by Ruskin Bond
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I am coming.’
The lounge was lit by two candles. One stood over the piano, the other on a small table near the couch. Miss Deeds was on the couch, Lin was at the piano stool, looking as though he would start playing Stravinsky any moment, and Dayal was fussing about the room. Sushila was standing at a window, looking out at the stormy night. I went to the window and touched her but she didn’t look around or say anything. The lightning flashed and her dark eyes were pools of smouldering fire.
‘What time will you be leaving?’ she asked.
‘The tonga will come for me at seven.’
‘If I come,’ she said, ‘if I come with you, I will be at the station before the train leaves.’
‘How will you get there?’ I asked, and hope and excitement rushed over me again.
‘I will get there,’ she said. ‘I will get there before you. But if I am not there, then do not wait, do not come back for me. Go on your way. It will mean I do not want to come. Or I will be there.’
‘But are you sure?’
‘Don’t stand near me now. Don’t speak to me unless you have to.’ She squeezed my fingers, then drew her hand away. I sauntered over to the next window, then back into the centre of the room.
A gust of wind blew through a cracked windowpane and put out the candle near the couch.
‘Damn the wind,’ said Miss Deeds.
The window in my room had burst open during the night and there were leaves and branches strewn about the floor. I sat down on the damp bed and smelt eucalyptus. The earth was red, as though the storm had bled it all night.
After a little while I went into the veranda with my suitcase to wait for the tonga. It was then that I saw Kiran under the trees. Kiran’s long black pigtails were tied up in a red ribbon, and she looked fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth. She stood looking seriously at me.
‘Did you like the storm?’ she asked.
‘Some of the time,’ I said. ‘I’m going soon. Can I do anything for you?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to the end of the world. I’m looking for Major Roberts, have you seen him anywhere?’
‘There is no Major Roberts,’ she said perceptively. ‘Can I come with you to the end of the world?’
‘What about your parents?’
‘Oh, we won’t take them.’
‘They might be annoyed if you go off on your own.’
‘I can stay on my own. I can go anywhere.’
‘Well, one day I’ll come back here and I’ll take you everywhere and no one will stop us. Now is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘I want some flowers, but I can’t reach them,’ she pointed to a hibiscus tree that grew against the wall. It meant climbing the wall to reach the flowers. Some of the red flowers had fallen during the night and were floating in a pool of water.
‘All right,’ I said, and pulled myself up on the wall. I smiled down into Kiran’s serious, upturned face. ‘I’ll throw them to you and you can catch them.’
I bent a branch, but the wood was young and green and I had to twist it several times before it snapped.
‘I hope nobody minds,’ I said, as I dropped the flowering branch to Kiran.
‘It’s nobody’s tree,’ she said.
‘Sure?’
She nodded vigorously. ‘Sure, don’t worry.’
I was working for her and she felt immensely capable of protecting me. Talking and being with Kiran, I felt a nostalgic longing for childhood—emotions that had been beautiful because they were never completely understood.
‘Who is your best friend?’ I said.
‘Daya Ram,’ she replied. ‘I told you so before.’
She was certainly faithful to her friends.
‘And who is the second best?’
She put her finger in her mouth to consider the question, and her head dropped sideways.
‘I’ll make you the second best,’ she said.
I dropped the flowers over her head. ‘That is so kind of you. I’m proud to be your second best.’
I heard the tonga bell, and from my perch on the wall saw the carriage coming down the driveway. ‘That’s for me,’ I said. ‘I must go now.’
I jumped down the wall. And the sole of my shoe came off at last.
‘I knew that would happen,’ I said.
‘Who cares for shoes,’ said Kiran.
‘Who cares,’ I said.
I walked back to the veranda and Kiran walked beside me, and stood in front of the hotel while I put my suitcase in the tonga.
‘You nearly stayed one day too late,’ said the tonga driver. ‘Half the hotel has come down and tonight the other half will come down.’
I climbed into the back seat. Kiran stood on the path, gazing intently at me.
‘I’ll see you again,’ I said.
‘I’ll see you in Iceland or Japan,’ she said. ‘I’m going everywhere.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘maybe you will.’
We smiled, knowing and understanding each other’s importance. In her bright eyes I saw something old and wise. The tonga driver cracked his whip, the wheels creaked, the carriage rattled down the path. We kept waving to each other. In Kiran’s hand was a sprig of hibiscus. As she waved, the blossoms fell apart and danced a little in the breeze.
Shamli station looked the same as it had the day before. The same train stood at the same platform and the same dogs prowled beside the fence. I waited on the platform till the bell clanged for the train to leave, but Sushila did not come.
Somehow, I was not disappointed. I had never really expected her to come. Unattainable, Sushila would always be more bewitching and beautiful than if she were mine.
Shamli would always be there. And I could always come back, looking for Major Roberts.
BUS STOP, PIPALNAGAR
I
My balcony was my window on the world.
The room itself had only one window, a square hole in the wall crossed by two iron bars. The view from it was rather restricted. If I craned my neck sideways, and put my nose to the bars, I could see the end of the building. Below was a narrow courtyard where children played. Across the courtyard, on a level with my room, were three separate windows belonging to three separate rooms, each window barred in the same way, with iron bars. During the day it was difficult to see into these rooms. The harsh, cruel sunlight filled the courtyard, making the windows patches of darkness.
