by Ruskin Bond
Of course there were times when he could be infuriating, stubborn, deliberately pig-headed, sending me little notes of resignation—but I never found it difficult to overlook these little acts of self-indulgence. He had brought much love and laughter into my life, and what more could a lonely man ask for?
It was his stubborn streak that limited the length of his stay in the Headmaster’s household. Mr Good was tolerant enough. But Mrs Good was one of those women who, when they are pleased with you, go out of their way to help, pamper and flatter; and who, when they are displeased, become vindictive, going out of their way to harm or destroy. Mrs Good sought power—over her husband, her dog, her favourite pupils, her servant …. She had absolute power over the husband and the dog; partial power over her slightly bewildered pupils; and none at all over Prem, who missed the subtleties of her designs upon his soul. He did not respond to her mothering; or to the way in which she tweaked him on the cheeks, brushed against him in the kitchen, or made admiring remarks about his looks and physique. Memsahibs, he knew, were not for him. So he kept a stony face and went diligently about his duties. And she felt slighted, put in her place. Her liking turned to dislike. Instead of admiring remarks, she began making disparaging remarks about his looks, his clothes, his manners. She found fault with his cooking. No longer was it ‘lovely’. She even accused him of taking away the dog’s meat and giving it to a poor family living on the hillside: no more heinous crime could be imagined! Mr Good threatened him with dismissal. So Prem became stubborn. The following day he withheld the dog’s food altogether; threw it down the khud where it was seized upon by innumerable strays; and went off to the pictures.
It was the end of his job. ‘I’l have to go home now,’ he told me. ‘I won’t get another job in this area. The Mem will see to that.’
‘Stay a few days,’ I said.
‘I have only enough money with which to get home.’
‘Keep it for going home. You can stay with me for a few days, while you look around. Your uncle won’t mind sharing his food with you.’
His uncle did mind. He did not like the idea of working for his nephew as well; it seemed to him no part of his duties. And he was apprehensive lest Prem might get his job.
So Prem stayed no longer than a week.
Here on the knoll the grass is just beginning to turn October yellow. The first clouds approaching winter cover the sky. The trees are very still. The birds are silent. Only a cricket keeps singing on the oak tree. Perhaps there will be a storm before evening. A storm like that in which Prem arrived at the cottage with his wife and child—but that’s jumping too far ahead ….
After he had returned to his village, it was several months before I saw him again. His uncle told me he had taken a job in Delhi. There was an address. It did not seem complete, but I resolved that when I was next in Delhi, I would try to see him.
The opportunity came in May, as the hot winds of summer blew across the plains. It was the time of year when people who can afford it, try to get away to the hills. I dislike New Delhi at the best of times, and I hate it in summer. People compete with each other in being bad-tempered and mean. But I had to go down—I don’t remember why, but it must have seemed very necessary at the time—and I took the opportunity to try and see Prem.
Nothing went right for me. Of course the address was all wrong, and I wandered about in a remote, dusty, treeless colony called Vasant Vihar (Spring Garden) for over two hours, asking all the domestic servants I came across if they could put me in touch with Prem Singh of Village Koli, Pauri Garhwal. There were innumerable Prem Singhs, but apparenly none who belonged to Village Koli. I returned to my hotel and took two days to recover from heatstroke before returning to Mussoorie, thanking God for mountains!
And then the uncle gave me notice. He’d found a better-paid job in Dehradun and was anxious to be off. I didn’t try to stop him.
For the next six months I lived in the cottage without any help. I did not find this difficult. I was used to living alone. It wasn’t service that I needed but companionship. In the cottage it was very quiet. The ghosts of long dead residents were sympathetic but unobtrusive. The song of the whistling thrush was beautiful, but I knew he was not singing for me. Up the valley came the sound of a flute, but I never saw the flute player. My affinity was with the little red fox who roamed the hillside below the cottage. I met him one night and wrote these lines:
As I walked home last night
I saw a lone fox dancing
In the cold moonlight.
