The Best of Ruskin Bond

by Bond, Ruskin

  Suraj was always a bit embarrassed with her. At first I thought it was because of my presence in the room; but when I offered to leave, he protested. He told me that he would havebeen completely helpless if I was not present all the time. In fact, I think he slept with Kamla only in order to please me.

  Eight

  Suraj and I were sitting in the tea-shop one night. Most of the customers were outside on a bench, where they could listen to the shopkeeper, a popular story-teller. Sitting on the ground in front of the shop was a thick-set youth, with a shaved head. He was dumb—they called him Goonga—and the customers often made sport of him, abusing him and clouting him over the head from time to time. The Goonga didn’t mind this; he made faces at the others, and chuckled derisively at their remarks. He could say only one word, ‘Goo,’ and he said it often. This kept the customers in fits of laughter.

  ‘Goo,’ he said, when he saw Suraj enter the shop with me. He pointed at us, chuckled, and said, ‘Goo.’

  Everyone laughed. Someone got up from the bench and, with the flat of his hand, whacked the Goonga over his bald head. The Goonga sprang at the man making queer noises in his throat, and then someone tripped him and sent him sprawling on the ground. There was more laughter.

  We were sitting at an inside table, and everyone was drinking tea, except the Goonga.

  ‘Give the Goonga a glass of tea,’ I told the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper grinned but complied with the order. The Goonga looked at me and said ‘Goo.’

  When we left the shop, the full moon floated above us, robbing the stars of their glory. We walked in the direction of the Maidan, towards my room. The bazaar was almost empty, the shops closed, lights showing only from upper windows I became conscious of the sound of soft footfalls behind me and, looking over my shoulder, found that we were being followed by the Goonga. ‘Goo,’ he said, on being noticed.

  ‘Why did you have to give him tea?’ said Suraj. ‘Now he probably thinks we are rich, and won’t let us out of sight again.’

  ‘He can do no harm,’ I said, though I quickened my step. ‘We’ll pretend we’re going to sleep on the Maidan, then he’ll change his mind about us.’

  ‘Goo,’ said the Goonga from behind, and quickened his step as well.

  We turned abruptly down an alley-way, trying to shake him off; but he padded after us, chuckling ghoulishly to himself. We cut back to the main road, but he was behind us at the clock tower. At the edge of the Maidan I turned and said:

  ‘Go away, Goonga. We’ve got very little, and can’t do anything for you. Go away.’

  But the youth said ‘Goo’ and took a step forward, and his shaved head glistened in the moonlight. I shrugged, and led Suraj on to the Maidan. The Goonga stood at the edge of the Maidan, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. His body showed through his rags, and his feet were covered with mud. He watched us as we walked across the grass, watched us until we sat down on a bench; then he shrugged his shoulders and said ‘Goo’ and went away.

  The beggars on the whole are a thriving community, and it came as no surprise to me when the municipality decided to place a tax on begging.

  I know that some beggars earned, on an average, more than a chaprasi or a clerk; I knew for certain that the one-legged man, who had been hobbling about town on crutches long before I come to Pipalnagar, sent money-orders home every month. Begging had become a profession, and so perhaps the municipality felt justified in taxing it, and besides, the municipal coffers needed replenishing.

  Shaggy old Ganpat Ram, who was bent double and couldn’t straighten up, didn’t like it at all, and told me so. ‘If I had known this was going to happen,’ he mumbled, ‘I would have chosen some other line of work.’

  Ganpat Ram was an aristocrat among beggars. I had heard that he had once been a man of property, with several houses and a European wife; when his wife packed up and returned to Europe, together with all their savings, Ganpat had a nervous breakdown from which he never recovered. His health became steadily worse until he had to hobble about with a stick. He never made a direct request for money, but greeted you politely, commented on the weather or the price of things, and stood significantly beside you.

