by Ruskin Bond
Outside, the street rapidly emptied. The crowd dissolved in the rain. Then buses, cars and bullock-carts ploughed through the suddenly rushing water. A group of small boys, gloriously naked, came romping along a side street, which was like a river in spate. A garland of marigolds, swept off the steps of a temple, came floating down the middle of the road.
The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The day was dying, and the breeze remained cool and moist. In the brief twilight that followed, I was witness to the great yearly flight of insects into the cool brief freedom of the night.
Termites and white ants, which had been sleeping through the hot season, emerged from their lairs. Out of every hole and crack, and from under the roots of trees, huge winged ants emerged, fluttering about heavily on this, the first and last flight of their lives. There was only one direction in which they could fly — towards the light, towards the street lights and the bright neon tubelight above my balcony.
The light above the balcony attracted a massive, quivering swarm of clumsy termites, giving the impression of one thick, slowly revolving mass. A frog had found its way through the bathroom and came hopping across the balcony to pause beneath the light. All he had to do was gobble, as insects fell around him.
This was the hour of the geckos, the wall lizards. They had their reward for weeks of patient waiting. Plying their sticky pink tongues, they devoured insects as swiftly and methodically as children devour popcorn. For hours they crammed their stomachs, knowing that such a feast would not come their way again. Throughout the entire hot season the insect world had prepared for this flight out of darkness into light, and the phenomenon would not happen again for another year.
In hot up-country towns in India it is good to have the first monsoon showers arrive at night, while you are sleeping on the veranda. You wake up to the scent of wet earth and fallen neem leaves, and find that a hot and stuffy bungalow has been converted into a cool, damp place. The swish of the banana fronds and the drumming of the rain on broad-leaved sal trees will soothe the most fevered brow.
During the rains the frogs have a perfect Country Music Festival. There are two sets of them, it seems, and they sing antiphonal chants all evening, each group letting the other take its turn in the fairest manner. No one sees or hears them during the hot weather, but the moment the monsoon breaks they swarm all over the place.
When night comes on, great moths fly past, and beetles of all shapes and sizes come whirring in at the open windows. Recently, when Prem closed my window to keep out these winged visitors, I remonstrated, saying that as a nature lover I would share my room with them. I’d forgotten that I am inclined to sleep with my mouth open. In the wee hours I woke up, spluttering and choking, to find that I had almost swallowed a large and somewhat unpleasant-tasting moth. I closed the window. Moths are lovely creatures, but a good night’s sleep is even lovelier.
At night the fireflies light up their lamps, flashing messages to each other through the mango groves. Some nocturnal insects thrive mainly at the expense of humans. Sometimes one wakes up to find thirty or forty mosquitoes looking through the netting in a bloodthirsty manner. If you are sleeping out, you will need that mosquito netting.
The road outside is lined with fine babul trees, now covered with powdery little balls of yellow blossom, filling the air with a faint scent. After the first showers there is a great deal of water about, and for many miles the trees are standing in it. The common monsoon sights along an up-country road are often picturesque—the wide plains, with great herds of smoke-coloured, delicate-limbed cattle being driven slowly home for the night, accompanied by troops of ungainly buffaloes and flocks of black long-tailed sheep. Then you come to a pond, where the buffaloes are indulging in a sensuous wallow, no part of them visible but the tips of their noses.
Within a few days of the first rain the air is full of dragonflies, crossing and re-crossing, poised motionless for a moment, then darting away with that mingled grace and power which is unmatched among insects. Dragonflies are the swallows of the insect world; their prey is the mosquito, the gnat, the midge and the fly. These swarms, therefore, tell us that the moistened surface of the ground, with its mouldering leaves and sodden grass, has become one vast incubator teeming with every form of ephemeral life.
After the monotony of a fierce sun and a dusty landscape quivering in the dim distance, one welcomes these days of mild light, green earth, and purple hills coming nearer in the clear and transparent air.
