by Ruskin Bond
‘Leela, during her lonely evenings, would often ask me to sit on her veranda and talk to her. The day’s work done, she would relax with a hookah. Smoking a hookah was a habit she had brought with her from her village near Agra, and it was a habit she refused to give up. She liked to talk and, as I was a good listener, she soon grew fond of me. The fact that I was twenty-six years old and still a bachelor, never failed to astonish her.
‘It was not long before she took upon herself the responsibility for getting me married. I found it useless to protest. She did not believe me when I told her that I could not afford to marry, that I preferred a bachelor’s life. A wife, she insisted, was an asset to any man. A wife reduced expenses. Where did I eat? At a hotel, of course. That must cost me at least sixty rupees a month, even on a vegetarian diet. But if I had a simple homely wife to do the cooking, we could both eat well for less than that.
‘Leela fingered my shirt, observing that a button was missing and that the collar was frayed. She remarked on my pale face and general look of debility and told me that I would fall victim to all kinds of diseases if I did not find someone to look after me. What I needed, she declared between puffs at the hookah, was a woman—a young, healthy, buxom woman, preferably from a village near Agra.
‘If I could find someone like you,’ I said slyly, ‘I would not mind getting married.’
‘She appeared neither flattered nor offended by my remark.
‘“Don’t marry an older woman,” she advised. “Never take a wife who is more experienced in the ways of the world than you are. You just leave it to me, I’ll find a suitable bride for you.”
‘To please Leela, I agreed to this arrangement, thinking she would not take it seriously. But, two days later, when she suggested that I accompany her to a certain distinguished home for orphan girls, I became alarmed. I refused to have anything to do with her project.
‘“Don’t you have confidence in me?” she asked. “You said you would like a girl who resembled me. I know one who looks just as I did ten years ago.”
‘I like you as you are now,’ I said. ‘Not as you were ten years ago.’
‘Of course. We shall arrange for you to see the girl first.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I protested. ‘It’s not that I feel I have to be in love with someone before marrying her—I know you would choose a fine girl, and I would really prefer someone who is homely and simple to an MA with honours in psychology—it’s just that I’m not ready for it. I want another year or two of freedom. I don’t want to be chained down. To be frank, I don’t want the responsibility.’
‘“ A little responsibility will make a man of you,” said Leela; but she did not insist on my accompanying her to the orphanage, and the matter was allowed to rest for a few days.
‘I was beginning to hope that Leela had reconciled herself to allowing one man to remain single in a world full of husbands when, one morning, she accosted me on the veranda with an open newspaper, which she thrust in front of my nose.
‘“There!” she said triumphantly. “What do you think of that? I did it to surprise you.”
‘She had certainly succeeded in surprising me. Her henna-stained forefinger rested on an advertisement in the matrimonial columns.
‘Bachelor journalist, age twenty-five, seeks attractive young wife well-versed in household duties Caste, religion no bar. Dowry optional.
‘I must admit that Leela had made a good job of it. In a few days the replies began to come in, usually from the parents of the girls concerned. Each applicant wanted to know how much money I was earning. At the same time, they took the trouble to list their own connections and the high positions occupied by relatives. Some parents enclosed their daughters’ photographs. They were very good photographs, though there was a certain amount of touching-up employed.
‘I studied the pictures with interest. Perhaps marriage wasn’t such a bad proposition, after all. I selected the photographs of the three girls I most fancied and showed them to Leela.
‘To my surprise, she disapproved of all three. One of the girls, she said, had a face like a hermaphrodite; another obviously suffered from tuberculosis; and the third was undoubtedly an adventuress. Leela decided that the whole idea of the advertisement had been a mistake. She was sorry she had inserted it; the only replies we were likely to get would be from fortune hunters. And I had no fortune.
‘So we destroyed the letters. I tried to keep some of the photographs, but Leela tore them up too.
‘And so, for some time, there were no more attempts at getting me married.
