Children's Omnibus

by Ruskin Bond

  She was Ram Bharosa's first customer in almost two weeks. He looked suspiciously at the girl. Had she come to taunt him, to flaunt the umbrella in his face? She had placed her coin on the counter. Perhaps it was a bad coin. Ram Bharosa picked it up and bit it; he held it up to the light; he rang it on the ground. It was a good coin. He gave Binya the toffee.

  Binya had already left the shop when Ram Bharosa saw the closed umbrella lying on his counter. There it was, the blue umbrella he had always wanted, within his grasp at last! He had only to hide it at the back of his shop, and no one would know that he had it, no one could prove that Binya had left it behind.

  He stretched out his trembling, bony hand, and took the umbrella by the handle. He pressed it open. He stood beneath it, in the dark shadows of his shop, where no sun or rain could ever touch it.

  "But I'm never in the sun or in the rain," he said aloud. "Of what use is an umbrella to me?"

  And he hurried outside and ran after Binya.

  "Binya, Binya!" he shouted. "Binya, you've left your umbrella behind!"

  He wasn't used to running, but he caught up with her, held out the umbrella, saying, 'You forgot it — the umbrella!"

  In that moment it belonged to both of them.

  But Binya didn't take the umbrella. She shook her head and said, 'You keep it. I don't need it any more."

  "But it's such a pretty umbrella!" protested Ram Bharosa. "It's the best umbrella in the village."

  "I know," said Binya. "But an umbrella isn't everything."

  And she left the old man holding the umbrella, and went tripping down the road, and there was nothing between her and the bright blue sky.

  SEVEN

  ell, now that Ram Bharosa has the blue umbrella — a gift from Binya, as he tells everyone — he is sometimes persuaded to go out into the sun or the rain, and as a result he looks much healthier. Sometimes he uses the umbrella to chase away pigs or goats. It is always left open outside the shop, and anyone who wants to borrow it may do so; and so in a way it has become everyone's umbrella. It is faded and patchy, but it is still the best umbrella in the village.

  People are visiting Ram Bharosa's shop again. Whenever Bijju or Binya stop for a cup of tea, he gives them a little extra milk or sugar. They like their tea sweet and milky.

  A few nights ago, a bear visited Ram Bharosa's shop. There had been snow on the higher ranges of the Himalayas, and the bear had been finding it difficult to obtain food; so it had come lower down, to see what it could pick up near the village. That night it scrambled on to the tin roof of Ram Bharosa's shop, and made off with a huge pumpkin which had been ripening on the roof. But in climbing off the roof, the bear had lost a claw.

  Next morning Ram Bharosa found the claw just outside the door of his shop. He picked it up and put it in his pocket. A bear's claw was a lucky find.

  A day later, when he went into the market-town, he took the claw with him, and left it with a silversmith, giving the craftsman certain instructions.

  The silversmith made a locket for the claw; then he gave it a thin silver chain. When Ram Bharosa came again, he paid the silversmith ten rupees for his work.

  The days were growing shorter, and Binya had to be home a little earlier every evening. There was a hungry leopard at large, and she couldn't leave the cows out after dark.

  She was hurrying past Ram Bharosa's shop when the old man called out to her.

  "Binya, spare a minute! I want to show you something."

  Binya stepped into the shop.

  "What do you think of it?" asked Ram Bharosa, showing her the silver pendant with the claw.

  "It's so beautiful," said Binya, just touching the claw and the silver chain.

  "It's a bear's claw," said Ram Bharosa. "That's even luckier than a leopard's claw. Would you like to have it?"

  "I have no money," said Binya.

  "That doesn't matter. You gave me the umbrella — I give you the claw! Come, let's see what it looks like on you."

  He placed the pendant on Binya, and indeed it looked very beautiful on her.

  Ram Bharosa says he will never forget the smile she gave him when she left the shop.

  She was half-way home when she realized she had left the cows behind.

  "Neelu, Neelu!" she called. "Oh, Gori!"

