by Ruskin Bond
‘Let us come here every week,’ said Suraj stretching himself out on the grass. It was a drowsy day, the air humid and he soon fell asleep. I was aware of different sensations. I heard a cricket singing in the tree; the cooing of pigeons which lived in the walls of the old well; the soft breathing of Suraj; a rustling in the leaves of the tree; the distant drone of the bees. I smelt the grass and the old bricks around the well, and the promise of rain.
When I opened my eyes, I saw dark clouds on the horizon. Suraj was still sleeping his arms thrown across his face to keep the glare out of his eyes. As I was thirsty, I went to the well, and putting my shoulders to it, turned the wheel very slowly, walking around the well four times, while cool clean water gushed out over the stones and along the channel to the fields. I drank from one of the trays, and the water tasted sweet: the deeper the wells the sweeter the water. Suraj was sitting up now, looking at the sky.
‘It’s going to rain,’ he said.
We pushed our cycles back to the main road and began riding homewards. We were a mile out of Pipalnagar when it began to rain. A lashing wind swept the rain across our faces, but we exulted in it and sang at the top of our voices until we reached the bus stop. Leaving the cycles at the hire-shop, we ran up the ricketty, swaying steps to my room.
In the evening, as the bazaar was lighting up, the rain stopped. We went to sleep quite early; but at midnight I was woken by the moon shinning full in my face — a full moon, shedding its light all over Pipalnagar, peeping and prying into every home, washing the empty streets, silvering the corrugated tin roofs.
IX
The lizards hung listlessly on the walls and ceilings, waiting for the monsoon rains, which bring out all the insects from their cracks and crannies.
One day clouds loomed up on the horizon, growing rapidly into enormous towers. A faint breeze sprang up, bringing with it the first of the monsoon rain-drops. This was the moment everyone was waiting for. People ran out of their houses to take in the fresh breeze and the scent of those first few raindrops on the parched, dusty earth. Underground, in their cracks, the insects were moving. Termites and white ants, which had been sleeping through the hot season, emerged from their lairs.
And then, on the second or third night of the monsoon, came the great yearly flight of insects into the cool brief freedom of the night. Out of every crack, from under the roots of trees, huge winged ants emerged, at first fluttering about heavily, on this the first and last flight of their lives. At night there was only one direction in which they could fly — towards the light; towards the electric bulbs and smoky kerosene lamps throughout Pipalnagar. The street lamp opposite the bus stop, beneath my room, attracted a massive quiv- ering swarm of clumsy termites, which gave the impression of one thick slowly revolving body.
This was the hour of the lizards. Now they had their reward for those days of patient waiting. Plying their sticky pink tongues, they devoured the insects as fast as they came. For hours they crammed their stomachs, knowing that such a feast would not be theirs again for another year. How wasteful nature is, I thought. Through the whole hot season the insect world prepares for this flight out of darkness into light, and not one of them survives its freedom.
Suraj and I walked barefooted over the cool wet pavements, across the railway lines and the river bed, until we were not far from the crooked tree. Dotting the landscape were old abandoned brick kilns. When it rained heavily, the hollows made by the kilns filled up with water. Suraj and I found a small tank where we could bathe and swim. On a mound in the middle of the tank stood a ruined hut, formerly inhabited by a watchman at the kiln. We swam and then wrestled on the young green grass. Though I was heavier than Suraj and my chest as sound as a new drum, he had a lot of power in his long wiry arms and legs, and he pinioned me about the waist with his bony knees. And then suddenly, as I strained to press his back to the ground, I felt his body go tense. He stiffened, his thigh jerked against me and his legs began to twitch. I knew that a fit was coming on, but I was unable to get out of his grip. He held me more tightly as the fit took possession of him.
When I noticed his mouth working, I thrust the palm of my hand in, sideways to prevent him from biting his tongue. But so violent was the convulsion that his teeth bit into my flesh. I shouted with pain and tried to pull my hand away, but he was unconscious and his jaw was set. I closed my eyes and counted slowly up to seven and then I felt his muscles relax, and I was able to take my hand away. It was bleeding a little but I bound it in a handkerchief before Suraj fully regained consciousness.
