The Best of Ruskin Bond

by Bond, Ruskin

  *

  All night long I hear the shunting and whistling of engines, and like a child I conjure up visions of places with sweet names like Kumbekonam, Krishnagiri, Mahabalipuram and Polonnarurawa; dreams of palm-fringed beaches and inland lagoons; of the echoing chambers of some deserted city, red sandstone and white marble; of temples in the sun, and elephants crossing wide slow-moving rivers . . .

  Ours is a land of many people, many races; their diversity gives it colour and character. For all Indians to be alike would be as dull as for all sexes to be the same, or for all humans to be normal. In Delhi, too, there is a richness of race, though the Punjabi predominates—in shops, taxis, motor workshops and carpenters’ sheds. But in the old city there are still many Muslims following traditional trades—bakers, butchers, painters, makers of toys and kites. South Indians have filled our offices; Rajasthanis move dexterously along the scaffolding of new buildings springing up every where; and in the surrounding countryside nomadic Gujjars still graze their cattle, while settled villagers find their lands selected for trails of new tubewells, pumps, fertilizers and ploughs.

  *

  The city wakes early. The hour before sunrise is the only time when it is possible to exercise. Once the sun is up, people must take refuge beneath fans or in the shade of jamun and neem trees. September in Delhi is sultry and humid, relieved only by an occasional monsoon downpour. In the old city there is always the danger of cholera; in the new capital, people fall ill from sitting too long in air-conditioned cinemas and restaurants.

  At noon the streets are almost empty; but early in the morning everyone is about, young and old, shopkeeper and clerk, taxi driver and shoeshine boy, flooding the maidans and open spaces in their vests and underwear. Some sprint around the maidans; some walk briskly down the streets, swinging their arms like soldiers; young men wrestle, or play volley-ball or kabaddi; others squat on their haunches, some stand on their heads; some pray, facing the sun; some study books, mumbling to themselves, or make speeches to vast, invisible audiences; scrub their teeth with neem twigs, bathe at public taps, wash clothes, tie dhotis or turbans and go about their business.

  The sun is up, clerks are asleep with their feet up at their desks, government employees drink innumerable cups of tea, and the machinery of bureaucracy and civilization runs on as smoothly as ever.

  Twenty-One

  Suraj was on the platform when the Pipalnagar Express steamed into the station in the early hours of a warm late September morning. I wanted to shout to him from the carriage window, to tell him that everything was well, that the world was wonderful, and that I loved him and the world and everything in it.

  But I couldn’t say anything until we had left the station and I was drinking hot tea on the string-bed in our room.

  ‘It is three hundred a month,’ I said, ‘but we should be able to manage on that, if we are careful. And now that you have done your matriculation, you will be able to join the Polytechnic. So we will-both be busy. And when we are not working, we shall have all Delhi to explore. It will be better in the city. One should live either in a city or in a village. In a village, everyone knows you intimately. In a city, no one has the slightest interest in you. But in a town like Pipalnagar, everyone knows you, nobody loves you; when you die, you are forgotten; while you live, you are only a subject for malicious conversation. Poor Pipalnagar. . . . Will you be sorry to leave the place, Suraj?’

  ‘Yes, I will be sorry. This is where I have lived.

  ‘This is where I’ve existed. I only began to live when I realized I could leave the place.’

  ‘When we went to the hills?’

  ‘When I met you.’

  ‘How did I change anything? I am still an additional burden.

  ‘You have made me aware of who and what I am.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t want you to. That would spoil it.’

  *

  There was no rent to be paid before we left, as Seth Govind Ram’s Munshi had taken it in advance, and there were five days to go before the end of the month; there was little chance of the balance being returned to us.

  Deep Chand was happy to know that we were leaving. ‘I shall follow you soon,’ he said. ‘There is money to be made in Delhi, cutting hair. Why, even girls are beginning to keep short hair. I shall keep a special saloon for ladies, which Ramu can attend. Women feel safe with him, he looks so pretty and innocent.’

  Ramu winked at me in the mirror. I could not imagine anyone less innocent. Girls going to school and college still complained that he harassed them and threatened to remove their pigtails with his razor.

  The snip of Deep Chand’s scissors lulled me to sleep as I sat in his chair; his fingers beat a rhythmic tattoo on my scalp; his razor caressed by cheeks. It was my last shave, and Deep Chand did not charge me anything. I promised to write to him as soon as I had settled down in Delhi.

  *

  Kamla had gone home for a few days. Her village was about five miles from Pipalnagar in the opposite direction to Pitamber’s, among the mustard and wheat fields that sloped down to the banks of the little water-course. I worked my way downstream until I came to the fields.