And later on, when the monsoon begins to break up and the hills are dappled with light and shade, dark islands of cloud moving across the bright green sea, the effect on one’s spirits is strangely exhilarating.
II
TALES OF THE OPEN ROAD
On the Highway
Once or twice a year, in self-indulgent mood, I give myself a ‘treat’, if you can call it that: a seven-hour drive to Delhi from Mussoorie, in an old but sturdy Ambassador taxi. Winter is the best time for such a visit. The hot winds of summer are best avoided, for once you have descended from the hills, the road becomes dusty, and in places something of an obstacle race.
I have known this highway over the years and I have seen it change imperceptibly. There wasn’t much traffic on it in the 1940s, apart from the familiar bullock-carts stacked high with sugar cane. The carts are still used, although the wooden wheels have given way to heavy tyres, and the bullocks to buffaloes. Most of the cane is now carried in trucks, and these ‘kings of the road’ have made it difficult for others to drive smoothly by day or safely by night. The trucks and the sugar cane keep the economy going, so we shouldn’t grumble too much. This is one of the wealthiest agricultural areas in the land—Shamli, in its heartland, has the highest per capita income in the country, according to my bank manager—and from field to factory, and factory to town, the truckers are the ones to do the job.
Shamli is not one of the places you normally pass through on the way to Delhi. Not unless you are the actor Tom Alter and your driver takes the wrong turning in the middle of the night.
Tom got into his favourite Mussoorie taxi, leaving town after dinner as he had to be in Delhi early next morning. The driver fortified himself with a couple of drinks while Tom, who doesn’t drink, settled into the back seat for a nap. He woke up to find himself in Shamli instead of Roorkee; but they eventually returned to the main highway and, having completed half the journey, the driver felt the need for further refreshment and stopped at a wayside inn where he fell in with some of his buddies. Tom got out of the car to stretch his legs. He crossed the road and gazed out across the moonlit mustard fields. When he turned back to the taxi, he found it had vanished! The inebriated driver had returned to the wheel and, without glancing back to see if his passenger was still in the back seat, had driven on. An hour later, on reaching the outskirts of Meerut, the driver discovered that Tom was missing. Crestfallen, he was about to turn back in search of his lost passenger when Tom himself arrived, having hitched a ride on an early-morning milk van.
Although I have been up and down the Delhi road two or three times a year, for the last forty years, I have been fortunate in that I have experienced relatively few mishaps. And when my nature-loving bank manager, Vishal Ohri, decided to give me a treat some years ago by taking a short cut from Hardwar through the Rajaji Sanctuary and out at the Mohand Pass, I did not demur. I’m the ideal front-seat passenger, as I cannot drive and simply put my faith in God and the travelling public in general. Vishal Ohri enjoys his driving, especially in rough conditions; unfortunately his ancient Fiat was in poor condition, and half-way through the Sanctuary, while we were crossing a boulder-strewn rao (a semi-dry riverbed) the door on my side fell off and I very nearly went with it. For the rest of the journey, I had an uninterrupted view of the wildlife in the sanctuary— two peahens, a startled porcupine, and a herd of tame buffaloes.
* * *
Driving by night is not always so risible. Most accidents on the main highway road occur in the early
hours when drivers fall asleep at the wheel: their vehicles overturn, or run into trees and ditches, or collide with other vehicles. Before dawn breaks, the road has taken its toll of several lives.
It was late Christmas Eve in the 1970s, when my thirty-year-old half-brother Harold set out from Dehra in his father’s car, to try and get to Delhi in time for a party at the Anglo-Indian Club. Although he was a good driver, having taken part in car rallies and other tests of speed and endurance, he had become a heavy drinker and he was in no condition to undertake a long and arduous drive late at night. He was alone, and as he was killed instantly (or so it appeared), we never knew all the circumstances of the accident. Apparently his car had been caught and crushed between two trucks, which had speedily disappeared into the night.
What can one say about Harold? He was attractive to women, but they had a hard time looking after him. And he wrecked their lives in addition to his own.
