by Ruskin Bond
The White Tiger and Other Stories
Ruskin Bond has been writing for over sixty years, and now has over 120 titles in print—novels, collections of short stories, poetry, essays, anthologies and books for children. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, received the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Award in 1957. He has also received the Padma Shri (1999), the Padma Bhushan (2014) and two awards from Sahitya Akademi—one for his short stories and another for his writings for children. In 2012, the Delhi government gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Born in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Shimla, New Delhi and Dehradun. Apart from three years in the UK, he has spent all his life in India, and now lives in Mussoorie with his adopted family.
The White Tiger and Other Stories
Selected and Compiled by
RUSKIN BOND
Published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2016
7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj
New Delhi 110002
Copyright © Ruskin Bond 2016
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-81-291-×××-××
First impression 2016
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
Contents
Introduction
The Men-tigers
Lt Col. W.H. Sleeman
The Phantom Coach
Amelia B. Edwards
The Phantom Rickshaw
Rudyard Kipling
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Arthur Conan Doyle
The White Tiger
Alice Perrin
The Monkey’s Paw
W.W. Jacobs
Dracula’s Guest
Bram Stoker
The Werewolf
C.A. Kincaid
The Trouble with Jinns
Ruskin Bond
Introduction
There’s a particular thrill in reading stories about otherworldly creatures and happenings that no other form of writing can quite capture. Scary, strange or just plain funny—these stories come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Some of the best are those that make you jump at every little squeak around you, making you wish you had not decided to stay up late finishing just one more story. Or the ones that send you diving for cover under a blanket where you continue to read, unable to stop.
I have written a number of stories featuring spirits, Jinns and other such creatures from the netherworld. As someone who has spent much of my life in the mountains, I am also conversant with stories about hill-station ghosts and those who walk the dark on winding mountain roads and forests. Add to this, the many years of reading such stories, and you will understand why I keep returning to them.
In The White Tiger and Other Stories, we meet some of the best examples of stories about spirits and ghosts. If ‘The Men-tigers’ is about shape shifters with a definite streak of malcontent, then the ‘The Phantom Coach’ is about a spooky night spent in a rambling mansion. The stories of Arthur Conan Doyle with their streak of odd creatures and sinister men with evil on their minds make them immortal. If The Hound of the Baskervilles was one of the best when it came to evoking atmosphere and chills, then the story by Doyle featured in this collection—‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’—remains perhaps one of his creepiest ever with strange night sounds, exotic animals lurking everywhere and a general sense of doom all over it. Another writer who excelled in such stories was Rudyard Kipling. ‘The Phantom Rickshaw’, set in the Simla of the Raj, where a love story goes wrong, leaves the clatter of the ‘rickshaw’ containing the apparition of a wronged lover echoing in the mind long after one has put the book away.
Also in this collection are stories by some of the finest writers of the genre: Bram Stoker, W.W. Jacobs, C.A. Kincaid and Alice Perrin. Perrin’s story, ‘The White Tiger’, set in the jungles, about the White Tiger that has claimed numerous victims evokes the beliefs and fears that the tiger and specially man-eating ones have produced among those who live closest to them. Mar Singh, the shikari, meets his end while trying to kill the man-eater, but then: ‘Kowta glanced back into the shadow of the hut and shivered, remembering the native belief that the soul of the tiger’s victim becomes the servant of the slayer, and is bound to warn the master when danger threatens.’ Can Kowta get the better of the legendary White Tiger with just his gun and bait, while the tiger holds the souls of its victims as its ace in this battle?
It is my firm belief that one does not have to believe in ghosts in order to enjoy a ghost story. And when I run out of ideas for realistic characters, I turn to the supernatural. In The White Tiger and Other Stories I present not a ghost but a Jinn—those mischievous creatures who are capable of stretching their arms to extraordinary lengths. What would happen if one were in school and discovered just such a talent? ‘The Trouble with Jinns’ has the answer.
Dive into The White Tiger and Other Stories and lose yourself in a mysterious, ominous and atmospheric world where the rules of everyday life are suspended.
Ruskin Bond
and anthologized many times. He once said, ‘You don’t have to believe in ghosts in order to enjoy a ghost story.’ He has also mentioned that when he runs out of ideas for realistic characters, he turns to the supernatural. These stories written by him are by turns mischievous and tongue-in-cheek or evoke the sadness of lost souls. In his interviews he talks of how children have complained that his ghosts are not always very scary. Yet, the twist in the last line of ‘A Face in the Dark’ must remain with every child forever, after coming across the story in their school English textbooks. In The White Tiger and Other Stories we meet not a ghost but a Jinn—those mischievous creatures who can stretch their arms indefinitely. What would happen if one were in school and discovered just such a talent? ‘The Trouble with Jinns’ has the answer.
