by Ruskin Bond
The senior clown was an old-timer who’d been to Dehra before, and he welcomed the audience with a flattering little speech which was cut short when one of the prancing ponies farted full in his face. Was this accident or design? We in the audience couldn’t tell, but we laughed all the same.
A circus does bring all kinds of people together under the one tent-top. The popular stands were of course packed, but the more expensive seats were also occupied. I caught sight of Indu and her mother. They were accompanied by someone who looked like the Prince of Purkazi. I looked again, and came to the conclusion that it was indeed the Prince of Purkazi. A pang of jealousy assailed me. What was the eligible young prince doing in the company of my princess? Why wasn’t he playing cricket for India or the minor counties, or preferably on some distant field in East UP where bottles and orange peels would be showered down on the players? Could the Maharani be scheming to get him married to her daughter? The dreadful thought crossed my mind.
He was handsome, he was becoming famous, he was royalty. And he probably owned racehorses.
But not the ones in the circus ring. They looked reasonably well-fed, and they were obedient; but they weren’t of racing stock. A gentle canter around the ring had them snorting and heaving at the flanks as though they’d just finished running all the way from Meerut, their last stop.
Dear Hema Mahajan was watching them with her eagle eye. She was just starting out on her campaign for the SPCA, with particular reference to circus animals, and she had her notebook and fountain pen poised and ready for action. Hema, then in her thirties, had come into prominence after winning a newspaper short story contest, and her articles and middles were now appearing quite regularly in the national press. She knew Peter and disapproved of him, for he was known to move around in a pony trap. She knew Mohan and disapproved of him; he had shot his neighbour’s Dobermann for howling beneath his window all night. She disapproved of the Indiana owner for serving up partridges at Christmas. And did she disapprove of me? Not yet. But I could sense her looking my way to see if I was enjoying the show. That would have gone against me. So I pretended to look bored; then turned towards her with a resigned look and threw my arms up in the air in a sort of world-weary gesture. ‘I’m here for the same reasons as you,’ was what it meant, and I must have succeeded, because she gave me a friendly nod. Quite a decent sort, Hema.
There were several other acquaintances strewn about the audience, including a pale straw-haired boy called Bob Canter, who had managed to secure Dilip Kumar’s autograph earlier that day. Bob was the son of American missionaries, but his heart was in Hindi movies and already he was nursing an ambition to be a film star.
Peter and Anand were absent. They felt the circus was just a little below their intellectual brows. Anand said he had a painting to finish, and Peter was writing a long article on one of the country’s Five-Year Plans— don’t ask me which one … At the time a writer named Khushwant Singh was editing a magazine called Yojana, which was all about Five-Year Plans, and he had asked Peter to do the article. I’d offered the editor an article on punch and its five ingredients—spirit, lemon or lime juice, spice, sugar and rose water—but had been politely turned down. Mr Singh liked his Scotch, but punch was not within the purview of the Five-Year Plan.
To return to the circus … The trapeze artistes (from Kerala) were very good. The girl on the tightrope (from Andhra) was scintillating in her skin-tight, blue-sequinned costume. The lady lion tamer (from Tamil Nadu) was daunting, although her lion did look a bit scruffy. The talent seemed to come largely from the south, so that it did not surprise me when the band broke into that lovely Strauss waltz, Roses of the South.
The ringmaster came from Bengal. He had a snappy whip, and its sound, as it whistled through the air, was sufficient to command obedience from snarling tigers, prancing ponies and dancing bears. He did not actually touch anyone with it. The whistle of the whip was sufficient.
Sitaram, who sat beside me looking like Sabu in The Thief of Baghdad, was enthralled by all he saw. This was his first circus, and every single act and individual performance had his complete attention. His face was suffused with delighted anticipation. He gasped when the trapeze artistes flew through the air. He laughed at the clown’s antics. He sang to the tunes the band played, and he whistled (along with the rowdier sections of the audience) when those alluring southern beauties stood upright on their cantering, wheeling ponies.
