by Ruskin Bond
Ranji put his hand to one of the rails and felt its tremor. He heard the distant rumble of the train. And then the engine came round the bend, hissing at them, scattering sparks into the darkness, defying the jungle as it roared through the steep sides of the cutting. It charged straight into the tunnel, thundering past Ranji like the beautiful dragon of his dreams.
And when it had gone, the silence returned and the forest seemed to breathe, to live again. Only the rails still trembled with the passing of the train.
*
They trembled again to the passing of the same train, almost a week later, when Ranji and his father were both travelling in it.
Ranji’s father was scribbling in a notebook, doing his accounts. How boring of him, thought Ranji as he sat near an open window staring out at the darkness. His father was going to Delhi on a business trip and had decided to take the boy along.
‘It’s time you learnt something about the business,’ he had said, to Ranji’s dismay.
The Night Mail rushed through the forest with its hundreds of passengers. The carriage wheels beat out a steady rhythm on the rails. Tiny flickering lights came and went, as they passed small villages on the fringe of the jungle.
Ranji heard the rumble as the train passed over a small bridge. It was too dark to see the hut near the cutting, but he knew they must be approaching the tunnel. He strained his eyes looking out into the night; and then, just as the engine let out a shrill whistle, Ranji saw the lamp.
He couldn’t see Kishan Singh, but he saw the lamp, and he knew that his friend was out there.
The train went into the tunnel and out again, it left the jungle behind and thundered across the endless plains. And Ranji stared out at the darkness, thinking of the lonely cutting in the forest, and the watchman with the lamp who would always remain a fire-fly for those travelling thousands, as he lit up the darkness for steam-engines and leopards.
The Summer Season
It was in the spring that Visni presented himself at the Roxy cinema and asked for a job. He was fourteen. He had the light, soft-brown skin of the hill people, with black eyes and dark unruly hair. He had walked into the hill-station from his village, which lay over thirty miles away, behind two ranges of mountains. After his father’s death it had been decided that Visni should go into the town to find work, while his mother, sister, and two small brothers looked after their fields in Garhwal, scraping a scant living from the rocky soil.
The Roxy was the hill-station’s only cinema, and remained open for six months in the year, from April to October. During this period it did good business, for the town was crowded with tourists and holiday-makers who had come up from the plains to escape the heat. But during the winter months the town was deserted, the shops and restaurants would be closed, and if one walked a little way out of the town one was more likely to meet a bear than a human being.
When Visni came into town, after a day and a half’s walking, he was wearing a thin cotton shirt, short pants, and an old pair of tennis shoes. The days were warm and sunny, and this clothing was sufficient. In the bag he carried with him was a blanket, and in his shirt pocket he had six rupees, and that was all.
At first he had tried to get work in a tea-shop, but they didn’t need any more helpers. On his second day in town, after spending the night in a shed meant for rickshaw-pullers, he went to the cinema, where the proprietor of the cinema’s tea- stall engaged him. The proprietor was in need of a new boy, having just sacked the previous one for his general clumsiness. Visni’s job was to help prepare tea and samosas serve refreshments to the public during intervals in the film, and later wash up the plates and cups. His pay would be thirty rupees a
month—including as much free tea as he could drink. . . .
Visni went to work immediately, and it was not long before he was as well-versed in his duties as the other two tea-boys, Chitru and Ram Parshad. Chitru was a lazy good-for-nothing who always tried to place the brunt of his work on someone else’s shoulders; but he was generous, and had lent Visni five rupees during the first week. Ram Parshad, besides being a tea-boy, had the enviable job of being the poster-boy as well. (He was paid extra for this.) As the cinema was closed till three in the afternoon, Ram Parshad was engaged either in pushing the big poster-board around the town, or sticking posters on convenient walls. ‘It keeps the walls from falling down,’ he said. This suited him nicely, as he could go where he liked, visit friends, and stop in at restaurants for a smoke, a chat or a light meal.
