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

by Ruskin Bond

  IT WAS A large square mahogany box, well polished, and there was a handle you had to wind, and lids that opened top and front. You changed the steel needle every time you changed the record.

  The records were kept flat in a cardboard box to prevent them from warping. If you didn’t pack them flat, the heat and humidity turned them into strange shapes which would have made them eligible for an exhibition of modern sculpture.

  The winding, the changing of records and needles, the selection of a record were boyhood tasks that I thoroughly enjoyed. I was very methodical in these matters. I hated records being scratched, or the turntable slowing down in the middle of a record, bringing the music of the song to a slow and mournful stop: this happened if the gramophone wasn’t fully wound. I was especially careful with my favourites, such as Nelson Eddy singing ‘The Mounties’ and ‘The Hills of Home’, various numbers sung by the Ink Spots, and medley of marches.

  All this musical activity (requiring much physical exertion on the part of the listener!) took place in a little-known port called Jamnagar, on the west coast of our country, where my father taught English to the young princes and princesses of the state. The gramophone had been installed to amuse me and my mother, but my mother couldn’t be bothered with all the effort that went into playing it.

  I loved every aspect of the gramophone, even the cleaning of the records with a special cloth. One of my first feats of writing was to catalogue all the records in our collection—only about fifty to begin with—and this cataloguing I did with great care and devotion. My father liked ‘grand opera’—Caruso, Gigli and Galli-Curci—but I preferred the lighter ballads of Nelson Eddy, Deanna Durbin, Gracie Fields, Richard Tauber, and ‘The Street Singer’ (Arthur Tracy). It may seem incongruous, to have been living within sound of the Arabian Sea and listening to Nelson sing most beautifully of the mighty Missouri river, but it was perfectly natural to me. I grew up with that music, and I love it still.

  I was a lonely boy, without friends of my own age, so that the gramophone and the record collection meant a lot to me. My catalogue went into new and longer editions, taking in the names of composers, lyricists and accompanists.

  When we left Jamnagar, the gramophone accompanied us on the long train journey (three days and three nights, with several changes) to Dehradun. Here, in the spacious grounds of my grandparents’ home at the foothills of the Himalayas, songs like ‘The Hills of Home’ and ‘Shenandoah’ did not seem out of place.

  Grandfather had a smaller gramophone and a record collection of his own. His tastes were more ‘modern’ than mine. Dance music was his passion, and there were any number of foxtrots, tangos and beguines played by the leading dance bands of the 1940s. Granny preferred waltzes and taught me to waltz. I would waltz with her on the broad veranda, to the strains of ‘The Blue Danube’ and ‘The Skater’s Waltz’, while a soft breeze rustled in the banana fronds. I became quite good at the waltz, but then I saw Gene Kelly tap-dancing in a brash, colourful MGM musical, and—base treachery!—forsook the waltz and began tap-dancing all over the house, much to Granny’s dismay.

  All this is pure nostalgia, of course, but why be ashamed of it? Nostalgia is simply an attempt to try and preserve that which was good in the past… The past has served us: why not serve the past in this way?

  When I was sent to boarding school and was away from home for nine long months, I really missed the gramophone. How I looked forward to coming home for the winter holidays! There were, of course, some new records waiting for me. And Grandfather had taken to the Brazilian rumba, which was all the rage just then. Yes, Grandfather did the rumba with great aplomb.

  I believe he moved on to the samba and then the calypso, but by then I’d left India and was away for five years. A great deal had changed in my absence. My grandparents had moved on, and my mother had sold the old gramophone and replaced it with a large radiogram. But this wasn’t so much fun: I wanted something I could wind!

  I keep hoping our old gramophone will turn up somewhere—maybe in an antique shop or in someone’s attic or storeroom, or at a sale. Then I shall buy it back, whatever the cost, and install it in my study and have the time of my life winding it up and playing the old records. I now have tapes of some of them, but that won’t stop me listening to the gramophone. I have even kept a box of needles in readiness for the great day.

  Who Kissed Me in the Dark?

  THIS CHAPTER, OR story, could not have been written but for a phone call I received last week. I’ll come to the caller later. Suffice to say that it triggered off memories of a hilarious fortnight in the autumn of that year (can’t remember which one) when India and Pakistan went to war with each other. It did not last long, but there was plenty of excitement in our small town, set off by a rumour that enemy parachutists were landing in force in the ravine below Pari Tibba.

  The road to this ravine led past my dwelling, and one afternoon I was amazed to see the town’s constabulary, followed by hundreds of concerned citizens (armed mostly with hockey sticks) taking the trail down to the little stream where I usually went birdwatching. The parachutes turned out to be bedsheets from a nearby school, spread out to dry by the dhobis who lived on the opposite hill. After days of incessant rain the sun had come out, and the dhobis had finally got a chance to dry the school bedsheets on the verdant hillside. From afar they did look a bit like open parachutes. In times of crisis, it’s wonderful what the imagination will do.

  There were also blackouts. It’s hard for a hill station to black itself out, but we did our best. Two or three respectable people were arrested for using their torches to find their way home in the dark. And of course, nothing could be done about the lights on the next mountain, as the people there did not even know there was a war on. They did not have radio or television or even electricity. They used kerosene lamps or lit bonfires!

  We had a smart young set in Mussoorie in those days, mostly college students who had also been to convent schools and some of them decided it would be a good idea to put on a show—or old-fashioned theatrical extravaganza—to raise funds for the war effort. And they thought it would be a good idea to rope me in, as I was the only writer living in Mussoorie in those innocent times. I was thirty-one and I had never been a college student but they felt I was the right person to direct a one-act play in English. This was to be the centrepiece of the show.

