The Best of Ruskin Bond

by Bond, Ruskin

  His face was white, except where a little blood had trickled from his mouth. His leg kept twitching, and his hands moved restlessly, helplessly amongst the wheat.

  I spoke to him: ‘What is wrong?’ I asked, but he was obviously unconscious and could not answer. So I ran down the path to the well, and dipping the end of my shirt in a shallow trough of water, soaked it well, and ran back to the boy.

  By that time he seemed to have recovered from the fit. The twitching had ceased, and though he still breathed heavily, his face was calm and his hands still. I wiped the blood from his mouth, and he opened his eyes and stared at me without any immediate comprehension.

  ‘You have bitten your tongue.’ I said. ‘There’s no hurry. I’ll stay here with you.’

  We rested where we were for some minutes without saying anything. He was no longer agitated. Resting his chin on his knees, he passed his hands around his drawn-up legs.

  ‘I am all right now,’ he said.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was nothing, it often happens. I don’t know why. I cannot stop it.’

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘I went to the hospital when it first began. They gave me some pills. I had to take them every day. But they made me so tired and sleepy that I couldn’t do any work. So I stopped taking them. I get the attack about once a week, but I am useless if I take those pills.’

  He got to his feet, smiling as he dusted his clothes.

  He was a thin boy, long-limbed and bony. There was a little fluff on his cheeks and the promise of a moustache. His pyjamas were short for him, accentuating the awkwardness of his long, bony feet. He had beauty, though; his eyes held secrets, his mouth hesitant smiles.

  He told me that he was a student at the Pipalnagar College, and that his terminal examination would be held in August. Apparently his whole life hinged on the result of the coming examination. If he passed, there was the prospect of a scholarship, and eventually a place for himself in the world. If he failed, there was only the prospect of Pipalnagar, and a living eked out by selling combs and buttons and little vials of perfume.

  I noticed the tray of merchandise lying on the ground. It usually hung at his waist, the straps going round his neck. All day he walked about Pipalnagar, covering ten to fifteen miles a day, selling odds and ends to people at their houses. He made about two rupees a day, which gave him enough for his food; and he ate irregularly, at little tea-shops, at the stalls near the bus stops, or on the roadside under shady jamun and mango trees. When the jamuns were ripe, he would sit in a tree, sucking the sour fruit till his lips were stained purple with their juice. There was always the fear that he would get a fit while sitting in a tree, and fall off; but the temptation to eat jamuns was too great for him, and he took the risk.

  ‘Where do you stay?’ I asked. ‘I will walk back with you to your home.’

  ‘I don’t stay anywhere in particular. Sometimes in a dharamsala, sometimes in the Gurudwara, sometimes on the Maidan. In the summer months I like to sleep on the Maidan, on the grass.’

  ‘Then I’ll walk with you to the Maidan,’ I said.

  There was nothing extraordinary about his being a refugee and an orphan. During the communal holocaust of 1947 thousands of homes had been destroyed, women and children killed. What was extraordinary was his sensitivity—or should I say sensibility—a rare quality in a Punjabi youth who had been brought up in the Frontier Provinces during one of the most cruel periods in the country’s history. It was not his conversation that impressed me—though his attitude to life was one of hope, while in Pipalnagar people were too resigned even to be desperate—but the gentle persuasiveness of his voice, eyes, and also of his hands, long-fingered, gliding hands, and his smile which flickered with amusement and sometimes irony.

  Five

  One morning, when I opened the door of my room, I found Suraj asleep at the top of the steps. His tray lay a short distance away. I shook him gently, and he woke up immediately, blinking in the bright sunlight.

  ‘Why didn’t you come in,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘It was late,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

  ‘Someone could have stolen your things while you slept.’

  ‘So far no one has stolen from me.’

  I made him promise to sleep in my room that night, and he came in at ten, curled up on the floor and slept fitfully, while I lay awake worrying if he was comfortable enough.

  He came several nights, and left early in the morning, before I could offer him anything to eat. We would talk into the early hours of the morning. Neither of us slept much.

  I liked Suraj’s company. He dispelled some of my own loneliness, and I found myself looking forward to the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. He liked my company because I was full of stories, even though some of them were salacious; and because I encouraged his ambitions and gave him confidence.

  I forget what it was I said that offended him and hurt his feelings—something unintentional, and, of course, silly: one of those things that you cannot remember afterwards but which seem terribly important at the time. I had probably been giving him too much advice, showing off my knowledge of the world and women, and joking about his becoming a prime minister one day: because the next night he didn’t come to my room.

  I waited till eleven o’clock for the sound of his footsteps, and then when he didn’t come, I left the room and went in search of him. I couldn’t bear the thought of an angry and unhappy Suraj sleeping alone on the Maidan. What if he should have another fit? I told myself that he had been through scores of fits without my being around to help him, but already I was beginning to feel protective towards him.

  The shops had closed and lights showed only in upper windows. There were many sleeping on the sidewalk, and I peered into the faces of each, but I did not find Suraj. Eventually I found him on the Maidan, asleep on a bench.

  ‘Suraj,’ I said, and he awoke and sat up.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve been looking for you for the last two hours. Come on home.’

