The Hidden Pool

by Ruskin Bond

  The course was about six feet long, the tracks six inches wide. The tracks were fenced with strips of cardboard so that the contestants would not move over to each other’s path or leave the course altogether. They could only go forwards or backwards. They were held at the starting point by another piece of cardboard, which would be placed behind them as soon as the race began.

  A little Sikh boy in a yellow pyjama suit was acting as starter, and he kept blowing his whistle for order and attention. Eventually he gained enough silence in which to announce the rules of the race: the contesting beetles were not allowed to be touched during the race, or blown at from behind, or bribed forward with bits of food. Only moral assistance was allowed, in the form of cheering and advice.

  Moochha and Black Prince were already at the starting point, but Maharani seemed unwilling to leave her apple core, and I had to drag her to the starting post. There was further delay when Moochha got his whiskers entangled in the legs of a rival, but they were soon separated and the beetles placed in separate lanes. The race was about to start.

  Kamal sat on his haunches, very quiet and serious, looking from Moochha to the finishing line and back again. I was biting my nails. Anil’s bushy eyebrows were bunched together in a scowl. There was a tense hush amongst the spectators.

  ‘Pee-ee-eep!’ went the whistle.

  And they were off!

  Or rather, Moochha and Black Prince were off because Maharani was still at the starting post, wondering what had happened to her apple core.

  Everyone was cheering madly, Anil was jumping about, and Kamal was shouting himself hoarse.

  Moochha was going at a spanking rate. Black Prince really wasn’t taking much interest in the proceedings, but at least he was moving, and everything could happen in a race of this nature. I was in a furious temper. All the coaching I had given Maharani appeared to be of no use. She was still looking confused and a little resentful at having been deprived of her apple.

  Then Moochha suddenly stopped, about two feet from the finishing line. He seemed to be having trouble with his whiskers, and kept twitching them this way and that. Black Prince was catching up inch by inch, and both Anil and Kamal were hopping about with excitement. Nobody was paying any attention to Maharani, who was looking suspiciously at the other beetles in the rear. No doubt she suspected them of having something to do with the disappearance of her apple. I begged her to make an effort. It was with difficulty that I prevented myself from giving her a push, but that would have meant disqualification.

  As Black Prince drew level with Moochha, he stopped and appeared to be enquiring about his rival’s whiskers. Anil and Kamal now became even more frantic in their efforts to encourage their racers, and the cheering on all sides was deafening.

  Maharani, enraged at having been deprived of her apple core, now decided to make a bid for liberty and rushed forward in great style.

  I gave a cry of joy, but the others did not notice this new challenge until Maharani had drawn level with her rivals. There was a gasp of surprise from the spectators, and Maharani dashed across the finishing line in record time.

  Everyone cheered the gallant outsider. Anil and Kamal very sportingly shook my hand and congratulated me on my methods. Coins and marbles passed from hand to hand. The little Sikh boy blew his whistle for silence and presented me with the first prize.

  I examined the new beetle with respect and gently stroked its hard, smooth back. Then in case Maharani should feel jealous, I put away the prize beetle and returned Maharani to her apple core. I was determined that I would not indulge in any favouritism.

  To the Hills

  At the end of August, when the rains were nearly over, we met at the pool to make plans for the autumn holidays. We had bathed and were stretched out in the shade of the fresh, rain-washed sal trees, when Kamal, pointing vaguely to the distant mountains, said: ‘Why don’t we go to the Pindari Glacier?’

  ‘The glacier!’ exclaimed Anil. ‘But that’s all snow and ice!’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Kamal. ‘But there’s a path through the mountains that goes all the way to the foot of the glacier. It’s only fifty-four miles.’

  ‘Only fifty-four miles! Do you mean we must—walk fifty-four miles?’

  ‘Well, there’s no other way,’ said Kamal. ‘Unless you prefer to sit on a mule. But your legs are too long, they’ll be trailing along the ground. No, we’ll have to walk. It will take us about ten days to get to the glacier and back, but if we take enough food there’ll be no problem. There are dak bungalows to stay in at night.’

  ‘Kamal gets all the best ideas,’ I said. ‘But I suppose Anil and I will have to get our parents’ permission. And some money.’

