Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra

by Ruskin Bond

  ‘A double whisky for Vijay!’ she declared. ‘He’s the only one here who still has a steady hand.’

  ‘You haven’t felt my hand,’ said Reggie, bearing down on her. ‘You missed my nose by a whisker.’

  ‘You’d look better with a scar running down your face,’ said H.H. ‘Then you might get a role as Frankenstein or the phantom of the opera.’

  This touched a raw nerve, as Reggie had been having some difficulty in getting a decent role in recent months. But he snapped back: ‘I’ll play the phantom on condition you’re cast as the fat soprano—then I shall take great pleasure in strangling you.’

  ‘Let’s change the subject,’ said his wife Ruby, always ready to pour oil on troubled waters. She moved over to Colonel Wilkie’s table and asked: ‘How have you been, Colonel?’

  ‘Like an old bus—just about moving, and badly in need of spare parts.’

  ‘Well, have a beer with us—and some French fries if we can get any.’

  ‘Cook’s on strike,’ said Vijay. ‘Only liquid diet today.’

  I saw my opportunity, and piped up again from behind the potted palm. ‘I can boil some eggs for you if you like!’

  There was a stunned silence, broken by Suresh Mathur who said, sounding a little incredulous, ‘Young Master Copperfield can boil an egg!’

  Everyone clapped, and Vijay said, ‘Copperfield has certainly saved the day for us. First he produces a dartboard, and now he’s about to save us from starvation. Go to it, Copperfield!’

  Off I went, then, not to boil eggs—there weren’t any in the kitchen—but to find Sitaram, the room-boy, who was the only person of my age in the hotel. I found him in my room, listening to ‘Binaca Geet Mala’, the popular musical request programme, on my radio.

  ‘We need some eggs,’ I told him. ‘Boiled.’

  ‘Egg-man comes tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Cook finished the rest. Made himself an omelette, got drunk, and took off!’

  ‘Well, let’s go down to the bazaar and buy some eggs. I’ve got enough money on me.’

  So off we went, and near the clock tower found a street-vendor selling boiled eggs. We bought a dozen and hurried back to the barroom, where Vijay and Reggie were having a heated argument on the relative merits of cricket and football. Reggie didn’t think much of cricket, and Vijay didn’t think much of football.

  ‘And what’s your favourite game?’ asked Ruby of Suresh Mathur.

  ‘Snakes and ladders,’ he said, chuckling, and returned to his drink.

  ‘Boiled eggs!’ I announced. ‘On the house!’

  Sitaram produced saucers, and distributed the eggs among the guests—two each, exactly.

  ‘Do I have to peel my own egg?’ asked the Maharani querulously, staring down at the two eggs rolling about on her plate. ‘Peel them for me, Simon!’

  Simon dutifully cracked one of the eggs and began peeling it for her. ‘Not that way, you fool. You’re leaving all the skin on it.’ And seizing the half-peeled egg from her companion, she flung it across the room, narrowly missing the bartender.

  ‘Good throw!’ exclaimed Vijay. ‘You’d be great fielding on the boundary.’

  ‘Better at baseball,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Snakes and ladders,’ said Suresh again, now quite drunk.

  Colonel Wilkie, equally drunk, gave a loud belch.

  The Maharani got up to leave. ‘Well, I’m not going to sit here to be insulted by everyone. Come on, Simon, drive me home!’ And she marched out of the room with an attempt at majesty, but tripped over the hotel cat, an ugly striped creature who had sensed that there was food around and had come looking for it. The cat caterwauled, H.H. screamed and cursed, Reggie cheered, and Suresh Mathur pronounced, ‘When two cats are fighting they make a hideous sound.’

  Not to be outdone in nastiness, the Maharani went up to Suresh, looked him up and down, and said, ‘It’s easy to tell you’re a single man.’

  ‘I’m not homosexual,’ said Suresh defensively. (The word ‘gay’ had yet to be used in any sense other than ‘happy’ in those days.)

  ‘No,’ the Maharani smiled wickedly. ‘You’re single because you are so damn ugly!’

  And on that triumphant note she left the room, followed by the obedient Simon.

