by Ruskin Bond
Anyway, I felt I was nearing home as soon as the bus brought me into the cheerful roadside hamlet, a little way above the Nandakini River’s confluence with the Alaknanda. A prayag is a meeting place of two rivers, hence Nandprayag, the place where these two mountain rivers meet. As there are many rivers in the Garhwal Himalayas, all linking up to join either the Ganga or the Yamuna, it follows that there are numerous prayags, in themselves places of pilgrimage as well as wayside halts en route to the higher Hindu shrines at Kedarnath and Badrinath. Nowhere else in these mountains are there so many temples, sacred streams, holy places, and holy men.
Some little way above Nandprayag’s sleepy little bazaar is a tourist rest house. It has a well-kept garden surrounded by fruit trees and is a little distance from the general hubbub of the main road.
Above it is the old pilgrim path. Just over twenty years ago, if you were a pilgrim intent on seeking salvation at the abode of the gods, you travelled on foot all the way from the plains, climbing about 200 miles in a couple of months. Those pilgrims had the time, the faith, and the endurance. Illness and misadventure often dogged their footsteps, but what was a little suffering if at the end of the day they arrived at the very portals of heaven?
Today’s pilgrims may not be lacking in devotion, but most of them do expect to come home again.
Along the old pilgrim path are several handsome houses, set among mango trees and the fronds of the papaya and banana. Higher up the hill the pine forests commence, but down here it is almost subtropical. Nandprayag is only about 3,000 feet above sea level—a height at which the vegetation is usually lush provided there is protection from the wind.
In one of these double-storeyed houses lives Devki Nandan, a scholar and recluse. He welcomes me into his home and plies me with food till I am close to bursting. He has a great love for this little corner of Garhwal and proudly shows me his collection of cuttings of articles about the area. One is from a travelogue by Sister Nivedita—an Englishwoman, Margaret Noble, who became an interpreter of Hinduism to the West. Visiting Nandprayag in 1928, she wrote:
Nandprayag is a place that ought to be famous for its beauty and order. For a mile or two before reaching it we had noticed the superior character of the agriculture and even some careful gardening of fruits and vegetables. The peasantry also suddenly grew handsome, not unlike the Kashmiris. The town itself is new, rebuilt since the Gohna flood, and its temple stands far out across the fields on the shore of the Prayag. But in this short time a wonderful energy has been at work on architectural carvings and the little place is full of gem-like beauties. As the road crosses the river, I noticed two or three old Pathan tombs, the only traces of Mohammedanism that we had seen north of Srinagar in Garhwal.
Little has changed since Sister Nivedita’s visit. There is still a small and thriving Pathan population in Nandprayag. In fact, when I called on Mr Nandan, he was in the act of sending out Eid greetings to his Muslim friends. Some of the old graves have disappeared in the debris from new road cuttings. As for the beautiful temple described by Sister Nivedita, I learned that it had been swept away by a mighty flood in 1970 when a cloudburst and subsequent landslide up-river resulted in great destruction downstream.
Mr Nandan remembers the time when he walked to the small hill station of Pauri to join the old Messmore Christian Mission School, where so many famous sons of Garhwal received their early education. It took him four days marching to get to Pauri. Now it is just four hours by bus. It was only after the Chinese invasion of 1962 that there was a sudden spurt in road building in the northern hill districts. Before that, everyone walked and thought nothing of it.
Sitting on my own that same evening in the little garden of the rest house, I heard innumerable birds break into song. I did not see them, because the light was fading and the trees were dark; but I heard the rather melancholy call of the hill dove, the ascending trill of the koel, and much shrieking, whistling, and twittering that I could not assign to any particular species.
Now, once again, while I sit on the lawn surrounded by zinnias in full bloom, I am teased by that feeling of having been here before, on this lush hillside, among the pomegranates and oleanders. Is it some childhood memory asserting itself? As far as I know, I never travelled in these parts.