Chitru had relatives in town and slept at their house. Both Visni and Ram Parshad were on their own, and had to sleep at the cinema. They were not provided with any accommodation. The hall was closed at night, after the last show, so it was not possible for them to settle down comfortably in the expensive seats, as they would have liked; they had to sleep in the open foyer, near the ticket office, where they were often at the mercy of icy Himalayan winds.
But Ram Parshad made things comfortable by setting his poster-board at an angle to the wall, which gave them a small alcove where they could sleep protected from the wind. As Visni and Ram Parshad had only one blanket each, and the nights were cold, they placed their blankets together and rolled themselves into a warm, round ball. Ram Parshad smoked innumerable bidis, and his breath, which held the aroma, was at first disconcerting to Visni; but Visni soon got used to this, as he got used to Ram Parshad’s many unhygienic habits, like bathing only once a month and using his finger to clean his teeth about once a week.
Every morning Visni scrubbed his teeth with a twig of neem, and soaped himself well at the public tap. Ram Parshad was pleased by the freshness of Visni’s body, and enjoyed watching him bathe, and sometimes even condescended to rub his friend’s body with mustard oil; but he was supremely indifferent to his own body—perhaps the dirt he accumulated
on it kept him warm on cold nights. That, at any rate, was the explanation he gave for his slovenliness. . . . Despite all this, Visni could not help liking Ram Parshad, for his good humour, unselfish nature, and even a little for his untidiness which made him attractive in an unattractive way.
The new pictures started their run on a Friday, and over the week-end large crowds would gather at the cinema, clamouring for tickets. There was quite a black market in tickets, as the first comers would buy up about two dozen and then sell them at higher prices to people who stood little chance of getting in. This would anger others in the crowd; people would start shouting and pushing and climbing over one another’s heads. Sometimes there would be a free-for-all, and if a lone policeman attempted to bring about order he might find himself at the bottom of a heap of struggling bodies. Visni was alarmed when he first saw this happen, but Ram Parshad assured him that it took place regularly every week-end, and that none of the hostility was directed at the boys. But in the hall itself, when Visni brought the tea around, some of the people (not confined to the cheaper seats) would be rude and disagreeable. When Visni spilt some tea over an aggressive college student’s shoes, he received a vicious kick on the shin. He complained to the tea- stall proprietor; but his employer said, ‘The customer is always right. You should have got out of the way in time!’
As he began to get used to the life and to the tempo of his work, Visni found himself taking an interest in his patrons. He feared the occupants of the cheaper seats, whose language was often free and uninhibited; he was timid and shy of the people in the balcony, and usually left them to Chitru; but he felt quite happy with the people in between, those who were neither very crude nor very sophisticated, though they certainly had peculiarities of their own.
There was, for instance, the large gentleman with the soup- strainer moustache, who drank his tea from the saucer. When he drank, his lips worked on the principle of a suction pump, and the tea, after some brief agitation in the saucer, would disappear in a matter of seconds. Visni often wondered if there was something lurking in the forests of that gentleman’s upper lip, something that would suddenly spring out and fall
upon him! The boys took great pleasure in exchanging anecdotes about
the eccentricities of some customers.
Visni had never seen such bright, painted women before. The girls in his village had been healthy and good-looking; but they did not smell and talk as mysteriously as these women who had come up from the plains for the summer season. Dressed in fine clothes, painted and perfumed, they chattered about inconsequentials of vast importance, and never gave Visni more than a brief, bored glance. Middle-aged women were more inclined to notice him, and favoured him with kind words and sometimes a small tip when he took away the cups. He found he could make a rupee or two every week in tips; and when he received his first month’s pay, he sent half of it home.
*
Visni never had a holiday, but in the mornings he was free, and then he would join other boys in flying kites from the top of the hill, or he would play football on the maidan. Football was great fun, especially during the monsoon rains, when the field became a bog, the football slippery and elusive. Then there was kabbadi, a vigorous game that called for strong legs and healthy lungs; and occasional dips in the cool stream that tumbled down the mountain into the valley. Whenever one of Visni’s playmates came to a picture, Visni would slip him a free cup of tea.