  ‘Pay no attention to her, Suresh,’ said Vijay generously. ‘You’re better-looking than that old lapdog who follows her around.’

  ‘I understand she’s leaving him her fortunes,’ said Reggie. ‘I could do with some of it myself. Perhaps I could interest her in producing a film.’

  ‘She’s tight-fisted,’ said Vijay. ‘If you look closely at Simon you’ll notice he’s wearing the late Maharaja’s smoking-jacket and deer-stalker cap. The old Maharaja loved dressing up like Sherlock Holmes.’

  Colonel Wilkie came out of his reverie. ‘When I was in Jamnagar—’ he began.

  ‘We’ve heard that a hundred times,’ said Vijay.

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Ruby.

  ‘When I was in Jamnagar,’ continued Colonel Wilkie, ‘I saw Duleepsinhji made a hundred. That was against Lord Tennyson’s team.’

  ‘Yesterday you said Ranjitsinhji,’ remarked Vijay.

  ‘I’m not that old,’ said Colonel Wilkie, struggling to his feet. ‘But old enough to want to go to bed. I’ll toddle off now.’ Locating his walking-stick, he found his way to the door, wishing everyone goodnight as he passed them. They heard the tap of his walking-stick as he walked away down the corridor.

  ‘Shouldn’t someone go with him?’ asked Ruby. ‘It’s very late and he isn’t too steady on his feet.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll find his way home,’ said Suresh nonchalantly. ‘Lives just around the corner, in rented rooms near the Club.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he join the Club?’

  ‘Can’t afford it. Neither can I.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Vijay.

  ‘Neither can we,’ added Ruby, sadly. ‘And anyway, it’s more homely here. Even when the Maharani is around.’

  ‘She can afford the Club,’ said Suresh. ‘But they won’t let her in. Created a disturbance once too often. Insulted the secretary and emptied a dish of chicken biryani on his head.’

  ‘Not done,’ said Vijay. ‘Not cricket.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Reggie. ‘Can’t be true.’

  ‘Calling me a liar?’ asked Suresh, bristling.

  Ruby poured oil on troubled waters again. ‘Interesting if true,’ she said. ‘And if not true, still interesting.’

  ‘Mark Twain.’

  My mother came along the corridor just as Vijay had shown off his knowledge of literature, and found me behind the palms listening to all this fascinating talk.

  ‘Time you went to your room, young man,’ she said.

  ‘I’m waiting for everyone to go home,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll help Sitaram tidy up. There’s no cook, as you know.’

  ‘ Let him stay,’ called Suresh from his bar stool. ‘It’s all part of his education. And he’s old enough for a glass of beer. How old are you, sonny?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ I said.

  ‘Well, enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.’

  But I wasn’t thinking of beer just then. I knew there were sausages in the fridge, and I had every intention of polishing them off as soon as all the guests had gone. I wanted to be a writer, but I had no intention of starving in a garret. However, all thoughts of food vanished when I looked across the room and saw Colonel Wilkie framed in the opposite doorway. He was staring at us through the glass. The glass door then opened of its own volition, and Colonel Wilkie stepped into the room. We all looked up, and Reggie said, ‘Back again, Colonel? Still feeling thirsty?’ But Colonel Wilkie ignored the jibe, and walked slowly across the room to the table where he had been sitting. This was close to where I was standing. He bent down and picked up his pipe from the table. He’d forgotten it when he’d left the barroom. Shoving the pipe into his pocket, he turned and retraced his steps, leaving the room by the door from which he had
entered.

  ‘Well, I’m blowed,’ said Vijay. ‘I thought he was sleep-walking.’

  ‘Never goes anywhere without his pipe,’ said Suresh. ‘A perfect example of single-mindedness.’

  ‘Didn’t say a word.’

  ‘The pipe was all that mattered.’

  ‘Like a favourite cricket bat,’ said Vijay.

  ‘Maybe I’ll come back for mine when I’m dead.’

  A silence fell upon the room. The mention of death had a sobering effect upon the small group. And come to think of it, Colonel Wilkie on his return to the barroom had something of the zombie about him—the walking dead.

  There was a commotion in the passageway, and my mother burst into the room, followed by the night-watchman.

