by Ruskin Bond
It now occurred to us that some of the other paintings in the godown would benefit from Mukesh’s methods. There was one in particular that I strongly resented. It showed a woman in a reclining posture; she had a very small head but very long legs. I have never known a woman with such long legs. One of them could have been substituted for the neck of a giraffe. Don’t artists keep mistresses any more? Or perhaps the artist’s model had been a churel, able to elongate her arms and legs at will.
Mukesh and I scraped off the dirt and set about restoring the painting. He shortened the woman’s legs to the acceptable length, and gave her an Afro hairstyle to correct the proportions of her head. Her sari, a dirty white, was changed to petunia-pink, and an empty window was brightened up by the introduction of a bright green parrot.
This masterpiece also went up on the sitting room wall.
Here it was soon joined by several others, now much more colourful and in tune with the natural world. Casual visitors (one of them an art critic) went into raptures over some of the paintings.
And then, last week, who should walk into our flat but ‘Matisse’ himself, the creator and only begetter of the lady with the serpentine legs.
I was hoping he wouldn’t recognize his old painting, but Mukesh had forgotten to remove the original signature. ‘Matisse’ looked at it once, he looked at it a second time. At the third inspection he resembled a Pekinese whose eyeballs have parted from their sockets.
He barged out of the sitting room, tumbled down the stairs, and went rushing down the road telling everyone he met that I was the most treacherous person on earth. Mukesh later saw him at Dr Bisht’s clinic, having his blood pressure checked.
Since then he has been seen to come out of bookshops, arms laden with copies of my books, which he proceeds to tear apart and stamp on in the street. At least my sales are going up.
The Box Man
Sitting outside my cottage, in the summer shade of an old plum tree, I can see a path leading through the deodars towards the next tree-darkened mountain. On this morning, I saw an old man coming down the path, walking very slowly, carrying a small tin trunk on his head.
He stopped at the gate and asked me if I would buy something. I could think of nothing I wanted, but the old man looked so tired, so very old, that I thought he would collapse if he moved any further along the path without resting. So I asked him to step in and show me his wares. He had a snow-white beard, crinkled brown skin, and bright intelligent eyes. He was thin and bandy-legged and wore a patched, black waistcoat.
He couldn’t get the box off his head by himself, but together we managed to set it down in the shade and the old man insisted on spreading the entire contents out on the grass: bangles, combs, shoe-laces, safety-pins, cheap stationery, buttons, pomades, elastic, and scores of other minor household necessities.
When I refused buttons because there was no one to sew them on for me, he plied me with safety-pins. I said no; but, as he moved from article to article, his querulous, persuasive voice slowly broke down my sales resistance, and I ended up buying envelopes, a letter-pad (pink roses on bright blue paper), a one-rupee fountain-pen, and several yards of elastic. I had no idea what I would use the elastic for, but the old man convinced me that I could no longer live without it.
He then produced a small plastic glass from his waistcoat pocket, and I thought it was another item for sale. But he only wanted a drink of water. I readily brought him some. He drank the water slowly, then leant back against the trunk of the plum tree, making no effort to pack his things. He closed his eyes. I had a suden panicky feeling that he would die in my garden!
‘I am very tired, hazoor,’ he said. ‘Please do not mind if I rest here for a while.’ ‘Rest for as long as you like,’ I said. ‘That’s a heavy load to carry on a hot day.’ He opened his eyes at the chance of a conversation and said, ‘When I was a young man, it was nothing. I could cary my box up from Rajpur to Mussoorie by the bridle-path—seven steep miles! But now I find it difficult to cover even one mile from the bazar to the Mall.’
‘Naturally, you are old.’ ‘Seventy years old, sahib.’ ‘You are very fit for your age. You do not look more than sixty-five.’ Though he was frail, he had a wiry frame and his skin still had a healthy colour. ‘Don’t you have anyone to help you?’ I asked.
