Collected Short Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  It was a tall, sturdy tree, the Indian mahogany. It was a safe place, for there was no rush of water in the forest and the trees grew close together, making the earth firm and unyielding.

  But those who lived in the forest were on the move. The animals had been flooded out of their homes, caves and lairs, and were looking for shelter and high ground.

  Sita and Vijay had just finished tying the boat to the tree, when they saw a huge python gliding over the water towards them.

  ‘Do you think it will try to get into the boat?’ asked Sita.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Vijay, although he took the precaution of holding an oar ready to fend off the snake.

  But the python went past them, its head above water, its great length trailing behind, until it was lost in the shadows.

  Vijay had more mangoes in the basket, and he and Sita sucked hungrily on them while they sat in the boat.

  A big sambhar stag came threshing through the water. He did not have to swim. He was so tall that his head and shoulders remained well above the water. His antlers were big and beautiful.

  ‘There will be other animals,’ said Sita. ‘Should we climb on to the tree?’

  ‘We are quite safe in the boat,’ said Vijay. ‘The animals will not be dangerous tonight. They will not even hunt each other. They are only interested in reaching dry land. For once, the deer are safe from the tiger and the leopard. You lie down and sleep. I will keep watch.’

  Sita stretched herself out in the boat and closed her eyes. She was very tired and the sound of the water lapping against the side of the boat soon lulled her to sleep.

  She woke once, when a strange bird called overhead. She raised herself on one elbow but Vijay was awake, sitting beside her, his legs drawn up and his chin resting on his knees. He was gazing out across the water. He looked blue in the moonlight, the colour of the young God Krishna, and for a few moments Sita was confused and wondered if the boy was actually Krishna. But when she thought about it, she decided that it wasn’t possible; he was just a village boy and she had seen hundreds like him—well, not exactly like him, he was a little different . . .

  And when she slept again, she dreamt that the boy and Krishna were one, and that she was sitting beside him on a great white bird, which flew over the mountains, over the snow peaks of the Himalayas, into the cloud-land of the gods. And there was a great rumbling sound, as though the gods were angry about the whole thing, and she woke up to this terrible sound and looked about her, and there in the moonlit glade, up to his belly in water, stood a young elephant, his trunk raised as he trumpeted his predicament to the forest—for he was a young elephant, and he was lost, and was looking for his mother.

  He trumpeted again, then lowered his head and listened. And presently, from far away, came the shrill trumpeting of another elephant. It must have been the young one’s mother, because he gave several excited trumpet calls, and then went stamping and churning through the water towards a gap in the trees. The boat rocked in the waves made by his passing.

  ‘It is all right,’ said Vijay. ‘You can go to sleep again.’

  ‘I don’t think I will sleep now,’ said Sita.

  ‘Then I will play my flute for you and the time will pass quickly.’

  He produced a flute from under the seat and putting it to his lips began to play. And the sweetest music that Sita had ever heard came pouring from the little flute, and it seemed to fill the forest with its beautiful sound. And the music carried her away again, into the land of dreams, and they were riding on the bird once more, Sita and the blue god. And they were passing through cloud and mist, until suddenly the sun shot through the clouds. And at that moment Sita opened her eyes and saw the sky through the branches of the mahogany tree, the shiny green leaves making a bold pattern against the blinding blue of an open sky.

  The forest was drenched with sunshine. Clouds were gathering again, but for an hour or so there would be hot sun on a steamy river.

  Vijay was fast asleep in the bottom of the boat. His flute lay in the palm of his half-open hand. The sun came slanting across his bare brown legs. A leaf had fallen on his face, but it had not woken him. It lay on his cheek as though it had grown there.

  Sita did not move about as she did not want to wake the boy. Instead she looked around her, and she thought the water level had fallen in the night, but she couldn’t be sure.

  Vijay woke at last. He yawned, stretched his limbs and sat up beside Sita.

  ‘I am hungry,’ he said.

  ‘So am I,’ said Sita.

  ‘The last mangoes,’ he said, emptying the basket of its last two mangoes.