Soon he had an extensive knowledge of films and film-stars, and knew the lyrics of all the popular songs. Once he even managed to pinch a couple of photo-stills, and sold them to a well-to-do young student for five rupees.
And so, throughout the summer, life carried on more or less on the same even keel.
As the night show finished at about twelve, Visni would wake late in the morning. He would eat with Ram Parshad, cooking his own food, sharing the expenses. This was their only big meal; the rest was made up of snacks during the film-time, and innumerable cups of tea. The cinema did well throughout the summer, but when the monsoon rains set in, the town began to empty. A thick mist lay over the town for days on end. When the rains passed, and the mists cleared, an autumn wind came whispering through the pine trees. Visni couldn’t sleep so well,
as the cold crept through the blankets and into his bones.
At the end of September the manager of the Roxy gave everyone a week’s notice, a week’s pay, and announced that the cinema was closing for winter months.
Ram Parshad said, ‘I’m going down to the plains to find work. I shall come back next year. What about you, Visni, why don’t you come with me? It’s easier to find work in the plains.’
‘I’m going home,’ said Visni. ‘I don’t know if I’ll come back next season. I have land of my own. I think it is better to work on my own land, even if it is more difficult.’
‘I like the towns,’ said Ram Parshad. ‘I like the shops and people and lots of noise. I will never go back to my village again. There is no money to be made there.’
Ram Parshad made a bundle of his things and set out on foot for the railway terminus at the bottom of the hill. Chitru went to his relatives, to hibernate until the spring came. Visni rolled up his blanket, and with the money he had saved, bought himself a pair of chappals; his old shoes had worn away, compelling him to go barefoot for a month.
*
It snowed during his last night in town. He slept alone behind the poster-board, for Ram Parshad had gone. The wind blew the snow-flakes into the open foyer, and went whistling down the still, deserted streets. In the morning Visni opened his eyes on a world of dazzling white. The snow was piled high against the poster-board, obscuring most of the glamorous film actress who smiled emptily at the unresponsive mountains.
Visni went to a tea-shop, drank a glass of hot sweet tea, and ate two buns. Then he set out on his march home.
As his village lay further to the north, he went deeper into the snow. His feet were blue with the cold, and after some time he wasn’t conscious of having any feet at all. He trudged through the forests all day, stopping only at villages to take refreshment. By nightfall he was still ten miles from home. But he had fallen in with other travellers, mule-drivers mostly, and with them he found shelter in a small village. They built a fire and crowded round it, and each man spoke of his home, and someone sang,
and someone told a story of evil spirits and mysterious disappearances—happenings that were peculiar to that area. Visni felt at home with these strong, simple men, and fell asleep listening to their tales. In the morning they parted and went different ways.
It was almost noon when Visni reached his village. The fields were covered with snow, and the mountain stream that passed through the village was in full spate. As he climbed the hill to his house—it was the highest house in the village—he heard the sound of barking, and his mother’s big black Bhotia dog came bounding towards him over the snow. The dog jumped on him and licked his face, and then went bounding back to the house to tell the others.
Visni’s smallest brother saw him next, and turned and ran indoors, shouting, ‘Visni has come! Visni has come!’
The other brother ran out of the house, shouting, ‘Visni, Visni!’ Visni came walking through the fields, and he didn’t hurry, he didn’t run, though he saw his mother and sister standing in front of the house, waiting for him. There was no need to hurry now. He would be with them for a long time, and the manager of the Roxy would have to find someone else for the next summer season. . . .It was his house, and they were his fields; even the snow was his. When the snow melted he would clear these fields, and nourish them, and make them rich.
He felt very big and very strong as he came striding over the land he loved.