  I waited behind some trees on the outskirts of the village until I saw her playing with a little boy; I whistled and stepped out of the trees, but when she saw me she motioned me back, and took the child into one of the small mud houses.

  I waited amongst the sal trees until I heard footsteps a short distance away.

  ‘Where are you?’ I called, but received no answer. I walked in the direction of the footsteps, and found a small path going through the trees. After a short distance the path turned to meet a stream, and Kamla was waiting there.

  ‘Why didn’t you wait for me?’ I asked.

  ‘I wanted to see if you could follow me.’

  ‘Well, I am good at it,’ I said, sitting down beside her on the bank of the stream. The water was no more than ankle-deep, cool and clear. I took off my shoes, rolled up my trousers, and put my feet in the water. Kamla was barefooted, and so she had to tuck up her sari a little, before slipping her feet in.

  With my feet I churned up the mud at the bottom of the stream. As the mud subsided, I saw her face reflected in the water; and looking up at her again, into her dark eyes, I wanted to care for her and protect her, I wanted to take her away from Pipalnagar; I wanted her to live like other people. Of course, I had forgotten all about my poor finances.

  I kissed the tips of her fingers, then her neck. She ran her fingers through my hair. The rain began splatting down and Kamla said, ‘Let us go.’

  We set off. Soon the rain began pelting down. Kamla shook herself free and we dashed for cover. She was breathing heavily and I kissed her again. Kamla’s hair came loose and streamed down her body. We had to hop over pools, and avoid the soft mud. And then I thought she was crying, but I wasn’t sure, it might have been the raindrops on her cheeks, and her heavy breathing.

  ‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘Come away from Pipalnagar.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Why can’t you come?’

  ‘Because you really do not want me to. For you, a woman would only be a liability. You are free like birds, you and Suraj, you can go where you like and do as you like. I cannot help you in any way. And what use is a woman to a man if she cannot help him? I have helped you to pass your time in Pipalnagar. That is something. I am part of this place. Neither Pipalnagar nor I can change. But you can, simply by going away.’

  ‘Will you come later, once I have started making a living in Delhi?’

  ‘I am married, it is as simple as that . . .’

  ‘If it is that simple, you can come.’

  ‘I have to think of my parents, you know. It would ruin them if I ran away.’

  ‘Yes, but they do not care if they have broken your heart.’

  She shrugged and looked away towards the village. ‘I am not so unhappy. He is an old fool, my husband, and I get some fu
n out of teasing him. He will die one day, and so will the Seth, and then I will be free.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Why not? And anyway, you can always come to see me, and nobody will be made unhappy by it.’

  I felt sad and frustrated but I couldn’t take my frustration out on anyone or anything.

  ‘It was Suraj, not I, who stole your heart,’ she said.

  She touched my face softly and then abruptly ran towards her little hut. She waved once and then was gone.

  Twenty-Two

  At six every morning the first bus arrives, and the passengers alight, looking sleepy and dishevelled, and rather depressed at the sight of our Mohalla. When they have gone their various ways, the bus is driven into the shed. and the road is left clear for the arrival of the municipal van. The cows congregate at the dustbin, and the pavement dwellers come to life, stretching their dusty limbs on the hard stone steps. I carry the bucket up three steps to my room, and bathe for the last time on the open balcony. Our tin trunks are packed, and Suraj’s tray is empty.

  At Pitamber’s village the buffaloes are wallowing in green ponds, while naked urchins sit astride them, scrubbing their backs, and a crow or water-bird purchases on a glistening neck. The parrots are busy in the crooked tree, and a slim green snake basks in the sun on our island near the brick-kiln. In the hills, the mists have lifted and the distant mountains are covered with snow.

  It is autumn, and the rains are over. The earth meets the sky in one broad sweep of the creator’s brush.

  *

  A land of thrusting hills. Terraced hills, wood-covered and windswept. Mountains where the gods speak gently to the lonely heart. Hills of green and grey rock, misty at dawn, hazy at noon, molten at sunset; where fierce fresh torrents rush to the valleys below.

  A quiet land of fields and ponds, shaded by ancient trees and ringed with palms, where sacred rivers are touched by temples; where temples are touched by the southern seas.

  This is the real land, the land I should write about. My Mohalla is but a sickness, a wasting disease, and I should turn aside from it to sing instead of the splendours of tomorrow. But only yesterdays are splendid. . . . There are other singers, sweeter than I, to sing of tomorrow. I can only sing of today, of Pipalnagar, where I have lived and loved.