‘Leela and I met nearly every day, but we spoke of other things. Sometimes, in the evenings, she would make me sit on the charpoy opposite her, and then she would draw up her hookah and tell me stories about her village and her family. I was getting used to the boy, too, and even growing rather fond of him.
‘All this came to an end when Leela’s husband went and got himself killed. He was shot by a bootlegger who had decided to get rid of the excise man rather than pay him an exorbitant sum of money. It meant that Leela had to give up her quarters and return to her village near Agra. She waited until the boy’s school-term had finished, and then she packed their things and bought two tickets, third-class to Agra.
‘Something, I could see, had been troubling her, and when I saw her off at the station I realized what it was. She was having a fit of conscience about my continued bachelorhood.
‘“In my village,” she said confidently, leaning out from the carriage window, “there is a very comely young girl, a distant relative of mine. I shall speak to the parents.”
‘And then I said something which I had not considered before, which had never, until that moment, entered my head. And I was no less surprised than Leela when the words came tumbling out of my mouth, “Why don’t you marry me now?”’
Arun didn’t have time to finish his story because, just at this interesting stage, the dinner arrived.
But the dinner brought with it the end of his story.
It was served by his wife, a magnificent woman, strong and handsome, who could only have been Leela. And a few minutes later, Chandu, Arun’s stepson, charged into the house, complaining that he was famished.
Arun introduced me to his wife, and we exchanged the usual formalities.
‘But why hasn’t your friend brought his family with him?’ she asked.
‘Family? Because he’s still a bachelor!’
And then as he watched his wife’s expression change from a look of mild indifference to one of deep concern, he hurriedly changed the subject.
Kishen Again*
Over the years, I was in and out of New Delhi’s Regal Cinema quite a few times, and so I became used to meeting old acquaintances or glimpsing familiar faces in the foyer or on the steps outside.
On one occasion, I was mistaken for a ghost.
I was about thirty at the time. I was standing on the steps of the arcade, waiting for someone, when a young Indian man came up to me and said something in German or what sounded like German.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand. You may speak to me in English or Hindi.’
‘Aren’t you Hans? We met in Frankfurt last year.’
‘I’m sorry, I’ve never been to Frankfurt.’
‘You look exactly like Hans.’
‘Maybe I’m his double. Or maybe I’m his ghost!’ My facetious remark did not amuse the young man. He looked confused and stepped back, a look of horror spreading over his face. ‘No, no,’ he stammered. ‘Hans is alive, you can’t be his ghost!’
‘I was only joking.’
But he had turned away, hurrying off through the crowd. He seemed agitated. I shrugged philosophically. So I had a double called Hans, I reflected, perhaps I’d run into him some day.
I mention this incident only to show that most of us have lookalikes, and that sometimes we see what we want to see, or are looking for, even if on looking closer, the resemblance isn’t all that
striking.
But there was no mistaking Kishen when he approached me. I hadn’t seen him for five or six years, but he looked much the same. Bushy eyebrows, offset by gentle eyes; a determined chin, offset by a charming smile. The girls had always liked him, and he knew it; and he was content to let them do the pursuing.
We saw a film—I think it was The Wind Cannot Read—and then we strolled across to the old Standard Restaurant, ordered dinner and talked about old times, while the small band played sentimental tunes from the 1950s.
Yes, we talked about old times—growing up in Dehra, where we lived next door to each other, exploring our neighbours’ litchi orchards, cycling about the town in the days before the scooter had been invented, kicking a football around on the maidan, or just sitting on the compound wall doing nothing. I had just finished school, and an entire year stretched before me until it was time to go abroad. Kishen’s father, a civil engineer, was under transfer orders, so Kishen too temporarily did not have to go to school.
He was an easygoing boy, quite content to be at a loose end in my company—I was to describe a couple of our escapades in my first novel, The Room on the Roof. I had literary pretensions; he was apparently without ambition although, as he grew older, he was to surprise me by his wide reading and erudition.