It’s true that Nandprayag resembles some parts of the Doon Valley (where I grew up) before the Doon was submerged by a tidal wave of humanity. But in the Doon there is no great river running past your garden. Here there are two, and they are also part of this feeling of belonging.
Presently, the room boy joins me for a chat on the lawn. He is in fact running the rest house in the absence of the manager. Wherever I go in India, the manager is usually absent; it seems to make no difference. A coach load of pilgrims is due at any moment, but until they arrive the place is empty and only the birds can be heard.
The room boy’s name is Janakpal and he tells me something about his village on the next mountain, where a marauding leopard has been carrying off goats and cattle. He doesn’t think much of the laws protecting leopards—nothing can be done unless the animal becomes a man-eater.
A shower of rain descends on us, and so do the pilgrims. Janakpal leaves me to attend to his duties. But I am not left alone for long. A youngster with a cup of tea is the next to interview me. He wants me to take him to Mussoorie or New Delhi. He is fed up, he says, with washing dishes here.
‘You are better off here,’ I tell him sincerely. ‘In Mussoorie you will have twice as many dishes to wash. In Delhi, ten times as many.’
‘Yes, but there are cinemas and video and TV there,’ he says, leaving me without an argument. Bird song may have charms for me, but not for the restless dishwasher in tranquil Nandprayag.
The rain stops and I go for a walk. The pilgrims keep to themselves, but the locals are always ready to talk. I remember a saying (and it may have originated in these hills), which goes: ‘All men are my friends. I have only to meet them.’ In Nandprayag, where life still moves at a leisurely and civilized pace, one is constantly meeting them.
A GOOD PLACE FOR TREES
As my father had told me, Dehra was a good place for trees, and Grandmother’s house was surrounded by several kinds—peepul, neem, mango, jackfruit, papaya and an ancient banyan tree. Some of the trees had been planted by my father and grandfather.
‘How old is the jackfruit tree?’ I asked Grandmother.
‘Now let me see,’ said Grandmother, looking very thoughtful. ‘I should remember the jackfruit tree. Oh yes, your grandfather put it down in 1927. It was during the rainy season. I remember, because it was your father’s birthday, and we celebrated it by planting a tree. 14 July 1927. Long before you were born!’
The banyan tree grew behind the house. Its spreading aerial roots which descended into the ground formed a number of twisting passageways in which I liked to wander. The tree was older than the house, older than my grandparents, as old as Dehra. I could hide myself among the roots, behind thick green leaves, and spy on the world below.
It was an enormous tree, about sixty feet high, and the first time I saw it I trembled with excitement because I had never seen such a marvellous tree before. I approached it slowly, even cautiously, as I wasn’t sure the tree wanted my friendship. It looked as though it had many secrets. There were sounds and movement in the branches, but I couldn’t see who or what made the sounds.
The tree made the first move, the first sign of friendship. It allowed a leaf to fall.
The leaf brushed against my face as it floated down but before it could reach the ground I caught and held it. I studied the leaf, running my fingers over its smooth, glossy surface. Then I put out my hand and touched the rough bark of the tree and this felt good to me. So I removed my shoes and socks, as people do when they enter a holy place, and finding first a foothold and then a handhold on that broad trunk I pulled myself up with the help of the tree’s aerial roots.
As I climbed, it seemed as though someone was helping me, that
invisible hands, the hands of the spirit in the tree, touched me and helped me climb.
But although the tree wanted me, there were others who were disturbed and alarmed by my arrival. A pair of parrots suddenly shot out of a hole in the trunk and, with shrill cries, flew across the garden, flashes of green and red and gold. A squirrel looked out from behind a branch, saw me, and went scurrying away to inform his friends and relatives.
I climbed higher, looked up, and saw a red beak poised above my head. I shrank away, but the hornbill made no attempt to attack me. He was relaxing in his home, which was a great hole in the tree trunk. Only the bird’s head and massive beak were showing. He looked at me in a rather bored way, sleepily opening and shutting his eyes.