  There was a faint tinkle of bells as the cows came slowly down the mountain path.

  In the distance she could hear her mother and Bijju calling for her.

  She began to sing. They heard her singing, and knew she was safe and near.

  She walked home through the darkening glade, singing of the stars; and the trees stood still and listened to her, and the mountains were glad.

  Ghost Trouble

  ONE

  t was Grandfather who finally decided that we would have to move to another house.

  And it was all because of a Pret, a mischievous north Indian ghost, who had been making life difficult for everyone.

  Prets usually live in peepul trees, and that's where our little ghost first had his home — in the branches of a massive old peepul tree which had grown through the compound wall and spread into our garden. Part of the tree was on our side of the wall, part on the other side, shading the main road. It gave the ghost a good view of the whole area.

  For many years the Pret had lived there quite happily, without bothering anyone in our house. It did not bother me, either, and I spent a lot of time in the peepul tree. Sometimes I went there to escape the adults at home, sometimes to watch the road and the people who passed by. The peepul tree was cool on a hot day, and the heart-shaped leaves were always waving in the breeze. This constant movement of the leaves also helped to disguise the movements of the Pret, so that I never really knew exactly where he was sitting. But he paid no attention to me. The traffic on the road kept him fully occupied.

  Sometimes, when a tonga was passing, he would jump down and frighten the pony, and as a result the little pony-cart would go rushing off in the wrong direction.

  Sometimes, he would get into the engine of a car or a bus, which would have a breakdown soon afterwards.

  And he liked to knock the sun-helmets off the heads of sahibs or officials, who would wonder how a strong breeze had sprung up so suddenly, only to die down just as quickly. Although this special kind of ghost could make himself felt, and sometimes heard, he was invisible to the human eye.

  I was not invisible to the human eye, and often got the blame for some of the Pret's pranks. If bicycle-riders were struck by mango seeds or apricot stones, they would look up, see a small boy in the branches of the tree, and threaten me with terrible consequences. Drivers who went off after parking their cars in the shade would sometimes come back to find their tyres flat. My protests of innocence did not carry much weight. But when I mentioned the Pret in the tree, they would look uneasy, either because they thought I must be mad, or because they were afraid of ghosts, especially Prets. They would find other things to do and hurry away.

  At night no one walked beneath the peepul tree.

  It was said that if you yawned beneath the tree, the Pret would jump down your throat and give you a pain. Our gardener, Chandu, who was always taking sick-leave, blamed the Pret for his tummy troubles. Once, when yawning, Chandu had forgotten to put his hand in front of his mouth, and the ghost had got in without any trouble.

  Now Chandu spent most of his time lying on a string-bed in the courtyard of his small house. When Grandmother went to visit him, he would start groaning and holding his sides, the pain was so bad; but when she went away, he did not fuss so much. He claimed that the pain did not affect his appetite, and he ate a normal diet, in fact a little more than normal — the extra amount was meant to keep the ghost happy!

  TWO

  ell, it isn't our fault," said Grandfather, who had given permission to the Public Works Department to cut the tree, which had been on our land. They wanted to widen the road, and the tree and a bit of our wall were in the way. So both had to go.

&nb
sp; Several people protested, including the Raja of Jinn, who lived across the road and who sometimes asked Grandfather over for a game of tennis.

  "That peepul tree has been there for hundreds of years," he said. "Who are we to cut it down?"

  "We" said the Chief Engineer, "are the P.W.D."

  And not even a ghost can prevail against the wishes of the Public Works Department.

  They brought men with saws and axes, and first they lopped all the branches until the poor tree was quite naked. It must have been at this moment that the Pret moved out. Then they sawed away at the trunk until, finally, the great old peepul came crashing down on the road, bringing down the telephone wires and an electric pole in the process, and knocking a large gap in the Raja's garden wall.

  It took them three days to clear the road, and during that time the Chief Engineer swallowed a lot of dust and tree-pollen. For months afterwards he complained of a choking feeling, although no doctor could ever find anything in his throat.

