Rusty Comes Home

by Ruskin Bond

  Ruskin Bond

  Rusty Comes Home

  Illustrations by Archana Sreenivasan

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Contents

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  All You Need Is Paper

  Summertime in Old New Delhi

  Bhabiji’s House

  The Crooked Tree

  The Haunted Bicycle

  The Story of Madhu

  Most Beautiful

  The Night Train at Deoli

  He Said It with Arsenic

  Binya Passes By

  The Good Old Days

  The Trouble with Jinns

  Listen to the Wind

  The Last Time I Saw Delhi

  From Small Beginnings

  Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

  When You Can’t Climb Trees Any More

  As Time Goes By

  Upon an Old Wall Dreaming

  Author’s Note

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  RUSTY COMES HOME

  Ruskin Bond’s first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written a number of novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley, A Flight of Pigeons and Mr Oliver’s Diary) essays, poems and children’s books, many of which have been published in Puffin Books. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

  Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Simla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.

  Also in Puffin by Ruskin Bond

  Puffin Classics: The Room on the Roof

  The Room of Many Colours: Ruskin Bond’s Treasury of Stories for Children

  Panther’s Moon and Other Stories

  The Hidden Pool

  The Parrot Who Wouldn’t Talk and Other Stories

  Mr Oliver’s Diary

  Escape from Java and Other Tales of Danger

  Crazy Times with Uncle Ken

  Rusty the Boy from the Hills

  Rusty Runs Away

  Rusty and the Leopard

  Rusty Goes to London

  Rusty Comes Home

  The Puffin Book of Classic School Stories

  The Puffin Good Reading Guide for Children

  The Kashmiri Storyteller

  Hip-Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems

  The Adventures of Rusty: Collected Stories

  The Cherry Tree

  Getting Granny’s Glasses

  The Eyes of the Eagle

  Thick as Thieves: Tales of Friendship

  Uncles, Aunts and Elephants: Tales from Your Favourite Storyteller

  All You Need Is Paper

  AS I WRITE this, a bright yellow butterfly flits in through the open window and settles on my writing pad. I pause for a moment, wait for the butterfly to make its way across the page and on to a slim copy of Tagore’s Crescent Moon which I was reading again last night. I have entered a period of my life when I enjoy returning to old favourites, old classics. Just as there are exciting new authors being brought to our attention every day, so there are exciting old authors who are yet to be discovered. Life is too short to take in all of them. It’s the beauty of language that draws me back, time and again, to the heart-stopping prose of Conrad in Heart of Darkness and Youth; the lyrical intensity of Emily Brönte in Wuthering Heights; the wonderful abandon of Sterne; the precision of Wilde; the broad humour of Dickens and Wells and the rolling, orchestrated prose of T.E. Lawrence in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

  But to return to the butterfly. It takes me back to the little flat in Dehra, where my adventure of being a writer really got under way.

  I had grown used to living on my own in small rooms furnished with other people’s spare beds, tables and chairs. I had grown used to the print of Constable’s Blue Boy on the wall, even though I had never cared for the look of that boy. But those London bedsitters had been different. Whether in Hampstead, Belsize Park, Swiss Cottage or Tooting, they had been uniformly lonely. One seldom encountered any other lodgers, except when they came to complain that my radio was too loud; and the landlady was seen only when the rent fell due. If you wanted company, you went out into the night. If you wanted a meal, you walked down the street to the nearest restaurant or snack bar. If you wanted to kill time, you sat in a cinema. If you wanted a bath, you went round to the nearest public bathing rooms where, for 2s.6d., you were given a small cake of soap, a clean towel, and a tub of piping hot water. The tub took me back to my childhood days with my father in Jamnagar, where I would be soaped and scrubbed by a fond ayah; but there was no fond ayah in London. And rooms with attached baths were rare—and expensive . . .

  In contrast, my room in Astley Hall was the very opposite of lonely. There was the front balcony, from which I could watch the activity along the main road and the shops immediately below me. I could also look into the heart of a large peepal tree, which provided shelter to various birds, squirrels and other small creatures. There were flats on either side of mine, served by a common stairway—and blocked, at night, by a sleeping cow, over whom one had to climb, for it would move for no one. And there were quarters at the back, occupied by servants’ families or low-income tenants.

  I suppose my most colourful neighbour was Mrs Singh, an attractive woman in her thirties, who smoked a hookah. She came from a village near Mainpuri. Her husband was a sub-inspector in the police. They had one son, Sumit, a lollipop-sucking brat without any charm. Mrs Singh often regaled me with tales of the supernatural from her village, and I did not hesitate to work some of them into my own stories.

  Mrs Singh once told me of the night she had seen the ghost of her husband’s first wife. The ghost had lifted Sumit, then a few months old, out of his cradle, rocked the baby in her arms for a little while, and announced that she was glad the child was a boy—a sentiment not shared by those who knew the eleven-year-old.

  Mrs Singh taught me several mantras, which I was to recite whenever I felt threatened by ghosts or malignant spirits. If I was working at my desk, and saw Sumit approaching, I would recite one of these mantras under my breath. They may have worked on ghosts and demons, but had no effect on Sumit.