  ‘Colonel Wilkie’s dead,’ said my mother. ‘He collapsed on his steps about half an hour ago.’

  ‘But he was here five minutes ago,’ said Vijay.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Gopal the watchman. ‘I went home with him when he left here some time back. Madam said to keep an eye on him. When we got to his place, he began climbing his steps with some difficulty. I helped him to the top step, and then he collapsed. I dragged him into his room and then ran for Dr Bhist. He is there now.’

  There was silence for a couple of minutes, and then Ruby said, ‘We all saw him. Colonel Wilkie.’

  ‘We saw his ghost,’ Vijay murmured.

  ‘He came for his pipe,’ said Suresh quietly. ‘I told you he wouldn’t go anywhere without it.’

  Colonel Wilkie was buried the next day, and we made sure his pipe was buried with him. We did not want him turning up from time to time, looking for it. It could be a bit unnerving for the customers.

  In all the excitement I’d forgotten about the sausages, but decided they would keep until after the funeral.

  All the regular bar-flies turned up for the funeral. H.H. was quite sloshed when she arrived and had to be extricated from an open grave into which she had slipped, the ground being soft and yielding after recent rain. She blamed secretary Simon for the mishap and called him an ‘ullu-ka-patha’—son of an owl—but he was quite used to such broadsides and took them in his stride. Was it love or loyalty or dependence that kept him in abeyance? Or was it, as some said, the prospect of becoming her heir? If so, he was paying a heavy price well in advance of such a prospect. Not everyone relishes being abused and kicked around in public by a half-crazed maharani.

  When Colonel Wilkie’s coffin was lowered into the grave, we all said ‘Cheers!’ He would have liked that. We then returned to Green’s for an early opening of the bar. Alcoholics Unanimous held a subdued but not too melancholy meeting.

  But bad news was in store for everyone. A day or two later, I heard the owner, our Sardarji, inform my mother that the hotel had been sold and that she’d have to leave at the end of the month. She’d been expecting something like this, and had already accepted a matron’s job at one of the schools in the valley. As for me, I was to be packed off to England to my aunt’s home in Jersey. The prospect did not thrill me, but I was more or less resigned to it. And there did not appear to be much future for me in Dehra.

  Even before the month was out, workers had begun pulling down parts of the building. It was to be rebuilt as a cinema hall, and would show the latest hits from Bombay. It was even rumoured that Dilip Kumar, the biggest star of that era, would inaugurate the new cinema when it was ready to open.

  The spirit and character of a building lasts only while the building lasts. Remove the roof-beams, pull down the walls, smash the stairways, and you are left with nothing but memories. Even the ghosts have nowhere to go.

  An old hotel that once had a personality of its own was now dismantled with startling rapidity. It had gone up slowly, brick by brick; it came down like a house of cards. No treasures cascaded from its walls; no skeletons were discovered. In two or three days the demolishers had wiped out the past, removed Green’s Hotel from the face of the earth so effectively that it might never have existed.

  Searching through the ruins one day, I found a bottle-opener lying in the dust, and kept it as a souvenir.

  The bar had been the only common factor in the lives of those disparate individuals who had come there so regularly—drawn to the place rather than to each other.

  Now they went their different ways—Suresh Mathur to the Club, the Maharani to her card-table and private bar, Vijay to a public school as cricket coach, Reggie Bhowmik and Ruby to Darjeeling to make a documentary … Sitaram continued to work for my mother, so I had his company whenever he was free.

  The cinema came up quite rapidly, but I had left for England before it opened. When I returned five years later, it was showing Madhubala and Guru Dutt in a romantic comedy, Mr & Mrs 55.

  Then I moved to Delhi.

  In recent years, some of the old single cinemas have been closing down, giving way to multiplexes. The other day, passing through Dehra, I saw that ‘our’ cinema hall was being pulled down.

  ‘What now?’ I asked my taxi driver. ‘A multiplex?’

  ‘No, sir. A shopping mall!’

  And such is progress.

  I think I’m the only one around who is old enough to remember the old Green’s Hotel, its dusty corridors, shabby barroom, and odd-ball customers. All have gone. All forgotten! Not even footprints in the sands of time. But by putting down this memoir of an evening or two at that forgotten watering-place, I think I have cheated Time just a little.