Harold’s interests and mine were very different, but we did not get in each other’s way. He left me to my books and long walks; I left him to his motorcycles and dance parties. Our mother indulged him; his father left him to his own devices.
Our mother died a year or two before Harold’s fatal accident, and so she was spared a lot of heartbreak—double heartbreak, because a few months later my second half-brother died in a motorcycle accident. He was the careful one, who seldom took risks, so I don’t suppose there are any lessons to be learnt.
* * *
I haven’t driven through Meerut for many years, because most cars now take the bypass. Back in the 1960s it would provide an escape from Delhi, and I would spend an occasional weekend there, staying with old Captain Saulez in the cantonment and attending the Meerut races. The Meerut races were always a shade superior to the Delhi races, as they were patronized by the Army. Captain Saulez, a legendary racehorse owner and trainer, was a familiar figure in Meerut, moving about in his little pony-trap. His daughter had married a Swiss journalist, William Matheson, much disliked by the Captain. It was at William’s invitation that I first went to stay at their bungalow in its sprawling grounds on Centre Road. The Captain paid no attention to me. This meant he approved of me, according to William; most other visitors weren’t allowed in at the gate. On summer nights I slept out of doors, kept awake for long hours by a brain-fever bird screaming at me from a gulmohur tree. There were many trees in the compound, as well as lots of open space for the horses to exercise.
Captain Saulez died many years ago, mourned by jockeys and racing people if not by his relatives. William and his wife left the country. I wonder if the house and grounds have gone too, swallowed up by the march of time and the pressures of population. It is unlikely that I will go that way again. It is good to remember the past, but to return to places associated with one’s youth can often be disappointing. An old school friend of mine visited Saharanpur after fifty years, hoping to find the house where he had grown up. Instead he found a crowded bus stand. And in Delhi, the bungalow and garden where I spent a year or two of my childhood has vanished and in its place has risen a massive high-rise building, with hundreds of cars parked where sweet peas and roses once flourished.
‘You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will linger there still. . .’
* * *
The byways of history have always fascinated me. The history books tell us about Delhi, Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, but they have little to say about the drama that takes place in the lives of those living in villages or small towns. There are stories to be told about all these places.
While living in Delhi in the early 1960s, I made a number of excursions to small and large towns in the Hindi heartland—Agra, Mathura, Rishikesh, Aligarh, Shahjahanpur . . .
In Shahjahanpur I located the church and compound where the tragic incidents of the 1857 uprising occurred. My novella, A Flight of Pigeons, was based on the actual experiences of Ruth Labadoor, a fourteen-year-old Anglo-Indian girl who survived the massacre.*
The pieces that follow are extracted from the journal I kept at the time.
Rishikesh
‘Ganga mai ki jai!’ (May mother Ganga flow for ever!)
Everyone raised the cry as the Hardwar bus moved out of Meerut. Most of the passengers, including Kamal and I, were going to take darshan of Mother Ganga. But while many were bound for Hardwar, we were going to Rishikesh, a more secluded temple-town, situated on the banks of the Ganga at the point where the river emerges from the mountains and, hemmed in no longer by rocks and trees, stretches itself across the plains of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, flowing past great cities like Kanpur, Allahabad, Benares and Patna, and into Bengal.
Just next to us sat a well-built woman with three small children. The eldest, a boy of about six, took a fancy to Kamal, and was soon lolling about on his knees. In front of us, obliterating the view, sat a stout ‘lala’ and his devoted wife. Lalaji proved to be an impatient and ill-tempered man. He quarrelled with the conductor, the driver and the ticket-seller. In order to travel in comfort he had reserved three front seats, but was unwilling to pay toll on the third seat which, he insisted, would only be occupied by his and his wife’s feet. They gave in to him eventually. An urchin who inadvertently touched the sleeve of his kurta received a stinging slap. But he became more tolerant as time went on, and once, when engaged in an argument with a passenger at the other end of the bus, favoured me with a smile.
