by Ruskin Bond
‘Well, what did the blighter say?’ asked Mr Muggeridge.
‘I think he’s going to have to ditch the plane,’ said my father, who knew enough Dutch to get the gist of anything that was said.
‘Down in the drink!’ exclaimed Mr Muggeridge.
‘Gawd ’elp us! And how far are we from Bombay, guv?’
‘A few hundred miles,’ said my father.
‘Can you swim, mate?’ asked Mr Muggeridge looking at me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But not all the way to Bombay. How far can you swim?’
‘The length of a bathtub,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry,’ said my father. ‘Just make sure your life jacket’s properly tied.’
We looked to our life jackets; my father checked mine twice, making sure that it was properly fastened.
The pilot had now cut both engines, and was bringing the plane down in a circling movement. But he couldn’t control the speed, and it was tilting heavily to one side. Instead of landing smoothly on its belly, it came down on a wing tip, and this caused the plane to swivel violently around in the choppy sea. There was a terrific jolt when the plane hit the water, and if it hadn’t been for the seat belts we’d have been flung from our seats. Even so, Mr Muggeridge struck his head against the seat in front, and he was now holding a bleeding nose and using some shocking language.
As soon as the plane came to a standstill, my father undid my seat belt. There was no time to lose. Water was already filling the cabin, and all the passengers—except one, who was dead in his seat with a broken neck—were scrambling for the exit hatch. The co-pilot pulled a lever and the door fell away to reveal high waves slapping against the sides of the stricken plane.
Holding me by the hand, my father was leading me towards the exit.
‘Quick, lad,’ he said. ‘We won’t stay afloat for long.’
‘Give us a hand!’ shouted Mr Muggeridge, still struggling with his life jacket. ‘First this bloody bleedin’ nose, and now something’s gone and stuck.’
My father helped him fix the life jacket, then pushed him out of the door ahead of us.
As we swam away from the seaplane (Mr Muggeridge splashing fiercely alongside us), we were aware of the other passengers in the water. One of them shouted to us in Dutch to follow him.
We swam after him towards the dinghy, which had been released the moment we hit the water. That yellow dinghy, bobbing about on the waves, was as welcome as land.
All who had left the plane managed to climb into the dinghy. We were seven altogether—a tight fit. We had hardly settled down in the well of the dinghy when Mr Muggeridge, still holding his nose, exclaimed:—‘There she goes!’ And as we looked on helplessly, the seaplane sank swiftly and silently beneath the waves.
The dinghy had shipped a lot of water, and soon everyone was busy bailing it out with mugs (there were a couple in the dinghy), hats, and bare hands. There was a light swell, and every now and then water would roll in again and half fill the dinghy. But within half an hour we had most of the water out, and then it was possible to take turns, two men doing the bailing while the others rested. No one expected me to do this work, but I gave a hand anyway, using my father’s sola topi for the purpose.
‘Where are we?’ asked one of the passengers.
‘A long way from anywhere,’ said another.
‘There must be a few islands in the Indian Ocean.’
‘But we may be at sea for days before we come to one of them.’
‘Days or even weeks,’ said the captain. ‘Let us look at our supplies.’
The dinghy appeared to be fairly well provided with emergency rations: biscuits, raisins, chocolates (we’d lost our own), and enough water to last a week. There was also a first-aid box, which was put to immediate use, as Mr Muggeridge’s nose needed attention. A few others had cuts and bruises. One of the passengers had received a hard knock on the head and appeared to be suffering from a loss of memory. He had no idea how we happened to be drifting about in the middle of the Indian Ocean; he was convinced that we were on a pleasure cruise a few miles off Batavia.
The unfamiliar motion of the dinghy, as it rose and fell in the troughs between the waves, resulted in almost everyone getting seasick. As no one could eat anything, a day’s rations were saved.
The sun was very hot, and my father covered my head with a large spotted handkerchief. He’d always had a fancy for bandana handkerchiefs with yellow spots, and seldom carried fewer than two on his person; so he had one for himself too. The sola topi, well soaked in seawater, was being used by Mr Muggeridge.