  I suspected his story to be half true because whenever he approached a well-dressed person, he used impeccable English. He had a white beard and twinkling eyes, and was not the sort of beggar who invokes the names of the gods and calls on the mercy of the passer-by. Ganpat would rely more on a good joke. Some said he was a spy or a policeman in disguise, however, devoted to his work, would remain a beggar for five years.

  I don’t know how blind the blind man was, because he always recognized me in the street, even when he was alone. He would invoke blessings on my head, or curses, as the occasion demanded. I didn’t like the blind man, because he made too much capital out of his affliction; there were opportunities for him to work with other blind people, but he found begging more profitable. The boy who sometimes led him around town didn’t beg from me, but would ask ‘Have you got an anna on you?’ as though he were merely borrowing the money, or needed it only for a minute or two. He was quite friendly, and even came up to my room, to see how I was getting on. He was very solicitous about my welfare. If he saw me from a hundred yards down the street, he would run all the way up to enquire about my health, and borrow an anna. He had a crafty, healthy face, and wore a long, dirty cloak draped over his shoulders., and very little else. He didn’t care about the tax on begging, that was the blind man’s problem.

  In fact, the tax didn’t affect the boys at all; with them, begging was a pastime and not a profession. They had big watery eyes, and it was difficult to resist their appeal.

  ‘I haven’t any small change,’ I would say defensively.

  ‘I’ll change your note,’ offers the boy.

  ‘It’s not a note; it’s a fifty paise coin.’

  ‘What do you want to change that for? Give me the coin and I won’t trouble you for the rest of the week.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’ But even if I gave him the two annas, he would accost me again at the first opportunity and wheedle something more from my pocket. There was a time when beggars asked for one or two pice; but these days, what with the rise in the cost of living, they never ask for anything less than an anna.

  Friday is Leper day.

  There is a leper colony a little way out of town, on the banks of a muddy, mosquito-ridden ditch, the other side of the railway station. They come into Pipalnagar once a week to beg, and wander through the town in small groups, making for wealthy-looking individuals who give them something if only to avoid being followed down the road. (Of course the danger of contagion is there, but if the municipal authorities do not let the lepers beg, they will have to support them, and that would prove expensive).

  Some of the leper girls have good faces, but their hands are withered stumps, or their arms and legs are eaten away: the older ones have lost their ears and noses, and the men shuffle about with one or two limbs missing. Most of the sufferers belong to the hill areas, where it is still widely believed that leprosy is punishment for sins committed in a former life; the victim is ostracized and often driven out by his family; he goes into the towns and, in order to get work, makes a secret of his affliction; it is only when it can no longer be concealed that he goes for treatment, and then it is too late. The few who get into the hospitals are soldiers and policemen, who are looked after by the State, and a few others whose families have not disclaimed responsibility for them.

  But the tax didn’t affect the boys or the lepers. It was aimed at the professionals, those who had made a business of begging over the past few years. It was rumoured that one beggar, after spending the day on the pavement calling for alms, would have a taxi drawn up beside him in the evening, and would be driven off to his residence outside town. And when, some months back, news got around that the Pipalnagar Bank was ready to crash, one beggar, who had never been seen to stand on his own two feet, leapt from the pavement an
d sprinted for the Bank. The professionals are usually crippled or maimed in one way or another—many of them have maimed themselves, others have gone through rigorous training schools in their youth, where they are versed in the fine art of begging. A few cases are genuine, and those are not so loud in their demands for charity, with the result that they don’t make much. There are some who sing for their money, and I do not class these as beggars unless they sing badly.

  Well, when the municipality decided to place a tax on begging, you should have seen the beggars get together; anyone would have thought they had a union. About a hundred of them took a procession down the main road to the municipal offices, shouting slogans and even waving banners to express the injustice felt by the beggar fraternity over this high-handed action of the authorities. They came on sticks and in carts, a dirty, ragged bunch, one or two of them stark naked; and they stood for two hours outside the municipal offices, to the embarrassment of the working staff and anyone who tried to enter the building.