  ‘My mother won’t let me go,’ said Anil. ‘She says the mountains are full of ghosts. And she thinks I’ll get up to some mischief. How can one get up to mischief on a lonely mountain? Have you been on the mountains, Laurie?’

  ‘I’ve been on English mountains,’ I said, ‘but they’re not half as high as these. Kamal seems to know about them.’

  ‘Only what I’ve read in books,’ said Kamal. ‘I’m sure it won’t be dangerous, people are always going to the glacier. Can you see that peak above the others on the right?’ He pointed to the distant snow range, barely visible against the soft blue sky. ‘The Pindari Glacier is below it. It’s at 12,000 feet, I think, but we won’t need any special equipment. There’ll be snow only for the final two or three miles. Do you know that it’s the beginning of the river Sarayu?’

  ‘You mean our river?’ asked Anil, thinking of the little river that wandered along the outskirts of the town, joining the Ganges further downstream.

  ‘Yes. But it’s only a trickle where it starts.’

  ‘How much money will we need?’ I asked, determined to be practical.

  ‘Well. I’ve saved twenty rupees,’ said Kamal.

  ‘But won’t you need that for your books?’ I asked.

  ‘No, this is extra. If each of us brings twenty rupees, we should have enough. There’s nothing to spend money on, once we are up on the mountains. There are only one or two villages on the way and food is scarce, so we’ll have to take plenty of food with us. I learnt all this from the Tourist Office.’

  ‘Kamal’s been planning this without our knowledge,’ complained Anil.

  ‘He always plans in advance,’ I said. ‘But it’s a good idea, and it should be a fine adventure.’

  ‘All right,’ said Anil. ‘But Laurie will have to be with me when I ask my mother. She thinks Laurie is very sensible, and might let me go if he says it’s quite safe.’ And he ended the discussion by jumping into the pool, where we soon joined him.

  Though my mother hesitated about letting me go, my father said it was a wonderful idea and was only sorry because he couldn’t accompany us himself (which was a relief, as we didn’t want our parents along); and though Anil’s father hesitated—or rather, because he hesitated—his mother said yes, of course Anil must go, the mountain air would be good for his health. A puzzling remark, because Anil’s health had never been better. The bazaar people, when they heard that Anil might be away for a couple of weeks, were overjoyed at the prospect of a quiet spell, and pressed his father to let him go.

  On a cloudy day, promising rain, we bundled ourselves into the bus that was to take us to Kapkote (where people lose their caps and coats, punned Anil), the starting point of our trek. Each of us carried a haversack, and we had also brought along a good-sized bedding roll which, apart from blankets, also contained rice and flour thoughtfully provided by Anil’s mother. We had no idea how we would carry the bedding roll once we started walking. But we didn’t worry much over minor details: an astrologer had told Anil’s mother it was a good day for travelling, so we decided all would be well.

  We were soon in the hills, on a winding road that took us up and up, until we saw the valley and our town spread out beneath us, the river a silver ribbon across the plain. Kamal pointed to a patch of dense sal f
orest and said, ‘Our pool must be there!’ We took a sharp bend, and the valley disappeared, and the mountains towered above us.

  We had dull headaches by the time we reached Kapkote, but when we got down from the bus a cool breeze freshened us. At the wayside shop we drank glasses of hot, sweet tea, and the shopkeeper told us we could spend the night in one of his rooms. It was pleasant at Kapkote, the hills wooded with deodar trees, the lower slopes planted with fresh green paddy. At night, there was a wind moaning in the trees and it found its way through the cracks in the windows and eventually through our blankets. Then, right outside the door, a dog began howling at the moon. It had been a good day for travelling, but the astrologer hadn’t warned us that it would be a bad night for sleep.

  Next morning, we washed our faces at a small stream about a hundred yards from the shop and filled our water bottles for the day’s march. A boy from the nearby village sat on a rock, studying our movements.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked, unable to suppress his curiosity.

  ‘To the glacier,’ said Kamal.

  ‘Let me come with you,’ said the boy. ‘I know the way.’

  ‘You’re too small,’ said Anil. ‘We need someone who can carry our bedding roll.’