It was only when I had recovered to some extent from my seasickness that I remembered the valuable stamp album, and sat up, exclaiming, ‘The stamps! Did you bring the stamp album, Dad?’
He shook his head ruefully. ‘It must be at the bottom of the sea by now,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, I kept a few rare stamps in my wallet.’ And looking pleased with himself, he tapped the pocket of his bush shirt.
The dinghy drifted all day, with no one having the least idea where it might be taking us.
‘Probably going round in circles,’ said Mr Muggeridge pessimistically.
There was no compass and no sail, and paddling wouldn’t have got us far even if we’d had paddles; we could only resign ourselves to the whims of the current and hope it would take us towards land or at least to within hailing distance of some passing ship.
The sun went down like an overripe tomato dissolving slowly in the sea. The darkness pressed down on us. It was a moonless night, and all we could see was the white foam on the crests of the waves. I lay with my head on my father’s shoulder, and looked up at the stars which glittered in the remote heavens.
‘Perhaps your friend Sono will look up at the sky tonight and see those same stars,’ said my father. ‘The world isn’t so big after all.’
‘All the same, there’s a lot of sea around us,’ said Mr Muggeridge from out of the darkness.
Remembering Sono, I put my hand in my pocket and was reassured to feel the smooth outline of the jade seahorse.
‘I’ve still got Sono’s seahorse,’ I said, showing it to my father.
‘Keep it carefully,’ he said. ‘It may bring us luck.’
‘Are seahorses lucky?’
‘Who knows? But he gave it to you with love, and love is like a prayer. So keep it carefully.’
I didn’t sleep much that night. I don’t think anyone slept. No one spoke much either, except, of course, Mr Muggeridge, who kept muttering something about cold beer and salami.
I didn’t feel so sick the next day. By ten o’clock I was quite hungry; but breakfast consisted of two biscuits, a piece of chocolate, and a little drinking water. It was another hot day, and we were soon very thirsty, but everyone agreed that we should ration ourselves strictly.
Two or three still felt ill, but the others, including Mr Muggeridge, had recovered their appetites and normal spirits, and there was some discussion about the prospects of being picked up.
‘Are there any distress rockets in the dinghy?’ asked my father. ‘If we see a ship or a plane, we can fire a rocket and hope to be spotted. Otherwise there’s not much chance of our being seen from a distance.’
A thorough search was made in the dinghy, but there were no rockets.
‘Someone must have used them last Guy Fawkes Day,’ commented Mr Muggeridge.
‘They don’t celebrate Guy Fawkes Day in Holland,’ said my father. ‘Guy Fawkes was an Englishman.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Muggeridge, not in the least put out. ‘I’ve always said, most great men are Englishmen. And what did this chap Guy Fawkes do?’
‘Tried to blow up Parliament,’ said my father.
That afternoon we saw our first sharks. They were enormous creatures, and as they glided backward and forward under the boat it seemed they might hit and capsize us. They went away for some time, but returned in the evening.
At night, as I lay half asleep beside my father, I f
elt a few drops of water strike my face. At first I thought it was the sea spray; but when the sprinkling continued, I realized that it was raining lightly.
‘Rain!’ I shouted, sitting up. ‘It’s raining!’
Everyone woke up and did his best to collect water in mugs, hats or other containers. Mr Muggeridge lay back with his mouth open, drinking the rain as it fell.
‘This is more like it,’ he said.
‘You can have all the sun an’ sand in the world. Give me a rainy day in England!’
But by early morning, the clouds had passed, and the day turned out to be even hotter than the previous one. Soon we were all red and raw from sunburn. By midday even Mr Muggeridge was silent. No one had the energy to talk.
Then my father whispered, ‘Can you hear a plane, lad?’
I listened carefully, and above the hiss of the waves I heard what sounded like the distant drone of a plane; it must have been very far away, because we could not see it. Perhaps it was flying into the sun, and the glare was too much for our sore eyes; or perhaps we’d just imagined the sound.
