Tales of the Open Road

by Ruskin Bond

  The bazaar winds and turns back upon itself, and eventually I find myself back at the river-front, gazing out across the river at the forested foothills. Few of the pilgrims on the bathing-steps can realize that sometimes at night a tiger stands on the opposite bank watching the bright illuminations of the temples, or that elephants listen to the rumbling of the trains bringing pilgrims to Hardwar from all parts of India.

  It is evening now, and there are fewer people at the ghats. Most of the bathers are family people—farmers and small shopkeepers with their wives and children and aged parents. One does not see many students, or young people in Western clothes. Hardwar is old-fashioned, and so are most of the people who come here. Charity, too, is old-fashioned, and Hardwar thrives on charity: donations to the temples and alms to the beggars, mendicants and itinerant ash-smeared sadhus. The beggars do not follow one about, as in the larger cities. They are confident of receiving coins from the pilgrims who pass by on the steps to the river. They simply sit there, occasionally calling out, but preferring to listen to the music of small coins dropping into brass begging-bowls.

  Close by are the money changers, squatting before baskets which are brimming over with small change. In the rest of the country there is a shortage of small coins, and shopkeepers often decline to provide change; but in Hardwar you can change any number of notes for small coins. You are going to leave all the coins here anyway, when you distribute it along the river-front.

  As the pilgrims leave the ghats, the joy of having accomplished their mission bursts forth in songs of praise: ‘Henceforth no more pain, no more sickness; all will be well in future; Ganga mai ki jai!’

  At Home in the Hills

  The Trail to the Bank

  Local residents have got fed up with offering me lifts on the road to our hilltop bank and post office. They typically drive up the steep road to Landour in third (or is it fourth?) gear, see me plodding along on foot, and out of the goodness of their hearts, stop and open the door for me.

  Although I hate to disappoint them, I close the door, thank them profusely, and insist that I am enjoying my walk. They don’t believe me, naturally; but with a shrug, the drivers get into gear again and take off, although sometimes they have difficulty getting started, the hill being very steep. As I don’t wish to insult them by reaching the bank first, I sit on the parapet wall and make encouraging sounds until they finally take off. Then I renew my leisurely walk up the hill, taking note of the fact that the wild geraniums and periwinkles have begun to flower and that the whistling thrushes are nesting under the culvert over which those very cars pass every day.

  Many people—car drivers anyway—think I’m a little eccentric. So be it. I probably am eccentric! But having come to the Himalayan foothills forty years ago in order to enjoy walking among them, I am not about to stop now, just because everyone else has stopped walking. The hills are durable in their attractions, and my legs have proved durable too, so why should we not continue together as before?

  Now, I’m no fitness freak. I don’t jog either. If I did, I would almost certainly miss the latest wildflower to appear on the hillside, and I would not be able to stop awhile and talk to other people on the road—villagers with their milk and vegetables, all-weather postmen, cheeky schoolchildren, inquisitive tourists—or to exchange greetings with cats, dogs, stray cows and runaway mules. (Runaway mules are friendly creatures except towards their owners. I chat with the owners too, when they come charging up the road. I try to put them in good humour, so as to save the mules from a beating.)

  Most of these people I have mentioned are walkers from necessity. Those who walk for pleasure grow fewer by the day. I don’t mean long-distance trekkers or high altitude climbers, who are almost professional in their approach to roads and mountains. I mean people such as myself who are not great athletes but who enjoy sauntering through the woods on a frosty morning, leaving the main road and slithering downhill into a bed of ferns, or following a mountain stream until you reach the small spring in the rocks where it begins …

  It takes a car less than five minutes up the hill to get to the bank. It takes me roughly twenty-five minutes. But there is never a dull minute. Apart from having interesting animal and human encounters, there are the changes that occur almost daily on the hill slopes: the ferns turning from green to gold, the Virginia creepers becoming a dark crimson, horse chestnuts falling to the ground.

  On today’s walk I spot a redstart, come down early from higher altitudes to escape the snow. He whistles cheerfully in a medlar tree. Wild ducks are flying south. There they go, high over the valley, heading for the lakes and marshlands.