He didn’t say much as we walked back to town. He looked depressed and weak, but I knew it wouldn’t take long for him to recover his usual good spirits. He did not notice that I kept my hand out of sight and only after he had returned from classes that night did he notice the bandage and asked what happened.
X
‘Do you want to make some money?’ asked Pitamber, bursting into the room like a festive cracker.
‘I do,’ I said.
‘What do we have to do for it?’ asked Suraj, striking a cautious note.
‘Oh nothing — carry a banner and walk in front of a procession.’ ‘Why?’
‘Don’t ask me. Some political stunt.’
‘Which party?’
‘I don’t know. Who cares? All I know is that they are paying two rupees a day to anyone who’ll carry a flag or banner.’
‘We don’t need two rupees that badly,’ I said. ‘And you can make more than that in a day with your rickshaw.’
‘True, but they’re paying me five. They’re fixing a loudspeaker to my rickshaw, and one of the party’s men will sit in it and make speeches as we go along. Come on — it will be fun.’
‘No banners for us,’ I said. ‘But we may come along and watch.’ And we did watch, when, later that morning, the procession passed along our street. It was a ragged procession of about a hundred people, shouting slogans. Some of them were children, and some of them were men who did not know what it was all about, but all joined in the slogan-shouting.
We didn’t know much about it, either. Because though the man in Pitamber’s rickshaw was loud and eloquent, his loudspeaker was defective, with the result that his words were punctuated with squeaks and an eerie whining sound. Pitamber looked up and saw us standing on the balcony and gave us a wave and a wide grin. We decided to follow the procession at a discreet distance. It was a protest march against something or other; we never did manage to find out the details. The destination was the Municipal office, and by the time we got there the crowd had increased to two or three hundred persons. Some rowdies had now joined in, and things began to get out of hand. The man in the rickshaw continued his speech; another man standing on a wall was making a speech; and someone from the Municipal office was confronting the crowd and making a speech of his own.
A stone was thrown, then another. From a sprinkling of stones it soon become a shower of stones; and then some police constables, who had been standing by watching the fun, were ordered into action. They ran at the crowd where it was thinnest, brandishing stout sticks.
We were caught up in the stampede that followed. A stone — flung no doubt at a policeman — was badly aimed and struck me on the shoulder. Suraj pulled me down a side-street. Looking back, we saw Pitamber’s cycle-rickshaw lying on its side in the middle of the road; but there was no sign of Pitamber.
Later, he turned up in my room, with a cut over his left eyebrow which was bleeding freely. Suraj washed the cut, and I poured iodine over it — Pitamber did not flinch — and covered it with sticking-plaster. The cut was quite deep and should have had stitches; but Pitamber was superstitious about hospitals, saying he knew very few people to come out of them alive. He was of course thinking of the Pipalnagar hospital.
So he acquired a scar on his forehead. It went rather well with his demonic good looks.
XI
‘Thank god for the monsoon,’ said Suraj. ‘We won’t have any more demonstrations on the ro
ads until the weather improves!’
And, until the rain stopped, Pipalnagar was fresh and clean and alive. The children ran naked out of their houses and romped through the streets. The gutters overflowed, and the road became a mountain stream, coursing merrily towards the bus stop.
At the bus stop there was confusion. Newly arrived passengers, surrounded on all sides by a sea of mud and rain water, were met by scores of tongas and cycle-rickshaws, each jostling the other trying to cater to the passengers. As a result, only half found conveyances, while the other half found themselves knee-deep in Pipalnagar mud.
Pipalnagar mud has a quality all its own; and it is not easily removed or forgotten. Only buffaloes love it because it it soft and squelchy. Two parts of it is thick sticky clay which seems to come alive at the slightest touch, clinging tenaciously to human flesh. Feet sink into it and have to be wrenched out. Fingers become webbed. Get it into your hair, and there is nothing you can do except go to Deep Chand and have your head shaved.