  Eventually somebody came out and told them it was all a rumour, and that no such tax had been contemplated; it would be far too impractical, for one thing. The beggars could all go home and hoard their earnings without any fear of official interference.

  So the beggars returned jubilant, feeling they had won a moral victory, conscious of the power of group action. They went out of their way to develop their union, and now there is a fully fledged Beggars’ Union. Different districts are allotted to different beggars, and woe betide the trespasser! Beggars are becoming more demanding than ever, and it is rumoured that they intend staging demonstrations outside the houses of those who refuse to be charitable!

  But my own personal beggars, old Ganpat Ram and the boys, don’t take advantage of their growing power; they treat me with due respect and affection; they do not consider me just another member of the public, who has to be blackmailed into charity, but look upon me as a friend who can be counted upon to make them a small loan from time to time, without expecting any immediate return.

  Nine

  ‘Should I go to Delhi, Suraj?’

  ‘Why not? You are always talking about it. You should go.’ ‘I would like you to come with me. Perhaps they can make you better there, even cure you of your fits.’

  ‘Not now. After my examinations.’

  ‘Then I will wait . . .’

  ‘Go now, if there is a chance of making a living in Delhi.’

  ‘There is nothing definite. But I know the chance will not come until I leave this place and make my chances. There are one or two editors who have asked me to look them up. They could give me some work. And if I find an honest publisher I might be encouraged to write an honest book.’

  ‘Write the book, even if you don’t find a publisher.’

  ‘I will try.’

  We decided to save a little money, from his small earnings and from my occasional erratic payments which came by money order. I would need money for my trip to Delhi; sometimes there were medicines to be paid for; and we had no warm clothes for the cold weather. We managed to put away twenty rupees one week, but withdrew it the next, as Pitamber needed a loan for repairs on his cycle-rickshaw. He returned the money in three instalments and it disappeared in meeting various small bills.

  Pitamber and Deep Chand and Ramu and Aziz all had plans for visiting Delhi. Only Kamla could not foresee such a move for herself. She was a woman and she had no man.

  Deep Chand dreamt of his barber shop. Pitamber planned to own a scooter-rickshaw, which would involve no physical exertion and bring in more money. Ramu had a hundred-and-one different dreams, all of which featured beautiful women. He was a sweet boy, with little intelligence but much good nature.

  Once, when he had his arm gashed by a knife in a street fight, he came to me for treatment. The hospital would have had to report the matter to the police. I washed his wound, poured benzedrine over it to stop the bleeding, and bandaged his arm rather crudely. He was very grateful and rewarded me with the story of his life. It was a chronicle of disappointed females, all of whom had been seduced by Ramu in fantastic circumstances and had been discarded by him after he had slept with each but once. Ramu boasted that he did not go twice to the same woman.

  All this was good-natured lying, as it was well-known that a girl-teaser like Ramu had never seen anything more than a well-shaped ankle; but apparently Ramu believed in many of his own adventures, which in his own mind had acquired a legendary aspect.

  I did not ask him how he got his arm cut, because I know he would have given me a fantastic explanation involving his honour and a lady’s dishonour. Later I discovered that an irate brother had stabbed him for spreading discreditable rumours about his sister.

  Ramu slept in my room that night. It was the sweet sleep of childhood. Suraj read his books, and Kamla came and went, while Ramu dreamt—he told us about it in the morning—of a woman with three breasts.

  Ten

  ‘Look, Ganpat,’ I said one day, ‘I’ve heard a lot of stories about you, and I don’t know which is true. How did you get your crooked back?’

  ‘That’s a very long story,’ he said, flattered by my interest in him. ‘And I don’t know if you will believe it. Besides, it is not to anyone that I would speak freely.’

  He had served his purpose in whetting my appetite. I said, ‘I’ll give you four annas if you tell me your story. How about that?’