Then the Dutchman who’d lost his memory thought he saw land, and kept pointing towards the horizon and saying, ‘That’s Batavia, I told you we were close to shore!’ No one else saw anything. So my father and I weren’t the only ones imagining things.
Said my father, ‘It only goes to show that a man can see what he wants to see, even if there’s nothing to be seen!’
The sharks were still with us. Mr Muggeridge began to resent them. He took off one of his shoes and hurled it at the nearest shark; but the big fish ignored the shoe and swam on after us.
‘Now, if your leg had been in that shoe, Mr Muggeridge, the shark might have accepted it,’ observed my father.
‘Don’t throw your shoes away,’ said the captain. ‘We might land on a deserted coastline and have to walk hundreds of miles!’
A light breeze sprang up that evening, and the dinghy moved more swiftly on the choppy water.
‘At last we’re moving forward,’ said the captain.
‘In circles,’ said Mr Muggeridge.
But the breeze was refreshing; it cooled our burning limbs, and helped us to get some sleep. In the middle of the night, I woke up feeling very hungry.
‘Are you all right?’ asked my father, who had been awake all the time.
‘Just hungry,’ I said.
‘And what would you like to eat?’
‘Oranges!’
He laughed. ‘No oranges on board. But I kept a piece of my chocolate for you. And there’s a little water, if you’re thirsty.’ I kept the chocolate in my mouth for a long time, trying to make it last. Then I sipped a little water.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ I asked.
‘Ravenous! I could eat a whole turkey. When we get to Bombay or Madras or Colombo, or wherever it is we get to, we’ll go to the best restaurant in town and eat like—like—’
‘Like shipwrecked sailors!’ I said.
‘Exactly.’
‘Do you think we’ll ever get to land, Dad?’
‘I’m sure we will. You’re not afraid, are you?’
‘No. Not as long as you’re with me.’
Next morning, to everyone’s delight, we saw seagulls. This was a sure sign that land couldn’t be far away; but a dinghy could take days to drift a distance of thirty or forty miles. The birds wheeled noisily above the dinghy. Their cries were the first familiar sounds we had heard for three days and three nights, apart from the wind and the sea and our own weary voices.
The sharks had disappeared, and that too was an encouraging sign. They didn’t like the oil slicks that were appearing in the water.
But presently the gulls left us, and we feared we were drifting away from land.
‘Circles,’ repeated Mr Muggeridge. ‘Circles.’
We had sufficient food and water for another week at sea; but no one even wanted to think about spending another week at sea.
The sun was a ball of fire. Our water ration wasn’t sufficient to quench our thirst. By noon, we were without much hope or energy.
My father had his pipe in his mouth. He didn’t have any tobacco, but he liked holding the pipe between his teeth. He said it prevented his mouth from getting too dry.
The sharks came back.
Mr Muggeridge removed his other shoe and threw it at them.
‘Nothing like a lovely wet English summer,’ he mumbled.
I fell asleep in the well of the dinghy, my father’s large handkerchief spread over my face. The yellow spots on the cloth seemed to grow into enormous revolving suns.
When I woke up, I found a huge shadow hanging over us. At first I thought it was a cloud. But it was a shifting shadow. My father took the handkerchief from my face and said, ‘You can wake up now, lad. We’ll be home and dry soon.’
A fishing boat was beside us, and the shadow came from its wide, flapping sail. A number of bronzed, smiling, chattering fishermen—Burmese, as we discovered later—were gazing down at us from the deck of their boat.
A few days later my father and I were in Bombay. My father sold his rare stamps for over a thousand rupees, and we were able to live in a comfortable hotel. Mr Muggeridge was flown back to England. Later we got a postcard from him saying the English rain was awful!
‘And what about us?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t we going back to England?’
‘Not yet,’ said my father. ‘You’ll be going to a boarding school in Simla, until the war’s over.’
‘But why should I leave you?’ I asked.
‘Because I’ve joined the RAF,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, I’m being posted to Delhi. I’ll be able to come up to see you sometimes.’
