by Ruskin Bond
‘He wouldn’t let me take you away.’
‘Because you were going to marry someone else.’
I break off; we have been over this before. I am not here as my father’s advocate, and the time for recrimination has passed.
And now it is raining outside, and the scent of wet earth comes through the open doors, overpowering the odour of medicines and disinfectants. The dark-eyed nurse comes in again and informs me that the doctor will soon be on his rounds. I can come again in the evening, or early morning before the operation.
‘Come in the evening,’ says my mother. ‘The others will be here then.’
‘I haven’t come to see the others.’
‘They are looking forward to seeing you.’ ‘They’ being my stepfather and half-brothers.
‘I’ll be seeing them in the morning.’
‘As you like . . .’
And then I am on the road again, standing on the pavement, on the fringe of a chaotic rush of traffic, in which it appears that every vehicle is doing its best to overtake its neighbour. The blare of horns can be heard in the corridors of the hospital, but everyone is conditioned to the noise and pays no attention to it. Rather, the sick and the dying are heartened by the thought that people are still well enough to feel reckless, indifferent to each other’s safety! In Delhi there is a feverish desire to be first in line, the first to get anything . . . This is probably because no one ever gets round to dealing with second-comers.
When I hail a scooter rickshaw and it stops a short distance away, someone elbows his way past me and gets in first. This epitomizes the philosophy and outlook of the Delhiwallah.
So I stand on the pavement waiting for another scooter, which doesn’t come. In Delhi, to be second in the race is to be last.
I walk all the way back to my small hotel, with a foreboding of having seen my mother for the last time.
A Guardian Angel
I can still picture the little Dilaram Bazaar as I first saw it twenty years ago. Hanging on the hem of Aunt Mariam’s sari, I had followed her along the sunlit length of the dusty road and up the wooden staircase to her rooms above the barber’s shop.
There were a number of children playing on the road and they all stared at me. They must have wondered what my dark, black-haired aunt was doing with a strange child who was fairer than most. She did not bother to explain my presence and it was several weeks before the bazaar people learned something of my origins.
Aunt Mariam, my mother’s younger sister, was at that time about thirty. She came from a family of Christian converts, originally Muslims of Rampur. My mother had married an Englishman who died while I was still a baby. She herself was not a strong woman and fought a losing battle with tuberculosis while bringing me up.
My sixth birthday was approaching when she died, in the middle of the night, without my being aware of it. And I woke up to experience, for a day, all the terrors of abandonment.
But that same evening Aunt Mariam arrived. Her warmth, worldliness and carefree chatter gave me the reassurance I needed so badly. She slept beside me that night and the next morning, after the funeral, took me with her to her rooms in the bazaar. This small flat was to be my home for the next year and a half.
Before my mother’s death I had seen very little of my aunt. From the remarks I occasionally overheard, it appeared that Aunt Mariam had, in some indefinable way, disgraced the family. My mother was cold towards her and I could not help wondering why, because a more friendly and cheerful extrovert than Aunt Mariam could hardly be encountered.
There were other relatives, but they did not come to my rescue with the same readiness. It was only later, when the financial issues became clearer, that innumerable uncles and aunts appeared on the scene.
The age of six is the beginning of an interesting period in the life of a boy, and the months I spent with Aunt Mariam are not difficult to recall. She was a joyous, bubbling creature—a force of nature rather than a woman—and every time I think of her, I am tempted to put down on paper some aspect of her conversation, or her gestures, or her magnificent physique.
She was a strong woman, taller than most men in the bazaar, but this did not detract from her charms. Her voice was warm and deep, her face was a happy one, broad and unlined, and her teeth gleamed white in the dark brilliance of her complexion.
She had large, soft breasts, long arms and broad thighs. She was majestic and at the same time graceful. Above all, she was warm and full of understanding, and it was this tenderness of hers that overcame resentment and jealousy in other women.