‘I like the one on the second pony,’ he said. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’
His gaze followed the girl on the pony until she, along with the others in the act, made their exit from the ring.
There were a number of other interesting acts—a dare devil motor cyclist riding through a ring of fire, the lady wrestler taking on a rather somnolent bear, and three tigers forming a sort of pyramid atop a revolving platform—but Sitaram was only half-attentive, his thoughts still being with the beautiful, dark, pink-sequinned girl on her white pony.
On the way home he held my hand and sighed.
‘I have to go again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You’ll lend me the money, won’t you? I have to see that girl again.’
10
For a couple of weeks Sitaram was busy with the circus, and I did not see much of him. When he wasn’t watching the evening performance, he was there in the mornings, hanging round the circus tents, trying to strike up an acquaintance with the ring-hands or minor performers. Most of the artistes and performers were staying in cheap hotels near the railway station. Sitaram appointed himself an unofficial messenger boy, and as he was familiar with every corner of the town, the circus people found him quite useful. He told them where they could get their clothes stitched or repaired, dry-cleaned or laundered; he guided them to the best eating places, cheap but substantial restaurants such as Komal’s or Chacha-da-Hotel (no Indiana or Royal Cafe for the circus crew); posted their letters home; found them barbers and masseurs, brought them newspapers. He was even able to get a copy of the Madras Mail for the lady lion tamer.
Late one night (it must have been after the night show was over) he woke me from a deep dreamless sleep and without any preamble stuffed a laddoo into my mouth. Laddoos were not my favourite sweetmeat, and certainly not in bed at midnight, when the crumbs on the bedsheet were likely to attract an army of ants. While I was still choking on the laddoo, he gave me his good news.
‘I’ve got a job at the circus!’
‘What, as assistant to the clown?’
‘No, not yet. But the manager likes me. He’s made me his office boy. Two hundred rupees a month!’
‘Almost as much as I make—but I suppose you’ll be running around at all hours. And have you met the girl you liked—the dark girl on the white pony?’
‘I have spoken to her. She smiles whenever she sees me. I have spoken to all the girls. They are very nice—especially the ones from the south.’
‘Well, you’re luckier than I am with girls.’
‘Would you like to meet the lady wrestler?’
‘The one who wrestles with the bear every night?
After that, would she have any time for mere men?’
‘They say she’s in love with the ringmaster, Mr Victor. He uses his whip if she gets too rough.’
‘I don’t want to have anything to do with lady wrestlers, lions, bears or whips. Now let me go to sleep. I have to write a story in the morning. Something romantic.’
He leant over and gave me a quick sharp bite on the cheek. I yelped.
‘What’s that supposed to be?’ I demanded.
‘An expression of my joy,’ he said, and vanished into the night.
The monsoon was only a fortnight away, we were told, and we were all looking forward to some relief from the hot and dusty days of June. Sometimes the nights were even more unbearable, as squadrons of mosquitoes came zooming across the eastern Doon. In those days the eastern Doon was more malarious than the western, probably because it was lowlying in parts and there was more still
water in drains and pools. Wild boar and swamp deer abounded.
But it was now mango time, and this was one of the compensations of summer. I kept a bucket filled with mangoes and dipped into it frequently during the day. So did Anand, Peter, Mohan and others who came by.
One of my more interesting visitors was a writer called G.V. Desani who had, a few years earlier, written a comic novel called All About H. Hatterr. I suspect that the character of Hatterr was based on Desani himself, for he was an eccentric individual who told me that he slept in a coffin.
‘Do you carry it around with you?’ I asked, over a coffee at Indiana.
‘No, hotels won’t allow me to bring it into the lobby, let alone my room. Hotel managers have a morbid fear of death, haven’t they?’
‘A coffin should make a good coffee table. We’ll put it to the owner of the Indiana.’
‘Trains are fussy too. You can’t have it in your compartment, and in the brake-van it gets smashed. Mine’s an expensive mahogany coffin, lined with velvet.’
‘I wish you many comfortable years sleeping in it. Do you intend being buried in it too?’