A week later I was on a small train which went chugging up the steep mountain track to Simla. Several Indian, Anglo-Indian and English children tumbled around in the compartment. I felt quite out of place among them, as though I had grown out of their pranks. But I wasn’t unhappy. I knew my father would be coming to see me soon. He’d promised me some books, a pair of roller skates, and a cricket bat, just as soon as he got his first month’s pay.
Meanwhile, I had the jade seahorse which Sono had given me.
And I have it with me today.
Sita and the River
The Island in the River
In the middle of the river, the river that began in the mountains of the Himalayas and ended in the Bay of Bengal, there was a small island. The river swept round the island, sometimes clawing at its banks but never going right over it. The river was still deep and swift at this point, because the foothills were only forty miles distant. More than twenty years had passed since the river had flooded the island, and at that time no one had lived there. But then years ago a small family had come to live on the island and now a small hut stood on it, a mud-walled hut with a sloping thatched roof. The hut had been built into a huge rock. Only three of its walls were mud, the fourth was rock.
A few goats grazed on the short grass and the prickly leaves of the thistle. Some hens followed them about. There was a melon patch and a vegetable patch and a small field of marigolds. The marigolds were sometimes made into garlands, and the garlands were sold during weddings or festivals in the nearby town.
In the middle of the island stood a peepul tree. It was the only tree on this tongue of land. But peepul trees will grow anywhere—through the walls of old temples, through gravestones, even from rooftops. It is usually the buildings, and not the trees, that give way!
Even during the great flood, which had occurred twenty years back, the peepul tree had stood firm.
It was an old tree, much older than the old man on the island, who was only seventy. The peepul was about three hundred. It provided shelter for the birds who sometimes visited it from the mainland.
Three hundred years ago, the land on which the peepul tree stood had been part of the mainland; but the river had changed its course and the bit of land with the tree on it had become an island. The tree
had lived alone for many years. Now it gave shade and shelter to a small family who were grateful for its presence.
The people of India love peepul trees, especially during the hot summer months when the heart-shaped leaves catch the least breath of air and flutter eagerly, fanning those who sit beneath.
A sacred tree, the peepul, the abode of spirits, good and bad.
‘Do not yawn when you are sitting beneath the tree,’ Grandmother would warn Sita, her ten-year-old granddaughter. ‘And if you must yawn, always snap your fingers in front of your mouth. If you forget to do that, a demon might jump down your throat!’
‘And then what will happen?’ asked Sita.
‘He will probably ruin your digestion,’ said Grandfather, who didn’t take demons very seriously.
The peepul had beautiful leaves and Grandmother likened it to the body of the mighty god Krishna—broad at the shoulders, then tapering down to a very slim waist.
The tree attracted birds and insects from across the river. On some nights it was full of fireflies.
Whenever Grandmother saw the fireflies, she told her favourite story.
‘When we first came here,’ she said, ‘we were greatly troubled by mosquitoes. One night your grandfather rolled himself up in his sheet so that they couldn’t get at him. After a while, he peeped out of his bedsheet to make sure they were gone. He saw a firefly and said, “You clever mosquito! You could not see in the dark, so you got a lantern!”’
Grandfather was mending a fishing net. He had fished in the river for ten years, and he was a good fisherman. He knew where to find the slim silver chilwa and the big, beautiful mahseer and the singhara with its long whiskers; he knew where the river was deep and where it was shallow; he knew which baits to use—when to use worms and when to use gram. He had taught his son to fish, but his son had gone to work in a factory in a city nearly a hundred miles away. He had no grandson but he had a granddaughter, Sita, and she could do all the things a boy could do and sometimes she could do them better. She had lost her mother when she was two or three. Grandmother had taught her all that a girl should know—cooking, sewing, grinding spices, cleaning the house, feeding the birds—and Grandfather had taught her other things, like taking a small boat across the river, cleaning a fish, repairing a net, or catching a snake by the tail! And some things she had learnt by herself—like climbing the peepul tree, or leaping from rock to rock in shallow water, or swimming in an inlet where the water was calm.