Rusty Comes Home

by Ruskin Bond

  ‘The beat had closed in, and the exit along the bank downstream was completely blocked, so the tiger turned and disappeared into a belt of reeds, and Kundan Singh expected that the head would soon peer out of the cover a few yards away. The beaters were now making a great noise, shouting and beating their drums, but nothing moved; and Ramu, watching from a distance, wondered, “Has he slipped through the beaters?” And he half hoped so.

  ‘Tins clashed, drums beat, and some of the men poked into the reeds with their spears or long bamboos. Perhaps one of these thrusts found a mark, because at last the tiger was roused, and with an angry desperate snarl he charged out of the reeds, splashing his way through an inlet of mud and water. Kundan Singh fired, and his bullet struck the tiger on the thigh.’

  ‘The mighty animal stumbled; but he was up in a minute, and rushing through a gap in the narrowing line of beaters, he made straight for the only way across the river—the suspension bridge that passed over the Ganga here, providing a route into the high hills beyond.

  ‘“We’ll get him now,” said Kundan, priming his gun again. “He’s right in the open!”’

  ‘So, did they get him finally?’ Rakesh’s eyes were wide with curiosity and excitement.

  ‘The suspension bridge swayed and trembled as the wounded tiger lurched across it. Kundan fired, and this time the bullet grazed the tiger’s shoulder. The animal bounded forward, lost his footing on the unfamiliar, slippery planks of the swaying bridge, and went over the side, falling headlong into the strong, swirling waters of the river.’

  ‘Oh no!’ gasped Rakesh.

  ‘He rose to the surface once, but the current took him under and away, and only a thin streak of blood remained on the river’s surface.

  ‘Kundan and others hurried downstream to see if the dead tiger had been washed up on the river’s banks; but though they searched the riverside for several miles, they did not find the king of the forest.’

  I paused. Rakesh looked downcast and dissatisfied.

  ‘At first,’ I said, ‘the villagers were glad because they felt their buffaloes were safe. Then the men began to feel that something had gone out of their lives, out of the life of the forest; they began to feel that the forest was no longer a forest. It had been shrinking year by year, but, as long as the tiger had been there and the villagers had heard it roar at night, they had known that they were still secure from the intruders and newcomers who came to fell the trees and eat up the land and let the flood waters into the village. But now that the tiger had gone, it was as though a protector had gone, leaving the forest open and vulnerable, easily destroyable. And once the forest was destroyed they too would be in danger . . .

  ‘There was another thing that had gone with the tiger, another thing that had been lost, a thing that was being lost everywhere—something called “nobility”.

  ‘Always remember one thing Raki: the tiger is the very soul of India, and when the last tiger goes, so will the soul of the country.’

  Rakesh lay flat on his stomach on the bed and said, ‘So, did the tiger really die?’

  ‘There must be tigers,’ I said. ‘How can there be an India without tigers? Now, I’ve told you my bit of the story. After lunch, you should think up a suitable ending for my story and narrate it to me just as I have. Okay? Now, run along, have your lunch.’

  Lunch over, I went back to my room to rest. I was soon joined by Rakesh. ‘Shall I tell you what I thought up?

  ‘The river had carried the tiger many miles away from his home, from the forest he had always known, and brought him ashore on a strip of warm yellow sand, where he lay in the sun, quite still, but breathing.’

  I sat up with interest. It looked like my tiger still had hope . . .

  ‘He was more drowned than hurt, and as the river water oozed out of his mouth, and the warm sun made new life throb through his body, he stirred and stretched, and his glazed eyes came into focus. Raising his head, he saw trees and tall grass.

  ‘Slowly he heaved himself off the ground and moved at a crouch to where the grass waved in the afternoon breeze. Would he be harried again, and shot at? There was no smell of man here. The tiger moved forward with greater confidence.

  ‘There was, however, another smell in the air—a smell he knew since his youth—a smell that he had almost forgotten but could never quite forget—the smell of a tigress!