  If there’s no one on the road, and I feel like a little diversion, I can always sing. I don’t sing well, but there’s no one to hear me except for a startled woodpecker, so I can go into my Nelson Eddy routine, belting out the songs my childhood gramophone taught me. ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp’, ‘Stouthearted Men’, ‘Song of the Open Road’! No one writes marching songs now, so I have to rely on the old ones.

  Above me the blue sky, around me the green forest, below me the dusty plains.

  Presently I am at Char-Dukaan—‘Four Shops’—and the bank and post office.

  Letters posted, I enter the bank, to be greeted effusively by the manager, Vishal Ohri—not because I have come to make a large deposit, but because he is that rarity among bank managers, a nature lover! When he learns that I have just seen the first redstart of the winter, he grows excited and insists that I take him to it. As we are nearing the office tea break, he sets off with me down the road and, to our mutual satisfaction and delight, is still in the medlar tree, putting on a special performance seemingly for our benefit.

  The manager returns to his office, happy to be working at this remote hilltop branch. Both staff and customers will find him the most understanding and sympathetic of managers today, for has he not just seen the first white-capped redstart to fly into Landour for the winter? That’s as good a ‘first’ as any in those books of records.

  As long as there are nature-loving bank managers, I muse on my way home, there’s still hope for this little old world. And for bank depositors, too!

  Hill of the Fairies

  Fairy Hill, or Pari Tibba as the paharis call it, is a lonely uninhabited hill, almost a mountain, lying to the east of Mussoorie, at a height of about 6000 feet. Some nights I have seen a greenish light zigzagging about the hill. Is this ‘fairy light’ what gives the hill its name? No one has been able to explain it satisfactorily to me; but often from my window I see this strange light.

  I have visited Pari Tibba occasionally, scrambling up its rocky slopes where the only paths are the narrow tracks made by goats and the small hill cattle. Rhododendrons and a few stunted oaks are the only trees on the hillsides, but at the summit is a small, grassy plateau ringed by pine trees.

  It may have been on this plateau that the early settlers tried building their houses. All their attempts met with failure. The area seemed to attract the worst of any thunderstorm, and several dwellings were struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. People then confined themselves to the adjacent Landour hill, where a flourishing hill station soon grew up.

  Why Pari Tibba should be struck so often by lightning has always been something of a mystery to me. Its soil and rock seem no different from the soil or rock of any other mountain in the vicinity. Perhaps a geologist can explain the phenomenon; or perhaps it has something to do with the fairies.

  ‘Why do they call it the Hill of the Fairies?’ I asked an old resident, a retired schoolteacher. ‘Is the place haunted?’

  ‘So they say,’ he said.

  ‘Who say?’

  ‘Oh, people who have heard it’s haunted. Some years after the site was abandoned by the settlers, two young runaway lovers took shelter for the night in one of the ruins. There was a bad storm and they were struck by lightning. Their charred bodies were found a few days later. They came from different communities and were buried far from e
ach other, but their spirits hold a tryst every night under the pine trees. You might see them if you’re on Pari Tibba after sunset.’

  There are no ruins on Pari Tibba, and I can only presume that the building materials were taken away for use elsewhere. And I did not stay on the hill till after sunset. Had I tried climbing downhill in the dark, I would probably have ended up as the third ghost on the mountain. The lovers might have resented my intrusion; or, who knows, they might have welcomed a change. After a hundred years together on a windswept mountaintop, even the most ardent of lovers must tire of each other.

  Who could have been seeing ghosts on Pari Tibba after sunset? The nearest resident is a woodcutter who makes charcoal at the bottom of the hill. Terraced fields and a small village straddle the next hill. But the only inhabitants of Pari Tibba are the langurs. They feed on oak leaves and rhododendron buds. The rhododendrons contain intoxicating nectar, and after dining—or wining—to excess, the young monkeys tumble about on the grass in high spirits.