She called me ladla, her darling, and told me she had always wanted to look after me. She had never married. I did not, at that age, ponder on the reasons for her single state. At six I took all things for granted, and accepted Mariam for what she was—my benefactress and guardian angel.
Her rooms were untidy compared with the neatness of my mother’s house. Mariam revelled in untidiness. I soon grew accustomed to the topsy-turviness of her rooms and found them comfortable. Beds (hers a very large and soft one) were usually left unmade, while clothes lay draped over chairs and tables.
A large watercolour hung on a wall, but Mariam’s bodice and knickers were usually suspended from it, and I cannot recall the subject of the painting. The dressing table was a fascinating place, crowded with all kinds of lotions, mascaras, paints, oils and ointments.
Mariam would spend much time sitting in front of the mirror running a comb through her long black hair or preferably having young Mulia, a servant girl, comb it for her. Though a Christian, my aunt retained several Muslim superstitions, and never went into the open with her hair falling loose.
Once, Mulia came into the rooms with her own hair open. ‘You ought not to leave your hair open. Better knot it,’ said Aunt Mariam.
‘But I have not yet oiled it, Aunty,’ replied Mulia. ‘How can I put it up?’
‘You are too young to understand. There are Jinns—aerial spirits—who are easily attracted by long hair and pretty, black eyes like yours.’
‘Do Jinns visit human beings, Aunty?’
‘Learned people say so. Though I have never seen a Jinn myself, I have seen the effect they can have on one.’
‘Oh, do tell me about them,’ said Mulia.
‘Well, there was once a lovely girl like you who had a wealth of black hair,’ said Mariam. ‘Quite unaccountably she fell ill, and in spite of every attention and the best medicines she kept getting worse. She grew as thin as a whipping post, her beauty decayed, and all that remained of it till her dying day was her wonderful head of hair.’
It did not take me long to make friends in Dilaram Bazaar. At first I was an object of curiosity, and when I came down to play in the street, both women and children would examine me as though I was a strange marine creature.
‘How fair he is,’ observed Mulia.
‘And how black his aunt,’ commented the washerman’s wife, whose face was riddled with the marks of smallpox.
‘His skin is very smooth,’ pointed out Mulia, who took considerable pride in having been the first to see me at close quarters. She pinched my cheeks with obvious pleasure.
‘His hair and eyes are black,’ remarked Mulia’s ageing mother. ‘Is it true that his father was an Englishman?’
‘Mariam-bi says so,’ said Mulia. ‘She never lies.’
‘True,’ said the washerman’s wife. ‘Whatever her faults—and there are many—she has never been known to lie.’
My aunt’s other ‘faults’ were a deep mystery to me. Nor did anyone try to enlighten me about them.
Some nights she had me sleep with her, other nights (I often wondered why) she gave me a bed in an adjoining room, although I much preferred remaining with her—especially since, on cold January nights, she provided me with considerable warmth.
I would curl up into a ball just below her soft tummy. On the other side, behind her knees, slept Leila, an enchanting Siamese cat given to her by an American businessman, w
hose house she would sometimes visit. Every night, before I fell asleep, Mariam would kiss me, very softly, on my closed eyelids. I never fell asleep until I had received this phantom kiss.
At first, I resented the nocturnal visitors that Aunt Mariam frequently received. Their arrival meant that I had to sleep in the spare room with Leila. But when I found that these people were impermanent creatures, mere ships that passed in the night, I learned to put up with them.
I seldom saw those men, though occasionally I caught a glimpse of a beard or an expensive waistcoat or white pyjamas. They did not interest me very much, though I did have a vague idea that they provided Aunt Mariam with some sort of income, thus enabling her to look after me.
Once, when one particular visitor was very drunk, Mariam had to force him out of the flat. I glimpsed this episode through a crack in the door. The man was big but no match for Aunt Mariam.