London has its fog, Paris its sewers, Pipalnagar its mud. Pitamber, of course succeeded in getting as his passenger the most attractive girl to step off the bus, and showed her his skill and daring by taking her to her destination by the longest and roughest road.
The rain swirled over the trees and roofs of the town, and the parched earth soaked it up, giving out a fresh smell that came only once a year, the fragrance of quenched earth, that loveliest of all smells.
In my room I was battling against the elements, for the door would not close, and the rain swept into the room and soaked my cot. When finally I succeeded in closing the door, I discovered that the roof was leaking, and the water was trickling down the walls, running through the dusty designs I had made with my feet. I placed tins and mugs in strategic positions and, satisfied that every- thing was now under control, sat on the cot to watch the roof-tops through the windows.
There was a loud banging on the door. It flew open, and there was Suraj, standing on the threshold, drenched. Coming in, he began to dry himself while I made desperate efforts to close the door again.
‘Let’s make some tea,’ he said.
Glasses of hot sweet milky tea on a rainy day . . . It was enough to make me feel fresh and full of optimism. We sat on the cot, enjoying the brew.
‘One day I’ll write a book,’ I said. ‘Not just a thriller, but a real book, about real people. Perhaps about you and me and Pipalnagar. And then we’ll be famous and our troubles will be over and new troubles will begin. I don’t mind problems as long as they are new. While you’re studying, I’ll write my book. I’ll start tonight. It is an auspicious time, the first night of the monsoon.’
A tree must have fallen across the wires somewhere, because the lights would not come on. So I lit a small oil-lamp, and while it spluttered in the steamy darkness, Suraj opened his books and, with one hand on the book, the other playing with his toes — this helped him to concentrate!— he began to study. I took the ink
down from the shelf, and, finding it empty, added a little rain-water to it from one of the mugs. I sat down beside Suraj and began to write; but the pen was no good and made blotches all over the paper. And, although I was full of writing just then, I didn’t really know what I wanted to say.
So I went out and began pacing up and down the road. There I found Pitamber, a little drunk very merry, and prancing about in the middle of the road.
‘What are you dancing for?’ I asked.
‘I’m happy, so I’m dancing,’ said Pitamber.
‘And why are you happy?’ I asked.
‘Because I’m dancing,’ he said .
The rain stopped and the neem trees gave out a strong sweet smell.
XII
Flowers in Pipalnagar — did they exist? As a child I knew a garden in Lucknow where there were beds of phlox and petunias; and another garden where only roses grew. In the fields around Pipal nagar thorn-apple — a yellow buttercup nestling among thorn leaves. But in the Pipalnagar bazaar, there were no flowers except one — a marigold growing out of a crack on my balcony. I had removed the plaster from the base of the plant, and filled in a little earth which I watered every morning. The plant was healthy, and sometimes it produced a little orange marigold.
Sometimes Suraj plucked a flower and kept it in his tray, among the combs, buttons, and scent-bottles. Sometimes he gave the flower to a passing child, once to a small boy who immediately tore it to shreds. Suraj was back on his rounds, as his exams were over.
Whenever he was tired of going from house to house, Suraj would sit beneath a shady banyan or peepul tree, put his tray aside, and take out his flute. The haunting notes travelled down the road in the afternoon stillness, drawing children to him. They would sit besides him and be very quiet when he played, because there was some- thing melancholic and appealing about the tunes. Suraj sometimes made flutes out of pieces of bamboo; but he never sold them. He would give them to the children he liked. He would sell almost anything, but not flutes.
Suraj sometimes played the flute at night, when he lay awake,
unable to sleep; but even though I slept, I could hear the music in my dreams. Sometimes he took his flute with him to the crooked tree, and played for the benefit of the birds. The parrots made harsh noise in response and flew away. Once, when Suraj was playing his flute to a small group of children, he had a fit. The flute fell from his hands. And he began to roll about in the dust on the roadside. The children became frightened and ran away, but they did not stay away for long. The next time they heard the flute, they came to listen as usual.