  ‘He raised his head high, and new life surged through his tired limbs. He gave a full-throated roar and moved purposefully through the tall grass. And the roar came back to him, calling him, calling him forward—a roar that meant there would be more tigers in the land!’

  ‘Well done, my boy,’ I said. My story had been given a befitting, happy ending.

  When You Can’t Climb Trees Any More

  A YEAR LATER I found myself sitting in a taxi that was headed for Dehra. Though I was happily ensconced in Mussoorie, I’d miss Dehra once in a while and be reflecting on the many years that I had spent there. I decided to visit the town every now and then to put my restless thoughts and memories to rest.

  When I finally got there, I felt a bit lost. Now what? What exactly did I want to do in Dehra? None of my old friends had stayed back in Dehra. Neither did I have any relatives here. Maybe I should look up old Miss Pettibone . . . I’d promised to keep in touch with her, but had sent her just a letter or two in the beginning—when I had moved. After that, I had not been in touch with her, neither had she written at all. But then, I didn’t expect her to write—she was so very old and not very well either. Never mind, I told myself, I will surprise her and apologize for being such a cad all these years. But first I would get her something.

  I went to the mall and bought her a jar of orange marmalade and some bacon, and made my way to her cottage. I entered through the gate and walked up the small path. The garden which she was so fond of hardly remained . . . it was just a jungle of weeds and all kinds of wild plants. As for the cottage, it wore a deserted look. The smile died on my lips and I started feeling a bit apprehensive. Just as I was turning away from the front door, I saw the postman come up near the gate. It was the same old postman Dehra had had all these years . . . he just looked more wizened and lean.

  ‘Ah, Bond sahib. Good to see you after all these years. But what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to visit Miss Pettibone. Can you tell me where she’ll be now? I had no idea she had moved.’

  ‘So you haven’t heard . . . Miss Pettibone, she passed away three years after you left. As you know, she was very old and weak. She lay crippled by a paralytic stroke for a long time, and had one of her distant relatives looking after her. But she didn’t recover from that stroke . . . she seemed to have given up on life suddenly, and wanted nature to take its own course.’

  ‘But what about this cottage?’

  ‘This house is now disputed property. You see, she didn’t leave any will and now all her relatives—I’m sure she never even knew how some of them were related to her—have turned up to claim this property as theirs and quite predictably, this house has been closed up till a legal verdict is taken on it.’

  I felt ashamed of my negligence towards this gentle old lady who had been so kind and friendly towards me. Now there was nothing I could do for her. Disappointed and upset, I walked down the hill slowly. I began to wonder if it had been such a good idea to come back to Dehra after all. It might have been better not to know of these sad things at all.

  Brooding, I let my feet take me wherever they wanted to go, and after some time saw that I was now facing Astley Hall. I was suddenly afraid to go into the building. What if more disappointments lurked around the corner? Moti Bibi came out of her shop. But she didn’t seem to recognize me.

  ‘Moti Bibi, don’t you know me? Bond?’

  She looked up at me and smiled and said, ‘Of course I recognized you, but wasn’t sure if you’d remember me. You’ve come to meet your friend, isn’t it? Good. Well, don’t keep standing there, go right upstairs.’
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br />   Which friend, I asked myself. I stood back and took stock of the building. It looked older and more decrepit than before, but it was the first-floor balcony which caught my attention. On it were a row of potted plants—ferns, a palm, a few bright marigolds, zinnias and nasturtiums—they made the balcony stand out from others. It was impossible to miss it.

  I was quite sure they were my plants—the plants that my friend Sitaram had stolen for me, and which I had left behind in Moti Bibi’s care when I was leaving Dehra. They still looked healthy, but who was taking care of them now? Could it be . . .?

  With my heart racing, I bounded up the stairs—all twenty-two of them—and knocked at the door of the flat.

  Chance gives and takes away and gives again. The door was opened by none other than Sitaram himself. For a second he looked as surprised as I was and, grinning in that typical Sitaram manner, welcomed me in.

