by Ruskin Bond
‘I’ll look after them,’ I said. ‘As long as the landlady doesn’t turn me out. The rent is overdue.’
‘Don’t lend money to your friends. Especially that Swiss fellow. He owes money everywhere—hasn’t even paid my parents for two months’ washing. One of these days he’ll just go away—and your money will go with him. There is nothing to keep him here.’
‘There is nothing to keep me here.’
‘This is where you belong, where you grew up. You will always be here.’
It was where I had grown up—my grandparents’ home—but I had always been happier with my father, sharing a wartime tent with him on the outskirts of Delhi, visiting the ruins of Old Delhi—Humayun’s Tomb, the Purana Killa, the Kashmiri Gate; going to the cinema with him to see the beautiful skating legend, Sonja Henie in Sun Valley Serenade; Nelson Eddy singing Volga Boatmen and Ride, Cossack, Ride in Balalaika; Carmen Miranda swinging her hips to Down Argentine Way; and Hope and Crosby On the Road to Zanzibar or Morocco or Singapore. Rickshaw-rides in Simla. Ice creams at Davico’s. Comics—Film Fun and Hotspur … And those colourful postcards he used to send me once a week. At school, the distribution of the post was always something to look forward to.
But I must also have inherited a great deal of my mother’s sensuality, her unconventional attitude to life, her stubborn insistence on doing things that respectable people did not approve of … She was a convivial character, who mingled with all and shocked not a few.
I’m sure my mother was quite a handful for my poor father, bookish and intellectual, who did so want her to be a ‘lady’. But this was something that went against her nature. She liked to drink and swear a bit. The ladies of the Dehra Benevolent Society had not approved. Nor had they approved of my mother going to church without a hat! This was considered the height of irreverence in those days. There were remonstrances and anguished letters of protest from other (always female) members of the congregation. I wasn’t big enough to understand much of all this then—I was only about three years old. My parents separated a year later, so whatever I know is from hearsay.
17
The circus tents were being dismantled and the parade ground was comparatively silent again. Some boys kicked a football around. Others flew kites. The monsoon season is kite-flying time, for it’s not too windy, and the moist air currents are just right for keeping a kite aloft.
In the old part of the Dhamawalla bazaar, there used to be a kite shop, and, taking a circuitous way home, I stopped at the shop and bought a large pink kite. I thought Sitaram would enjoy flying it from the rooftop when he wasn’t dancing in the rain. But when I got home, I found he had gone. His parents told me he had left in a hurry, as most of the circus people had taken the afternoon train to Amritsar. He had taken his clothes and a cracked bathroom mirror, nothing else, and yet the flat seemed strangely empty and forlorn without him. The plants on the balcony were poignant reminders of his presence.
I thought of giving the kite to my landlady’s son, but I knew him to be a destructive brat who’d put his fist through it at the first opportunity, so I hung it on a nail on the bedroom wall, and thought it looked rather splendid there, better than a Picasso although perhaps not in the same class as one of Anand’s angels.
As I stood back, admiring it, there was a loud knocking at my door (as in the knocking at the gate in Macbeth, portending deeds of darkness) and I turned to open it, wondering why I had bothered to close it in the first place (I seldom did), when something about the knocking—its tone, its texture—made me hesitate.
There are knocks of all kinds—hesitant knocks, confident knocks, friendly knocks, good-news knocks, bad-news knocks, tax-collector’s knocks (exultant, these!), policemen’s knocks (peremptory, businesslike), drunkard’s knocks (slow and deliberate), the landlady’s knock (you could tell she owned the place) and children’s knocks (loud thumps halfway down the door).
I had come to recognize different kinds of knocks, but this one was unfamiliar. It was a possessive kind of knock, gloating, sensual, bold and ar rogant. I stood a chair on a table, then balanced myself on the chair and peered down through the half-open skylight.