My room was very small. I had paced about in it so often that I knew its exact measurements. My foot, from heel to toe, was eleven inches long. That made my room just over fifteen feet in length; for, when I measured the last foot, my toes turned up against the wall. It wasn’t more than eight feet broad, which meant that two people was the most it could comfortably accommodate. I was the only tenant but at times I had put up at least three friends—two on the floor, two on the bed. The plaster had been peeling off the walls and in addition the greasy stains and patches were difficult to hide, though I covered the worst ones with pictures cut out from magazines—Waheeda Rehman, the Indian actress, successfully blotted out one big patch and a recent Mr Universe displayed his muscles from the opposite wall. The biggest stain was all but concealed by a calendar that showed Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, whose blessings were vital to all good beginnings.
My belongings were few. A shelf on the wall supported an untidy pile of paperbacks, and a small table in one corner of the room supported the solid weight of my rejected manuscripts and an ancient typewriter which I had obtained on hire.
I was eighteen years old and a writer.
Such a combination would be disastrous enough anywhere, but in India it was doubly so; for there were not many papers to write for and payments were small. In addition, I was very inexperienced and though what I wrote came from the heart, only a fraction touched the hearts of editors. Nevertheless, I persevered and was able to earn about a hundred rupees a month, barely enough to keep body, soul and type
writer together. There wasn’t much else I could do. Without that passport to a job—a university degree—I had no alternative but to accept the classification of ‘self-employed’—which was impressive as it included doctors, lawyers, property dealers, and grain merchants, most of whom earned well over a thousand rupees a month.
‘Haven’t you realized that India is bursting with young people trying to pass exams?’ asked a journalist friend. ‘It’s a desperate matter, this race for academic qualifications. Everyone wants to pass his exam the easy way, without reading too many books or attending more than half-a-dozen lectures. That’s where a smart fellow like you comes in! Why would students wade through five volumes of political history when they can buy a few model answer papers at any bookstall? They are helpful, these guess papers. You can write them quickly and flood the market. They’ll sell like hot cakes!’
‘Who eats hot cakes here?’
‘Well, then, hot chapattis.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said; but the idea repelled me. If I was going to misguide students, I would rather do it by writing second-rate detective stories than by providing them with readymade answer papers. Besides, I thought it would bore me.
II
The string of the cot needed tightening. The dip in the middle of the bed was so bad that I woke up in the morning with a stiff back. But I was hopeless at tightening bed-strings and would have to wait until one of the boys from the tea shop paid me a visit. I was too tall for the cot, anyway, and if my feet didn’t stick out at one end, my head lolled over the other.
Under the cot was my tin trunk. Apart from my clothes, it contained notebooks, diaries, photographs, scrapbooks, and other odds and ends that form a part of a writer’s existence.
I did not live entirely alone. During cold or rainy weather, the boys from the tea shop, who normally slept on the pavement, crowded into the room. Apart from them, there were lizards on the walls and ceilings—friends these—and a large rat—definitely an enemy—who got in and out of the window and who sometimes carried away manuscripts and clothing.
June nights were the most uncomfortable. Mosquitoes emerged from all the ditches, gullies and ponds, to swarm over Pipalnagar. Bugs, finding it uncomfortable inside the woodwork of the cot, scrambled out at night and found their way under the sheet. The lizards wandered listlessly over the walls, impatient for the monsoon rains, when they would be able to feast off thousands of insects.
Everyone in Pipalnagar was waiting for the cool, quenching relief of the monsoon.
III
I woke every morning at five as soon as the first bus moved out of the shed, situated only twenty or thirty yards down the road. I dressed, went down to the tea shop for a glass of hot tea and some buttered toast, and then visited Deep Chand the barber in his shop.
At eighteen, I shaved about three times a week. Sometimes I shaved myself. But often, when I felt lazy, Deep Chand shaved me, at the special concessional rate of two annas.
‘Give my head a good massage, Deep Chand,’ I said. ‘My brain is not functioning these days. In my latest story there are three murders, but it is boring just the same.’
‘You must write a good book,’ said Deep Chand, beginning the ritual of the head massage, his fingers squeezing my temples and tugging at my hair-roots. ‘Then you can make some money and clear out of Pipalnagar. Delhi is the place to go! Why, I know a man who arrived in Delhi in 1947 with nothing but the clothes he wore and a few rupees. He began by selling thirsty travellers glasses of cold water at the railway station, then he opened a small tea shop; now he has two big restaurants and lives in a house as large as the prime minister’s!’
Nobody intended to live in Pipalnagar forever. Delhi was the city most aspired to but as it was 200 miles away, few could afford to travel there.
Deep Chand would have shifted his trade to another town if he had had the capital. In Pipalnagar his main customers were small shopkeepers, factory workers and labourers from the railway station. ‘Here I can charge only six annas for a haircut,’ he lamented. ‘In Delhi I could charge a rupee.’