  ‘Truly filmi style,’ he said, still grinning.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, your reappearance at our doorstep.’

  ‘“Our”? Who else is staying with you? Oh, your parents. I’d forgotten about them.’

  ‘Not them, not them. My wife, Mr Rusty, lives with me now.’

  Wife! Before I could ask him anything else, a young woman entered the room and I got up in confusion. I knew her . . . had seen her; but couldn’t remember who she was. She looked at me directly and seeing my lost expression, gave a little laugh. Sitaram too burst into laughter. Radha! The name leapt into my mind. The maid who had worked in the flat next to mine in the very same building. I regained my composure and said, ‘Nice to see you again, Radha. Nicer to know you have married this rogue. How long has it been?’

  ‘I know what’s on your mind,’ said Sitaram. ‘You are asking yourself how Radha and I happen to be married to each other. Well, as you know, I was in Simla for a few years, roughing it out as an underpaid, but overworked waiter. A few months after you left I came back to Dehra. Let’s say I was forced to come back. I was accused of stealing cutlery and soap bars in the hotel. Can you imagine that? I admit I had been reckless and mischievous in the past, but this allegation was completely baseless. I couldn’t prove my innocence, so I left and came back here. But when I got here, my parents told me you’d gone away. Moti Bibi gave me all your plants and I continued staying with my parents. But even then I was bored and lonely and used to come over to Astley Hall.

  ‘I’d go up to the terrace and sit there, watching the kites in the sky. Sometimes I met Radha there—she’d come upstairs to hang out the washing and we’d get talking. Soon, I realized that I liked her a lot. What I liked most about her was her smile. It dropped over her face slowly, like sunshine moving over brown hills. She seemed to give out some of that glow that was in her face. I felt it pour over me. And this golden feeling did not pass when she left the terrace. That was how I knew she was going to mean something special to me.

  ‘Radha’s folks were poor, but in time I was to realize that I was even poorer. When I discovered that plans were afoot to marry her to a widower of sixty, I plucked up enough courage to declare that I would marry her myself. But my youth was no consideration. The widower had a generous gift of money for Radha’s parents. Not only was this offer attractive, it was customary. What had I to offer? Nothing—I did not even possess a job that would take care of our basic needs if we got married. Nor did I have rich parents or relatives to speak and act on my behalf.

  ‘I thought of running away with Radha. When I mentioned it to her, her eyes lit up. She thought it would be great fun. Women in love can be just as reckless as men! She did not even seem to worry about where we would go and how we would live. There would be no home to crawl back to for either of us. But we had loved passionately and fiercely and felt compelled to elope, regardless of the consequences. We longed for something more permanent than the few stolen moments we shared together—on the stairs, on the terrace, in the deserted junkyard behind the shops.

  ‘And so we ran away to Simla where I had some friends. I didn’t have your address with me, or I would have brought her straight to your place. Anyway, God has been kind to me ever since. We got jobs in the canteen of a missionary school in Simla, and then after a year, I got a job in Dehra. Now, she looks after the house while I work in a jam factory close by. Tell me, Rusty, aren’t you happy for us?’

  Of course I was. I was glad that Sitaram had not only found true love, but also managed to do something which I never could—have the courage and belief to sustain that love. My trip to Dehra was justified. And now, there was one more place I had to go to.

  I headed towards my grandmother’s house.

  When the trees saw me, they made as if to turn in my direction. A puff of wind came across the valley from the distant snows. A long-tailed blue magpie took alarm and flew noisily out of an oak tree. The cicadas were suddenly silent. But the trees remembered me. They bowed gently in the breeze and beckoned me nearer, welcoming me home. Three pines, a straggling oak and a wild cherry. I went among them and acknowledged their welcome with a touch of my hand against their trunks—the cherry’s smooth and polished; the pine’s patterned and whorled; the oak’s rough, gnarled, full of experience. He’d been there longest, and the wind had bent and twisted a few of his upper branches, so that he looked shaggy and undistinguished. But like the philosopher who is careless about his dress and appearance, the oak has secrets, a hidden wisdom. He has learnt the art of survival!