I stood and watched—then
Took the low road, knowing
The night was his by right.
Sometimes, when words ring true,
I’m like a lone fox dancing
In the morning dew.
During the rains, watching the dripping trees and the mist climbing the valley, I wrote a great deal of poetry. Loneliness is of value to poets. But poetry didn’t bring me much money, and funds were low. And then, just as I was wondering if I would have to give up my freedom and take a job again, a publisher bought the paperback rights of one of my children’s stories, and I was free to live and write as I pleased—for another three months!
That was in November. To celebrate, I took a long walk through the Landour Bazaar and up the Tehri road. It was a good day for walking; and it was dark by the time I returned to the outskirts of the town. Someone stood waiting for me on the road above the cottage. I hurried past him.
If I am not for myself,
Who will be for me?
And if I am not for others,
What am I?
And if not now, when?
I startled myself with the memory of these words of Hillel, the ancient Hebrew sage. I walked back to the shadows where the youth stood, and saw that it was Prem.
‘Prem! ‘I said. ‘Why are you sitting out here, in the cold? Why did you not go to the house?’
‘I went, sir, but there was a lock on the door. I thought you had gone away.’
‘And you were going to remain here, on the road?’
‘Only for tonight. I would have gone down to Dehra in the morning.’
‘Come, let’s go home. I have been waiting for you. I looked for you in Delhi, but could not find the place where you were working.’
‘I have left them now.’
‘And your uncle has left me. So will you work for me now?’
‘For as long as you wish,’
‘For as long as the gods wish.’
We did not go straight home, but returned to the bazaar and took our meal in the Sindhi Sweet Shop; hot puris and strong sweet tea.
We walked home together in the bright moonlight. I felt sorry for the little fox, dancing alone.
That was twenty years ago, and Prem and his wife and three children are still with me. But we live in a different house now, on another hill.
Death of the Trees
The peace and quiet of the Maplewood hillside disappeared forever one winter. The powers-that-be decided to build another new road into the mountains, and the PWD saw fit to take it right past the cottage, about six feet from the large window which had overlooked the forest.
In my journal I wrote: already they have felled most of the trees. The walnut was one of the first to go. A tree I had lived with for over ten years, watching it grow just as I had watched Prem’s little son, Rakesh, grow up …. Looking forward to its new leaf-buds, the broad, green leaves of summer, turning to spears of gold in September when the walnuts were ripe and ready to fall. I knew this tree better than the others. It was just below the window, where a buttress for the road is going up.
Another tree I’ll miss is the young deodar, the only one growing in this stretch of the woods. Some years back it was stunted from lack of sunlight. The oaks covered it with their shaggy branches. So I cut away some of the overhanging branches and after that the deodar grew much faster. It was just coming into its own this year; now cut down in its prime like my young brother on the ro
ad to Delhi last month: both victims of the roads. The tree killed by the PWD; my brother by a truck.
Twenty oaks have been felled. Just in this small stretch near the cottage. By the time this bypass reaches Jabarkhet, about six miles from here, over a thousand oaks will have been slaughtered, besides many other fine trees—maples, deodars and pines—most of them unnecessarily, as they grew some fifty to sixty yards from the roadside.
The trouble is, hardly anyone (with the exception of the contractor who buys the felled trees) really believes that trees and shrubs are necessary. They get in the way so much, don’t they? According to my milkman, the only useful tree is one which can be picked clean of its leaves for fodder! And a young man remarked to me: ‘You should come to Pauri. The view is terrific, there are no trees in the way!’
Well, he can stay here now, and enjoy the view of the ravaged hillside. But as the oaks have gone, the milkman will have to look further afield for his fodder.
Rakesh calls the maples the butterfly trees because, when the winged seeds fall, they flutter like butterflies in the breeze. No maples now. No bright red leaves to flame against the sky. No birds!