  ‘I’m small,’ said the boy, ‘but I’m strong. I’m not a weakling like the boys in the plains.’ Though he was shorter than any of us, he certainly looked sturdy, and had a muscular well-knit body and pink cheeks. ‘See!’ he said, and picking up a rock the size of a football, he heaved it across the stream.

  ‘I think he can come with us,’ I said.

  And the boy, whose name was Bisnu, dashed off to inform his people of his employment—we had agreed to pay him a rupee a day for acting as our guide and ‘sherpa’.

  And then we started walking, at first, above the little Sarayu river, then climbing higher along the rough mule track, always within sound of the water. Kamal wanted to bathe in the river. I said it was too far, and Anil said we wouldn’t reach the dak bungalow before dark if we went for a swim. Regretfully, we left the river behind, and marched on through a forest of oaks, over wet, rotting leaves that made a soft carpet for our feet. We ate at noon, under an oak. As we didn’t want to waste any time making a fire—not on this first crucial day—we ate beans from a tin and drank most of our water.

  In the afternoon we came to the river again. The water was swifter now, green and bubbling still far below us. We saw two boys in the water, swimming in an inlet which reminded us of our own secret pool. They waved, and invited us to join them. We returned their greeting but it would have taken us an hour to get down to the river and up again; so we continued on our way.

  We walked fifteen miles on that first day—our speed was to decrease after this and we were at the dak bungalow by six o’clock. Bisnu busied himself collecting sticks for a fire. Anil found the bungalow’s watchman asleep in a patch of fading sunlight and roused him. The watchman, who hadn’t been bothered by visitors for weeks, grumbled at our intrusion, but opened a room for us. He also produced some potatoes from his quarters, and these we roasted for dinner.

  It became cold after the sun had gone down and we remained close to Bisnu’s fire. The damp sticks burnt fitfully. By this time Bisnu had fully justified his inclusion in our party. He had balanced the bedding roll on his shoulders as though it were full of cotton wool instead of blankets. Now he was helping with the cooking. And we were glad to have him sharing our hot potatoes and strong tea.

  There were only two beds in the room and we pushed these together, apportioning out the blankets as fairly as possible. Then the four of us leapt into bed, shivering in the cold. We were already over 5000 feet. Bisnu, in his own peculiar way, had wrapped a scarf round his neck, though a cotton singlet and shorts were all that he wore for the night.

  ‘Tell us a story, Laurie,’ said Anil. ‘It will help us to fall asleep.’

  I told them one of his mother’s stories, about a boy and a girl who had been changed into a pair of buffaloes and then Bisnu told us about the ghost of a sadhu, who was to be seen sitting in the snow by moonlight, not far from the glacier. Far from putting us to sleep, this story kept us awake for hours.

  ‘Aren’t you asleep yet?’ I asked Anil in the middle of the night.

  ‘No, you keep kicking me,’ he lied.

  ‘We don’t have enough blankets,’ complained Kamal. ‘It’s too cold to sleep.’

  ‘I never sleep till it’s very late,’ mumbled Bisnu from the bottom of the bed.

  No one was prepared to admit that our imaginations were keeping us awake.

  After a little while we heard a thud on the corrugated tin sheets, and then the sound of someone—or something—scrambling about on the roof. Anil, Kamal and I sat up in bed, startled out of our wits. Bisnu, who had won the race to be the first one to fall asleep, merely turned over on his side and grunted.

  ‘It’s only a bear,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you notice the pumpkins on the roof? Bears love pumpkins.’

  For half an hour we had to listen to the bear as it clambered about on the roof, feasting on the watchman’s ripening pumpkins. Finally, there was silence. Kamal and I crawled out of our blankets and went to the window. And through the frosted glass we saw a black Himalayan bear ambling across the slope in front of the bungalow, a fat pumpkin held between its paws.

  To the River

  It was raining when we woke and the mountains were obscured by a heavy mist. We delayed our departure, playing football on the veranda with one of the pumpkins that had fallen off the roof. At noon the rain stopped and the sun shone through the clouds. As the mist lifted, we saw the snow range, the great peaks of Nanda Kot and Trishul stepping into the sky.