  Desert Rhapsody

  A fierce sun beat down on the desert sand. Heat waves shimmered across the barren landscape. Did anything live out there? I wondered, as I sat in a cane chair on the rest-house veranda on the outskirts of the city of Jodhpur.

  It was September, and there was no likelihood of rain. I had spent a night in this remote rest house, and now there was nothing for me to do until late evening when I would catch a train to Delhi. The previous day had been spent in Ajmer, where the grounds of the old Mayo School had provided ample shade. But there was no shade outside Jodhpur.

  The only relief from the glare was provided by a small pond that existed in a declivity to one side of the rest house. And this too had shrivelled in recent weeks, leaving large cracks in the dry mud where the water had receded.

  I had taken my breakfast in the veranda, served by a room-boy who had also done the cooking and was now about to tidy up the rooms. Apparently, the rest house had a staff of one.

  ‘You do everything by yourself?’ I asked.

  He assured me that it was no trouble, as hardly anyone came to stay in the rest house. He gave me a good breakfast—parathas and an omelette—and set about making up the bed.

  As he lifted up a pillow, a large black scorpion ran out and scurried across the bed sheets, its tail raised as if to strike.

  I was horrified. I had spent the night with my head on that pillow, unaware that it also sheltered a scorpion.

  The room-boy was unperturbed. ‘Must be more here,’ he said, and lifted the mattress. Several fierce-looking scorpions emerged, running for shelter. I had spent the entire night on a bed of scorpions.

  I decided to spend the rest of the day on the veranda. No afternoon siesta for me, no matter how drowsy I felt.

  The room-boy assured me that the room was now free of scorpions, and asked me if I would be staying another night. I told him that it was vital that I catch the train to Delhi that evening.

  ‘There is another room,’ he told me.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll need it,’ I said.

  But the pond looked inviting.

  Not that I was about to plunge into it. A green scum covered most of the surface. But at least it looked cool.

  And presently its cool waters attracted a group of youths who drove their buffaloes into the shallows, and then followed them, shouting and splashing around. Had I been a boy I might well have joined them. But at seventy-five you don’t go leaping into strange ponds, mixing with a herd of buffaloes and their high-spirited keepers. No, I just di
dn’t have the figure for it any more.

  So I sat and watched.

  After half-an-hour the youths and their buffaloes left the pond and meandered away. Buffaloes have to be fed, if you want them to provide for you. Nobody keeps buffaloes because they make nice pets.

  The pond was still again. A cormorant arrived, wading into the shallows on its long legs, looking for a small fish or two for breakfast. A kingfisher flew across the pond, a sparkle of colour, but it did not dive or descend; the water was still too muddy.

  A small islet, consisting of sand and a fringe of rushes, stood out in the middle of the pond. What I took to be a small boulder turned out to be a tortoise. It hadn’t moved since I’d first seen it, and it remained motionless for the rest of the morning.

  Three mynas were squabbling on the patch of grass in front of the bungalow. One of them was bald, having lost its feathers in some previous gladiatorial contest. Its companions did not care for its unconventional appearance, and like humans who resent the presence of a nonconforming outsider, they went at it with their beaks and talons until it fled from the field.

  The room-boy gave me lunch in the little sitting room, beneath an overhead fan. This young all-rounder, whose name was Bhim, had made the lunch himself. His dal, roti, and aloo-mattar, was better than any hotel meal; but I couldn’t do justice to the very sticky dessert (a sort of pastry stuffed with coconut and various nuts) that he served up afterwards, and he was a little put out that I pushed my plate away after a couple of mouthfuls.

  ‘Mawa-ki-kachori,’ he informed me. ‘Special to Jodhpur.’

  ‘Too sweet for me,’ I said. ‘But the dal-roti was perfect.’

  He was mollified, and went off on his bicycle to carry out a few errands.

  I was left with the sun and the sand and the pond below. The tortoise was still meditating on its islet.

  I slept. I overslept. And young Bhim was late in returning from the city. As a result, no taxi turned up to take me to the station.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said philosophically. ‘You can leave tomorrow. Tonight I make mutton kababs and hot bean curry. You will like!’