‘No, I shall be cremated like any other good Hindu. But I may will the coffin to a good Christian friend. Would you like it?’
‘I rather fancy being cremated myself. I’m not a very successful Christian. A pagan all my life. Maybe I’ll get religious when I’m older.’
Mr Desani then told me that he was nominating his own novel for the Nobel Prize, and would I sign a petition that was to be presented to the Nobel Prize Committee extolling the merits of his book? Gladly, I said, always ready to help a good cause. And did I know of any other authors or patrons of literature who might sign? I told him there was Hema Mahajan; and Peter, an eminent Swiss journalist; and old Mrs D’Souza who did a gardening column for Eve’s Weekly; and Holdsworth at the Doon School—he’d climbed Kamet with Frank Smythe and had written an account for the journal of the Bombay Natural History Society—and of course there was Anand who was keeping a diary in the manner of Stendhal; and wasn’t Mohan planning to write a PhD on P.G. Wodehouse? I gave their names and addresses to the celebrated author, and even added that of the inventor of the Sit-Safe. After all, hadn’t he encouraged this young writer by commissioning him to write a brochure for his toilet seat?
Mr Desani produced his own brochure, with quotes from reviewers and writers who had praised his work. I signed his petition and allowed him to pay for the coffee.
As I walked through the swing doors of the Indiana, Indu and her mother walked in. It was too late for me to turn back. I bowed like the gentleman my grandmother had always wanted me to be, and held the door for them, while they breezed in to the restaurant. Larry Gomes was playing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes with a wistful expression.
11
Lady Wart of Worcester, Lady Tryiton and the Earl of Stopwater, the Hon. Robin Crazier, Mr and Mrs Paddy Snott-Noble, the Earl and Countess of Lost Marbles, and General Sir Peter de l’Orange-Peel …
These were only some of the gracious names that graced the pages of the Doon Club’s guest and membership register at the turn of the century, when the town was the favourite retiring place for the English aristocracy. So well did the Club look after its members that most of them remained permanently in Dehra, to be buried in the Chandernagar cemetery just off the Hardwar Road.
In the Dehra cemetery were buried my grandfather, father and a few other relatives. If I sat on their graves, I felt I owned a bit of property. Not a bungalow or even a vegetable patch, but a few feet of well-nourished sod. There were even marigolds flowering at the edges of the graves. And a little blue everlasting that I have always associated with Dehra. It grows in ditches, on vacant plots, in neglected gardens, along footpaths, on the edges of fields, behind lime-kilns, wherever there is a bit of wasteland. Call it a weed if you like, but I have every respect for a plant that will survive the onslaught of brick, cement, petrol fumes, grazing cows and goats, heat and cold (for it flowers almost all the year round), and overflowing sewage. As long as that little flowering weed is still around, there is hope for both man and nature.
A feeling of tranquillity and peace always pervaded my being when I entered the cemetery. Were my long-gone relatives pleased by my presence there? I did not see them in any form, but then, cemeteries are the last place for departed souls to hang around in. Given a chance, they would rather be among the living, near those they cared for or in places where they were happy. I have never been convinced by ghost stories in which the tormented spirit revisits the scene of some ghastly tragedy. Why on earth (or why in heaven) should they want to relive an unpleasant experience?
My grandfather was a man with a mischievous sense of humour who often discomfited his relatives by introducing into their homes odd creatures who refused to go away. Hence the tiny Jharipani bat released into Aunt Mabel’s bedroom, or the hedgehog slipped between Uncle Ken’s bedsheets. A cousin, Mrs Blanchette, found her house swarming with white rats, while a neighbour received a gift of a parcel of papayas—and in their midst, a bright green and yellow chameleon.
And so, when I was within some fifty to sixty feet of Grandfather’s grave, I was not in the least surprised to see a full-grown tiger stretched out on his tombstone apparently enjoying the shade of the magnolia tree which grew beside it.