  After they had finished the fruit, they sucked the big seeds until they were quite dry. The discarded seeds floated well on the water. Sita had always preferred them to paper boats.

  ‘We had better move on,’ said Vijay.

  He rowed the boat through the trees, and then for about an hour they were passing through the flooded forest, under the dripping branches of rain-washed trees. Sometimes, they had to use the oars to push away vines and creepers. Sometimes, submerged bushes hampered them. But they were out of the forest before ten o’clock.

  The water was no longer very deep and they were soon gliding over flooded fields. In the distance they saw a village standing on high ground. In the old days, people had built their villages on hill tops as a better defence against bandits and the soldiers of invading armies. This was an old village, and though its inhabitants had long ago exchanged their swords for pruning forks, the hill on which it stood gave it protection from the flood waters.

  A Bullock Cart Ride

  The people of the village were at first reluctant to help Sita and Vijay.

  ‘They are strangers,’ said an old woman. ‘They are not of our people.’

  ‘They are of low caste,’ said another. ‘They cannot remain with us.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said a tall, turbaned farmer, twirling his long, white moustache. ‘They are children, not robbers. They will come into my house.’

  The people of the village—long-limbed, sturdy men and women of the Jat race—were generous by nature, and once the elderly farmer had given them the lead they were friendly and helpful.

  Sita was anxious to get to her grandparents, and the farmer, who had business to transact at a village fair some twenty miles distant, offered to take Sita and Vijay with him.

  The fair was being held at a place called Karauli, and at Karauli there was a railway station from which a train went to Shahganj.

  It was a journey that Sita would always remember. The bullock cart was so slow on the waterlogged roads that there was plenty of time in which to see things, to notice one another, to talk, to think, to dream.

  Vijay couldn’t sit still in the cart. He was used to the swift, gliding movements of his boat (which he had had to leave behind in the village), and every now and then he would jump off the cart and walk beside it, often ankle-deep in water.

  There were four of them in the cart. Sita and Vijay, Hukam Singh, the Jat farmer and his son, Phambiri, a mountain of a man who was going to take part in the wrestling matches at the fair.

  Hukam Singh, who drove the bullocks, liked to talk. He had been a soldier in the British Indian army during the First World War, and had been with his regiment to Italy and Mesopotamia.

  ‘There is nothing to compare with soldiering,’ he said, ‘except, of course, farming. If you can’t be a farmer, be a soldier. Are you listening, boy? Which will you be—farmer or soldier?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Vijay. ‘I shall be an engineer!’

  Hukam Singh’s long moustache seemed almost to bristle with indignation.

  ‘An engineer! What next! What does your father do, boy?’

  ‘He keeps buffaloes.’

  ‘Ah! And his son would be an engineer? . . . Well, well, the world isn’t what it used to be! No one knows his rightful place any more. Men send their children to schools and what is the result? Engineers! And who will l
ook after the buffaloes while you are engineering?’

  ‘I will sell the buffaloes,’ said Vijay, adding rather cheekily, ‘Perhaps you will buy one of them, Subedar Sahib!’

  He took the cheek out of his remark by adding ‘Subedar Sahib’, the rank of a non-commissioned officer in the old army. Hukam Singh, who had never reached this rank, was naturally flattered.

  ‘Fortunately, Phambiri hasn’t been to school. He’ll be a farmer and a fine one, too.’

  Phambiri simply grunted, which could have meant anything. He hadn’t studied further than class 6, which was just as well, as he was a man of muscle, not brain.

  Phambiri loved putting his strength to some practical and useful purpose. Whenever the cart wheels got stuck in the mud, he would get off, remove his shirt and put his shoulder to the side of the cart, while his muscles bulged and the sweat glistened on his broad back.

  ‘Phambiri is the strongest man in our district,’ said Hukam Singh proudly. ‘And clever, too! It takes quick thinking to win a wrestling match.’

  ‘I have never seen one,’ said Sita.

  ‘Then stay with us tomorrow morning, and you will see Phambiri wrestle. He has been challenged by the Karauli champion. It will be a great fight!’

  ‘We must see Phambiri win,’ said Vijay.

  ‘Will there be time?’ asked Sita.

