The Very Best of Ruskin Bond, the Writer on the Hill: Selected Fiction and Non-Fiction

by Ruskin Bond

  The house was full of people—friends, relatives, neighbours. Some had tried to fuss over him but had been discouraged by his silence, the absence of tears. The more understanding of them had kept their distance.

  Scattered words of condolence passed back and forth like dragonflies on the wind. ‘Such a tragedy!’ ... ‘Only forty’ ... ‘No one realized how serious it was’ ... ‘Devoted to the child’...

  It seemed to the boy that everyone who mattered in the hill station was present. And for the first time they had the run of the house for his father had not been a sociable man. Books, music, flowers and his stamp collection had been his main preoccupations, apart from the boy.

  A small hearse, drawn by a hill pony, was led in at the gate and several able-bodied men lifted the coffin and manoeuvred it into the carriage. The crowd drifted away. The cemetery was about a mile down the road and those who did not have cars would have to walk the distance.

  The boy stared through a window at the small procession passing through the gate. He’d been forgotten for the moment—left in care of the servants, who were the only ones to say behind. Outside it was misty. The mist had crept up the valley and settled like a damp towel on the face of the mountain. Everyone was wet although it hadn’t rained.

  The boy waited until everyone had gone and then he left the room and went out on the veranda. The gardener, who had been sitting in a bed of nasturtiums, looked up and asked the boy if he needed anything. But the boy shook his head and retreated indoors. The gardener, looking aggrieved because of the damage done to the flower beds by the mourners, shambled off to his quarters. The sahib’s death meant that he would be out of a job very soon. The house would pass into other hands. The boy would go to an orphanage. There weren’t many people who kept gardeners these days. In the kitchen, the cook was busy preparing the only big meal ever served in the house. All those relatives, and the padre too, would come back famished, ready for a sombre but nevertheless substantial meal. He, too, would be out of a job soon; but cooks were always in demand.

  The boy slipped out of the house by a back door and made his way into the lane through a gap in a thicket of dog roses. When he reached the main road, he could see the mourners wending their way round the hill to the cemetery. He followed at a distance.

  It was the same road he had often taken with his father during their evening walks. The boy knew the name of almost every plant and wildflower that grew on the hillside. These, and various birds and insects, had been described and pointed out to him by his father.

  Looking northwards, he could see the higher ranges of the Himalayas and the eternal snows. The graves in the cemetery were so laid out that if their incumbents did happen to rise one day, the first thing they would see would be the glint of the sun on those snow-covered peaks. Possibly the site had been chosen for the view. But to the boy it did not seem as if anyone would be able to thrust aside those massive tombstones and rise from their graves to enjoy the view. Their rest seemed as eternal as the snows. It would take an earthquake to burst those stones asunder and thrust the coffins up from the earth. The boy wondered why people hadn’t made it easier for the dead to rise. They were so securely entombed that it appeared as though no one really wanted them to get out.

  ‘God has need of your father...’ With those words a well-meaning missionary had tried to console him.

  And had God, in the same way, laid claim to the thousands of men, women and children who had been put to rest here in these neat and serried rows? What could he have wanted them for? Of what use are we to God when we are dead, wondered the boy.

  The cemetery gate stood open but the boy leant against the old stone wall and stared down at the mourners as they shuffled about with the unease of a batsman about to face a very fast bowler. Only this bowler was invisible and would come up stealthily and from behind.

  Padre Lal’s voice droned on through the funeral service and then the coffin was lowered—down, deep down. The boy was surprised at how far down it seemed to go! Was that other, better world down in the depths of the earth? How could anyone, even a Samson, push his way back to the surface again? Superman did it in comics but his father was a gentle soul who wouldn’t fight too hard against the earth and the grass and the roots of tiny trees. Or perhaps he’d grow into a tree and escape that way! ‘If ever I’m put away like this,’ thought the boy, ‘I’ll get into the root of a plant and then I’ll become a flower and then maybe a bird will come and carry my seed away... I’ll get out somehow!’