Was this a manifestation of Timothy (the tiger cub he’d kept when I was a child)? Did the ghosts of long-dead tigers enjoy visiting old haunts? Live tigers certainly did, and when this one stirred, yawned, and twitched its tail, I decided I wouldn’t stay to find out if it was a phantom tiger or a real one.
Beating a hasty retreat to the watchman’s quarters near the lych-gate, I noticed that a large, well-fed and very real goat was tethered to one of the old tombstones (Colonel Ponsonby of Her Majesty’s Dragoons), and I concluded that the tiger had already spotted it and was simply building up an appetite before lunch.
‘There’s a tiger on Grandfather’s grave,’ I called out to the watchman, who was checking out his cabbage patch. (And healthy cabbages they were, too.)
The watchman was a bit deaf and assumed that I was complaining about some member of his family, as they were in the habit of grinding their masalas on the smoother gravestones.
‘It’s that boy Masood,’ he said. ‘I’ll get after him with a stick.’ And picking up his lathi, he made for the grave.
A yell, a roar, and the watchman was back and out of the lych-gate before me.
‘Send for the police, sahib,’ he shouted. ‘It’s one of the circus tigers. It must have escaped!’
12
Sincerely hoping that Sitaram had not been in the way of the escaping tiger, I made for the circus tents on the parade-ground. There was no show in progress. It was about noon, and everyone appeared to be resting. If a tiger was missing, no one seemed to be aware of it.
‘Where’s Sitaram?’ I asked one of the hands.
‘Helping to wash down the ponies,’ he replied.
But he wasn’t in the pony enclosure. So I made my way to the rear, where there was a cage housing a lion (looking rather sleepy, after its late-night bout with the lady lion tamer), another cage housing a tiger (looking ready to bite my head off), and another cage with its door open—empty!
Someone came up behind me, whistling cheerfully. It was Sitaram.
‘Do you like the tigers?’ he asked.
‘There’s only one here. There are two in the show, aren’t there?’
‘Of course, I helped feed them this morning.’
‘Well, one of them’s gone for a walk. Someone must have unlocked the door. If it’s the same tiger I saw in the cemetery, I think it’s looking for another meal—or maybe just dessert!’
Sitaram ran back into the tent, yelling for the trainer and the ringmaster. And then, of course, there was commotion. For no one had noticed the tiger slipping away. It must have made off through the bamboo grove at the edge of the parade-ground, through the Forest Rangers College (well-w
ooded then), circled the police lines and entered the cemetery. By now it could have been anywhere.
It was, in fact, walking right down the middle of Dehra’s main road, causing the first hold-up in traffic since Pandit Nehru’s last visit to the town. Mr Nehru would have fancied the notion; he was keen on tigers. But the citizens of Dehra took no chances. They scattered at the noble beast’s approach. The Delhi bus came to a grinding halt, while tonga-ponies, never known to move faster than a brisk trot, broke into a gallop that would have done them proud at the Bangalore Races.
The only creature that failed to move was a large bull (the one that sometimes blocked the approach to my steps) sitting in the middle of the road, forming a traffic island of its own. It did not move for cars, buses, tongas and trucks. Why budge for a mere tiger?
And the tiger, having been fed on butcher’s meat for most of its life, now disdained the living thing (since the bull refused to be stalked) and headed instead for the back entrance to the Indiana’s kitchens.
There was a general exodus from the Indiana. Peter, who had been regaling his friends with tales of his exploits in the Foreign Legion, did not hang around either; he made for the comparative safety of my flat. Larry Gomes stopped in the middle of playing the Anniversary Waltz, and fox-trotted out of the restaurant. The owner of the Indiana rushed into the street and collided with the owner of the Royal Cafe. Both swore at each other in choice Pashtu—they were originally from Peshawar. Swami Aiyar, a Doon School boy with ambitions of being a newspaper correspondent, buttonholed me near my landlady’s shop and asked me if I knew Jim Corbett’s telephone number in Haldwani.
‘But he only shoots man-eaters,’ I protested.
‘Well, they’re saying three people have already been eaten in the bazaar.’
‘Ridiculous. No self-respecting tiger would go for a three-course meal.’