  ‘Why not? The train for Shahganj won’t come in till evening. The fair goes on all day and the wrestling bouts will take place in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, you must see me win!’ exclaimed Phambiri, thumping himself on the chest as he climbed back on to the cart after freeing the wheels. ‘No one can defeat me!’

  ‘How can you be so certain?’ asked Vijay.

  ‘He has to be certain,’ said Hukam Singh. ‘I have taught him to be certain! You can’t win anything if you are uncertain . . . Isn’t that right, Phambiri? You know you are going to win!’

  ‘I know,’ said Phambiri with a grunt of confidence.

  ‘Well, someone has to lose,’ said Vijay.

  ‘Very true,’ said Hukam Singh smugly. ‘After all, what would we do without losers? But for Phambiri, it is win, win, all the time!’

  ‘And if he loses?’ persisted Vijay.

  ‘Then he will just forget that it happened and will go on to win his next fight!’

  Vijay found Hukam Singh’s logic almost unanswerable, but Sita, who had been puzzled by the argument, now saw everything very clearly and said, ‘Perhaps he hasn’t won any fights as yet. Did he lose the last one?’

  ‘Hush!’ said Hukam Singh looking alarmed. ‘You must not let him remember. You do not remember losing a fight, do you, my son?’

  ‘I have never lost a fight,’ said Phambiri with great simplicity and confidence.

  ‘How strange,’ said Sita. ‘If you lose, how can you win?’

  ‘Only a soldier can explain that,’ said Hukam Singh. ‘For a man who fights, there is no such thing as defeat. You fought against the river, did you not?’

  ‘I went with the river,’ said Sita. ‘I went where it took me.’

  ‘Yes, and you would have gone to the bottom if the boy had not come along to help you. He fought the river, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he fought the river,’ said Sita.

  ‘You helped me to fight it,’ said Vijay.

  ‘So you both fought,’ said the old man with a nod of satisfaction. ‘You did not go with the river. You did not leave everything to the gods.’

  ‘The gods were with us,’ said Sita.

  And so they talked, while the bullock cart trundled along the muddy village roads. Both bullocks were white, and were decked out for the fair with coloured bead necklaces and bells hanging from their necks. They were patient, docile beasts. But the cartwheels which were badly in need of oiling, protested loudly, creaking and groaning as though all the demons in the world had been trapped within them.

  Sita noticed a number of birds in the paddy fields. There were black-and-white curlews and cranes with pink coat-tails. A good monsoon means plenty of birds. But Hukam Singh was not happy about the cranes.

  ‘They do great damage in the wheat fields,’ he said. Lighting up a small, hand-held hookah pipe, he puffed at it and became philosophical again: ‘Life is one long struggle for the farmer. When he has overcome the drought, survived the flood, hunted off the pig, killed the crane and reaped the crop, then comes that blood-sucking ghoul, the moneylender. There is no escaping him! Is your father in debt to a moneylender, boy?’

  ‘No,’ said Vijay.

  ‘That is because he doesn’t have daughters who must be married! I have two. As they resemble Phambiri, they will need generous dowries.’

  In spite of his grumbling, Hukam Singh seemed fairly content with his lot. He’d had a good maize crop, and the front of his cart was piled high with corn. He would sell the crop at the fair, along with some cucumbers, eggplants and melons.

  The bad road had slowed them down so much that when darkness came, they were still far from Karauli. In India there is hardly any twilight. Within a short time of the sun’s going down, the stars come out.

  ‘Six miles to go,’ said Hukam Singh. ‘In the dark our wheels may get stuck again. Let us spend the night here. If it rains, we can pull an old tarpaulin over the cart.’

  Vijay made a fire in the charcoal burner which Hukam Singh had brought along, and they had a simple meal, roasting the corn over the fire and flavouring it with salt and spices and a squeeze of lemon. There was some milk, but not enough for everyone because Phambiri drank three tumblers by himself.

  ‘If I win tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I will give all of you a feast!’ They settled down to sleep in the bullock cart, and Phambiri and his father were soon snoring. Vijay lay awake, his arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the stars. Sita was very tired but she couldn’t sleep. She was worrying about her grandparents and wondering when she would see them again.