IV
I was walking in the wheat fields beyond the railway tracks when I noticed a boy lying across the footpath, his head and shoulders hidden by wheat plants. I walked faster, and when I came near I saw that the boy’s legs were twitching. He seemed to be having some kind of fit. The boy’s face was white, his legs kept moving and his hands fluttered restlessly among the wheat stalks.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said, kneeling down beside him but he was still unconscious.
I ran down the path to a Persian well, and dipping the end of my shirt in a shallow trough of water, soaked it well before returning to the boy. As I sponged his face the twitching ceased, and though he still breathed heavily, his face was calm and his hands still. He opened his eyes and stared at me, but he didn’t really see me.
‘You have bitten your tongue,’ I said, wiping a little blood from the corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll stay here with you until you are all right.’
The boy raised himself and, resting his chin on his knees, he passed his arms around his drawn-up legs.
‘I’m all right now,’ he said.
‘What happened?’ I asked, sitting down beside him.
‘Oh, it is nothing, it often happens. I don’t know why. I cannot control it.’
‘Have you been to a doctor?’
‘Yes, when the fits first started, I went to the hospital. They gave me some pills that I had to take every day. But the pills made me so tired and sleepy that I couldn’t work properly. So I stopped taking them. Now this happens once or twice a week. What does it matter? I’m all right when it’s over and I do not feel anything when it happens.’
He got to his feet, dusting his clothes and smiling at me. He was a slim boy, long-limbed and bony. There was a little fluff on his cheeks and the promise of a moustache. He told me his name was Suraj, that he went to a night school in the city, and that he hoped to finish his high school exams in a few months’ time. He was studying hard, he said, and if he passed he hoped to get a scholarship to a good college. If he failed, there was only the prospect of continuing in Pipalnagar.
I noticed a small tray of merchandise lying on the ground. It contained combs and buttons and little bottles of perfume. The tray was made to hang at Suraj’s waist, supported by straps that went around his shoulders. All day he walked about Pipalnagar, sometimes covering ten or fifteen miles, selling odds and ends to people in their houses. He averaged about two rupees a day, which was enough for his food and other necessities; he managed to save about ten rupees a month for his school fees. He ate irregularly at little tea shops, at the stall near the bus stop, under the shady jamun and mango trees. When the jamun fruit was ripe, he would sit on a tree, sucking the sour fruit until his lips were stained purple. There was a small, nagging fear that he might get a fit while sitting on the tree and fall off, but the temptation to eat jamun was greater than his fear.
All this he told me while we walked through the fields towards the bazaar.
‘Where do you live?’ I asked. ‘I’ll walk home with you.’
‘I don’t live anywhere,’ said Suraj. ‘My home is not in Pipalnagar. Sometimes I sleep at the temple or at the railway station. In the summer months I sleep on the grass of the municipal park.’
‘Well, wherever it is you stay, let me come with you.’
We walked together into the town, and parted near the bus stop. I returned to my room, and tried to do some writing while Suraj went to the bazaar to try selling his wares. We had agreed to meet each other again. I realized that Suraj was an epileptic, but there was nothing unusual about him being an orphan and a refugee. I liked his positive attitude to life. Most people in Pipalnagar were resigned to their circumstances but he was ambitious. I also liked his gentleness, his quiet voice, and the smile that flickered across his face regardless of whether he was sad or happy.
V
The temperature had to
uched forty-three degrees Celsius, and the small streets of Pipalnagar were empty. To walk barefoot on the scorching pavements was possible only for labourers, whose feet had developed several hard layers of protective skin; and now even these hardy men lay stretched out in the shade provided by trees and buildings.
I hadn’t written anything in two weeks, and though one or two small payments were due from a Delhi newspaper, I could think of no substantial amount that was likely to come my way in the near future. I decided that I would dash off a couple of articles that same night, and post them the following morning.
Having made this comforting decision, I lay down on the floor in preference to the cot. I liked the touch of things; the touch of a cool floor on a hot day, the touch of earth—soft, grassy grass was good, especially dew-drenched grass. Wet earth was soft, sensuous, as was splashing through puddles and streams.
I slept, and dreamt of a cool, clear stream in a forest glade, where I bathed in gay abandon. A little further downstream was another bather. I hailed him, expecting to see Suraj but when the bather turned I found that it was my landlord’s pot-bellied rent collector, holding an accounts ledger in his hands. This woke me up, and for the remainder of the day I worked feverishly at my articles.
Next morning, when I opened the door, I found Suraj asleep at the top of the steps. His tray lay at the bottom of the steps. He woke up as soon as I touched his shoulder.
‘Have you been sleeping here all night?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t you come in?’
‘It was very late,’ said Suraj. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘Someone could have stolen your things while you were asleep.’
‘Oh, I sleep quite lightly. Besides I have nothing of great value. But I came here to ask you a favour.’
‘You need money?’
He laughed. ‘Do all your friends mean money when they ask for favours? No, I want you to take your meal with me tonight.’
‘But where? You have no place of your own and it would be too expensive in a restaurant.’
‘In your room,’ said Suraj. ‘I shall bring the meat and vegetables and cook them here. Do you have a cooker?’