by Ruskin Bond
There was a hold-up, but before the audience could get too restless the curtain went up on our play, a tea-party scene, which opened with Guttoo pouring tea for everyone. Unfortunately, our stage manager had forgotten to put any tea in the pot and poor Guttoo looked terribly put out as he went from cup to cup, pouring invisible tea. ‘Damn. What happened to the tea?’ muttered Guttoo, a line, which was not in the script. ‘Never mind,’ said Gita, playing opposite him and keeping her cool. ‘I prefer my milk without tea,’ and proceeded to pour herself a cup of milk.
After this, everyone began to fluff their lines and our prompter had a busy time. Unfortunately, he’d helped himself to a couple of rums at the bar, so that, whenever one of the actors faltered, he’d call out the correct words in a stentorian voice which could be heard all over the hall. Soon there was more prompting than acting and the audience began joining in with dialogue of their own.
Finally, to my great relief, the curtain came down—to thunderous applause. It went up again, and the cast stepped forward to take a bow. Our prompter, who was also curtain-puller, released the ropes prematurely and the curtain came down with a rush, one of the sandbags hitting poor Guttoo on the head. He has never fully recovered from the blow.
The lights, which had been behaving all evening, now failed us, and we had a real blackout. In the midst of this confusion, someone—it must have been a girl, judging from the overpowering scent of jasmine that clung to her—put her arms around me and kissed me.
When the light came on again, she had vanished.
Who had kissed me in the dark?
As no one came forward to admit to the deed, I could only make wild guesses. But it had been a very sweet kiss, and I would have been only too happy to return it had I known its ownership. I could hardly go up to each of the girls and kiss them in the hope of reciprocation. After all, it might even have been someone from the audience.
Anyway, our concert did raise a few hundred rupees for the war effort. By the time we sent the money to the right authorities, the war was over. Hopefully they saw to it that the money was put to good use.
We went our various ways and although the kiss lingered in my mind, it gradually became a distant, fading memory and as the years passed it went out of my head altogether. Until the other day, almost forty years later. . .
‘Phone for you,’ announced Gautam, my seven-year-old secretary.
‘Boy or girl? Man or woman?’
‘Don’t know. Deep voice like my teacher but it says you know her.’
‘Ask her name.’
Gautam asked.
‘She’s Nellie, and she’s speaking from Bareilly.’
‘Nellie from Bareilly?’ I was intrigued. I took the phone.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m Bonda from Golconda.’
‘Then you must be wealthy now.’ Her voice was certainly husky. ‘But don’t you remember me? Nellie? I acted in that play of yours, up in Mussoorie a long time ago.’
‘Of course, I remember now.’ I was remembering. ‘You had a small part, the maidservant I think. You were very pretty. You had dark, sultry eyes. But what made you ring me after all these years.’
‘Well, I was thinking of you. I’ve often thought about you. You were much older than me, but I liked you. After that show, when the lights went out, I came up to you and kissed you. And then I ran away.’
‘So it was you! I’ve often wondered. But why did you run away? I would have returned the kiss. More than once.’
‘I was very nervous. I thought you’d be angry.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s too late now. You must be happily married with lots of children.’
‘Husband left me. Children grew up, went away.’
‘It must be lonely for you.’
‘I have lots of dogs.’
‘How many?’
‘About thirty.’
‘Thirty dogs! Do you run a kennel club?’
‘No, they are all strays. I run a dog shelter.’
‘Well, that’s very good of you. Very humane.’
‘You must come and see it sometime. Come to Bareilly. Stay with me. You like dogs, don’t you?’
‘Er—yes, of course. Man’s best friend, the dog. But thirty is a lot of dogs to have about the house.’
‘I have lots of space.’
‘I’m sure. . .well, Nellie, if ever I’m in Bareilly, I’ll come to see you. And I’m glad you phoned and cleared up the mystery. It was a lovely kiss and I’ll always remember it.’
We said our goodbyes and I promised to visit her some day. A trip to Bareilly to return a kiss might seem a bit far-fetched, but I’ve done sillier things in my life. It’s those dogs that worry me. I can imagine them snapping at my heels as I attempt to approach their mistress. Dogs can be very possessive.
‘Who was that on the phone?’ asked Gautam, breaking in on my reverie.
‘Just an old friend.’
‘Dada’s old girlfriend. Are you going to see her?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
And I’m still thinking about it and about those dogs. But bliss it was to be in Mussoorie forty years ago, when Nellie kissed me in the dark.
Some memories are best left untouched.
Topaz
t seemed strange to be listening to the strains of ‘The Blue Danube’ while gazing out at the pine-clad slopes of the Himalayas, worlds apart. And yet the music of the waltz seemed singularly appropriate. A light breeze hummed through the pines, and the branches seemed to move in time to the music. The record player was new, but the records were old, picked up in a junk shop behind the Mall.