It was Indu’s mother. Her perfume nearly knocked me off the chair. Her bosom heaved with passion and expectancy, her eyes glinted like a hyena’s and her crocodile hands were encased in white gloves!
I withdrew quietly and tiptoed back across the room and out on the balcony. On the next balcony, my neighbour’s maidservant was hanging out some washing.
‘For God’s sake,’ I told her. ‘That woman out front, banging on my door. Go and tell her I’m not at home!’
‘Who is she?’
‘A rakshasi, if you want to know.’
‘Then I’m not going near her!’
‘All right, can you let me out through your flat? Is there anyone at home?’
‘No, but come quickly. Can you climb over the partition?’
The partition did not look as if it would take my weight, so I climbed over the balcony wall and, clinging to it, moved slowly along the ledge till I got to my neighbour’s balcony. The maidservant helped me over. Such nice hands she had! How could a working girl have such lovely hands while a lady of royal lineage had crocodile-skin hands? It was the law of compensation, I suppose, Mother Nature looking after her own.
‘What’s your name?’ I whispered, as she led me through her employer’s flat and out to the back stairs.
‘Radha,’ she said, her smile lighting up the gloom.
‘Rather you than that rakshasi outside!’ I gave her hand a squeeze and said, ‘I’ll see you again,’ then took off down the stairs as though a swarm of bees was after me.
My landlady’s son’s bicycle was standing in the veranda. I decided to borrow it for a couple of hours.
I rode vigorously until I was out of the town, and then I took a narrow unmetalled road through the sal forest on the Hardwar road. I thought I would be safe there, but it wasn’t long before I heard the menacing purr of the Maharani’s Sunbeam-Talbot. Looking over my shoulder, I saw it bumping along in a cloud of dust. It was like a chase scene in a Hitchcock film, and I was Cary Grant about to be machine-gunned from a low-flying aircraft. I saw another narrow trail to the right, and swerved off the road, only to find myself parting company with the bicyle and somersaulting into some lantana bushes. There was a screech of brakes, a car door shot open, and the rich Maharani of Magador was bounding towards me like a man-eating tigress.
‘Jim Corbett, where are you?’ I called feebly.
‘He has no business here, you fool,’ said the tigress. Once again I lost out to the grim determination of the Maharani … Was there going to be no respite from her?
18
A change of air was needed. What with the attentions of the Maharani, the borrowings of Peter, the loss of Indu, and the absence of Sitaram, I wasn’t doing much writing. My bank balance was very low. I had also developed a throat infection (don’t ask me how).
There was a sum of two hundred and seventy rupees in the bank. Always prudent, I withdrew two hundred and fifty and left twenty rupees for my last supper. Then I packed a bag, and left my keys with the landlady with the entreaty that she tell no one in Dehra of my whereabouts, and took the bus to Rishikesh.
Rishikesh was then little more than a village, scattered along the banks of the Ganga where it cut through the foothills. There were a few ashrams and temples, a tiny bazaar and a police outpost. The saffron-robed sadhus and ascetics outnumbered the rest of the population. I couldn’t help remembering that trip to Rishikesh my friend Sudheer and I had undertaken … Sudheer had wanted to avoid being caught by the police, so he had disguised himself as a sadhu. But surely, he couldn’t be hanging around here now—he was always a rolling stone.
There had been a break in the rains, and I spent a night sleeping on the sands sloping down to the river.
The next night it did rain, and I moved to a bench on the small railway platform. I could have stayed in one
of the two ashrams, but I had no pretensions to religion of any kind, and was not inclined to become an acolyte to some holy man. Kim had his Lama, the braying Beatles had their Master, and others have had their gurus and godmen, but I have always been stubborn and thick-headed enough to want to remain my own man—myself, warts and all, singing my own song. Nobody’s chela, nobody’s camp-follower.
Let nature reign, let freedom sing! …
And, so, on the third morning of my voluntary exile from the fleshpots of Dehra, I strode up the river, taking a well-worn path which led to the shrines in the higher mountains. I was not seeking salvation or enlightenment; I wished merely to come to terms with myself and my situation.