‘So many creatures live here,’ I said to myself. ‘I hope none of them is dangerous!’ At that moment the hornbill sprang at a passing cricket. Bill and tree trunk met with a loud and resonant ‘tonk’!
I was so startled that I nearly fell off the tree. But it was a difficult tree to fall off! It was full of places where one could sit or even lie down. So I moved away from the hornbill, crawled along a branch and so moved quite a distance from the main body of the tree. I left its cold, dark depths for an area penetrated by shafts of sunlight.
No one could see me. I lay flat on the broad branch hidden by a screen of leaves. People passed by on the road below. A sahib in a sun helmet. His memsahib twirling a coloured sun umbrella. Obviously she did not want to get too brown and be mistaken for a country-born person. Behind them, a pram wheeled along by a nanny.
Then there were a number of locals, some in white dhotis, some in western clothes, some in loincloths. Some with baskets on their heads. Others with coolies to carry their baskets for them. A cloud of dust, the blare of a horn, and down the road, like an out-of-condition dragon, came the latest Morris touring car; then cyclists. Then a man with a basket of papaya balanced on his head. Following him, came a man with a performing monkey. This man rattled a little hand drum, and children followed man and monkey along the road. They stopped in the shade of a mango tree on the other side of the road. The little red monkey wore a frilled dress and a baby’s bonnet. It danced for the children, while the man sang and played his drum.
The clip-clop of a tonga pony, and Bansi’s tonga came rattling down the road. I called down to him, and he reined in with a shout of surprise, and looked up into the branches of the banyan tree.
‘What are you doing up there?’ he cried.
‘Hiding from Grandmother,’ I said.
‘And when are you coming for that ride?’
‘On Tuesday afternoon,’ I said.
‘Why not today?’
‘Ayah won’t let me. But she has Tuesdays off.’
Bansi spat red paan juice across the road. ‘Your Ayah is jealous,’ he said.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Women are always jealous, aren’t they? I suppose it’s because she doesn’t have a tonga.’
‘It’s because she doesn’t have a tonga driver,’ said Bansi, grinning up at me. ‘Never mind, I’ll come on Tuesday—that’s the day after tomorrow, isn’t it?’
I nodded down to him, and then started backing along my branch, because I could hear Ayah calling in the distance. Bansi leant forward and smacked his pony across the rump, and the tonga shot forward.
‘What are you doing up there?’ asked Ayah a little later.
‘I was watching a snake cross the road,’ I said. I knew she couldn’t resist talking about snakes. There weren’t as many in Dehra as there had been in Kathiawar, and she was thrilled that I had seen one.
‘Was it moving towards you or away from you?’ she asked.
‘It was going away.’
Ayah’s face clouded over. ‘That means poverty for the beholder,’ she said gloomily.
Later, while scrubbing me down in the bathroom, she began to talk about her dislikes, which included drunkards (‘they die quickly, anyway’), misers (‘they get murdered sooner or later’) and tonga drivers (‘they have all the vices’).
‘You are a very lucky boy,’ she said suddenly, peering closely at my tummy.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘You just said I would be poor because I saw a snake going the wrong way.’
‘Well, you won’t be poor for long. You have a mole on your tummy, and that’s very lucky. And there is one under your armpit, which means you will be famous. Do you have one on the neck? No, thank God! A mole on the neck is the sign of a murderer!’
‘Do you have any moles?’ I asked.
Ayah nodded seriously, and pulling her sleeve up to her shoulder, showed me a large mole on her arm.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘It means a life of great sadness,’ said Ayah gloomily.
‘Can I touch it?’ I asked.
‘Yes, touch it,’ she said, and taking my hand she placed it against the mole.
‘It’s a nice mole,’ I said, wanting to make Ayah happy. ‘Can I kiss it?’
‘You can kiss it,’ said Ayah.
I kissed her on the mole.
‘That’s nice,’ she said.