  A few more words from the padre and then some of those present threw handfuls of earth over the coffin before moving away.

  Slowly, in twos and threes, the mourners departed. The mist swallowed them up. They did not see the boy behind the wall. They were getting hungry.

  He stood there until they had all gone. Then he noticed that the gardeners or caretakers were filling in the grave. He did not know whether to go forward or not. He was a little afraid. And it was too late now. The grave was almost covered.

  He turned and walked away from the cemetery. The road stretched ahead of him, empty, swathed in mist. He was alone. What had his father said to him once? ‘The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.’

  Well, he was alone, but at the moment he did not feel very strong.

  For a moment he thought his father was beside him, that they ‘ were together on one of their long walks. Instinctively he put out his hand, expecting his father’s warm, comforting touch. But there was nothing there, nothing, no one...

  He clenched his fists and pushed them deep down into his pockets. He lowered his head so that no one would see his tears. There were people in the mist but he did not want to go near them for they had put his father away.

  ‘He’ll find a way out,’ the boy said fiercely to himself. ‘He’ll get out somehow!’

  The Monkeys

  I COULDN’T BE sure, next morning, if I had been dreaming or if I had really heard dogs barking in the night and had seen them scampering about on the hillside below the cottage. There had been a golden Cocker, a Retriever, a Peke, a Dachshund, a black Labrador and one or two nondescripts. They had woken me with their barking shortly after midnight, and had made so much noise that I had got out of bed and looked out of the open window. I saw them quite plainly in the moonlight, five or six dogs rushing excitedly through the bracken and long monsoon grass.

  It was only because there had been so many breeds among the dogs that I felt a little confused. I had been in the cottage only a week, and I was already on nodding or speaking terms with most of my neighbours. Colonel Fanshawe, retired from the Indian army, was my immediate neighbour. He did keep a Cocker, but it was black. The elderly Anglo-Indian spinsters who lived beyond the deodars kept only cats. (Though why cats should be the prerogative of spinsters, I have never been able to understand.) The milkman kept a couple of mongrels. And the Punjabi industrialist who had bought a former prince’s palace—without ever occupying it—left the property in charge of a watchman who kept a huge Tibetan mastiff.

  None of these dogs looked like the ones I had seen in the night.

  ‘Does anyone here keep a Retriever?’ I asked Colonel Fanshawe, when I met him taking his evening walk.

  ‘No one that I know of,’ he said and gave me a swift, penetrating look from under his bushy eyebrows. ‘Why, have you seen one around?’

  ‘No, I just wondered. There are a lot of dogs in the area, aren’t there?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Nearly everyone keeps a dog here. Of course, every now and then a panther carries one off. Lost a lovely little terrier myself only last winter.’

  Colonel Fanshawe, tall and red-faced, seemed to be waiting for me to tell him something more—or was he just taking time to recover his breath after a stiff uphill climb?

  That night I heard the dogs again. I went to the window and looked out. The moon was at the full, silvering the leaves of the oak trees.

  The dogs were looking up into the trees and barking. But I could
see nothing in the trees, not even an owl.

  I gave a shout, and the dogs disappeared into the forest.

  Colonel Fanshawe looked at me expectantly when I met him the following day. He knew something about those dogs, of that I was certain; but he was waiting to hear what I had to say. I decided to oblige him.

  ‘I saw at least six dogs in the middle of the night,’ I said. ‘A Cocker, a Retriever, a Peke, a Dachshund and two mongrels. Now, Colonel, I’m sure you must know whose they are.’

  The Colonel was delighted. I could tell by the way his eyes glinted that he was going to enjoy himself at my expense.

  ‘You’ve been seeing Miss Fairchild’s dogs,’ he said with smug satisfaction.

  ‘Oh, and where does she live?’

  ‘She doesn’t, my boy. Died fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Then what are her dogs doing here?’

  ‘Looking for monkeys,’ said the Colonel. And he stood back to watch my reaction.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘Let me put it this way,’ said the Colonel. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  ‘I’ve never seen any,’ I said.