  I forget the name of the play. It was one of those drawing-room situation comedies popular from the 1920s, inspired by such successes as Charley’s Aunt and Tons of Money. Anyway, we went into morning rehearsals at Hakman’s, one of the older hotels, where there was a proper stage and a hall large enough to seat at least two hundred spectators.

  The participants were full of enthusiasm, and rehearsals went along quite smoothly. They were an engaging bunch of young people—Guttoo, the intellectual among them; Ravi, a schoolteacher; Gita, a tiny ball of fire; Neena, a heavy-footed Bharatanatyam exponent; Nellie, daughter of a nurse; Chameli, who was in charge of make-up (she worked in a local beauty saloon); Rajiv, who served in the bar and was also our prompter; and a host of others, some of whom would sing and dance before and after our one-act play.

  The performance was well attended, Ravi having rounded up a number of students from the local schools; and the lights were working, although we had to cover all doors, windows and exits with blankets to maintain the regulatory blackout. But the stage was old and rickety and things began to go wrong during Neena’s dance number when, after a dazzling pirouette, she began stamping her feet and promptly went through, while the rest of her remained above board and visible to the audience.

  The schoolboys cheered, the curtain came down and we rescued Neena, who had to be sent to the civil hospital with a sprained ankle, Mussoorie’s only civilian war casualty.

  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 forgot
ten to put any tea in the pot and poor Guttoo looked terribly put out as he went from cup to cup, pouring invisible tea. ‘Damm. 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-putter, released the ropes prematurely and the curtain came down with a rush, one of the sandbags hitting poor Guttoo one 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.

  Joyfully I Write

  I AM A fortunate person. For over fifty years I have been able to make a living by doing what I enjoy most—writing.

  Sometimes I wonder if I have written too much. One gets into the habit of serving up the same ideas over and over again; with a different sauce perhaps, but still the same ideas, themes, memories, characters. Writers are often chided for repeating themselves. Artists and musicians are given more latitude. No one criticized Turner for painting so many sunsets at sea, or Gauguin for giving us all those lovely Tahitian women; or Husain for treating us to so many horses, or Jamini Roy for giving us so many identical stylized figures.

  In the world of music, one Puccini opera is very like another, a Chopin nocturne will return to familiar themes, and in the realm of lighter, modern music the same melodies recur with only slight variations. But authors are often taken to task for repeating themselves. They cannot help this, for in their writing they are expressing their personalities. Hemingway’s world is very different from Jane Austen’s. They are both unique worlds, but they do not change or mutate in the minds of their author-creators. Jane Austen spent all her life in one small place, and portrayed the people she knew. Hemingway roamed the world, but his characters remained much the same, usually extensions of himself.

  In the course of a long writing career, it is inevitable that a writer will occasionally repeat himself, or return to themes that have remained with him even as new ideas and formulations enter his mind. The important thing is to keep writing, observing, listening and paying attention to the beauty of words and their arrangement. And like artists and musicians, the more we work on our art, the better it will be.

  Writing, for me, is the simplest and greatest pleasure in the world. Putting a mood or an idea into words is an occupation I truly love. I plan my day so that there is time in it for writing a poem, or a paragraph, or an essay, or part of a story or longer work; not just because writing is my profession, but from a feeling of delight.

  The world around me—be it the mountains or the busy street below my window—is teeming with subjects, sights, thoughts, that I wish to put into words in order to catch the fleeting moment, the passing image, the laughter, the joy, and sometimes the sorrow. Life would be intolerable if I did not have this freedom to write every day. Not that everything I put down is worth preserving. A great many pages of manuscripts have found their way into my waste-paper basket or into the stove that warms the family room on cold winter evenings. I do not always please myself. I cannot always please others because, unlike the hard professionals, the Forsyths and the Sheldons, I am not writing to please everyone, I am really writing to please myself!

  My theory of writing is that the conception should be as clear as possible, and that words should flow like a stream of clear water, preferably a mountain stream! You will, of course, encounter boulders, but you will learn to go over them or around them, so that your flow is unimpeded. If your stream gets too sluggish or muddy, it i
s better to put aside that particular piece of writing. Go to the source, go to the spring, where the water is purest, your thoughts as clear as the mountain air.

  I do not write for more than an hour or two in the course of the day. Too long at the desk, and words lose their freshness.

  Together with clarity and a good vocabulary, there must come a certain elevation of mood. Sterne must have been bubbling over with high spirits when he wrote Shandy. The sombre intensity of Wuthering Heights reflects Emily Bronte’s passion for life, fully knowing that it was to be brief. Tagore’s melancholy comes through in his poetry. Dickens is always passionate; there are no half measures in his work. Conrad’s prose takes on the moods of the sea he knew and loved.

  A real physical emotion accompanies the process of writing, and great writers are those who can channel this emotion into the creation of their best work.

  ‘Are you a serious writer?’ a schoolboy once asked.

  ‘Well, I try to be serious,’ I said, ‘but cheerfulness keeps breaking in!’

  Can a cheerful writer be taken seriously? I don’t know. But I was certainly serious about making writing the main occupation of my life.

  In order to do this, one has to give up many things—a job, security, comfort, domesticity—or rather, the pursuit of these things. Had I married when I was twenty-five, I would not have been able to throw up a good job as easily as I did at the time; I might now be living on a pension! God forbid. I am grateful for continued independence and the necessity to keep writing for my living, and for those who share their lives with me and whose joys and sorrows are mine too. An artist must not lose his hold on life. We do that when we settle for the safety of a comfortable old age.

  Normally writers do not talk much, because they are saving their conversation for the readers of their books—those invisible listeners with whom we wish to strike a sympathetic chord. Of course, we talk freely with our friends, but we are reserved with people we do not know very well. If I talk too freely about a story I am going to write, chances are it will never be written. I have talked it to death.