TIME STOPS AT SHAMLI
The Dehra Express usually drew into Shamli at about five o’clock in the morning at which time the station would be dimly lit and the jungle across the tracks would just be visible in the faint light of dawn. Shamli is a small station at the foot of the Shivalik Hills and the Shivaliks lie at the foot of the Himalayas, which in turn lie at the feet of God.
The station, I remember, had only one platform, an office for the stationmaster, and a waiting room. The platform boasted a tea stall, a fruit vendor, and a few stray dogs. Not much else was required because the train stopped at Shamli for only five minutes.
Why it stopped at Shamli, I never could tell. Nobody got off or on. There were never any coolies to be seen. But the train would stand there a full five minutes and the guard would blow his whistle and soon Shamli would be left behind and forgotten…until I passed that way again.
I was paying my relations in Saharanpur an annual visit when the night train stopped at Shamli. I was thirty-six at the time and still single.
On this particular journey, the train came into Shamli just as I awoke from a restless sleep. The third-class compartment was crowded beyond capacity and I had been sleeping in an upright position with my back to the lavatory door. Now someone was trying to get into the lavatory. He was obviously hard pressed for time.
‘I’m sorry, brother,’ I said, moving as much as I could to one side.
He stumbled into the closet without bothering to close the door.
‘Where are we now?’ I asked the man sitting beside me. He was smoking a strong aromatic bidi.
‘Shamli station,’ he said, rubbing the palm of a large calloused hand over the frosted glass of the window.
I let the window down and stuck my head out. There was a cool breeze blowing down the platform, a breeze that whispered of autumn in the hills. As usual there was no activity except for the fruit vendor walking up and down the length of the train with his basket of mangoes balanced on his head. At the tea stall, a kettle was steaming, but there was no one to mind it. I rested my forehead on the window ledge and let the breeze play on my temples. I had been feeling sick and giddy but there was a wild sweetness in the wind that I found soothing.
‘Yes,’ I said to myself, ‘I wonder what happens in Shamli behind the station walls.’
My fellow passenger offered me a bidi. He was a farmer, I think, on his way to Dehra. He had a long, untidy, sad moustache.
We had been more than five minutes at the station. I looked up and down the platform, but nobody was getting on or off the train. Presently the guard came walking past our compartment.
‘What’s the delay?’ I asked him.
‘Some obstruction further down the line,’ he said.
‘Will we be here long?’
‘I don’t know what the trouble is. About half an hour at the least.’
My neighbour
shrugged and throwing the remains of his bidi out of the window, closed his eyes and immediately fell asleep. I moved restlessly in my seat and then the man came out of the lavatory, not so urgently now, and with obvious peace of mind. I closed the door for him.
I stood up and stretched and this stretching of my limbs seemed to set in motion a stretching of the mind and I found myself thinking: ‘I am in no hurry to get to Saharanpur and I have always wanted to see Shamli behind the station walls. If I get down now, I can spend the day here. It will be better than sitting in this train for another hour. Then in the evening I can catch the next train home.’
In those days I never had the patience to wait for second thoughts and so I began pulling my small suitcase out from under the seat.
The farmer woke up and asked, ‘What are you doing, brother?’
‘I’m getting out,’ I said.
He went to sleep again.
It would have taken at least fifteen minutes to reach the door as people and their belongings cluttered up the passage. So I let my suitcase down from the window and followed it on to the platform.
There was no one to collect my ticket at the barrier because there was obviously no point in keeping a man there to collect tickets from passengers who never came. And anyway, I had a through-ticket to my destination which I would need in the evening.
I went out of the station and came to Shamli.
Outside the station there was a neem tree and under it stood a tonga. The pony was nibbling at the grass at the foot of the tree. The youth in the front seat was the only human in sight. There were no signs of inhabitants or habitation. I approached the tonga and the youth stared at me as though he couldn’t believe his eyes.
‘Where is Shamli?’ I asked.
‘Why, friend, this is Shamli,’ he said.
I looked around again but I couldn’t see any sign of life. A dusty road led past the station and disappeared into the forest.