She thrust him out on to the landing, and then he lost his footing and went tumbling downstairs. No damage was done and the man called on Mariam again a few days later, very sober and contrite, and was readmitted to my aunt’s favours.
Aunt Mariam must have begun to worry about the effect these comings and goings might have on me, because after a few months, she began to make arrangements for sending me to a boarding school in the hills.
I had not the slightest desire to go to school, and raised many objections. We had long arguments in which she tried vainly to impress upon me the desirability of receiving an education.
‘To make a living, my Ladla,’ she said, ‘you must have an education.’
‘But you have no education,’ I said, ‘and you have no difficulty in making a living!’
Mariam threw up her arms in mock despair. ‘Ten years from now, I will not be able to make such a living. Then who will support and help me? An illiterate young fellow or an educated gentleman? When I am old, my son, when I am old . . .’
Finally, I succumbed to her arguments and agreed to go to a boarding school. And when the time came for me to leave, both Aunt Mariam and I broke down and wept at the railway station.
I hung out of the window as the train moved away from the platform, and saw Mariam, her bosom heaving, being helped from the platform by Mulia and some of our neighbours.
My incarceration in a boarding school was made more unbearable by the absence of any letters from Aunt Mariam. She could write little more than her name.
I was looking forward to my winter holidays and my return to Aunt Mariam and Dilaram Bazaar, but this was not to be. During my absence, there had been some litigation over my custody, and my father’s relatives claimed that Aunt Mariam was not a fit person to be a child’s guardian.
And so when I left school, it was not to Aunt Mariam’s place that I was sent, but to a strange family living in a railway colony near Moradabad. I remained with these relatives until I finished school. But that is a different story.
I did not see Aunt Mariam again. Dilaram Bazaar and my beautiful aunt and the Siamese cat all became part of the receding world of my childhood.
I would often think of Mariam, but as time passed, she became more remote and inaccessible in my memory. It was not until many years later, when I was a young man, that I visited Dilaram Bazaar again. I knew from my foster parents that Aunt Mariam was dead. Her heart, it seemed, had always been weak.
I was anxious to see Dilaram Bazaar and its residents again, but my visit was a disappointment. The place had disappeared. Or rather, it had been swallowed up by a growing city.
It was lost in the complex of a much larger market, which had sprung up to serve a new govermnent colony. The older people had died, and the young ones had gone to colleges or factories or offices in different towns. Aunt Mariam’s rooms had been pulled down.
I found her grave in the little cemetery on the town’s outskirts. One of her more devoted admirers had provided a handsome gravestone surmounted by a sculptured angel. One of the wings had broken off and the face was chipped, which gave the angel a slightly crooked smile.
But in spite of the broken wing and the smile, it was a very ordinary stone angel and could not hold a candle to my Aunt Mariam, the very special guardian angel of my childhood.
Love Is a Sad Song
I sit against this grey rock, beneath a sky of pristine blueness, and think of you, Sushila. It is November and the grass is turning brown and yellow. Crushed, it still smells sweet. The afternoon sun shimmers on the oak leaves and turns them a glittering silver. A cricket sizzles its way through the long grass. The stream murmurs at the bottom of the hill—that stream where you and I lingered on a golden afternoon in May.
I sit here and think of you and try to see your slim brown hand resting against this rock, feeling its warmth. I am aware again of the texture of your skin, the coolness of your feet, the sharp tingle of your fingertips. And in the pastures of my mind I run my hand over your quivering mouth and crush your tender breasts. Remembered passion grows sweeter with the passing of time.
You will not be thinking of me now, as you sit in your home in the city, cooking or sewing or trying to study for examinations. There will be men and women and children circling about you, in that crowded house of your grandmother’s, and you will not be able to think of me for more than a moment or two. But I know you do think of me sometimes, in some private moment which cuts you off from the crowd. You will remember how I wondered what it is all about, this loving, and why it should cause such an upheaval. You are still a child, Sushila—and yet you found it so easy to quieten my impatient heart.