‘I had a boy last month, but he stole my earnings and ran off to Dilli. I wish my son was alive—he would not have permitted me to work like a mule for a living. But he died five years ago, of a cough.’ By a ‘cough’, I presume, he meant tuberculosis. ‘Have you no relatives, then?’ ‘None. I have outlived them all. That is the curse of a healthy life. Your friends, your loved ones, all go before you and at the end you are left alone. But I must go too, before long. The road seems more difficult each day. I feel as though it has added a mile to its length. The stones are harder. The sun is hotter. Even some of the trees that were here in my youth have grown old and died. I have outlived the trees.’
He had outlived the trees. And I was certain that if he fell asleep in my garden he would strike root there, sending out crooked branches. I could imagine a small bent tree with a black waistcoat. He closed his eyes again, but kept on talking.
‘Yes, there were times when the memsahibs bought great quantities of elastic. Today it is ribbons and bangles for the girls, and combs for the boys. But I do not make so much. Not because people do not buy from me, but because I cannot walk as far. How many houses do I reach in a day? Ten, fifteen. But twenty years ago I could walk to fifty houses. That makes a difference.’
‘Have you always been here?’
‘Most of my life, hazoor. Except when I went to Najibabad to get married. I was here before they built the motor road, when gentlemen came up on ponies, and their women in dandies borne by coolies. I was cinemas I was here when the Prince of Welles came from across the sea. And I was here during the earthquake—when that was, I cannot remember exactly, I was only a boy—but the hills shook and many houses fell. Oh, I have been here a long time, hazoor. I was here when this house was built. Fifty, sixty years ago, it must have been. I cannot remember exactly. What is ten years when you have lived seventy? It was a Major Sahib who built your house. I remember, because he did not live in it for long. He was thrown from his horse one day, and was killed. Then came—I forget the name—and his wife and children. Beautiful children. But they went away many years ago. Everyone has gone away.’
‘But others have come,’ I said. ‘True, and that is as it should be. That is not my complaint. My complaint is that I have been left behind.’ He produced his little glass again. ‘I am sorry, hazoor, but talking has made me thirsty.’
I took the glass and went indoors to fill it. By the time I returned to the garden the old man had miraculously put away all his odds and ends. He stood over his old blue tin box, gazing down at it with a mixture of disdain and affection.
I helped him lift it, and placed it on the flattened cloth on his head. I opened the gate, and the box man tottered out. He did not have the energy to turn and make a salutation of any kind; but, setting his sights on the mountain ahead, he walked up the path with steps that were shaky and slow but wonderfully straight.
I watched him until he was far along the path. I wondered how long he could last. Perhaps a year or two, perhaps a day, pehaps an hour. But whenever or however he died, it wouldn’t be death. He was too old to die. He could only sleep. He could only fall gently, like an old brown leaf.
Ghosts of the Savoy
The clock over the Savoy Bar is stationary at 8.20 and has been like that since the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima fifty years ago. That’s what Nandu tells me, and I have no reason to disbelieve him. Many of his more outlandish statements often turn out to be true.
Almost any story about this old hotel in Mussoorie has a touch of the improbable about it, even when supported by facts. A previous owner, Mr McClintock, had a false nose—according to Nandu, who never saw it. So I checked with old Negi, who first ca
me to work in the hotel as a room boy back in 1932 (a couple of years before I was born) and who, sixty years and two wives later, looks after the front office. Negi tells me it’s quite true.
‘I used to take McClintock sahib his cup of cocoa last thing at night. After leaving his room I’d dash around to one of the windows and watch him until he went to bed. The last thing he did, before putting the light out, was to remove his false nose and place it on the bedside table. He never slept with it on. I suppose it bothered him whenever he turned over or slept on his face. First thing in the morning, before having his cup of tea, he’d put it on again. A great man, McClintock sahib.’
‘But how did he lose his nose in the first place?’ I asked.
‘Wife bit it off,’ said Nandu.
‘No, sir,’ said Negi, whose reputation for telling the truth is proverbial. ‘It was shot away by a German bullet during World War I. He got the Victoria Cross as compensation.’