Going Home
The train came panting through the forest and into the flat brown plain. The engine whistled piercingly, and a few cows moved off the track. In a swaying third-class compartment two men played cards; a women held a baby to an exposed breast; a Sikh labourer, wearing brief pants, lay asleep on an upper bunk, snoring fitfully; an elderly unshaven man chewed the last of his pan and spat the red juice out of the window. A small boy, mischief in his eyes, jingled a bag of coins in front of an anxious farmer.
Daya Ram, the farmer, was going home; home to his rice fields, his buffalo and his wife. A brother had died recently, and Daya Ram had taken the ashes to Hardwar to immerse them in the holy waters of the Ganga, and now he was on the train to Dehra and soon he would be home. He was looking anxious because he had just remembered his wife’s admonition about being careful with money; ten rupees was what he had left with him, and it was all in the bag the boy held.
‘Let me have it now,’ said Daya Ram, ‘before the money falls out.’ He made a grab at the little bag that contained his coins, notes and railway ticket, but the boy shrieked with delight and leapt out of the way.
Daya Ram stroked his moustache; it was a long drooping moustache that lent a certain sadness to his somewhat kind and foolish face. He reflected that it was his own fault for having started the game; the child had been sulky and morose, and, to cheer him up, Daya Ram had begun jingling his money. Now the boy was jingling the money, right in front of the open window.
‘Come now, give it back,’ pleaded Daya Ram, ‘or I shall tell your mother.’
The boy’s mother had her back to them, and it was a large back, almost as forbidding as her front. But the boy was enjoying his game and would not give up the bag; he was
exploiting to the full Daya Ram’s easy-going tolerant nature, and kept bobbing up and down on the seat, waving the bag in the poor man’s face.
Suddenly the boy’s mother, who had been engrossed in conversation with another woman, turned and saw what was happening. She walloped the boy over the head and the suddenness of the blow (it was more of a thump than a slap) made him fall back against the window, and the cloth bag fell from his hand on to the railway embankment outside.
Now Daya Ram’s first impulse was to leap out of the moving train. But when someone shouted, ‘Pull the alarm cord!’ he decided on this course of action. He plunged for the alarm cord, but just at that moment someone else shouted, ‘D
on’t pull the cord!’ and Daya Ram who usually listened to others, stood in suspended animation, waiting for further directions.
‘Too many people are stopping trains every day all over India,’ said one of the card players, who wore large thick- rimmed spectacles over a pair of tiny humourless eyes, and was obviously a post office counter-clerk. ‘You people are becoming a menace to the railways.’
‘Exactly,’ said the other card-player. ‘You stop the train on the most trifling excuses. What is your trouble?’
‘My money has fallen out.’ said Daya Ram.
‘Why didn’t you say so!’ exclaimed the clerk, jumping up. ‘Stop the train!’
‘Sit down,’ said his companion, ‘its too late now. The train cannot wait here until he walks half a mile back down the line. How much did you lose?’ he asked Daya Ram.
‘Ten rupees.’
‘And you have no more?’
Daya Ram shook his head.
‘Then you had better leave the train at the next station and go back for it.’
The next station, Harrawala, was about ten miles from the spot where the money had fallen. Daya Ram got down from the train and started back along the railway track. He was a well- built man, with strong legs and a dark, burnished skin. He wore a vest and dhoti, and had a red cloth tied round his head. He walked with long, easy steps, but the ground had been scorched by the burning sun, and it was not long before his feet were
smarting; his eyes too were unaccustomed to the glare of the plains, and he held a hand up over them, or looked at the ground. The sun was high in the sky, beating down on his bare arms and legs. Soon his body was running with sweat, his vest was soaked through and sticking to his skin.
There were no trees anywhere near the lines, which ran straight to the hazy blue horizon. There were fields in the distance, and cows grazed on short grass, but there were no humans in sight. After an hour’s walk, Daya Ram felt thirsty; his tongue was furred, his gums dry, his lips like parchment. When he saw a buffalo wallowing in a muddy pool, he hurried to the spot and drank thirstily of the stagnant water.