XIII
It was Lord Krishna’s birthday, and the rain came down as heavily as it is said to have done on the day Krishna was born. Krishna is the best beloved of all the Gods. Young mothers laugh or weep as they read or hear the pranks of his boyhood; young men pray to be as tall and as strong as Krishna was when he killed King Kamsa’s elephant and Kamsa’s wrestlers; young girls dream of a lover as daring as Krishna to carry them off in a war-chariot; grown-up men envy the wisdom and statesmanship with which he managed the affairs of his kingdom.
The rain came so unexpectedly that it took everyone by surprise. In seconds, people were drenched, and within minutes, the street was flooded. The temple tank overflowed, the railway-lines disap- peared, and the old wall near the bus stop shivered and silently fell, the sound of its collapse drowned in the downpour. A naked young man with a dancing bear cavorted in the middle of the vegetable market. Pitamber’s rickshaw churned through the flood-water while he sang lustily as he worked
Wading knee-deep down the road, I saw the roadside vendors salvaging whatever they could. Plastic toys, cabbages and utensils floated away and were seized by urchins. The water had risen to the level of the shop-fronts and floors were awash. Deep Chand and Ramu, with the help of a customer, were using buckets to bail the water out of their shop. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and the sun came out. The water began to find an outlet, flooding other low-lying areas, and a paper-boat came sailing between my legs.
Next morning, the morning on which the result of Suraj’s exami- nations were due, I rose early — the first time I ever got up before
Suraj — and went down to the news agency. A small crowd of students had gathered at the bus stop, joking with each other and hiding their nervousness with a show of indifference. There were not many passengers on the first bus, and there was a mad grab for newspapers as the bundle landed with a thud on the pavement. Within half-an-hour, the newsboy had sold all his copies. It was the best day of the year for him.
I went through the columns relating to Pipalnagar, but I couldn’t find Suraj’s roll number on the list of successful candidates. I had the number on a slip of paper, and I looked at it again to make sure I had compared it correctly with the others; then I went through the newspaper once more. When I returned to the room, Suraj was sitting on the doorstep. I didn’t have to tell him he had failed — he knew by the look on my face. I sat down beside him,
and we said nothing for sometime.
‘Never mind,’ Suraj said eventually. ‘I will pass next year.’
I realized I was more depressed than he was and that he was trying to console me.
‘If only you’d had more time,’ I said.
‘I have plenty of time now. Another year. And you will have time to finish your book, and then we can go away together. Another year of Pipalnagar won’t be so bad. As long as I have your friendship, almost everything can be tolerated.’ He stood up, the tray hanging from his shoulders. What would you like to buy?’
XIV
Another year of Pipalnagar! But it was not to be. A short time later, I received a letter from the editor of a newspaper, calling me to Delhi for an interview. My friends insisted that I should go. Such an oppor- tunity would not come again.
But I needed a shirt. The few I possessed were either frayed at the collars or torn at the shoulders. I hadn’t been able to afford a new shirt for over a year, and I couldn’t afford one now. Struggling writers weren’t expected to dress very well, but I felt in order to get the job, I would need both a haircut and a clean shirt.
Where was I to go to get a shirt? Suraj generally wore an old red-striped T-shirt; he washed it every second evening, and by morning it was dry and ready to wear again; but it was tight even on him. He did not have another. Besides, I needed something white,
something respectable!
I went to Deep Chand who had a collection of shirts. He was only too glad to lend me one. But they were all brightly coloured — pinks, purples and magentas . . . No editor was going to be impressed by a young writer in a pink shirt. They looked fine on Deep Chand, but he had no need to look respectable.
Finally Pitamber came to my rescue. He didn’t bother with shirts himself, except in winter, but he was able to borrow a clean white shirt from a guard at the jail, who’d got it from the relative of a convict in exchange for certain favours.