  The night was full of sounds. The loud snoring that came from Phambiri and his father seemed to be taken up by invisible sleepers all around them, and Sita, becoming alarmed, turned to Vijay and asked, ‘What is that strange noise?’

  He smiled in the darkness, and she could see his white teeth and the glint of laughter in his eyes.

  ‘Only the spirits of lost demons,’ he said, and then laughed. ‘Can’t you recognize the music of the frogs?’

  And that was what they heard—a sound more hideous than the wail of demons, a rising crescendo of noise—wurrk, wurrk, wurrk—coming from the flooded ditches on either side of the road. All the frogs in the jungle seemed to have gathered at that one spot, and each one appeared to have something to say for himself. The speeches continued for about an hour. Then the meeting broke up and silence returned to the forest.

  A jackal slunk across the road. A puff of wind brushed through the trees. The bullocks, freed from the cart, were asleep beside it. The men’s snores were softer now. Vijay slept, a half-smile on his face. Only Sita lay awake, worried and waiting for the dawn.

  At the Fair

  Already, at nine o’clock, the fairground was crowded. Cattle were being sold or auctioned. Stalls had opened, selling everything from pins to ploughs. Foodstuffs were on sale—hot food, spicy food, sweets and ices. A merry-go-round, badly oiled, was squeaking and groaning, while a loudspeaker blared popular film music across the grounds.

  While Phambiri was preparing for his wrestling match, Hukam Singh was busy haggling over the price of pumpkins. Sita and Vijay wandered on their own among the stalls, gazing at toys and kites and bangles and clothing, at brightly coloured, syrupy sweets. Some of the rural people had transistor radios dangling by straps from their shoulders, the radio music competing with the loudspeaker. Occasionally a buffalo bellowed, drowning all other sounds.

  Various people were engaged in roadside professions. There was the fortune teller. He had slips of paper, each of them covered with writing, which he kept in little trays along with some grain. He had a tame sparrow. W
hen you gave the fortune teller your money, he allowed the little bird to hop in and out among the trays until it stopped at one and started pecking at the grain. From this tray the fortune teller took the slip of paper and presented it to his client. The writing told you what to expect over the next few months or years.

  A harassed, middle-aged man, who was surrounded by six noisy sons and daughters, was looking a little concerned, because his slip of paper said: ‘Do not lose hope. You will have a child soon.’

  Some distance away sat a barber, and near him a professional ear cleaner. Several children clustered around a peepshow, which was built into an old gramophone cabinet. While one man wound up the gramophone and placed a well-worn record on the turntable, his partner pushed coloured pictures through a slide viewer.

  A young man walked energetically up and down the fairground, beating a drum and announcing the day’s attractions. The wrestling bouts were about to start. The main attraction was going to be the fight between Phambiri, described as a man ‘whose thighs had the thickness of an elephant’s trunk’, and the local champion, Sher Dil (tiger’s heart)—a wild-looking man, with hairy chest and beetling brow. He was heavier than Phambiri but not so tall.

  Sita and Vijay joined Hukam Singh at one corner of the akhara, the wrestling pit. Hukam Singh was massaging his son’s famous thighs.

  A gong sounded and Sher Dil entered the ring, slapping himself on the chest and grunting like a wild boar. Phambiri advanced slowly to meet him.

  They came to grips immediately, and stood swaying from side to side, two giants pitting their strength against each other. The sweat glistened on their well-oiled bodies.

  Sher Dil got his arms round Phambiri’s waist and tried to lift him off his feet, but Phambiri had twined one powerful leg around his opponent’s thigh, and they both came down together with a loud squelch, churning up the soft mud of the wrestling pit. But neither wrestler had been pinned down.

  Soon they were so covered with mud that it was difficult to distinguish one from the other. There was a flurry of arms and legs. The crowd was cheering and Sita and Vijay were cheering too, but the wrestlers were too absorbed in their struggle to be aware of their supporters. Each sought to turn the other on to his back. That was all that mattered. There was no count.