  ‘Why don’t you spend the night here?’ he said. ‘This is my home.’

  I felt angry at first, but then I felt ashamed of my anger.

  I said, ‘Thank you for your kind offer, dear friend, it will be a privilege to be your guest,’ and sat down on the bench beside him.

  We were silent for some time, while a big yellow moon played hide and seek with the clouds. Then it began to drizzle.

  ‘It’s raining,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you make a roof over your house? Now let us go back to mine.’

  I thought he might still refuse to return with me, but he got up, smiling; perhaps it was my own sudden humility, or perhaps it was the rain. . . . I think it was my own humility, because it made him feel he had wronged me. He did not feel for himself that way, and so it was not the rain.

  *

  In the afternoon Pipalnagar is empty. The temperature has touched 106°F! To walk barefoot on the scorching pavement is possible only for the beggars and labourers whose feet have developed several layers of hard protective skin. And even they lie stretched out in the shade given by shops and walls, their open sores festering in the hot sun.

  Suraj will be asleep in the shade of a peepul or banyan tree, a book lying open beside him, his tray a few feet away. Sometimes the crows are fascinated by his many coloured combs, and come down from the trees to inspect them.

  At this hour of the day I lie naked on the stone floor of my room, because the floor is the coolest place of all; and as I am too listless to work or sleep, I study my navel, the hair on my belly, the languid aspect of my genitals, and the hair on my legs and thighs. I study my toes, and with the dust that has accumulated on my feet, I trace patterns on the walls and disturb the flaking plaster which in itself has formed a score of patterns—birds and snakes and elephants . . . With a little imagination I can conjure up the entire world of the Panchatantra . . .

&nb
sp; Of all the joys of the senses, I think it is the sense of touch I relish most—contact of the cool floor on a hot day. That is why I lie naked in my room, so that all my flesh is in touch with the cool stones.

  The touch of the earth—soft earth, stony earth, grass, mud. Sometimes the road is so hot that it scorches the most hardened feet; sometimes it is cold and hard and cruel. Grass is good, especially dew-drenched grass; then the feet are stained with juices, and the sap seems to pass into the body. Wet earth is soft and sensuous, and when the mud cakes on one’s feet it is interesting to bathe at a tap and watch the muddy water run away. Splashing through puddles and streams . . .

  *

  There are days and there are nights, and then there are other days and other nights, and all the days and nights in Pipalnagar are the same.

  A few things reassure me . . . The desire to love and be loved. The beauty and ugliness of the human body, the intricacy of its design. These things fascinate me. Sometimes I make love as a sort of exploration of all that is physical; falling in love becomes an exploration of the mind.

  Six

  It is difficult to fall asleep some nights. Apart from the mosquitoes and the oppressive atmosphere, there are the loudspeakers blaring all over Pipalnagar—at cinemas, marriages and religious gatherings. There is a continuous variety of fare—religious music and film music. I do not care much for either, and yet I am compelled to listen, both repelled and fascinated by the sounds that permeate the midnight air.

  Strangely enough, it does not trouble Suraj. He is immune to noise. Once he is asleep, it would take a bomb to disturb him. At the first blare of the loudspeaker, he pulls a pillow or towel over his head, and falls asleep. He has been in Pipalnagar longer than I, and has grown accustomed to living against a background of noise. And yet he is a silent person, silent in his movements and in his moods; and I, who love silence so much—I am clumsy and garrulous.

  Suraj does not know if his parents are dead or alive. He lost them, literally, when he was seven.

  His father had been a cultivator, a dark unfathomable man, who spoke little, thought perhaps even less, and was vaguely aware that he possessed a son—a weak boy, who resembled his mother to a disconcerting degree in that he not only looked like her but was given to introspection and dawdling at the river-bank when he should have been at work in the fields.

  The boy’s mother was a subdued, silent woman—frail and, consumptive. Her husband did not expect that she would live long. Perhaps the separation from her son put an end to her interest in life—or perhaps it has urged her to live on somewhere, in the hope that she will find him again.

  Suraj lost his parents at Amritsar railway station, where trains coming over the border disgorged themselves of thousands of refugees—or pulled into the station half-empty, drenched with blood and piled with corpses.

  Suraj and his parents were lucky to escape the massacre. Had they been able to travel on an earlier train (they had tried desperately to get into one) they might easily have been killed; but circumstances favoured them then, only to trick them later.

  Suraj was clinging to his mother’s sari, while she kept close to her husband, who was elbowing his way through the frightened, bewildered throng of refugees; looking over his shoulder at a woman sobbing on the ground, Suraj collided with a burly Sikh and lost his grip on his mother’s sari.

  The Sikh had a long, curved sword at his waist, and Suraj stared up at him in terror and fascination, at his long hair, which had fallen loose, and his wild black beard, and the blood-stains on his white shirt. The Sikh pushed him out of the way, and when Suraj looked round for his mother she was not to be seen.

  He could hear her calling to him, ‘Suraj, where are you, Suraj?’ and he tried to force his way through the crowd, in the direction of her voice, but he was carried the other way.