‘And when he died, was he wearing his nose?’ I asked.
‘No, sir,’ said old Negi, continuing his tale with some relish. ‘One morning when I took the sahib his cup of tea, I found him stone dead, without his nose! It was lying on the bedside table. I suppose I should have left it there, but McClintock sahib was a good man, I could not bear to have the whole world knowing about his false nose. So I stuck it back on his face and then went and informed the manager. A natural death, just a sudden heart attack. But I made sure that he went into his coffin with his nose attached!’
We all agreed that Negi was a good man to have around, especially in a crisis.
Mr McClintock’s ghost is supposed to haunt the corridors of the hotel, but I have yet to encounter it. Will the ghost be wearing its nose? Old Negi thinks not (the false nose being man-made), but then he hasn’t seen the ghost at close quarters, only receding into the distance between the two giant deodars on the edge of the Beer Garden. Those deodars have been there a couple of hundred years—before the hotel was built, before the hill station came up.
* * *
A lot of people who enter the Bar look pretty far gone, and sometimes I have difficulty distinguishing the living from the dead. But the real ghosts are those who manage to slip away without paying for their drinks.
I don’t have to slip away. In the five or six years during which I have helped to prop up the Savoy Bar, I have seldom paid for a drink. That’s the kind of friend I have in Nandu. You won’t find a harsh word about him in these pages. I think he decided long ago that I was an adornment to the Bar, and that, draped over a bar stool, I looked like Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. (He won an Oscar for that, remember?)
As for the Man-from-Sail, who is usually parked on the next bar stool, he’s no adornment, in spite of the Jackie Shroff-moustache. But I have to admit that he’s skilful at pouring drinks, mixing cocktails and showing tipsy ladies to the powder room. He doesn’t pay for his drinks either.
How, then, does dear Nandu survive? Obviously there are some real customers in the wings, and we help them feel at home, chatting them up and encouraging them to try the Royal Salute or even a glass of Beaujolais. I can rattle off the history of the hotel for anyone who wants to hear it; and as for the Man-from-Sail, he provides a free ambulance service for those who can’t handle the hotel’s hospitality. The Man-from-Sail is the town’s number one blood donor, so if you come away from your transfusion with a bad hangover, you’ll know whose blood is coursing around in your veins. But it’s real Scotch, not the stuff they make at the bottom of the Sail mountain.
Nandu tells me that Pearl Buck, the Nobel laureate, stayed here for a few days in the early fifties. I looked up the hotel register and found that he was right as usual. As far as I know, Miss Buck did not record her impressions of the hotel or the town in any of her books. It’s the sort of place people usually have something to say about. Like the correspondent of the Melbourne Age who complained because the roof had blown off his room during one of our equinoxal storms. A frivolous sort of complaint, to say the least. Nandu placated him by saying, ‘Sir, in Delhi you can only get a five-star room. From your room here you can see all the stars!’ And so he could, once the clouds had rolled away.
It’s a windy sort of mountain, and in cyclonic storms our corrugated iron roofs are frequently blown away. Old Negi recalls that a portion of the Savoy roof once landed on the St George’s School flat, five miles away, at the height of the midsummer storm. In its flight it decapitated an early-morning fitness freak. Had anyone else told me the story, I wouldn’t have believed it. But Negi’s word is the real thing— as good as a sip of Johnie Walker Blue Label.
* * *
And here’s a limerick I wrote for Nandu and the Man-from-Sail:
There was a young man who could fix
Anything in five minutes or six;
His statue is found
On Savoy’s hallowed ground,
With Nandu beside him, transfix’d!
Bear in the Ballroom
The Old Savoy Bar has witnessed the passage of many famous celebrities—film stars, politicians, business tycoons, beauty queens—and sometimes they merge into one composite personality, vanity being the common factor. But the most unusual visitor was the brown Himalayan bear who wandered into the hotel after a heavy snowfall last January. During severe winters, when food is scarce, wild animals occasionally wander into the hill station—remember the leopard that carried off all the Landour strays a couple of years ago?