  ‘It’s different up here,’ said Kamal. ‘I feel a different person.’

  ‘That’s the altitude,’ I said. ‘As we go higher, we’ll get lighter in the head.’

  ‘Anil is light in the head already,’ said Kamal. ‘I hope the altitude isn’t too much for him.’

  ‘If you two are going to be witty,’ said Anil, ‘I shall go off with Bisnu, and you’ll have to find the way yourselves.’

  Bisnu grinned at each of us in turn to show us that he wasn’t taking sides, and after a breakfast of boiled eggs, we set off on our trek to the next bungalow.

  Rain had made the ground slippery and we were soon ankle-deep in slush. Our next bungalow lay in a narrow valley, on the banks of the rushing Pindar river, which twisted its way through the mountains. We were not sure how far we had to go, but nobody seemed to be in a hurry. On an impulse, I decided to hurry on ahead of the others. I wanted to be waiting for them at the river.

  The path dropped steeply, then rose and went round a big mountain. I met a woodcutter and asked him how far it was to the river. He was a short, stocky man, with gnarled hands and a weathered face.

  ‘Seven miles,’ he said. ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘No, the others are following but I cannot wait for them. If you meet them, tell them I’ll be waiting at the river.’

  The path descended steeply now, and I had to run a little. It was a dizzy, winding path. The hillside was covered with lush green ferns and, in the trees, unseen birds sang loudly. Soon I was in the valley and the path straightened out.

  A girl was coming from the opposite direction. She held a long, curved knife, with which she had been cutting grass and fodder. There were rings in her nose and ears and her arms were covered with heavy bangles. The bangles made music when she moved her hands: it was as though her hands spoke a language of their own.

  ‘How far is it to the river?’ I asked.

  The girl had probably never been near the river, or she may have been thinking of another one, because she replied, ‘Twenty miles,’ without any hesitation.

  I laughed and ran down the path. A parrot screeched suddenly, flew low over my head—a flash of blue and green—and took the course of the path, while I followed its dipping flight, until the path rose and the bird disappeared into the
trees.

  A trickle of water came from the hillside and I stopped to drink. The water was cold and sharp and very refreshing. I had walked alone for nearly an hour. Presently, I saw a boy ahead of me, driving a few goats along the path.

  ‘How far is it to the river?’ I asked, when I caught up with him.

  The boy said, ‘Oh, not far, just round the next hill.’

  As I was hungry, I produced some dry bread from my pocket and, breaking it in two, offered half to the boy. We sat on the grassy hillside and ate in silence. Then we walked on together and began talking; and talking, I did not notice the smarting of my feet and the distance I had covered. But after some time the boy had to diverge along another path, and I was once more on my own.

  I missed the village boy. I looked up and down the path, but I could see no one, no sign of Anil and Kamal and Bisnu, and the river was not in sight either. I began to feel discouraged. But I couldn’t turn back; I was determined to be at the river before the others.

  And so I walked on, along the muddy path, past terraced fields and small stone houses, until there were no more fields and houses, only forest and sun and silence.

  The silence was impressive and a little frightening. It was different from the silence of a room or an empty street. Nor was there any movement, except for the bending of grass beneath my feet and the circling of a hawk high above the fir trees.

  And then, as I rounded a sharp bend, the silence broke into sound.

  The sound of the river.

  Far down in the valley, the river tumbled over itself in its impatience to reach the plains. I began to run, slipped and stumbled, but continued running.

  And the water was blue and white and wonderful.

  When Anil, Kamal and Bisnu arrived, the four of us bravely decided to bathe in the little river. The late afternoon sun was still warm, but the water—so clear and inviting—proved to be ice-cold. Only twenty miles upstream the river emerged as a little trickle from the glacier and, in its swift descent down the mountain slopes, did not give the sun a chance to penetrate its waters. But we were determined to bathe, to wash away the dust and sweat of our two days’ trudging, and we leapt about in the shallows like startled porpoises, slapping water on each other and gasping with the shock of each immersion. Bisnu, more accustomed to mountain streams than ourselves, ventured across in an attempt to catch an otter, but wasn’t fast enough. Then we were on the springy grass, wrestling each other in order to get warm.