On the night you came to stay with us, the light from the street lamp shone through the branches of the peach tree and made leaf patterns on the walls. Through the glass panes of the front door I caught a glimpse of little Sunil’s face, bright and questing, and then—a hand—a dark, long-fingered hand that could only have belonged to you.
It was almost a year since I had seen you, my dark and slender girl. And now you were in your sixteenth year. And Sunil was twelve; and your uncle, Dinesh, who lived with me, was twenty-three. And I was almost thirty—a fearful and wonderful age, when life becomes dangerous for dreamers.
I remember that when I left Delhi last year, you cried. At first I thought it was because I was going away. Then I realized that it was because you could not go anywhere yourself. Did you envy my freedom—the freedom to live in a poverty of my own choosing, the freedom of the writer? Sunil, to my surprise, did not show much emotion at my going away. This hurt me a little, because during that year he had been particularly close to me, and I felt for him a very special love. But separations cannot be of any significance to small boys of twelve who live for today, tomorrow, and—if they are very serious—the day after.
Before I went away with Dinesh, you made us garlands of marigolds. They were orange and gold, fresh and clean and kissed by the sun. You garlanded me as I sat talking to Sunil. I remember you both as you both looked that day—Sunil’s smile dimpling his cheeks, while you gazed at me very seriously, your expression very tender. I loved you even then . . .
Our first picnic.
The path to the little stream took us through the oak forest, where the flashy blue magpies played follow-my-leader with their harsh, creaky calls. Skirting an open ridge (the place where I now sit and write), the path dipped through oak, rhododendron and maple, until it reached a little knoll above the stream. It was a spot unknown to the tourists and summer visitors. Sometimes a milkman or woodcutter crossed the stream on the way to town or village but no one lived beside it. Wild roses grew on the banks.
I do not remember much of that picnic. There was a lot of dull conversation with our neighbours, the Kapoors, who had come along too. You and Sunil were rather bored. Dinesh looked preoccupied. He was fed up with college. He wanted to start earning a living: wanted to paint. His restlessness often made him moody, irritable.
Near the knoll the stream was too shallow for bathing, but I told Sunil about a cave and a pool further downstream and prom
ised that we would visit the pool another day.
That same night, after dinner, we took a walk along the dark road that goes past the house and leads to the burning ghat. Sunil, who had already sensed the intimacy between us, took my hand and put it in yours. An odd, touching little gesture!
‘Tell us a story,’ you said.
‘Yes, tell us,’ said Sunil.
I told you the story of the pure in heart. A shepherd boy found a snake in the forest and the snake told the boy that it was really a princess who had been bewitched and turned into a snake, and that it could only recover its human form if someone who was truly pure in heart gave it three kisses on the mouth. The boy put his lips to the mouth of the snake and kissed it thrice. And the snake was transformed into a beautiful princess. But the boy lay cold and dead.
‘You always tell sad stories,’ complained Sunil.
‘I like sad stories,’ you said. ‘Tell us another.’
‘Tomorrow night. I’m sleepy.’
We were woken in the night by a strong wind which went whistling round the old house and came rushing down the chimney, humming and hawing and finally choking itself.
Sunil woke up and cried out, ‘What’s that noise, Uncle?’
‘Only the wind,’ I said.
‘Not a ghost?’
‘Well, perhaps the wind is made up of ghosts. Perhaps this wind contains the ghosts of all the people who have lived and died in this old house and want to come in again from the cold.’
You told me about a boy who had been fond of you in Delhi. Apparently he had visited the house on a few occasions, and had sometimes met you on the street while you were on your way home from school. At first, he had been fond of another girl but later he switched his affections to you. When you told me that he had written to you recently, and that before coming up you had replied to his letter, I was consumed by jealousy—an emotion which I thought I had grown out of long ago. It did not help to be told that you were not serious about the boy, that you were sorry for him because he had already been disappointed in love.