Mysterious and scary, ominous and atmospheric, The White Tiger and Other Stories has been edited by a writer who is a master of this genre himself. For those looking to lose themselves in a world where the rules of the everyday mundane life are suspended, this is the perfect book to dive into.
Sudeshna Shome Ghosh
The Men-tigers
Lt Col. W.H. Sleeman
Ram Chund Roo, commonly called the Sureemunt chief of Deoree, here overtook me. He came out from Saugor to visit me at Dhamoree, and not reaching that place in time came on after me. He held Deoree under the Peshwa, as the Saugor chief held Saugor, for the payment of the public establishments kept up for the local administration. It yielded him about ten thousand pounds a year, and when we took possession of the country he got an estate in the Saugor district, in rent-free tenure, estimated at fifteen hundred pounds a year. This is equal to about six thousand pounds a year in England. The tastes of native gentlemen lead them always to expend the greater part of their incomes in the wages of trains of followers of all descriptions, and in horses, elephants, & c.; and labour and the subsistence of labour are about four times cheaper in India than in England. By the breaking up of publi
c establishments, and consequent diminution of the local demand for agricultural produce, the value of land throughout all central India, after the termination of the Mahratta war in 1817, fell by degrees thirty per cent; and among the rest, that of my poor friend the Sureemunt. While I had the civil charge of the Saugor district, in 1831, I represented this case of hardship; and government, in the spirit of liberality which has generally characterized their in 1831, I represented this case of hardship; and government, in the spirit of liberality which has generally characterized their measures in this part of India, made up to him the difference between what he actually received and what they had intended to give him; and he has ever since felt grateful to me. He is a very small man, not more than five feet high; but he has the handsomest face I have almost ever seen; and his manners are those of the most perfect native gentleman. He came to call upon me after breakfast, and the conversation turned upon the number of people that had of late been killed by tigers between Saugor and Deoree, his ancient capital, which lies about midway between Saugor and the Nerbudda river. One of his followers, who stood behind his chair, said that when a tiger had killed one man he was safe, for the spirit of the man rode upon his head, and guided him from all danger. The spirit knew very well that the tiger would be watched for many days at the place where he had committed the homicide, and always guided him off to some other more secure place, where he killed other men without any risk to himself. He did not exactly know why the spirit of the man should thus befriend the beast that had killed him; but, added he, ‘There is a mischief inherent in spirits; and the better the man the more mischievous is his ghost, if means are not taken to put him to rest.’ This is the popular and general belief throughout India; and it is supposed that the only sure mode of destroying a tiger, who has killed many people, is to begin by making offerings to the spirits of his victims, and thereby depriving him of their valuable services!* The belief that men are turned into tigers by eating of a root is no less general throughout India.
The Sureemunt, on being asked by me what he thought of the matter, observed, ‘There was no doubt much truth in what the man said; but he was himself of opinion, that the tigers which now infest the wood from Saugor to Deoree were of a different kind—in fact, that they were neither more nor less than men turned into tigers—a thing which took place in the woods of central India much more often than people were aware of. The only visible difference between the two,’ added the Sureemunt, ‘is that the metamorphosed tiger has no tail, while the bora, or ordinary tiger, has a very long one. In the jungle about Deoree,’ continued he, ‘there is a root which, if a man eat of, he is converted into a tiger on the spot; and if in this state he can eat of another, he becomes a man again—a melancholy instance of the former of which,’ said he, ‘occurred, I am told, in my own father’s family when I was an infant.’ His washerman, Rughoo, was, like all washermen, a great drunkard; and being seized with a violent desire to ascertain what a man felt in the state of a tiger, he went one day to the jungle and brought home two of these roots, and desired his wife to stand by with one of them, and the instant she saw him assume the tiger’s shape, to thrust it into his mouth. She consented, the washerman ate his root, and became instantly a tiger; but his wife was so terrified at the sight of her old husband in this shape, that she ran off with the antidote in her hand. Poor old Rughoo took to the woods, and there ate a good many of his old friends from the neighbouring villages; but he was at last shot and recognized from the circumstance of his having no tail. ‘You may be quite sure,’ concluded the Sureemunt, ‘when you hear of a tiger without a tail, that it is some unfortunate man who has eaten of that root; and of all the tigers he will be found the most mischievous.’
How my friend had satisfied himself of the truth of this story I know not, but he religiously believes it, and so do all his attendants and mine; and out of a population of thirty thousand people in the town of Saugor, not one would doubt the story of the washerman if he heard it.
I was one day talking with my friend, the Rajah of Myhere, on the road between Jubbulpore and Mirzapore, on the subject of the number of men who had been lately killed by tigers at the Kutra Pass on that road, and the best means of removing the danger. ‘Nothing,’ said the Rajah, ‘could be more easy or more cheap than the destruction of these tigers, if they were of ordinary sort; but the tigers that kill men by wholesale, as these do, are, you may be sure, men themselves converted into tigers by the force of their science; and such animals are of all the most unmanageable.’