Should I stay on in Dehra, or should I strike out for richer pastures—Delhi or Bombay perhaps? Or should I return to London and my desk in the Photax office? Oh, for the life of a clerk! Or I could give English tuitions, I supposed. Except that everyone seemed to know English. What about French? I’d picked up a French patois in the Channel Islands. It wasn’t the real thing, but who would know the difference?
I practised a few lines, reciting aloud to myself:
Jeune femme au rendezvous.
(She is waiting for her lover.)
Oh, oui! Il va venir
(Oh, yes, he is coming!)
Enfin je le ver ra!
(Finally I shall see him!)
Pourquoi je attends?
(What am I waiting for?)
I could see my flat overflowing with students from all over Dehra and beyond. But how was I to keep the Maharani from attending?
The future looked rather empty as I trudged forlornly up the mountain trail. What I really needed just then was a good companion—someone to confide in, someone with whom to share life’s little problems. No wonder people get married! An admirable institution, marriage. But who’d marry an indigent writer, with twenty rupees in the bank and no prospects in a land where English was on the way out. (I was not to know that English would be ‘in’ again, thirty years later.) No self-respecting girl really wants to share the proverbial attic with a down-and-out writer, least of all the princess Indu from Magador.
I should have taken my cricket more seriously, I told myself. Must dress better. Put on the old school tie.
But did I really, really want to be bogged down by marriage? Even if it might be with Indu? Sure, married life had several admirable qualities, but did it not mean sacrifice, adjustment and so many other selfless things? Could I truly balance my first priority—of being a full-fledged writer—with the responsibilities of a married man? I wasn’t so sure … I wanted to lead a fairly unfettered life so that I could focus entirely and solely on my writing. All I needed and wanted was a room of my own, my own space, and my simple needs to be met. A room of my own … yes, that had been my dream many years ago as well, long before I had the room on the roof of the Kapoors’ house. When had I discovered that this was my dream? That day—when an old man, a beggar man bent double, with a flowing white beard and piercing grey eyes, stopped on the road on the other side of the garden wall and looked up at me, where I perched on the branch of a lichee tree. I was staying with my grandmother at her house then—in Dehra.
‘What’s your dream?’ he asked.
It was a startling question coming from that raggedy old man on the street. Even more startling that it should have been asked in English. English-speaking beggars were a rarity in those days.
‘What’s your dream?’ he repeated.
‘I don’t remember,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I had a dream last night.’
‘That’s not what I mean. You know it isn’t what I mean. I can see you’re a dreamer. It’s not the lichee season, but you sit in that tree all afternoon, dreaming.’
‘I just like sitting here,’ I said. I refused to admit that I was a dreamer. Other boys didn’t dream, they had catapults.
‘A dream, my boy, is what you want most in life. Isn’t there something that you want more than anything else?’
‘Yes,’ I said promptly. ‘A room of my own.’
‘Ah! A room of your own, a tree of your own, it’s the same thing. Not many people can have their own rooms, you know. Not in a land as crowded as ours.’
‘Just a small room.’
‘And what kind of room do you live in at present?’
‘It’s a big room, but I have to share it with my Uncle Ken and even my aunts if there are too many of us at the same time.’
‘I see. What you really want is freedom. Your own tree, your own room, your own small place in the sun.’
‘Yes, that’s all.’
‘That’s all? That’s everything! When you have all that, you’ll have found your dream.’
‘Tell me how to find it!’
‘There’s no magic formula, my friend. If I was a godman, would I be wasting my time here with you? You must work for your dream and move towards it all the time, and discard all those things that come in the way of finding it. And then, if you don’t expect too much too quickly, you’ll find your freedom, a room of your own. The difficult time comes afterwards.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘Yes, because it’s so easy to lose it all, to let someone take it away from you. Or you become greedy, or careless, and start taking everything for granted, and— poof!—suddenly the dream has gone, vanished!’
