by Ruskin Bond
In recent years, after leaving Delhi and making my home in the hills, I have passed through the town less often, but the flowers have always been there, bright and glowing in their increasingly shabby surroundings. Except on this last journey of mine . . .
And on the return trip, only yesterday, I looked again, but the house was empty and desolate. I got out of the car and looked up at the balcony and called Kamla’s name—called it after so many years—but there was no answer.
I asked questions in the locality. The old man had died, his wife had gone away, probably to her village. There had been no children. Would she return? No one could say. The house had been sold. It would be pulled down to make way for a block of flats.
I glanced once more at the deserted balcony, the withered, drooping plants. A butterfly flitted about the railing, looking in vain for a flower on which to alight. It settled briefly on my hand before opening its wings and fluttering away into the blue.
THE BEGINNING
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This collection published 1996
Copyright © Ruskin Bond 1996, 1999, 2009, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Ahlawat Gunjan
ISBN: 978-0-143-42655-4
This digital edition published in 2016.
e-ISBN: 978-9-386-05704-4
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.