That is to say, no birds near the house. No longer will it be possible for me to open the window and watch the scarlet minivets flitting through the dark green foliage of the oaks; the long-tailed magpies gliding through the trees; the barbet calling insistently from his perch on top of the deodar. Forest birds, all of them, they will now be in search of some other stretch of surviving forest. The only visitors will be the crows, who have learnt to live with, and off, humans, and seem to multiply along with roads, houses and people, And even when all the people have gone, the crows will still be around.
Other things to look forward to: trucks thundering past in the night; perhaps a tea and pakora shop around the corner; the grinding of gears, the music of motor horns. Will the whistling thrush be heard above them? The explosions that continually shatter the silence of the mountains, as thousand-year-old rocks are dynamited, have frightened away all but the most intrepid of birds and animals. Even the bold langurs haven’t shown their faces for over a fortnight.
Somehow, I don’t think we shall wait for the tea shop to arrive. There must be some other quiet corner, possibly on the next mountain, where new roads have yet to come into being. No doubt this is a negative attitude, and if I had any sense I’d open my own tea shop. To retreat is to be a loser. But the trees are losers too; and when they fall, they do so with a certain dignity.
Never mind. Men come and go; the mountains remain.
The Bar That Time Forgot
‘Cockroaches!’ exclaimed Her Highness, the Maharani. ‘Cockroaches everywhere! Can’t put down my glass without finding a cockroach beneath it!’
‘Cockroaches have a special liking for this room,’ observed Colonel Wilkie, from his corner by the disused fireplace. ‘For one thing, our Melaram there—’ and he indicated the bartender with a tilt of his double-chin—‘never washes the glasses properly. And there are sandwich remains all over the place. Last week’s sandwiches, I might add. From that party of yours, Vijay.’
Vijay, former test cricketer, now forty and with a forty-three waist, turned to the colonel. ‘You should see the kitchen. A pigsty. The cook is seldom sober.’
‘We are seldom sober,’ said Suresh Mathur, income-tax lawyer, from his favourite bar stool.
‘Speak for yourself,’ snapped H.H. ‘Simon, fetch me another whisky.’
Simon Lee, secretary-companion to Her Highness, rose dutifully from his chair and took her glass over to the bar counter.
‘Indian whisky or Scotch, sir?’ asked the bartender in a loud voice, knowing the Maharani was too mean to buy Scotch.
‘Whisky will do,’ said Simon. ‘And a beer for me.’ Just then he felt like spiking the Maharani’s whisky with something really lethal, and be free of her for the rest of his days. Years of loyalty and companionship had given way to abject slavery, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nearing seventy, unqualified and unworldly, he could hardly set about creating any sort of career for himself.
‘And what are you having?’ he asked Suresh Mathur, who had just put away his first drink.
‘I’m never vague, I ask for Haig!’ Suresh replied, chuckling at his clever rhyme. None of the others thought it amusing, but this was usual. ‘When they stop giving me credit I’ll try the local stuff.’
‘Good on you!’ called Colonel Wilkie from his corner. ‘But there’s nothing to beat Solan No. 1. Don’t trust these single malts—they always give me gout!’
‘I’ve never seen you move from that chair,’ said Vijay. ‘No wonder you suffer from gout.’
‘Played cricket once, like you,’ said the colonel. ‘Made a few runs. But they always made me twelfth man. Got fed up carrying out the drinks, or fielding when the star batsman felt indisposed. Gave up cricket. Indoor games are better. Why don’t we have a dartboard in here? In England, every respectable pub has a dartboard.’
I’d been listening to the conversation from a small table behind a potted palm. I was sixteen, just out of school, and I wasn’t supposed to be in the bar, even if I wasn’t drinking. The large potted palm separated the barroom from the outer lounge; it was neutral territory.
‘I have a dartboard!’ I piped up, and every head turned towards me. Most of them had been unaware of my presence. They knew, of course, that I was the son of the lady who managed the hotel.
Suresh Mathur, the most literary-inclined of the lot, said: ‘Young Copperfield has a dartboard!’