  None of my friends were in Dehra at this point. Sitaram had moved to Simla, and earned his living as a waiter in a hotel there. Somi’s family had moved to Calcutta, and Ranbir’s to Bombay. Dehra, then, was not a place for young men in search of a career. As soon as they finished school or college, they usually took wing. The town was a sleepy hollow, a great place in which to be educated, but a poor place to gain employment.

  But there were others to take their place—teenagers struggling to do their Matric or Intermediate, or young men at college, aspiring for their Arts or Science degrees. College was a bit of a dead end. But those who had their schooling in Dehra, and then moved on, usually did well for themselves.

  Take just two from Dilaram Bazaar. Gurbachan was an average student, but after doing his Intermediate he went to stay with an uncle in Hong Kong. Ten years later, he was a superintendent in the Income Tax Department. And then there was Narinder, always having to take tuitions to scrape through his exams. But he spoke English quite well, and he had a flair for business. Today, he owns the largest wholesale wine business in the UK. And as he doesn’t drink himself, it’s profit all the way.

  These boys, and others like them, came from middle-class families. It was impossible, then, to foresee what life held in
store for them. And it wasn’t always happy endings. Sudheer, my friend from earlier days, went on to become the assistant manager of a tea estate in Jalpaiguri, and was killed by the tea-garden labourers. Kishen, as a boy, was not the stuff that heroes are made of but at twenty-seven he died while trying to save a child from drowning.

  My own future was a little easier to predict. In a sense, I had already arrived. At twenty-four I was a published author, although not many people had heard of me! And although I wasn’t making much money then, and probably never would, it was the general consensus among my friends that I was an impractical sort of fellow and that I would be wise to stick to the only thing that I could do fairly well—putting pen to paper.

  I couldn’t drive a car. I fell off bicycles. I couldn’t repair an electrical fault. My efforts to buy vegetables in the mandi were the cause of great merriment. And my attempts at making a curry sent everyone into paroxysms of laughter. It’s true that I added a tablespoon of sugar to the aalu-gobi that I attempted to cook. I thought it improved the flavour. Gujaratis would have approved. But it had no takers in Dehra apart from myself.

  On the plus side, I could type draft job applications for all and sundry, help lovesick students write passionate letters to girls, make my own bed (something I’d learnt at boarding school), walk great distances, and pay for the chaat and tikkis we consumed near the clock tower. I held the tikki-eating record, having on one occasion put away no less than thirty of these delicious potato patties. Naturally, acute indigestion followed, and it was months before I could face another tikki.

  Here I must record my first and last foray into the world of commerce.

  On my landlady Bibiji’s insistence that I could make more money from selling vegetables than from selling stories, I thought—why not do just that, sell vegetables? Bibiji said I could sell the vegetables outside her shop, provided I gave her a ten per cent commission. As this was the same commission that a literary agent took, it seemed fair enough.

  It only remained for me to get up at five in the morning and march off to the sabzi mandi, there to spend a hard-earned two hundred rupees in stocking up with cauliflowers, carrots and other cold-weather vegetables.

  With some help from Mrs Singh’s son, Sumit, these were neatly displayed outside Bibiji’s shop, and on that first day we even had a couple of customers. But housewives do not like breaking the habits of a lifetime, and they continued shopping for their vegetables in the mandi and elsewhere. By the third day my vegetables were looking very sorry for themselves. Sumit kept splashing water over them, but they could not be revived. That evening they were all given away to my friends from the Dilaram Bazaar, and my brief venture into the grocery business was at an end.

  Summertime in Old New Delhi

  THE NEXT YEAR I left Dehra for Delhi, and lived in the capital for a few years—freelancing, and for a time working with an international relief agency. I wasn’t too happy to be in Delhi, but I’d felt the need to move, for Dehra had limited scope for young Indian authors writing in English. I could not fall in love with Delhi, my heart was always in the hills and small towns of north India.

  But there were things I came to like about Delhi, even in summer. The smell of a hot Indian summer is one smell that can never be forgotten. It is not just the thirsty earth with its distinctive odour, but all other ingredients of a hot weather in the plains that go to make this season almost intolerable on the one hand and sweetly memorable on the other. For who can forget that summer brings the jasmine, whose sweet scent drifts past us on the evening breeze along with the stronger odours and scents of mango blossom, raat-ki-rani and cowdung smoke.

  Although I have spent most of my life in the hills, I had stayed in some fairly hot places—humid Kathiawar ports, dusty old New Delhi, and the steamy Java—and I was no stranger to prickly heat, mosquito bites, intermittent fever and dysentery and other hot-weather afflictions. Today’s residents of the capital complain of pollution and overcrowding, and I wouldn’t exchange my mountain perch for the pleasure of being fried crisp, but at least half of them have air conditioning, coolers, refrigerators and other means to keep the heat at bay. In 1940s’ Delhi you were lucky to have a small table-fan, and that was effective only if the bhisti, or water-carrier, came around with his goat-skin bag, splashing water on to the khus-khus matting draped from your door or window; otherwise the fan simply blew hot air at you. I was in Delhi in the early ’40s, living with my father, and I shall never forget the fragrant, refreshing smell of the wet khus reed which cooled the rooms and verandas of New Delhi bungalows (the only high-rise building in those days was the Qutab Minar).

