‘What do you mean, “What is it?”’ I asked.
Mathrani smiled again, but he did not say anything. He waited for me to speak, as though he thought I was evading a direct answer to his question.
‘What do you mean, “What is it?”’ I asked again.
There is usually a reason, you know,’ he said, ‘A very sound reason why anyone should want to travel all the way in a sailing boat. You know the speed at which most of them travel?’
‘What? Four, five miles per hour?’
‘That’s about it. And how far do you think it is to Cal?’
‘One thousand six hundred and seventy-six miles,’ I said. I had checked up the distance in an atlas.
‘Well it won’t be as far as that. I might as well tell you that if I can arrange a passage for you it will be from Penang. About 1,200 miles from Cal. Even so, it will take you every bit of three weeks, counting all the delays.’
‘I’ve got all the time in the world,’ I said.
‘And it won’t be any cheaper than travelling by first class boat, or even by air.’
‘I know that,’ I said.
Mathrani crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘What gives?’ he said, suddenly lapsing into American, and again smiling that knowing smile of his.
Then I caught his meaning. I said, ‘I am not trying to smuggle anything, if that’s what you are hinting at. It’s just that . . .’
‘Boyhood ambition, what?’ he said, and grinned.
‘More or less,’ I said. ‘I have never sailed in a sailing boat in my life. As you know, I am a journalist. I thought the experience would be good for me.’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see.’ And he nodded his head several times. ‘Well, I’ll give Mr Arnold a ring. Ready for another?’
‘No, thank you,’ I said.
I left the Cholon-Bar feeling rather small. I didn’t like Mathrani. But he certainly was a fast worker, for when I went to the Radio Malaya office in the Cathay skyscraper the next day, Walter told me that he had already rung up about my passage.
‘Tell me more about Mathrani,’ I said.
Walter gave me a smile. ‘You don’t like him?’ he asked.
‘Well, no.’
‘I didn’t think you would,’ he said. ‘Although everyone seems to know him, no one knows much about him . . . See what I mean? He throws the most lavish parties in Singapore, but the people you meet there are, shall we say, a little odd. They say he is involved in all kinds of rackets. Someone also told me he is a Customs informer.’
‘What is that?’ I asked.
‘You know, the chap who assists in detecting smugglers. A lot of things are said to be smuggled from Singapore—gold, and dope, and things like that. Mathrani is believed to be one of those who pass on information to foreign ports. It is said they get quite a good rake-off from whatever the Customs blokes discover as a result of their tip-offs.’
‘Oh, now I see,’ I said. ‘He must have thought I was trying to smuggle something into India . . .’
‘Oh, no,’ Walter said and laughed. Then he got the Cholon-Bar on the telephone and passed the receiver to me, and there was Mathrani’s syrupy, bland voice again.
Mathrani told me that a boat was due to leave Penang in three days and if I could get there, he had arranged that I should get a passage in it to Calcutta. His last words to me were, ‘I hope you accomplish your . . . er boyhood ambition,’—and I didn’t like the way he said it at all.
I flew to Penang the next day and caught my boat in good time. The voyage was fully as fascinating as I had hoped it would be, but it was horribly uncomfortable. The boat was a small ninety-ton affair with dirty, patched-up sails, and it seemed to creak in every joint. All the space I had to myself was a corner of the minute deck.
Aldous Huxley has somewhere written about the ‘odours which crowded humanity naturally exhales’. I have never been so persistently aware of the smell as during those nineteen days. The only time that the smell was less strong was when it was overpowered by the smell of burning dried fish, which was twice a day; and even that was a relief.
I am now glad I have made that journey; but I wouldn’t like to do it again. I think once in a lifetime is quite enough. I was never more glad to see the sights of suburban Calcutta. I looked at the grimy landscape with all the longing of Sinbad returning from one of the most harrowing adventures. But my dreams of lying soaking in a hot bath within a few hours in some plush hotel in Calcutta and ordering my first real dinner in nineteen days did not materialize. Although we reached Calcutta in the late afternoon, I had to spend the night in the boat—guarded by two Customs sepoys.
We were still about a mile from the harbour when the Customs launch accosted us, and soon an impressive detachment of officials boarded the boat. Several times in the past, I had gone through the dreadful ordeal of an Indian Customs examination, and although I knew how irritating these examinations could be, I had no idea that this one would take twenty-four hours. At first I even welcomed the presence of the Customs people on the boat. I thought I would have a pleasant chat with them, for during my journey from Penang I had been condemned to almost complete silence, since I and the Malay crew had no language in common.
But I soon realized this was no ordinary Customs inspection of an incoming country-craft. With the boat itself they finished within half an hour. Then they concentrated on me.
I have no wish to go into details of how thoroughly my baggage and person were checked. It only makes me hot with anger, even after all these months. All I had that was dutiable were four tins of cigarettes, and these I declared to the inspector as soon as I got the chance.
The inspector laughed and looked at his assistants, and they all laughed too. He did not say a word to me. Then they began to go through my things.