‘I’ll go and fetch it,’ I said, only too ready to justify my presence in the bar.
I dashed down the corridor to my room and collided with my mother who was doing her nightly round of the hotel.
‘What are you doing here? You mustn’t hang around the bar,’ she said sharply. ‘You have a radio in your room, apart from all your books.’
The radio had given to me the previous year by a guest who was now wanted by the police (on suspicion of being a serial killer), but I did not feel in any way guilty about possessing it; the guest had been very friendly and generous.
‘Darts,’ I told my mother. ‘They want to play darts. That’s what a pub is for, isn’t it?’ And I charged into my room, picked up my old dartboard and set of darts, and returned breathless to the barroom.
My arrival was greeted by cheers, and Vijay helped me find a place for the dartboard, just below a framed picture of winged cherubs sporting about on some unlikely clouds.
‘Whoever gets the highest score has a free drink,’ announced Vijay.
‘Who pays for it?’ asked Suresh Mathur.
‘We all do—income-tax lawyers included.’
‘He never saved anyone a rupee of tax,’ declared the Maharani. ‘But come on, let’s have a game.’
‘Would you like to start the proceedings, H.H.?’
‘No, I’ll wait till everyone’s finished. You can start with Colonel Wilkie.’
‘Age before beauty,’ said Vijay. ‘Come on, Colonel, we know you have a steady hand.’
Colonel Wilkie’s hand was far from steady. His hands were always trembling. But he struggled out of his chair and took up his position at a point indicated by Vijay. Only one of his darts struck the board, earning him fifteen points. The others were near misses. Two darts bounced off the picture on the wall.
‘The old fool’s aiming at those naked cherubs,’ crowed H.H. ‘Go on, Simon, see if you can win a free drink for me.’
Simon did his best, but scored a meagre thirty points.
‘Idiot!’ cried H.H. ‘And you always said you were a good darts player.’
‘Out of practice,’ Simon mumbled.
Meanwhile, someone had opened up the old radiogram and placed a record on the turn-table. The cheeky voice of Maurice Chevalier filled the room:
All I want is just one girl,
But I have to have one girl—
All I want is one—
For
a start!
The evening was livening up. Suresh Mathur scored a few points, but it was Vijay who hit the bull’s eye and claimed a drink on the house.
‘Not until I’ve had my turn,’ shouted H.H., and made a grab for the darts.
She flung them at the board at random, missing wildly—so much so that one dart lodged itself in Colonel Wilkie’s old felt hat which was hanging from a peg, while another streaked across the room and narrowly missed the Roman nose of Reggie Bhowmik, ex-actor, who had just entered the room accompanied by his demure little wife.
Between ex-actor Reggie and former cricketer Vijay there was no love lost. Both middle-aged and no longer in demand, they were rivals in failure. One spoke of the prejudice and incompetence of the cricket selectors, the other of jealousy in the film industry and his subsequent neglect. Both lived in the past—Vijay recalling the one outstanding innings he had played for the country (before being dropped after a series of failures), Reggie living on memories of his one great romantic role before a sagging waist-line and alcohol-coarsened features had led to a rapid decline in his popularity. Somehow they had drifted into the backwater that was Dehra in 1950.
There are some places, no matter how dull or lacking in opportunity, which nevertheless take a grip on the individual—especially the more easy-going types—and hold him in thrall, rendering him unfit for life in a larger, more competitive milieu. Dehra was one such place.
The bar at Green’s Hotel was their refuge and their strength. Here they could reminisce, hark back to glory days, even speak optimistically of the future. Colonel Wilkie, Suresh Mathur, Vijay Kapoor, Reggie Bhowmik, H.H.—the Maharani—and Simon Lee, were all drop-outs, failures in their own way. Had they been busy and successful, they would not have found their way to Green’s every evening.
Reggie Bhowmik liked making dramatic entrances, but the Maharani was just as fond of being the centre of attention, and wasn’t about to give up centre stage to a fading actor.