  Yesterday I was sad, and tomorrow I may be sad again, but today I know that I am happy. I want to live on and on, delighting like a pagan in all that is physical; and I know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart.

  From Small Beginnings

  * On a warrant from Bombay, charging me with writing an allegedly obscene short story!

  From My Notebook

  * Some nature notes (made while living in Mussoorie; a writer who ignores the flora and fauna around him, does so at his own peril).

  Ganga Descends

  * Wilson inspires one of my brief forays into historical fiction in the opening chapters to Rosebud.

  Lost

  * My first poem, published in the Illustrated Weekly of India, in 1952

  Extract From A Flight Of Pigeons

  * The Rosa Rum Factory recovered, and survives to this day.

  The Lafunga

  * From Vagrants in the Valley.

  Extract From Rosebud

  * Author’s note: If I continue with this narrative, Wilson will move further into the interior, collecting plants and making friends. In a remote village he will meet the beautiful Gulabi (Rosebud) and fall in love with her. What enchanted him was her smile. It dropped over her face slowly, like sunshine moving over brown hills.

  Acknowledgements

  While every effort has been made to acknowledge the publications in which the stories and essays included in this collection first appeared, in the event of any inadvertent omission, the publishers should be notified and formal acknowledgements will be included in all future editions of this book.

  ‘My First Love’ first appeared in Sun, 1994; ‘Tribute to a Dead Friend’ first appeared in Orient/West (Tokyo), 1963; ‘The Trouble with Jinns’ first appeared in Sun, 1994; ‘Life At My Own Pace’ first appeared in The Heritage, 1986; ‘The Old Gramophone’ first appeared as ‘The Sound of Boyhood Days’ in Miscellany, 1993; ‘Adventures of a Book Lover’ first appeared in The Statesman and Books for Keeps (UK); ‘A Golden Voice Remembered’ first appeared in Span, 1991; ‘At Home in India’ first appeared in Miscellany, 1993; ‘Getting the Juices Flowing’ first appeared in The Sunday Observer, 1981; ‘Home is Under the Big Top’ first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, 1993; ‘Adventures in a Banyan Tree’ first appeared in Lokmat Times, 1994; ‘From My Notebook’ first appeared in Writers Workshop Miscellany (Twenty Seven); ‘Beautiful Mandakini’ first appeared in The Pioneer, 1991; ‘Flowers on the Ganga’ first appeared in Sunday World, 1971; ‘Footloose in Agra’ first appeared in India Perspectives, 1993.

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  ROOM ON THE ROOF

  Ruskin Bond

  Unhappy with the strict ways of his English guardian, Rusty runs away from home to live with Indian friends. Plunging for the first time into the dream-bright world of the bazaar, Hindu festivals and other aspects of Indian life. Rusty is enchanted . . . and is lost forever to the prime proprieties of the European community.

  ‘Has a special magic of its own’

  —Herald Tribune Book Review

  ‘Considerable charm and spontaneity . . .’

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  ‘Very engaging . . .

  —The Guardian

  ‘Moving in its simplicity and underlying tenderness . . . a novel of marked originality.’

  —The Scotsman

  ‘Mr Bond is a writer of great gifts . . .’

  —The New Statesman

  OUR TREES STILL GROW IN DEHRA

  Ruskin Bond

  Semi-autobiographical in nature, these stories span the period from the author’s childhood to the present. We are introduced, in a series of beautifully imagined and crafted cameos, to the author’s family, friends, and various other people who left a lasting impression on him. In othe
r stories we revisit Bond’s beloved Garhwal hills and the small towns and villages that he has returned to time and time again in his fiction.

  Together with his well-known novella, A Flight of Pigeons (which was made into the film Junoon), which also appears in this collection, these stories once again bring Ruskin Bond’s India vividly to life.

  TIME STOPS AT SHAMLI

  Ruskin Bond

  Ruskin Bond’s characters—who live for the most part in the country’s small towns and villages—are not the sort who make the headlines but are, nonetheless, remarkable for their quiet heroism, their grace under pressure and the manner in which they continue to cleave to the old values: honesty, fidelity, a deep-rooted faith in God, family and their neighbour. They do have problems, of course—the sudden death of a loved parent, unfulfilled dreams, natural calamities, ghostly visitations, a respected teacher gone crooked, strangers who make a nuisance of themselves in a town marooned in time—but these are solved with a minimum of fuss and tremendous dignity. Taken together these stories are a magnificent evocation of the real India by one of the country’s foremost writers.

  ‘An educative, charming and often memorable onetime read . . . .’