The way they handled my things, even unfolding each shirt and putting their hands through each single sock, made me furious. But there was little I could do. I protested in vain. Those who have gone through a routine Indian Customs examination will have some idea of what sort of search they make when they have reason to suspect that a passenger is trying to smuggle something into the country.
They took two hours to search my two suitcases and a zipper army-issue valise, and they seemed disappointed when they didn’t discover anything. Then they opened my tins of cigarettes, every single one, and ripped open several cigarettes in each tin.
At last, I thought, now I can get away. But they hadn’t finished. They left a guard on the boat, and throughout the night the guard watched me. I fumed and cursed and threatened all sorts of reprisals, but it was no use. The next morning they took me to the main Customs Office, and there my baggage was again carefully examined to see if there was any secret compartment or something. They brought out some new-fangled gadget—something like those mine detectors we used to have in the war—presumably to detect the presence of metals. They even ripped open my three pairs of shoes. In the end, when they discovered that I had nothing that I hadn’t declared, they let me go, reluctantly and without a word of apology.
The first thing I did on going to my hotel—even before taking a bath—was to send off an airmail letter to Walter Arnold. I got his reply after I reached Delhi. He confirmed what I had suspected. ‘Yes,’ he wrote, ‘Mathrani tells me he was convinced you were trying to smuggle something. He said he wasn’t sure what. I have had quite a row about it with the b—. He won’t admit it, of course, but you can bet anything he must have tipped off your Customs chaps that you were attempting to smuggle something.’
So that was that. Beyond cursing Mathrani, I could do little else. I had visions of meeting him in a dark alley somewhere, all by himself but even the worst hiding I might give him would not make up for what he had done to me. Also, I am not so sure I could have given him a hiding. He is about the same size as I.
It was only a few days ago that I got my chance. Walter Arnold was on his way to England and he stopped in Delhi with me for a day. Within a few minute
s of his arrival, we got to talking about Singapore and, inevitably, about Mathrani.
‘Oh, he is making a trip to India,’ Walter said. ‘On one of those posh new Japanese steamers—due to start in a couple of days.’
‘I almost feel like arranging a one-man reception committee,’ I said. ‘How I would love to knock out his teeth.’
Walter looked at me and smiled. ‘Oh, forget that b—,’ he said. ‘That worm is not worth bothering about. Nowadays, I cut him dead.’
But I didn’t forget the b—. Walter caught his plane the next afternoon, and as I was returning from Palam an idea struck me. It gave me a delightful thrill of anticipation.
I stopped at the best-known firm of travel agents in Delhi. ‘Yes, sir,’ the clerk told me. ‘The Kokin Maru leaves Singapore tomorrow. It is the new Japanese line ship. Very modern, very fast.’ And he shook his head in appreciation.
I waited until I was sure that the ship had actually left Singapore. I didn’t want to bungle this thing. Then I sent a cable to Mathrani, although I knew that he wouldn’t be there. I had given a lot of thought to the wording of the cable. It had to seem both secretive and yet its meaning had to be apparent. This is what I wrote:
S.B. MATHRANI CHOLON-BAR JOHORE ROAD SINGAPORE LALCHAND READY TO PAY TWO GEES PER BAR WILLING TAKE OVER ALL STOCK IN CAL AS SOON AS YOU ARRIVE
I signed the cable: ‘Ratanchand’. Then, just to make things doubly sure, I sent a letter to the Superintendent of Customs in Calcutta, telling him that I had reliable information that Mathrani was trying to smuggle gold and that he had already made arrangements with a Delhi merchant to take delivery of the gold in Calcutta itself. I did not send this letter anonymously, or even in a fictitious name. They never take much notice of such letters. I signed a name to this letter but I am not going to tell anyone what name I used.
As I said, all I wanted was to pay back Mathrani in his own coin. I wanted the Customs to receive him with the same ardour with which they had welcomed me when I landed in Calcutta.
It was not until I opened my paper yesterday morning that I realized that I had actually succeeded far beyond my most vengeful vision. It was right on the first page:
COCAINE HAUL IN CALCUTTA
Acting on information, Inspector Paul Raj of the Calcutta Customs searched the baggage of one S.B. Mathrani, a passenger who arrived from Singapore this morning on the M/V Kokin Maru. In the false bottom of a cabin trunk, and concealed in a number of ornamental Chinese vases, was hidden a large quantity of cocaine, said to be worth more than two lakhs of rupees.
Just shows you, doesn’t it? I wonder if the Customs people will give me a rake-off!
The Night Train at Deoli
RUSKIN BOND
When I was at college I used to spend my summer vacations in Dehra, at my grandmother’s place. I would leave the plains early in May and return late in July. Deoli was a small station about thirty miles from Dehra; it marked the beginning of the heavy jungles of the Indian terai.
The train would reach Deoli at about five in the morning, when the station would be dimly lit with electric bulbs and oil-lamps, and the jungle across the railway tracks would just be visible in the faint light of dawn. Deoli had only one platform, an office for the station-master and a waiting room. The platform boasted a tea stall, a fruit vendor, and a few stray dogs; not much else, because the train stopped there for only ten minutes before rushing on into the forests.