  "It's the Pret's doing," said the Raja knowingly. "They should never have cut that tree."

  Deprived of his tree, the Pret decided that he would live in our house.

  I first became aware of his presence when I was sitting on the verandah steps, reading a book. A tiny chuckling sound came from behind me. I looked round, but no one was to be seen. When I returned to my book, the chuckling started again. I paid no attention. Then a shower of rose petals fell softly on to the pages of my open book. The Pret wanted me to know he was there!

  "All right," I said. "So you've come to stay with us. Now let me read."

  He went away then; but as a good Pret has to be bad in order to justify his existence, it was not long before he was up to all sorts of mischief.

  He began by hiding Grandmother's spectacles.

  "I'm sure I put them down on the dining-table," she grumbled.

  A little later they were found balanced on the snout of a wild boar, whose stuffed and mounted head adorned the verandah wall, a memento of Grandfather's hunting trips when he was young.

  Naturally, I was at first blamed for this prank. But a day or two later, when the spectacles disappeared again, only to be found dangling from the bars of the parrot's cage, it was agreed that I was not to blame; for the parrot had once bitten off a piece of my finger, and I did not go near it any more.

  The parrot was hanging upside down, trying to peer through one of the lenses. I don't know if they improved his vision, but what he saw certainly made him angry, because the pupils of his eyes went very small and he dug his beak into the spectacle frames, leaving them with a permanent dent. I caught them just before they fell to the floor.

  But even without the help of the spectacles, it seemed that our parrot could see the Pret. He would keep turning this way and that, lunging out at unseen fingers, and protecting his tail from the tweaks of invisible hands. He had always refused to learn to talk, but now he became quite voluble and began to chatter in some unknown tongue, often screaming with rage and rolling his eyes in a frenzy.

  "We'll have to give that parrot away," said Grandmother. "He gets more bad-tempered by the day."

  Grandfather was the next to be troubled.

  He went into the garden one morning to find all his prize sweet-peas broken off and lying on the grass. Chandu thought the sparrows had destroyed the flowers, but we didn't think the birds could have finished off every single bloom just before sunrise.

  "It must be the Pret," said Grandfather, and I agreed.

  The Pret did not trouble me much, because he remembered me from his peepul-tree days and knew I resented the tree being cut as much as he did. But he liked to catch my attention, and he did this by chuckling and squeaking near me when I was alone, or whispering in my ear when I was with someone else. Gradually I began to make out the occasional word. He had started learning English!

  THREE

  ncle Benji, who came to stay with us for long periods when he had little else to do (which was most of the time), was soon to suffer.

  He was a heavy sleeper, and once he'd gone to bed he hated being woken up. So when he came to breakfast looking bleary-eyed and miserable, we asked him if he was feeling all right.

  "I couldn't sleep a wink last night," he complained. "Whenever I was about to fall asleep, the bedclothes would be pulled off the bed. I had to get up at least a dozen times to pick them off the floor." He stared suspiciously at me. "Where were you sleeping last night, young man?"

  "In Grandfather's room," I said. "I've lent you my room."

  "It's that ghost from the peepul tree," said Grandmother with a sigh.

  "Ghost!" exclaimed Uncle Benji. "I didn't know the house was haunted."

  "It is now," said Grandmother. "First my spectacles, then the sweet-peas, and now Benji's bedclothes! What will it be up to next, I wonder?"

  We did not have to wonder for long.

  There followed a series of minor disasters. Vases fell off tables, pictures fell from walls. Parrots' feathers turned up in the teapot, while the parrot himself let out indignant squawks and swear-words in the middle of the night. Windows which had been closed would be found open, and open windows closed.

  Finally, Uncle Benji found a crow's nest in his bed, and on tossing it out of the window was attacked by two crows.

  Then Aunt Ruby came to stay, and things quietened down for a time.

  Did Aunt Ruby's powerful personality have an effect on the Pret, or was he just sizing her up?

  "I think the Pret has taken a fancy to your aunt," said Grandfather mischievously. "He's behaving himself for a change."