One day, while we were cycling along the bank of the Raipur canal, he skidded off the path and fell into the canal with his cycle. The water was only waist-deep; but it was quite swift, and I had to jump in to help him. There was no real danger, but we had some difficulty getting the cycle out of the canal.
Later, he learnt to swim.
But that was after I’d gone away . . .
Convinced that my prospects would be better in England, my mother packed me off to her relatives in Jersey, and it was to be four long years before I could return to the land I truly cared for. In that time, many of my Dehra friends had left the town; it wasn’t a place where you could do much after finishing school. Kishen wrote to me from Calcutta, where he was at an engineering college. Then he was off to ‘study abroad’. I heard from him from time to time. He seemed happy. He had an equable temperament and got on quite well with most people. He had a girlfriend too, he told me.
‘But,’ he wrote, ‘you’re my oldest and best friend. Wherever I go, I’ll always come back to see you.’
And of course he did. We met several times while I was living in Delhi, and once we revisited Dehra together and walked down Rajpur Road and ate tikkees and golguppas behind the Clock Tower. But the old familiar faces were missing. The streets were overbuilt and overcrowded, and the litchi gardens were fast disappearing. After we got back to Delhi, Kishen accepted the offer of a job in Bombay. We kept in touch in desultory fashion, but our paths and our lives had taken different directions. He was busy nurturing his career with an engineering firm; I had retreated to the hills with radically different goals—to write and be free of the burden of a ten-to-five desk job.
Time went by, and I lost track of Kishen.
About a year ago, I was standing in the lobby of the India International Centre, when an attractive young woman in her mid-thirties came up to me and said, ‘Hello, Rusty, don’t you remember me? I’m Manju. I lived next to you and Kishen and Ranbir when we were children.’
I recognized her then, for she had always been a pretty girl, the ‘belle’ of Dehra’s Astley Hall.
We sat down and talked about old times and new times, and I told her that I hadn’t heard from Kishen for a few years.
‘Didn’t you know?’ she asked. ‘He died about two years ago.’
‘What happened?’ I was dismayed, even angry, that I hadn’t heard about it. ‘He couldn’t have been more than thirty-eight.’
‘It was an accident on a beach in Goa. A child had got into difficulties and Kishen swam out to save her. He did rescue the little girl, but when he swam ashore he had a heart attack. He died right there on the beach. It seems he had always had a weak heart. The exertion must have been too much for him.’
I was silent. I knew he’d become a fairly good swimmer, but I did not know about the heart.
‘Was he married?’ I asked.
‘No, he was always the eligible bachelor boy.’ It had been good to see Manju again, even though she had given me bad news. She told me she was happily married, with a small son. We promised to keep in touch.
And that’s the end of this tale, apart from my brief visit to Delhi last November.
I had taken a taxi to Connaught Place and decided to get down at the Regal. I stood there a while, undecided about what to do or where to go. It was almost time for a show to start, and there were a lot of people milling around.
I thought someone called my name. I looked around, and there was Kishen in the crowd. ‘Kishen!’ I called, and started after him.
But a stout lady climbing out of a scooter rickshaw got in my way, and by the time I had a clear view again, my old friend had disappeared.
Had I seen his lookalike, a double? Or had he kept his promise to come back to see me once more?
Somi and Rusty*
It was a sticky, restless afternoon. The water-carrier passed below the room with his skin bag, spraying water on the dusty path. The toy-seller entered the compound, calling his wares in a high-pitched sing-song voice, and presently there was the chatter of children.
The toy-seller had a long bamboo pole, crossed by two or three shorter bamboos, from which hung all manner of toys—little celluloid drums, tin watches, tiny flutes and whistles, and multicoloured rag dolls—and when these ran out, they were replaced by others from a large bag, a most mysterious and fascinating bag, one in which no one but the toy-seller was allowed to look. He was a popular person with the rich and poor alike, for his toys never cost more than four annas and never lasted longer than a day.