Why it stopped at Deoli I don’t know. Nothing ever happened there. Nobody got off the train and nobody got in. There were never any coolies on the platform. But the train would halt there a full ten minutes, and then a bell would sound, the guard would blow his whistle, and presently Deoli would be left behind and forgotten.
I used to wonder what happened in Deoli, behind the station walls. I always felt sorry for that lonely little platform, and for the place that nobody wanted to visit. I decided that one day I would get off the train at Deoli, and spend the day there, just to please the town.
I was eighteen, visiting my grandmother, and the night train stopped at Deoli. A girl came down the platform, selling baskets.
It was a cold morning and the girl had a shawl thrown across her shoulders. Her feet were bare and her clothes were old, but she was a young girl, walking gracefully and with dignity.
When she came to my window, she stopped. She saw that I was looking at her intently, but at first she pretended not to notice. She had a pale skin, set off by shiny black hair, and dark, troubled eyes. And then those eyes, searching and eloquent, met mine.
She stood by my window for some time and neither of us said anything. But when she moved on, I found myself leaving my seat and going to the carriage door, and stood waiting on the platform, looking the other way. I walked across to the tea stall. A kettle was boiling over on a small fire, but the owner of the stall was busy serving tea somewhere on the train. The girl followed me behind the stall.
‘Do you want to buy a basket?’ she asked. ‘They are very strong, made of the finest cane . . .’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want a basket.’
We stood looking at each other for what seemed a very long time, and she said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want a basket?’
‘All right, give me one,’ I said, and I took the one on top and gave her a rupee, hardly daring to touch her fingers.
As she was about to speak, the guard blew his whistle; she said something, but it was lost in the clanging of the bell and the hissing of the engine. I had to run back to my compartment. The carriage shuddered and jolted forward.
I watched her as the platform slipped away. She was alone on the platform and she did not move, but she was looking at me and smiling. I watched her until the signal-box came in the way, and then the jungle hid the station, but I could still see her standing there alone . . .
I sat up awake for the rest of the journey. I could not rid my mind of the picture of the girl’s face and her dark, smouldering eyes.
But when I reached Dehra the incident became blurred and distant, for there were other things to occupy my mind. It was only when I was making the return journey, two months later, that I remembered the girl.
I was looking out for her as the train drew into the station, and I felt an unexpected thrill when I saw her walking up the platform. I sprang off the footboard and waved to her.
When she saw me, she smiled. She was pleased that I remembered her. I was pleased that she remembered me. We were both pleased, and it was almost like a meeting of old friends.
She did not go down the length of the train selling baskets, but came straight to the tea stall; her dark eyes suddenly filled with light. We said nothing for some time but we couldn’t have been more eloquent.
I felt the impulse to put her on the train there and then, and take her away with me; I could not bear the thought of having to watch her recede into the distance of Deoli station. I took the baskets from her hand and put them down on the ground. She put out her hand for one of them, but I caught her hand and held it.
‘I have to go to Delhi,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘I do not have to go anywhere.’
The guard blew his whistle for the train to leave and how I hated the guard for doing that.
‘I will come again,’ I said. ‘Will you be here?’
She nodded again, and, as she nodded, the bell clanged and the train slid forward. I had to wrench my hand away from the girl and run for the moving train.
This time I did not forget her. She was with me for the remainder of the journey, and for long after. All that year she was a bright, living thing. And when the college term finished I packed in haste and left for Dehra earlier than usual. My grandmother would be pleased at my eagerness to see her.
I was nervous and anxious as the train drew into Deoli, because I was wondering what I should say to the girl and what I should do. I was determined that I wouldn’t stand helplessly before her, hardly able to speak or do anything about my feelings.
I opened the door and stepped off the footboard. I was deeply disappointed, and overcome by a sense of foreboding. I felt I had to do something, and so I ran up to the station-master and said, ‘Do you know the girl who used to sell baskets here?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said the station-master. ‘And you’d better get on the train if you don’t want to be left behind.’
But I paced up and down the platform, and stared over the railings at the station yard; all I saw was a mango tree and a dusty road leading into the jungle. Where did the road go? The train was moving out of the station, and I had to run up the platform and jump for the door of my compartment. T11hen, as the train gathered speed and rushed through the forests, I sat brooding in front of the window.
What could I do about finding a girl I had seen only twice, who had hardly spoken to me, and about whom I knew nothing—absolutely nothing—but for whom I felt a tenderness and responsibility that I had never felt before?
My grandmother was not pleased with my visit after all, because I didn’t stay at her place more than a couple of weeks. I felt restless and ill at ease. So I took the train back to the plains, meaning to ask further questions of the station-master at Deoli.
But at Deoli there was a new station-master. The previous man had been transferred to another post within the past week. The new man didn’t know anything about the girl who sold baskets. I found the owner of the tea stall, a small, shrivelled-up man, wearing greasy clothes, and asked him if he knew anything about the girl with the baskets.
‘Yes, there was such a girl here, I remember quite well,’ he said. ‘But she has stopped coming now.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What happened to her?’
‘How should I know?’ said the man. ‘She was nothing to me.’
And once again I had to run for the train.
Best Loved Indian Stories of the Century, Volume 1 Page 9