  Seven

  At a certain age a boy is like young wheat, growing, healthy, on the verge of manhood. His eyes are alive, his mind quick, his gestures confident. You cannot mistake him.

  This is the most fascinating age, when a boy becomes a man—it is interesting both physically and mentally: the growth of the boy’s hair, the toning of the muscles, the consciousness of growing and changing and maturing—never again will there be so much change and development in so short a period of time. The body exudes virility, is full of currents and counter-currents.

  For a girl, puberty is a frightening age when alarming things begin to happen to her body; for a boy it is an age of self-assertion, of a growing confidence in himself and in his attitude to the world. His physical changes are a source of happiness and pride.

  *

  There were no inhibitions in my friendship with Suraj. We spoke of bodies as we spoke of minds, and discussed the problems of one as we would discuss those of the other, for they are really the same problems.

  He was beautiful, with the beauty of the short-lived, a transient, sad beauty. It made me sad even to look at his pale slim limbs. It hurt me to look into his eyes. There was death in his eyes.

  He told me that he was afraid of women, that he constantly felt the urge to possess a woman, but that when confronted with one he might just as well have been a eunuch.

  I told him that not every woman was made for every man, and that I would bring him a girl with whom he would be happy.

  This was Kamla, a very friendly person from the house run by Seth Govind Ram. She was very small, and rather delicate, but more skilled in love-making than any of her colleagues. She was patient, and particularly fond of the young and inexperienced. She was only twenty-three, but had been four years in the profession.

  *

  Kamla’s hands and feet are beautiful. That in itself is satisfying. A beautiful face leaves me cold if the hands and feet are ugly. Perhaps this is some sort of phobia with me.

  Kamla first met me when I came up the stairs shortly after I had moved into the room above the bus stop. She was sitting on the steps, eating a melon; and when she saw me, she smiled and held out a slice.

  ‘Will you eat melon, bhai sahib?’ She asked, and her voice was so appealing and her eyes so mischievous that I couldn’t help taking the melon from her hands.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, patting the step. I had never come across a girl so openly friendly and direct. As I sat down, I discovered the secret of her smile; it lay in the little scar on her right check; when she smiled, the scar turned into a dimple.

  ‘Don’t you do any work?’ she asked.

  ‘I write stories and things,’ I said.

  ‘Is that work?’

  ‘Well, I live by it,’

  ‘Show me,’ she demanded.

  I brought her a magazine and began turning the pages for her. She could read a little, if the words were simple enough. But she didn’t get as far as my story, because her attention was arrested by a picture of a girl with an urchin hair-cut.

  ‘It is a girl?’ she asked; and, when I assured her it was: ‘But her hair, how is it like that?’

  ‘That’s the latest fashion,’ I protested. ‘Thousands of women keep hair like that. At least they did a year ago,’ I added, looking at the date on the magazine.

  ‘Is it easy to make?’

  ‘Yes, you just take a pair of scissors and cut away until it looks untidy enough.’

  ‘I like it. You give it to me. I’ll go and get scissors.’

  ‘No, no!’ I said. ‘You can’t do that, your family will be most upset.’

  She stamped her bare foot on the step. ‘I have no family, silly man! I have a husband who is happy only if I can make myself attractive to others. He is skinny and smells of garlic, and he has given my father five acres of land for the favour of having a wife half his age. But it is Seth Govind Ram who really owns me; my husband is only his servant.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I tell you?’ she said, and gave me a dark, defiant look. ‘You like me, do you not?’

  ‘Of course I like you,
’ I hastened to assure her.

  *

  I think I hate families. I am jealous of them. Their sense of security, of interdependence, infuriates me. To every family I am an outsider, because I have no family. A man without a family is a social outcast. He has no credentials. A man’s credentials are his father and his father’s property. His mother is another quantity; it is her family—her father—that matter.

  So I am glad that I do not belong to a family, and at the same time sad, because in our country if you do not belong to a family you are a piece of driftwood. And so two pieces of driftwood come together, and finding themselves caught in the same current, move along with it until they are trapped in a counter-current, and dispersed.

  And that is the way it is with me. I must cling to someone as long as circumstances will permit it.

  *

  Having no family of our own, it was odd and even touching that Kamla should have adopted us both as her brothers during the Raksha Bandhan festival.

  This is the time of year when sisters tie the sacred thread to the wrists of their brothers. As a token of affection, the brother makes her a small gift of money, and promises her his protection.

  It was a change to have Kamla visiting us early in the morning instead of late at night; and we were surprised, and rather disconnected, to be treated as her brothers.

  She tied the silver tinsel round our wrists, and I said, ‘Kamla, we are proud to be your brothers, and we would like to make you some gift, but at the moment there is no money with us.’

  ‘I want your protection, not your money,’ said Kamla. ‘I want to feel that I am not alone in the world.’

  So that made three of us. But we could hardly call ourselves a family.

  *

  Kamla visited us about once a week, when she found time to spare from her professional duties.

  Though I was the more accomplished lover, I think she preferred Suraj. He was gentle and he was beautiful, and I think she felt, as I did, that he would not live very long. She wanted to give him as much of herself as she could in so short a time.