  ‘But you have, my boy, you have. Miss Fairchild’s dogs died years ago—a Cocker, a Retriever, a Dachshund, a Peke and two mongrels. They were buried on a little knoll under the oaks. Nothing odd about their deaths, mind you. They were all quite old, and didn’t survive their mistress very long. Neighbours looked after them until they died.’

  ‘And Miss Fairchild lived in the cottage where I stay? Was she young?’

  ‘She was in her mid-forties, an athletic sort of woman, fond of the outdoors. Didn’t care much for men. I thought you knew about her.’

  ‘No, I haven’t been here very long, you know. But what was it you said about monkeys? Why were the dogs looking for monkeys?’

  ‘Ah, that’s the interesting part of the story. Have you seen the langur monkeys that sometimes come to eat oak leaves?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You will, sooner or later. There has always been a band of them roaming these forests. They’re quite harmless really, except that they’ll ruin a garden if given half a chance... Well, Miss Fairchild fairly loathed those monkeys. She was very keen on her dahlias—grew some prize specimens—but the monkeys would come at night, dig up the plants and eat the dahlia bulbs. Apparently they found the bulbs much to their liking. Miss Fairchild would be furious. People who are passionately fond of gardening often go off balance when their best plants are ruined—that’s only human, I suppose. Miss Fairchild set her dogs on the monkeys whenever she could, even if it was in the middle of the night. But the monkeys simply took to the trees and left the dogs barking.

  ‘Then one day—or rather one night—Miss Fairchild took desperate measures. She borrowed a shotgun and sat up near a window. And when the monkeys arrived, she shot one of them dead.’

  The Colonel paused and looked out over the oak trees which were shimmering in the warm afternoon sun.

  ‘She shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

  ‘Never shoot a monkey. It’s not only that they’re sacred to Hindus—but they are rather human, you know. Well, I must be getting on. Good day!’ And the Colonel, having ended his story rather abruptly, set off at a brisk pace through the deodars.

  I didn’t hear the dogs that night. But the next day I saw the monkeys—the real ones, not ghosts. There were about twenty of them, young and old, sitting in the trees munching oak leaves. They didn’t pay much attention to me, and I watched them for some time.

  They were handsome creatures, their fur a silver-grey, their tails long and sinuous. They leapt gracefully from tree to tree, and were very polite and dignified in their behaviour towards each other—unlike the bold, rather crude red monkeys of the plains. Some of the younger ones scampered about on the hillside, playing and wrestling with each other like schoolboys.

  There were no dogs to molest them—and no dahlias to tempt them into the garden.

  But that night, I heard the dogs again. They were barking more furiously than ever.

  ‘Well, I’m not getting up for them this time,’ I mumbled, and pulled the blanket over my ears.

  But the barking grew louder, and was joined by other sounds, a squealing and a scuffling.

  Then suddenly, the piercing shriek of a woman rang through the forest. It was an unearthly sound, and it made my hair stand up.

  I leapt out of bed and dashed to the window.

  A woman was lying on the ground, three or four huge monkeys were on top of her, biting her arms and pulling at her throat. The dogs were yelping and trying to drag the monkeys off, but they were being harried from behind by others. The woman gave another bloodcurdling shriek, and I dashed back into the room, grabbed hold of a small axe and ran into the garden.

  But everyone—dogs, monkeys and shrieking woman—had disappeared, and I stood alone on the hillside in my pyjamas, clutching an axe and feeling very foolish.

  The Colonel greeted me effusively the following day.

  ‘Still seeing those dogs?’ he asked in a bantering tone.

  ‘I’ve seen the monkeys too,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes, they’ve come around again. But they’re real enough, and quite harmless.’

  ‘I know—but I saw them last night with the dogs.’

  ‘Oh, did you really? That’s strange, very strange.’

  The Colonel tried to avoid my eye, but I hadn’t quite finished with him.

  ‘Colonel,’ I said. ‘You never did get around to telling me how Miss Fairchild died.’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I? Must have slipped my memory. I’m getting old, don’t remember people as well as I used to. But, of course, I remember about Miss Fairchild, poor lady. The monkeys killed her. Didn’t you know? They simply tore her to pieces...’