Below the pines there were oaks, and one oak tree in particular caught my eye. It was the biggest of the lot and stood by itself on a little knoll below the cottage. The breeze was not strong enough to lift its heavy old branches, but something was moving, swinging gently from the tree, keeping time to the music of the waltz, dancing. . .
It was someone hanging from the tree.
A rope oscillated in the breeze, the body turned slowly, turned this way and that, and I saw the face of a girl, her hair hanging loose, her eyes sightless, hands and feet limp; just turning, turning, while the waltz played on.
I turned off the player and ran downstairs.
Down the path through the trees, and on to the grassy knoll where the big oak stood.
A long-tailed magpie took fright and flew out from the branches, swooping low across the ravine. In the tree there was no one, nothing. A great branch extended halfway across the knoll, and it was possible for me to reach up and touch it. A girl could not have reached it without climbing the tree.
As I stood there, gazing up into the branches, someone spoke behind me.
‘What are you looking at?’
I swung round. A girl stood in the clearing, facing me. A girl of seventeen or eighteen; alive, healthy, with bright eyes and a tantalizing smile. She was lovely to look at. I hadn’t seen such a pretty girl in years.
‘You startled me,’ I said. ‘You came up so unexpectedly.’
‘Did you see anything—in the tree?’ she asked.
‘I thought I saw someone from my window. That’s why I came down. Did you see anything?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, the smile leaving her face for a moment. ‘I don’t see anything. But other people do—sometimes.’
‘What do they see?’
‘My sister.’
‘Your sister?’
‘Yes. She hanged herself from this tree. It was many years ago. But sometimes you can see her hanging there.’
She spoke matter-of-factly: whatever had happened seemed very remote to her.
We both moved some distance away from the tree. Above the knoll, on a disused private tennis court (a relic from the hill station’s colonial past) was a small stone bench. She sat down on it: and, after a moment’s hesitation, I sat down beside her.
‘Do you live close by?’ I asked.
‘Further up the hill. My father h
as a small bakery.’
She told me her name—Hameeda. She had two younger brothers.
‘You must have been quite small when your sister died.’
‘Yes. But I remember her. She was pretty.’
‘Like you.’
She laughed in disbelief. ‘Oh, I am nothing to her. You should have seen my sister.’
‘Why did she kill herself?’
‘Because she did not want to live. That’s the only reason, no? She was to have been married but she loved someone else, someone who was not of her own community. It’s an old story and the end is always sad, isn’t it?’
‘Not always. But what happened to the boy—the one she loved? Did he kill himself too?’
‘No, he took a job in some other place. Jobs are not easy to get, are they?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never tried for one.’
‘Then what do you do?’
‘I write stories.’
‘Do people buy stories?’
‘Why not? If your father can sell bread, I can sell stories.’
‘People must have bread. They can live without stories.’
‘No, Hameeda, you’re wrong. People can’t live without stories.’
Hameeda! I couldn’t help loving her. Just loving her. No fierce desire or passion had taken hold of me. It wasn’t like that. I was happy just to look at her, watch her while she sat on the grass outside my cottage, her lips stained with the juice of wild bilberries. She chatted away—about her friends, her clothes, her favourite things.
‘Won’t your parents mind if you come here every day?’ I asked.
‘I have told them you are teaching me.’
‘Teaching you what?’
‘They did not ask. You can tell me stories.’
So I told her stories.
It was midsummer.
The sun glinted on the ring she wore on her third finger: a translucent golden topaz, set in silver.
‘That’s a pretty ring,’ I remarked.
‘You wear it,’ she said, impulsively removing it from her hand. ‘It will give you good thoughts. It will help you to write better stories.’
She slipped it on to my little finger.
‘I’ll wear it for a few days,’ I said. ‘Then you must let me give it back to you.’
On a day that promised rain I took the path down to the stream at the bottom of the hill. There I found Hameeda gathering ferns from the shady places along the rocky ledges above the water.
‘What will you do with them?’ I asked.
‘This is a special kind of fern. You can cook it as a vegetable.’
‘It is tasty?’
‘No, but it is good for rheumatism.’
‘Do you suffer from rheumatism?’
‘Of course not. They are for my grandmother, she is very old.’
‘There are more ferns further upstream,’ I said. ‘But we’ll have to get into the water.’
We removed our shoes and began paddling upstream. The ravine became shadier and narrower, until the sun was almost completely shut out. The ferns grew right down to the water’s edge. We bent to pick them but instead found ourselves in each other’s arms; and sank slowly, as in a dream, into the soft bed of ferns, while overhead a whistling thrush burst out in dark sweet song.
‘It isn’t time that’s passing by,’ it seemed to say. ‘It is you and I. It is you and I. . .’
I waited for her the following day, but she did not come.
Several days passed without my seeing her.
Was she sick? Had she been kept at home? Had she been sent away? I did not even know where she lived, so I could not ask. And if I had been able to ask, what would I have said?