  He stroked his beard, considering my offer. ‘All right,’ he said, squatting down on his haunches in the sunshine, while I pulled myself up on a low wall. ‘But it happened more than twenty years ago, and you cannot expect me to remember very clearly.’

  In those days (said Ganpat) I was quite a young man, and had just been married. I owned several acres of land and, though we were not rich, we were not very poor. When I took my produce to the market, five miles away, I harnessed the bullocks and drove down the dusty village road. I would return home at night.

  Every night, I passed a peepul tree, and it was said this tree was haunted. I had never met the ghost and did not believe in him, but his name, I was told, was Bippin, and long ago he had been hanged on the peepul tree by a band of dacoits. Ever since, his ghost had lived in the tree, and was in the habit of pouncing upon any person who resembled a dacoit, and beating him severely. I suppose I must have looked dishonest, for one night Bippin decided to pounce on me. He leapt out of the tree and stood in the middle of the road, blocking the way.

  ‘You, there!’ he shouted. ‘Get off your cart. I am going to kill you!’

  I was, of course, taken aback, but saw no reason why I should obey.

  ‘I have no intention of being killed,’ I said. ‘Get on the cart yourself!’

  ‘Spoken like a man!’ cried Bippin, and he jumped up on the cart beside me. ‘But tell me one good reason why I should not kill you?’

  ‘I am not a dacoit,’ I replied.

  ‘But you look one. That is the same thing.’

  ‘You would be sorry for it later, if you killed me. I am a poor man, with a wife to support.’

  ‘You have no reason for being poor,’ said Bippin, angrily.

  ‘Well, make me rich if you can.’

  ‘So you think I don’t have the power to make you rich? Do you defy me to make you rich?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I defy you to make me rich.’

  ‘Then drive on!’ cried Bippin. ‘I am coming home with you.’ I drove the bullock-cart on to the village, with Bippin sitting beside me.

  ‘I have so arranged it,’ he said, ‘that no one but you will be able to see me. And another thing. I must sleep beside you every night, and no one must know of it. If you tell anyone about me, I’ll kill you immediately!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Good. I look forward to living with you. It was getting lonely in that peepul tree.’

  So Bippin came to live with me, and he slept beside me every night, and we got on very well together. He was as good
as his word, and money began to pour in from every conceivable and inconceivable source, until I was in a position to buy more land and cattle. Nobody knew of our association, though of course my friends and relatives wondered where all the money was coming from. At the same time, my wife was rather upset at my refusing to sleep with her at night. I could not very well keep her in the same bed as a ghost, and Bippin was most particular about sleeping beside me. At first, I had told my wife I wasn’t well, that I would sleep on the veranda. Then I told her that there was someone after our cows, and I would have to keep an eye on them at night: Bippin and I slept in the barn.

  My wife would often spy on me at night, suspecting infidelity, but she always found me lying alone with the cows. Unable to understand my strange behaviour, she mentioned it to her family. They came to me, demanding an explanation.

  At the same time, my own relatives were insisting that I tell them the source of my increasing income. Uncles and aunts and distant cousins all descended on me one day, wanting to know where the money was coming from.

  ‘Do you want me to die?’ I said, losing patience with them. ‘If I tell you the cause of my wealth, I will surely die.’

  But they laughed, taking this for a half-hearted excuse; they suspected I was trying to keep everything for myself. My wife’s relatives insisted that I had found another woman. Eventually, I grew so exhausted with their demands that I blurted out the truth.

  They didn’t believe the truth either (who does?), but it gave them something to think and talk about, and they went away for the time being.

  But that night, Bippin didn’t come to sleep beside me. I was all alone with the cows. And he didn’t come the following night. I had been afraid he would kill me while I slept, but it appeared that he had gone his way and left me to my own devices. I was certain that my good fortune had come to an end, and so I went back to sleeping with my wife.