  The black bulbuls also feed on the nectar of the rhododendron flower, and perhaps this accounts for the cheekiness of these birds. They are aggressive, disreputable little creatures, who go about in rowdy gangs. The song of most bulbuls consists of several pleasant tinkling notes; but that of the Himalayan black bulbul is as musical as the bray of an ass. Men of science, in their wisdom, have given this bird the sibilant name of Hypsipetes psaroides. But the hillmen, in their greater wisdom, call the species the ban bakra, which means the ‘jungle goat’.

  Perhaps the flowers have something to do with the fairy legend. In April and May, Pari Tibba is covered with the dazzling yellow flowers of St. John’s Wort (wort meaning herb). The paharis call the flower a wild rose, and it does resemble one. In Ireland it is called the Rose of Sharon. In Europe this flower is reputed to possess certain magical and curative properties. It is believed to drive away all evil and protect you from witches.

  Can St. John’s Wort be connected with the fairy legend of Pari Tibba? It is said that most flowers, when they die, become fairies. This might be especially true of St. John’s Wort.

  There is yet another legend connected with the mountain. A shepherd boy, playing on his flute, discovered a beautiful silver snake basking on a rock. The snake spoke to the boy, saying, ‘I was a princess once, but a jealous witch cast a spell over me and turned me into a snake. This spell can only be broken if someone who is pure in heart kisses me thrice. Many years have passed, and I have not been able to find one who is pure in heart.’ Then the shepherd boy took the snake in his arms, and he put his lips to its mouth, and at the third kiss he discovered that he was holding a beautiful princess in his arms. What happened afterwards is anybody’s guess.

  There are snakes on Pari Tibba, and though they are probably harmless, I have never tried taking one of them in my arms. Once, near a spring, I came upon a checkered water snake. Its body was a series of bulges. I used a stick to exert pressure along the snake’s length, and it disgorged five frogs. They came out one after the other, and, to my astonishment, hopped off, little the worse for their harrowing experience. Perhaps they, too, were enchanted. Perhaps shepherd boys, when they kiss the snake-princess, are turned into frogs and remain inside the snake’s belly until a writer comes along with a magic stick and releases them from bondage.

  Biologists probably have their own explanation for the frogs, but I’m all for perpetuating the fairy legends of Pari Tibba.

  A Wayside Tea Shop

  The Jaunpur range in Garhwal is dry, brown and rocky. Water is hard to find, and green fields are to be seen only far down in the valley, near the Aglar or some smaller stream. Elsewhere only monsoon crops are grown.

  I have walked five miles without finding a spring or even a shady spot along the sun-blistered path, and I am beginning to wonder if the only living creatures in the area are the big lizards, who slither about on the hot surface of the rocks and stare at me with unwinking eyes. Just as I am asking myself if it is better to be a lizard than a thirsty trekker, I round a bend and discover a small mountain oasis: a crooked little shack tucked away in a cleft of the hillside. Growing beside the shack is a single pine tree, humming softly in the faint breeze that drifts across the mountains.

  When one tree suddenly appears in this way, lonely and dignified in the midst of a vast treeless silence, it can be more beautiful than a forest.

  There is no glamour about the shack, a loose stone structure with a tin roof held down by stones. But it is a tea shop, one of those little pockets of pioneering mankind that spring up in the mountain wilderness to serve the weary traveller. Go where you will in Garhwal, you will always find a tea shop to sustain you just when you feel you have reached the end of your tether.

  A couple of mules are tied to the pine tree, and the mule drivers, handsome men in tattered clothes, sit on a bench in the shade, drinking tea from brass tumblers. The shopkeeper, a man of indeterminate age—the cold dry winds from the snows have crinkled his face like a walnut but his teeth are sound and his eyes are clear—greets me as a long-lost friend, although we are meeting for the first time.

  As a concession to my shirt and trousers, he produces a chair for me. It is a period chair, possibly even a Sheraton, but the stuffing has come out of the seat. It must have escaped from the nearby hill station of Mussoorie, where the sahibs foregathered in years gone by. The shopkeeper apologizes for its condition: ‘The rats have been nesting in it.’ And then, to reassure me, ‘But they have gone now.’