  His voice trailed off, and he looked thoughtfully at a caterpillar that was making its way up his walking stick.

  ‘She shouldn’t have shot one of them,’ he said. ‘Never shoot a monkey—they’re rather human, you know...’

  Wilson’s Bridge

  THE OLD WOODEN bridge has gone, and today an iron suspension bridge straddles the Bhagirathi as it rushes down the gorge below Gangotri. But villagers will tell you that you can still hear the hooves of Wilson’s horse as he gallops across the bridge he had built 150 years ago. At the time people were sceptical of its safety, and so, to prove its sturdiness, he rode across it again and again. Parts of the old bridge can still be seen on the far bank of the river. And the legend of Wilson and his pretty hill bride, Gulabi, is still well known in this region.

  I had joined some friends in the old forest rest house near the river. There were the Rays, recently married, and the Duttas, married many years. The younger Rays quarrelled frequently; the older Duttas looked on with more amusement than concern. I was a part of their group and yet something of an outsider. As a single man, I was a person of no importance. And as a marriage counsellor, I wouldn’t have been of any use to them.

  I spent most of my time wandering along the river banks or exploring the thick deodar and oak forests that covered the slopes. It was these trees that had made a fortune for Wilson and his patron, the Raja of Tehri. They had exploited the great forests to the full, floating huge logs downstream to the timber yards in the plains.

  Returning to the rest house late one evening, I was halfway across the bridge when I saw a figure at the other end, emerging from the mist. Presently I made out a woman, wearing the plain dhoti of the hills; her hair fell loose over her shoulders. She appeared not to see me, and reclined against the railing of the bridge, looking down at the rushing waters far below. And then, to my amazement and horror, she climbed over the railing and threw herself into the river.

  I ran forward, calling out, but I reached the railing only to see her fall into the foaming waters below, from where she was carried swiftly downstream.

  The watchman’s cabin stood a little way off. The door was open. The watch
man, Ram Singh, was reclining on his bed, smoking a hookah.

  ‘Someone just jumped off the bridge,’ I said breathlessly. ‘She’s been swept down the river!’

  The watchman was unperturbed. ‘Gulabi again,’ he said, almost to himself; and then to me, ‘Did you see her clearly?’

  ‘Yes, a woman with long loose hair—but I didn’t see her face very clearly.’

  ‘It must have been Gulabi. Only a ghost, my dear sir. Nothing to be alarmed about. Every now and then someone sees her throw herself into the river. Sit down,’ he said, gesturing towards a battered old armchair, ‘be comfortable and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  I was far from comfortable, but I listened to Ram Singh tell me the tale of Gulabi’s suicide. After making me a glass of hot sweet tea, he launched into a long, rambling account of how Wilson, a British adventurer seeking his fortune, had been hunting musk deer when he encountered Gulabi on the path from her village. The girl’s grey-green eyes and peach-blossom complexion enchanted him, and he went out of his way to get to know her people. Was he in love with her, or did he simply find her beautiful and desirable? We shall never really know. In the course of his travels and adventures he had known many women, but Gulabi was different, childlike and ingenuous, and he decided he would marry her. The humble family to which she belonged had no objection. Hunting had its limitations, and Wilson found it more profitable to tap the region’s great forest wealth. In a few years he had made a fortune. He built a large timbered house at Harsil, another in Dehradun and a third at Mussoorie. Gulabi had all she could have wanted, including two robust little sons. When he was away on work, she looked after their children and their large apple orchard at Harsil.

  And then came the evil day when Wilson met the Englishwoman, Ruth, on the Mussoorie Mall, and decided that she should have a share of his affections and his wealth. A fine house was provided for her, too. The time he spent at Harsil with Gulabi and his children dwindled. ‘Business affairs’—he was now one of the owners of a bank—kept him in the fashionable hill resort. He was a popular host and took his friends and associates on shikar parties in the Doon.