor, where it lay shattered, leaking precious fluid.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ she said, blaming me for the disaster but giving me a kiss all the same. Then she burst into song:
Ten green bottles standing on a wall,
If one green bottle should accidentally fall,
There’ll be nine green bottles standing on the wall.
Everyone joined in, and the song continued on its merry way while a barefoot servant padded in and cleaned up the mess.
‘You’re looking cute,’ said Neena, giving me another peck on the cheek.
‘And you’re looking younger than ever,’ I lied, since it seemed to be a time for hollow compliments. She looked pleased.