‘How do you know all this?’ I asked.
‘Because I had my dream and lost it.’
‘Did you lose everything?’
‘Yes, just look at me now, my friend. Do I look like a king or a godman? I had everything I wanted, but then I wanted more and more … You get your room, and then you want a building, and when you have your building you want your own territory, and when you have your own territory you want your own kingdom—and all the time it’s getting harder to keep everything. And when you lose it—in the end, all kingdoms are lost—you don’t even have your room any more.’
‘Did you have a kingdom?’
‘Something like that … Follow your own dream, boy, but don’t take other people’s dreams, don’t stand in anyone’s way, don’t take from another man his room or his faith or his song.’ And he turned and shuffled away, intoning the following verse which I have never heard elsewhere, so it must have been his own—
Live long, my friend, be wise and strong,
But do not take from any man his song.
These memories in mind, I found myself standing on the middle of a small wooden bridge in Rishikesh that crossed one of the swift mountain streams that fed the great river. No, I wasn’t thinking of hurling myself on the rocks below. The thought would have terrified me! I’m the sort who clings to life no matter how strong the temptation is to leave it. But absent-mindedly I leant against the wooden railing of the bridge. The wood was rotten and gave way immediately.
I fell some thirty feet, fortunately into the middle of the stream where the water was fairly deep. I did not strike any rocks. But the current was swift and carried me along with it. I could swim a little (thank God for those two years in the Channel Islands), and as I’d lost my chappals in my fall, I swam and drifted with the current, even though my clothes were an encumbrance. The breast-stroke seemed the best in those turbulent waters, but ahead I saw a greater turbulence and knew I was approaching rapids and, possibly, a waterfall. That would have spelt the end of a promising young writer.
So I tried desperately to reach the river bank on my right. I got my hands on a smooth rock but was pulled away by the current. Then I clutched at the branch of a dead tree that had fallen into the stream. I held fast; but I did not have the strength to pull myself out of the water.
Looking up I saw my father standing on the grassy bank. He was smiling at me in the way he had done that lazy afternoon at the canal. Was he beckoning to me to join him in the next world, or urging me to make a bid to continue for a while in this one?
I made a special effort—yes, I was a stout-hearted young man then—heaved myself out of th
e water and climbed along the waterlogged tree trunk until I sank into ferns and soft grass.
I looked up again, but the vision had gone. The air was scented with wild roses and magnolia.
You may break, you may shatter
the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will linger
there still.
19
Back to sleepy Dehra, somnolent in the hot afternoon sun and humid from the recent rain. Dragonflies hovered over the canals. Mosquitoes bred in still waters, multiplying their own species and putting a brake on ours. Someone at the bus stand told me that the Maharani was down with malaria; as a result I walked through the bazaar with a spring in my step, even though my cheap new chappals were cutting into the flesh between my toes. Underfoot, the neem pods gave out their refreshing though pungent odour. This was home, even though it did not offer fame or riches.
As I approached Astley Hall, I saw a pink kite flying from the roof of my flat. The landlady’s son had probably got hold of it. It darted about, pirouetted, made extravagant nose dives, recovered and went through teasing little acrobatic sallies, as though it had a life of its own. A pink kite against a turquoise-blue sky.
It was definitely my kite. How dare my landlady presume I had no need for it! I hurried to the stairs, stepping into cow dung as I went, and consoling myself with the thought that stepping into fresh cow dung was considered lucky, at least according to Sitaram’s mother.
And perhaps it was, because, as I took the narrow stairway to the flat roof, who should I find up there but Sitaram himself, flying my kite without a care in the world.
When he saw me, he tied the kite string to a chimney stack and ran up and gave me a tight hug. ‘Why aren’t you with the circus?’ I asked.
‘Left the circus,’ he said, and we sat down on the parapet and exchanged news.