‘And how is it, Rajah Sahib, that these men convert themselves into tigers?’
‘Nothing,’ said he, ‘is more easy than this to persons who have once acquired the science; but how they learn it, or what it is, we unlettered men know not. There was once a high priest, of a large temple, in this very valley of Myhere, who was in the habit of getting himself converted into a tiger by the force of this science, which he had thoroughly acquired. He had a necklace, which one of his disciples used to throw over his neck the moment the tiger’s form became fully developed. He had, however, long given up the practice, and all his old disciples had gone off on their pilgrimages to distant shrines, when he was one day seized with a violent desire to take his old form of the tiger. He expressed the wish to one of his new disciples, and demanded whether he thought he might rely upon his courage to stand by and put on the necklace. “Assuredly you may,” said the disciple; “such is my faith in you, and in the God we serve, that I fear nothing!” The high priest, upon this, put the necklace into his hand with the requisite instructions, and forthwith began to change his form. The disciple stood trembling in every limb, till he heard him give a roar that shook the whole edifice, when he fell flat upon his face, and dropped the necklace on the floor. The tiger bounded over him, and out at the door, and infested all the roads leading to the temple for many years afterwards.’
‘Do you think, Rajah Sahib, that the old high priest is one of the tigers at the Kutra Pass?’
‘No, I do not; but I think that they may be all men who have become imbued with a little too much of the high priest’s science—when men once acquire this science they can’t help exercising it, though it be to their own ruin and that of others.’
‘But, supposing them to be ordinary tigers, what is the simple plan you propose to put a stop to their depredations, Rajah Sahib?’
‘I propose,’ said he, ‘to have the spirits that guide them propitiated by proper prayers and offerings; for the spirit of every man or woman who has been killed by a tiger rides upon his head, or runs before him, and tells him where to go to get prey, and to avoid danger. Get some of the Gonds, or wild people from the jungles, who are well skilled in these matters—give them ten or twenty rupees, and bid them go and raise a small shrine, and there sacrifice to these spirits. The Gonds will tell them that they shall, on this shrine, have regular worship, and good sacrifices of fowls, goats, and pigs, every year at least, if they will but relinquish their offices with the tigers and be quiet. If this is done, I pledge myself,’ said the Rajah, ‘that the tigers will soon get killed themselves, or cease from killing men. If they do not, you may be quite sure that they are not ordinary tigers, but men turned into tigers, or that the Gonds have appropriated all you gave them to their own use, instead of applying it to conciliate the spirits of the unfortunate people!’
* When Agrippina, in her rage with her son Nero, threatens to take her step-son, Britannicus, to the camp of the Legion, and there assert his right to the throne, she invokes the spirit of his father, whom she had poisoned, and the names of the Silani, whom she had murdered.
The Phantom Coach
Amelia B. Edwards
The circumstances I am about to relate to you have truth to recommend them. They happened to myself, and my recollection of them is as vivid as if they had taken place only yesterday. Twenty years, however, have gone by since that night. During those twenty years I have told the story to but one other person. I tell it now with a reluct
ance which I find it difficult to overcome. All I entreat, meanwhile, is that you will abstain from forcing your own conclusions upon me. I want nothing explained away. I desire no arguments. My mind on this subject is quite made up and, having the testimony of my own senses to rely upon, I prefer to abide by it.
Well! It was just twenty years ago, and within a day or two of the end of the grouse season. I had been out all day with my gun, and had had no sport to speak of. The wind was due east; the month, December; the place, a bleak wide moor in the far north of England. And I had lost my way. It was not a pleasant place in which to lose one’s way, with the first feathery flakes of a coming snowstorm just fluttering down upon the heather, and the leaden evening closing in all around. I shaded my eyes with my hand, and staled anxiously into the gathering darkness, where the purple moorland melted into a range of low hills, some ten or twelve miles distant. Not the faintest smoke-wreath, not the tiniest cultivated patch, or fence, or sheep-track, met my eyes in any direction. There was nothing for it but to walk on, and take my chance of finding what shelter I could, by the way. So I shouldered my gun again, and pushed wearily forward; for I had been on foot since an hour after daybreak, and had eaten nothing since breakfast.
Meanwhile, the snow began to come down with ominous steadiness, and the wind fell. After this, the cold became more intense, and the night came rapidly up. As for me, my prospects darkened with the darkening sky, and my heart grew heavy as I thought how my young wife was already watching for me through the window of our little inn parlour, and thought of all the suffering in store for her throughout this weary night. We had been married four months, and, having spent our autumn in the Highlands, were now lodging in a remote little village situated just on the verge of the great English moorlands. We were very much in love and, of course, very happy. This morning, when we parted, she had implored me to return before dusk, and I had promised her that I would. What would I not have given to have kept my word!