  While the oak and the pines were older than me and my father, and had been here many, many years, the cherry tree was exactly thirty-nine years old. I knew, because I had planted it.

  On one of my vacations from boarding school, I’d come to Dehra to spend a few weeks with Grandmother. Uncle Ken had given me this cherry seed, and on an impulse I thrust it into the soft earth, and then went away and forgot all about it. A few months later I found a tiny cherry tree in the long grass. I did not expect it to survive. But the following year it was two feet tall. And then some goats ate its leaves and a grass-cutter’s scythe injured the stem, and I was sure it would wither away. But it renewed itself, sprang up even faster, and within three years it was a healthy, growing tree, about five feet tall.

  After Grandmother’s house was sold, I left Dehra for a while for some years—forced by circumstances—but I did not forget the cherry tree. I thought about it fairly often, sent telepathic messages of encouragement in its direction. And when, several years ago, I returned in the autumn, my heart did a somersault when I found my tree sprinkled with pale pink blossoms. (The Himalayan cherry flowers in November.) And later, when the fruit was ripe, the tree was visited by finches, tits, bulbuls and other small birds, all come to feast on the sour, red cherries.

  That summer when the house was standing empty (I think it was between owners) I spent a night on the pine-knoll, sleeping on the grass beneath the cherry tree. I lay awake for hours, listening to the chatter of the stream and the occasional tonk-tonk of the nightjar, and watching through the branches overhead, the stars turning in the sky. And I felt the power of the sky and the earth, and the power of a small cherry seed . . .

  Now I stood on the grass verge by the side of the road and looked over the garden wall at the old house. It hadn’t changed much. There’s little anyone can do to alter a house built with solid blocks of granite brought from the riverbed. But there was a new outhouse and there were fewer trees. I was pleased to see that the jackfruit tree still stood at the side of the building, casting its shade on the wall. I remembered my grandmother saying: ‘A blessing rests on the house where falls the shadow of a tree.’ And so the present owners must also be the recipients of the tree’s blessings.

  At the spot where I stood there had once been a turnstile, and as a boy I would swing on it, going round and round until I was quite dizzy. Now the turnstile had gone and the opening walled up. Tall hollyhocks grew on the other side of the wall.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  It was
a disembodied voice at first. Moments later a boy stood framed between dark-red hollyhocks, staring at me.

  It was difficult to guess his age. He might have been twelve or he might have been sixteen.

  ‘I’m looking at the house,’ I said.

  ‘Why? Do you want to buy it?’

  ‘Is it your house?’

  ‘It’s my father’s.’

  ‘And what does your father do?’

  ‘He’s only a Colonel.’

  ‘Only a Colonel?’

  ‘Well, he should have been a Brigadier by now.’

  I burst out laughing.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ he said. ‘Even mummy says he should have been a Brigadier.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to make a witty remark (‘Perhaps that’s why he’s still a Colonel’), but I did not want to give offence. We stood on either side of the wall, appraising each other.

  ‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘If you don’t want to buy the house, what are you looking at?’

  ‘I used to live here once.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Many years ago. When I was a boy—younger than you . . . until my grandmother died and then we sold the house and went away.’

  He was silent for a while, taking in this information. Then he said, ‘And you’d like to buy it back now, but you don’t have the money?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t thinking of buying it back. I wanted to see it again, that’s all. How long have you lived here?’

  ‘Only three years,’ he smiled. He’d been eating a melon and there was still juice at the corners of his mouth. ‘Would you like to come in—and look—once more?’

  ‘Wouldn’t your parents mind?’

  ‘They’ve gone to the Club. They won’t mind. I’m allowed to bring my friends home.’

  ‘Even adult friends?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Oh, a little old, but feeling young today.’ And to prove it I decided I’d climb over the wall instead of going in by the gate. I got up on the wall all right, but had to rest there, breathing heavily. ‘Middle-aged man on the flying trapeze,’ I muttered to myself.