Then one day I saw a boy delivering bread and pastries at the little tea shop about a mile down the road. From the upward slant of his eyes, I caught a slight resemblance to Hameeda. As he left the shop, I followed him up the hill. When I came abreast of him, I asked: ‘Do you have your own bakery?’
He nodded cheerfully, ‘Yes. Do you want anything—bread, biscuits, cakes? I can bring them to your house.’
‘Of course. But don’t you have a sister? A girl called Hameeda?’
His expression changed. He was no longer friendly. He looked puzzled and slightly apprehensive.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I haven’t seen her for some time.’
‘We have not seen her either.’
‘Do you mean she has gone away?’
‘Didn’t you know? You must have been away a long time. It is many years since she died. She killed herself. You did not hear about it?’
‘But wasn’t that her sister—your other sister?’
‘I had only one sister—Hameeda—and she died, when I was very young. It’s an old story, ask someone else about it.’
He turned away and quickened his pace, and I was left standing in the middle of the road, my head full of questions that couldn’t be answered.
That night there was a thunderstorm. My bedroom window kept banging in the wind. I got up to close it and, as I looked out, there was a flash of lightning and I saw that frail body again, swinging from the oak tree.
I tried to make out the features, but the head hung down and the hair was blowing in the wind.
Was it all a dream?
It was impossible to say. But the topaz on my hand glowed softly in the darkness. And a whisper from the forest seemed to say, ‘It isn’t time that’s passing by, my friend. It is you and I. . . .’
Love Lyrics for Binya Devi
1
Your face streamed April rain,
As you climbed the steep hill,
Calling the white cow home.
You seemed very tiny
On the windswept mountainside;
A twist of hair lay
Strung across your forehead
And your torn blue skirt
Clung to your tender thighs.
You smiled through the blind white rain
And gave me the salt kiss of your lips,
Salt mingled with raindrop and mint,
And left me there, where I had come to fetch you—
So gallant in the blistering rain!
And you ran home laughing;
But it was worth the drenching.
2
Your feet, laved with dew,
Stood firm on the quickening grass.
There was a butterfly between us:
Red and gold its wings
And heavy with dew.
It could not move because of the weight of moisture.
And as your foot came nearer
And I saw that you would crush it,
I said: ‘Stay. It has only a few days
In the sun, and we have many.’
‘And if I spare it,’ you said, laughing,
‘What will you do for me, what will you pay?’
‘Why, anything you say.’
‘And will you kiss my foot?’
‘Both feet,’ I said; and did so happily.
For they were no less than the wings of butterflies.
3
All night our love
Stole sleep from dusty eyes.
What dreams were lost, I’ll never know.
It seemed the world’s last night had come
And there would never be a dawn.
Your touch soon swept the panting dark away—
Some suns are brighter by night than day!
4
Your eyes, glad and wondering,
Dwelt in mine,
And all that stood between us
Was a blade of grass
Shivering slightly
In the breath from our lips.
But grass will bend.
We turn and kiss,
And the world swings round,
The sky spins, the trees go hush
Hush, the mountain sings—
Though we must leave this place,
We’ve trapped forever
<
br /> In the trembling air
The last sweet phantom kiss.
5
I know you’ll come when the cherries
Are ripe;
But it is still November
And I must wait
For the green fruit to blush
At your approach.
And meanwhile the tree is visited
By robber bands, masked mynas
And yellow birds with beaks like daggers,
Determined not to leave one cherry
Whole for lovers.
But still I wait, hoping one day
You’ll come to stain your lips
With cherry-juice, and climb my tree;
Bright goddess in dark green temple,
Thrusting your tongue at me.
6
Slender waisted, bright as a song,
Dark as the whistling-thrush at dawn,
Swift as the running days of November,
Lost like a dream too sweet to remember.
On Fairy Hill
hose little green lights that I used to see twinkling away on Pari Tibba—there had to be a scientific explanation for them. I was sure of that. After dark we see or hear many things that seem mysterious and irrational. And then, by the clear light of day, we find that the magic and the mystery have an explanation after all.
I saw those lights occasionally, late at night, when I walked home from the town to my little cottage at the edge of the forest. They moved too fast to be torches or lanterns carried by people. And as there were no roads on Pari Tibba, they could not have been cycle or cart lamps. Someone told me there was phosphorus in the rocks and that this probably accounted for the luminous glow emanating from the hillside late at night. Possibly, but I was not convinced.
My encounter with the little people happened by the light of day.
One morning early in April, purely on an impulse, I decided to climb to the top of Pari Tibba and look around for myself. It was springtime in the Himalayan foothills. The sap was rising—in the trees, in the grass, in the wild flowers, in my own veins. I took the path through the oak forest, down to the little stream at the foot of the hill, and then up the steep slope of Pari Tibba, Hill of Fairies.