The countryside was monotonous up to Roorkee. Then the road took us along the Ganga canal, and Kamal sat up and began to look at things. We changed buses at Hardwar, and got into a very old and wheezy contraption which surprised us by going much faster than the government roadways bus. Probably the driver was trying to make up for time lost in stopping every five minutes to pick up some acquaintance on the road. We stopped for ten minutes at the Sat Narain temple, once famous for the tiger that used to visit it every evening. Rattling through the Motichur forest block, we saw two elephants—tame ones, possibly— and a variety of monkeys.
We left the bus at Rishikesh and went in search of my friend Jhardari, with whom we were to stay. He lived at Muni-ki-Reti, two miles upstream, where the wealthier ashrams were situated. His rooms, adjoining Swami Sivananda’s Ashram, were on the right-hand bank of the Ganga.
Jhardhari was away, on a routine trip to Devprayag. As Secretary of the Tehri-Garhwal Motor Mazdoor Sangh Workers’ Union, he has to travel all over the district to keep in touch with the men who drive the trucks and buses on the dangerous hill roads. The buses are privately owned, the government only nationalizes those services that use first-class roads. The state is very cautious about taking over the responsibility of transporting people to remote hill towns like Tehri and Pipalkoti, where pilgrims on the way to Gangotri or Badrinath must start their journey on foot. The motor roads in the interior are narrow, precipitous and unmetalled. To mention this is not to condemn them. Till a few years ago many of these regions hadno roads at all. And Garhwalis are excellent drivers—many have experience of Army trucks—and serious accidents are uncommon.
Jhardhari’s room-mate made us at home, and prepared hot, strong tea. Garhwalis drink more tea than Englishmen, and seldom take water. We were to become accustomed to drinking tea at almost hourly intervals.
One of the first things we did was to dip ourselves in the river. The water was icy cold, and it was impossible to stay in for more than ten minutes. Shivering, we climbed on to the bathing steps to dry ourselves. Our clothes felt hot against our bodies.
Down at the Rishikesh bathing ghat, hundreds of people would be dipping themselves in the sacred waters; but at Muni-ki-reti (which is in Tehri-Garhwal district, while the town of Rishikesh is in Dehra Dun district) there were only a few people by the river—a few pilgrims from Bengal, Andhra and Madras; disciples from Swami Sivananda’s Ashram; and a number of boys who work in the area.
Logs were always floating downstream, and boys would get across them, lying flat on their
stomachs and paddling the planks through the water. Two of the more daring youths paddled their logs right across the river, to the temples on the opposite bank. They were good swimmers, but had they been parted from their floats they would have been carried away by the current and quite possibly drowned.
We walked down to Rishikesh in the evening, and saw over a hundred sadhus emerging from an ashram where they were given their evening meal. In their saffron robes, they flooded the dusty road, talking animatedly amongst themselves. Many of them were young men, probably novices. One was a strapping youth of about twenty, a Hercules gracefully wearing the robe of renunciation.
They looked well-fed and contented. Most of them spoke a little English. What had brought them to Rishikesh, I wondered, to live as recluses and ascetics? Personal tragedy, the stress of modern city life, or the failure of material pursuits. . . Or did the career of a religious mendicant hold out profitable prospects? Later on I was told that some of the novitiates should really have been in prison. But perhaps the rigours of their monastic existence rid them of early criminal tendencies; and if that was so, then surely ashrams were better places for them than jails.
Little shacks lined the river banks and though few people bathed late in the evening, hundreds were beside the water. Offerings of flowers in little leaf boats went sailing downstream. They were lighted by wicks dipped in oil, and went bobbing up and down on the water, sometimes for a considerable distance, until they were upset by rocks or inquisitive fish. Kamal sent an offering downstream, and requested Mother Ganga to grant him success as an artist. His boat, though, did not go very far. It came between the legs of a bather, an enormous Amazonian woman, and disappeared beneath her.