I was sitting on my favourite bar stool (the one that tilts slightly) waiting for the Man-from-Sail to walk in and sign for my drink, when I heard the swing-door open behind me. Without bothering to look around, I said, ‘Come on, old chap, you’re half an hour late this evening.’
All I got in response was a grunt. Now, the Man-from-Sail does snore (I have shared a railway compartment with him), but I have never known him to snore standing up.
‘In a bad mood?’ I asked, and knocking on the counter to attract the attention of the barman, said, ‘Get Sail sahib a whisky-and-soda.’ The barman came out from behind his cubby hole, looked over my shoulder, and let out a shrill cry, rather in the manner of a wounded stag.
I turned then, and saw the bear a few feet away, looking very hairy and threatening. Did I ever tell you that I was the 200-metres hurdles champion in my school days? Well, I can assure you that at sixty I’ve lost none of my speed or skill. I was over the bar counter like lightning, holding hands with the barman, a nice boy but not my type.
The bear was now separated from us by the high counter, and not being a high hurdler itself, began to vent its frustration by flinging bar stools all over the place. With great presence of mind the barman shook himself free of my embrace, picked up the house phone and rang the front office. Almost immediately he got Nandu on the line, and the conversation went something like this:
Prakash : ‘Sir, there’s a bear in the bar.’
Nandu: ‘Make sure you give him a bill.’
Prakash: ‘A bear, sir, not a customer.’
Nandu: ‘A bare customer? Did he have too much to drink?’
Prakash: ‘No, sir. Bear—big bhaloo, brown bear!’
Nandu: ‘Well, give Mr Bayer a drink and ask Mr Bond to look after him till I get there. He’s here to arrange a conference. Bayer and Bayer, you know. They’re into cosmetics. Very important customer.’ Nandu put the phone down and we were left to our own devices.
The bear had now discovered a decorated Christmas tree in a corner of the room and was proceeding to take it apart. Paper streamers, tinsel stars and imitation plastic holly were soon festooned over the rampant animal. While this mayhem was still in progress, Nandu and the Man-from-Sail entered at the swing-doors. Bravehearts both, they backed out again and ran for the security guard. It was the first time I’d seen the Man-from-Sail at a loss for words.
The security guard (a retired Havaldar from Meerut) carried a muzzle-loader which dated back to the Mutiny. He rushed into the room and fired at random, shatte
ring the glass of the clock that had been stationary ever since the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima. The hands now made rapid and seemingly endless revolutions, as though to make up for all the lost years when time stood still.
The bear rushed at the security guard, who left by the swing-doors and retreated to the conference room where Nandu and the Man-from-Sail were holding a council-of-war. Fortunately for Prakash and me, the bear was able to negotiate the doors, and finding the lobby deserted, made off down the corridor, stopping at the only occupied room on the ground floor. In residence was Miss Darshini Singh, an up-and-coming TV producer who was planning to film some of my plain tales from the hills.
Miss Darshini had only just arrived from Chennai, where she had been making a documentary on crocodiles. She was still wearing the Crocodile Dundee hat that had been presented to her by an elderly Australian tourist. After crocodiles, bear were small fry to her. When the Savoy bear thudded into the door of her room, she flung open the door, clapped her hands in delight, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, how cute! A real live bear! The Man-from-Sail must have arranged it. He really is enterprising. Now we can fix that scene in which the bear chases Ruskin Bond up a maple tree!’
Miss Darshini’s dog Rambo, an overfed golden retriever of considerable charm and no character, now rushed at the door, barking furiously. Bears are afraid of barking dogs; they don’t know what to make of them. The visiting bear turned and continued its journey down the corridors of the Savoy until it found the billiard room.
‘Oh, no, not my billiard cloth!’ cried Nandu in genuine distress. ‘It cost me a fortune! Made in Holland, 1922. Of course I’m not that old,’ he added, as an afterthought.