Rusty liked the cheap toys, and was fond of decorating the room with them. He bought a two-anna flute, and walked upstairs, blowing on it.
He removed his shirt and sandals and lay flat on the bed staring up at the ceiling. The lizards scuttled along the rafters, the bald maina hopped along the window ledge. He was about to fall asleep when Somi came into the room.
Somi looked listless.
‘I feel sticky,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to wear any clothes.’
He too pulled off his shirt and deposited it on the table, then stood before the mirror, studying his physique. Then he turned to Rusty.
‘You don’t look well,’ he said, ‘there are cobwebs in your hair.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You must have been very fond of Mrs Kapoor. She was very kind.’
‘I loved her, didn’t you know?’
‘No. My own love is the only thing I know. Rusty, best favourite friend, you cannot stay here in this room, you must come back to my house. Besides, this building will soon have new tenants.’
‘I’ll get out when they come, or when the landlord discovers I’m living here.’
Somi’s usually bright face was somewhat morose, and there was a faint agitation showing in his eyes.
‘I will go and get a cucumber to eat,’ he said, ‘then there is something to tell you.’
‘I don’t want a cucumber,’ said Rusty, ‘I want a coconut.’
‘I want a cucumber.’
Rusty felt irritable. The room was hot, the bed was hot, his blood was hot. Impatiently, he said, ‘Go and eat your cucumber, I don’t want any . . .’
Somi looked at him with a pained surprise; then, without a word, picked up his shirt and marched out of the room. Rusty could hear the slap of his slippers on the stairs, and then the bicycle tyres on the gravel path.
‘Hey, Somi!’ shouted Rusty, leaping off the bed and running out on to the roof. ‘Come back!’
But the bicycle jumped over the ditch, and Somi’s shirt flapped, and there was nothing Rusty could do but return to bed. He was alarmed at his liverish ill-temper. He lay down again and stared at the ceiling, at the lizards chasing each
other across the rafters. On the roof two crows were fighting, knocking each other’s feathers out. Everyone was in a temper.
What’s wrong? wondered Rusty. I spoke to Somi in fever, not in anger, but my words were angry. Now I am miserable, fed up. Oh, hell . . .
He closed his eyes and shut out everything.
He opened his eyes to laughter. Somi’s face was close, laughing into Rusty’s.
‘Of what were you dreaming, Rusty, I have never seen you smile so sweetly!’
‘Oh, I wasn’t dreaming,’ said Rusty, sitting up, and feeling better now that Somi had returned. ‘I am sorry for being so grumpy, but I’m not feeling . . .’
‘Quiet!’ admonished Somi, putting his finger to the other’s lips. ‘See I have settled the matter. Here is a coconut for you, and here is a cucumber for me!’
They sat cross-legged on the bed, facing each other; Somi with his cucumber, and Rusty with his coconut. The coconut milk trickled down Rusty’s chin and on to his chest, giving him a cool, pleasant sensation.
Rusty said, ‘I am afraid for Kishen. I am sure he will give trouble to his relatives, and they are not like his parents. Mr Kapoor will have no say, without Meena.’
Somi was silent. The only sound was the munching of the cucumber and the coconut. He looked at Rusty, an uncertain smile on his lips but none in his eyes; and, in a forced conversational manner, said, ‘I’m going to Amritsar for a few months. But I will be back in the spring, Rusty, you will be all right here . . .’
This news was so unexpected that for some time Rusty could not take it in. The thought had never occurred to him that one day Somi might leave Dehra, just as Ranbir and Suri and Kishen had done. He could not speak. A sickening heaviness clogged his heart and brain.
‘Hey, Rusty!’ laughed Somi. ‘Don’t look as though there is poison in the coconut!’
The poison lay in Somi’s words. And the poison worked, running through Rusty’s veins and beating against his heart and hammering on his brain. The poison worked, wounding him.