  I would just as soon be on the bench with the mule drivers, but do not wish to offend the shopkeeper, who has already given me his name, Megh Chand, and taken mine. So I take his chair into the shade and gently lower myself into it.

  ‘Do you live here alone?’ I ask.

  ‘Sometimes I am alone,’ he says. ‘My family is down in the village, looking after the fields. It is quite far, six miles. So I go home once a week, and then my son comes up to look after the shop.’

  ‘How long have you had the shop?’

  ‘Oh, ten-fifteen years, I do not remember exactly.’

  Why bother to count the years? In remote mountain areas, time has a different meaning; you may count the days, but not the hours. And yesterday, today, and tomorrow merge into one long day. When there is nowhere to go, you have no need of a clock. You eat when you are hungry, and sleep when you are tired.

  But the mule drivers have somewhere to go and something to deliver—pumpkins and potatoes. They are busy men of the world, and presently they lead their pack-animals away down the dusty path.

  ‘Tea or lassi?’ Megh Chand gives me a choice, and I take the lassi, which is sharp and refreshing. The wind sighs gently in the upper branches of the pine tree and I relax in my Sheraton chair like some eighteenth-century nabob who has brought his own chair into the wilderness.

  Megh Chand tells me that he has been starved of good conversation. ‘Next year,’ he says, sitting down on the steps of his shop, ‘the government will be widening the road, and then the buses will be able to stop here. For many years I have depended on the mule drivers, but they do not have much money to spend. Once the buses come, I will have many customers. Then perhaps I can afford to go to Delhi to have my operation.’

  ‘What operation?’

  ‘Oh, a rasoli (a growth) in my stomach. Sometimes the pain is very bad. I went to the hospital in Mussoorie, but they told me I would have to go to Delhi for an operation. Whenever someone is seriously ill, they say, “Go to Delhi”! Does the whole world go to Delhi to get treated? My uncle was told to go to Delhi for an operation. He went from one hospital to another until his money was finished, and then he came back to the village and died within a week. So maybe I won’t go for the operation. The money is needed here. Once the buses come, I will have to keep sweets and biscuits and other things, and also a boy to help me cook a few meals. All I can offer you today is a bun. It was made in Delhi, I am told.’

  ‘I’d rather have your lassi than a Delhi bun,’
I protest, for the bun looks as old as the Sheraton chair. ‘But where do you get your water?’ I ask.

  ‘Come, I will show you,’ he says, and takes me round to the back of the shack and through an unexpected gap in the hillside. It gives me a breathtaking glimpse of snow-clad mountains striding into the sky. It is cool and shady on the northern face of the hill, and here, issuing from a rock, is a trickle of water. Yellow primulae grow in clusters along the edges of a damp, dripping rock-face. The water collects in a small stone trough.

  ‘There is no other cheshma (spring) along this road,’ he says, ‘and the buses can’t go down into the ravine, unless they fall into it. So they will have to stop here!’ He is triumphant.

  We return to the shop front, where a milkman has just arrived with a container of milk. He too sits down for rest, refreshment and conversation. Next year, if the road is ready (and it is a big ‘if’, because with hill roads you can never be sure), and if he can afford the fare (an even bigger ‘if’), the milkman will be able to use the bus. But there are some who will walk anyway, because they have always been walking. Or ride mules, because they have been doing it all their lives.

  Still, when the road comes, time will take on new dimensions for Megh Chand. Even in remote mountain areas, buses must keep to some sort of schedule, and Megh Chand will have to be sure that his pot is on the boil, and be on the lookout for arrivals and departures. He will be better off than he is today but he is aware that prosperity has its pitfalls. He remembers a cousin, who opened a small grocery shop on a new bus-route near Devprayag. One day, some young hooligans got off the bus, looted his shop, and left him battered and bruised. It was the sort of thing that had never happened before …

  It is time for me to be on my way. I leave Megh Chand and his Sheraton chair with regret.