  Father and I lived in a small RAF hutment on the fringe of the scrub jungle near Humayun’s Tomb. This was then furthest Delhi, where one could expect to find peacocks in the garden and a snake in the bathroom. The bhisti and the khus-khus helped us to survive that summer. As did the box-like wind-up gramophone on which I played endless records which had to be stored flat in order to prevent them from warping and assuming weird shapes in the heat. My father liked opera, and on his day off he would play his Caruso records. It was strange to lie beside him on a perspiration-soaked bed, listening to Caruso sing Che Gelida Manina:

  Your tiny hand is frozen,

  Let me warm it into life!

  I was ten, a child of warm climates, and I had no idea what it was like to have one’s hand frozen. Dipping my hands in ice-cream was the nearest I’d come to it.

  In 1959 I was living on the outskirts of a greater, further New Delhi. The influx of refugees from the Punjab after Partition had led to many new colonies springing up on the outskirts of the capital, and at the time the furthest of these was Rajouri Garden. Needless to say, there were no gardens there. The treeless colony was buffeted by hot, dusty winds from Haryana and Rajasthan. The houses were built on one side of Najafgarh Road. On the other side, as yet uncolonized, were extensive fields of wheat and other crops still belonging to the original inhabitants. In an attempt to escape the city life that constantly oppressed me, I would walk across the main road and into the fields, finding old wells, irrigation channels, camels and buffaloes, and sighting birds and small creatures that no longer dwelt in the city. In an odd way, it was my reaction to city life that led to my taking a greater interest in the natural world. Up to that time, I had taken it all for granted.

  The notebook I kept at the time is before me now, and my first entry describes the bluejays or rollers that were so much a feature of those remaining open spaces. At rest, the bird is fairly nondescript, but when it takes flight it reveals the glorious bright blue wings and the tail, banded with a lighter blue. It sits motionless . . . But the large dark eyes are constantly watching the ground in every direction. A grasshopper or cricket has only to make a brief appearance, and the bluejay will launch itself straight at its prey. In the spring and early summer the ‘roller’ lives up to its other name. It indulges in love flights in which it rises and falls in the air with harsh grating screams—a real rock-’n’-roller!

  Some way down the Najafgarh Road was a large village pond and beside it a magnificent banyan tree. We have no place for banyan trees today, they need so much space in which to spread their limbs and live comfortably. Cut away its aerial roots and the great tree topples over—usually to make way for a spacious apartment building. This one had about a hundred pillars supporting the boughs, and above them there was this great leafy crown like a pillared hall. It has been said that whole armies could shelter in the shade of an old banyan. And probably at one time they did. I saw another sort of army visit the banyan by the village pond when it was in fruit. Parakeets, mynas, rosy pastors, crested bulbuls without crests, barbets and many other birds crowded the tree in order to feast noisily on big, scarlet figs. Season’s eatings!

  Even further down the Najafgarh Road was a large jheel, famous for its fishing. I wonder if any part of the jheel still exists, or if it got filled in and became a part of greater Delhi. One could rest in the shade of a s
mall babul or keekar tree and watch the kingfisher skim over the water, making just a slight splash as it dived and came up with small glistening fish. Our common Indian kingfisher is a beautiful little bird with a brilliant blue back, a white throat and orange underparts. I would spot one perched on an overhanging bush or rock, and wait to see it plunge like an arrow into the water and return to its perch to devour the catch. It came over the water in a flash of gleaming blue, shrilling its loud ‘tit-tit-tit’.

  The kingfisher is the subject of a number of legends, and the one I remember best, recounted by Romain Rolland, tells us that it was originally a plain grey bird that acquired its resplendent colours by flying straight towards the sun when Noah let it out of the ark. Its upper plumage took the colour of the sky above, while the lower was scorched a deep russet by the rays of the setting sun.

  Summer and winter, I scorned the dust and the traffic, and walked all over Delhi—from Rajouri Garden to Connaught Place, which must have been five or six miles, and on other occasions, from Daryaganj to Chandni Chowk, and from Ajmeri Gate to India Gate! That is the best way to get to know a city. I had walked all over London. Now I did the same thing in Delhi, investigating old tombs and monuments, historic streets and buildings, or simply sitting on the grass near India Gate and eating jamuns. I liked the sour tang of the jamun fruit which was best eaten with a little salt. And I liked the deep purple colour of the fruit. Jamuns were one of the nicer things about Delhi.

  Bhabiji’s House

  ON ONE OF my walks, I reached my friend Kamal’s house in Rajouri Garden, and mentioned that I had walked from Connaught Place, a distance of some eight miles. His family greeted me with a pained and bewildered silence.

  Finally my friend’s mother, a practical Punjabi lady, asked: ‘How did you lose your money?’ She kept hers knotted in the end of her sari, and firmly believed that people who kept their money in easily snatched handbags and wallets were asking for trouble.