  This may have been true, because the parrot, who had picked up some of the English words being tried out by the Pret, now called out, "kiss," whenever Aunt Ruby was in the room.

  "What a charming bird," said Aunt Ruby.

  'You can keep him if you like," said Grandmother.

  One day Aunt Ruby came into the house covered in rose petals.

  "I don't know where they came from," she exclaimed. "I was sitting in the garden, drying my hair, when handfuls of petals came showering down on me!"

  "It likes you," said Grandfather.

  "What likes me?"

  "The ghost."

  "What ghost?"

  "The Pret. It came to live in the house when the peepul tree was cut down."

  "What nonsense!" said Aunt Ruby.

  "Kiss, kiss!" screamed the parrot.

  "There aren't any ghosts, Prets or other kinds," said Aunt Ruby firmly.

  "Kiss, kiss!" screeched the parrot again. Or was it the parrot? The sound seemed to be coming from the ceiling.

  "I wish that parrot would shut up."

  "It isn't the parrot," I said. "It's the Pret."

  Aunt Ruby gave me a cuff over the ear and stormed out of the room.

  But she had offended the Pret. From being her admirer, he turned into her enemy. Somehow her toothpaste got switched with a tube of Grandfather's shaving-cream. When she appeared in the dining-room, foaming at the mouth, we ran for our lives, Uncle Benji shouting that she'd got rabies.

  FOUR

  wo days later Aunt Ruby complained that she had been struck on the nose by a grapefruit, which had leapt mysteriously from the pantry shelf and hurled itself at her.

  "If Ruby and Benji stay here much longer, they'll both have nervous breakdowns," said Grandfather thoughtfully.

  "I thought they broke down long ago," I said.

  "None of your cheek," snapped Aunt Ruby.

  "He's in league with that Pret to try and get us out of here," said Uncle Benji.

  "Don't listen to him — you can stay as long as you like," said Grandmother, who never turned away any of her numerous nephews, nieces, cousins or distant relatives.

  The Pret, however, did not feel so hospitable, and the persecution of Aunt Ruby continued.

  "When I looked in the mirror this morning," she complained bitterly, "I saw a little monster, with huge ears, bulging eyes, flaring nostrils and a toothless grin!"r />
  'You don't look that bad, Aunt Ruby," I said, trying to be nice.

  "It was either you or that imp you call a Pret," said Aunt Ruby. "And if it's a ghost, then it's time we all moved to another house."

  Uncle Benji had another idea.

  "Let's drive the ghost out," he said. "I know a Sadhu who rids houses of evil spirits."

  "But the Pret's not evil," I said. 'Just mischievous."

  Uncle Benji went off to the bazaar and came back a few hours later with a mysterious long-haired man who claimed to be a Sadhu — one who has given up all worldly goods, including most of his clothes.

  He prowled about the house, and lighted incense in all the rooms, despite squawks of protest from the parrot. All the time he chanted various magic spells. He then collected a fee of thirty rupees, and promised that we would not be bothered again by the Pret.

  As he was leaving, he was suddenly blessed with a shower — no, it was really a downpour — of dead flowers, decaying leaves, orange peel and banana skins. All spells forgotten, he ran to the gate and made for the safety of the bazaar.

  Aunt Ruby declared that it had become impossible to sleep at night because of the devilish chuckling that came from beneath her pillow. She packed her bags and left.

  Uncle Benji stayed on. He was still having trouble with his bedclothes, and he was beginning to talk to himself, which was a bad sign.

  "Talking to the Pret, Uncle?" I asked innocently, when I caught him at it one day.

  He gave me a threatening look. "What did you say?" he demanded. "Would you mind repeating that?"

  I thought it safer to please him. "Oh, didn't you hear me? I said, 'Teaching the parrot, Uncle?'"

  He glared at me, then walked off in a huff. If he did not leave/it was because he was hoping Grandmother would lend him enough money to buy a motorcycle; but Grandmother said he ought to try earning a living first.