by Ruskin Bond
‘This shirt will make you look respectable,’ said Pitamber. ‘To be respectable — what an adventure!’
XV
Freedom. The moment the bus was out of Pipalnagar, and the fields opened out on all sides, I knew that I was free, that I always had been free. Only my own weakness, hesitation, and the habits that had grown around me had held me back. All I had to do was to sit in a bus and go somewhere.
I sat near the open window of the bus and let the cool breeze from the fields play against my face. Herons and snipe waded among the lotus roots in flat green ponds. Bluejays swooped around telegraph poles. Children jumped naked into the canals that wound through the fields. Because I was happy, it seemed to me that everyone else was happy — the driver, the conductor, the pas- sengers, the farmers in the fields and those driving bullock-carts. When two women behind me started quarrelling over their seats. I helped to placate them. Then I took a small girl on my knee and pointed out camels, buffaloes, vultures, and parriah-dog.
Six hours later the bus crossed the bridge over the swollen Jam- una river, passed under the walls of the great Red Fort built by a Moghul Emperor, and entered the old city of Delhi. I found it strange to be in a city again, after several years in Pipalnagar. It was a little frightening, too. I felt like a stranger. No one was interested in me.
In Pipalnagar, people wanted to know each other, or at least to know about one another. In Delhi, no one cared who you were or where you came from like big cities almost everywhere,it was pros- perous but without a heart.
After a day and a night of loneliness, I found myself wishing that Suraj had accompanied me; wishing that I was back in Pipalnagar. But when the job was offered to me — at a starting salary of three hundred rupees per month, a princely sum, compared to what I had been making on my own — I did not have the courage to refuse it. After accepting the job — which was to commence in a week’s time
— I spent the day wandering through the bazaars, down the wide shady roads of the capital, resting under the jamun trees, and thinking all the time of what I would do in the months to come.
I slept at the railway waiting-room and all night long I heard the shunting and whistling of engines which conjured up visions of places with sweet names like Kumbakonam, Krishnagiri, Polonna- rurawa. I dreamt of palm-fringed beaches and inland lagoons, of the echoing chambers of deserted cities, red sandstone and white mar- ble; of temples in the sun, and elephants crossing wide slow- moving rivers . . .
XVI
Pitamber was on the platform when the train steamed into the Pipalnagar station in the early hours of a damp September morning. I waved to him from the carriage window, and shouted that every- thing had gone well.
But everything was not well here. When I got off the train, Pitamber told me that Suraj had been ill — that he’d a fit on a lonely stretch of road the previous afternoon and had lain in the sun for over-an-hour. Pitamber had found him, suffering from heat-stroke, and brought him home. When I saw him, he was sitting up on the string-bed drinking hot tea. He looked pale and weak, but his smile was reassuring.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I will be all right.’
‘He was bad last night,’ said Pitamber. ‘He had a fever and kept talking, as in a dream. But what he says is true — he is better this morning.’
‘Thanks to Pitamber,’ said Suraj. ‘It is good to have friends.’ ‘Come with me to Delhi, Suraj,’ I said. ‘I have got a job now. You can live with me and attend a school regularly.’
‘It is good for friends to help each other,’ said Suraj, ‘but only after I have passed my exam will I join you in Delhi. I made myself this promise. Poor Pipalnagar — nobody wants to stay here. Will you be sorry to leave?’
‘Yes, I will be sorry. A part of me will still be here.’
XVII
Deep Chand was happy to know that I was leaving. ‘I’ll follow you soon,’ he said. ‘There is money to be made in Delhi, cutting hair. Girls are keeping it short these days.’
‘But men are growing it long.’
‘True. So I shall open a Barber Shop for Ladies and a Beauty Salon for Men! Ramu can attend to the ladies.’
Ramu winked at me in the mirror. He was still at the stage of teasing girls on their way to school or college.
The snip of Deep Chand’s scissors made me sleepy, as I sat in his chair. His fingers beat a rhythmic tatto on my scalp. It was my last hair-cut in Pipalnagar, and Deep Chand did not charge me for it. I promised to write as soon as I had settled down in Delhi.
The next day when Suraj was stronger, I said, ‘Come, let us go for a walk and visit our crooked tree. Where is your flute, Suraj?’
‘I don’t know. Let us look for it.’
We searched the room and our belongings for the flute but could not find it.
‘It must have been left on the roadside,’ said Suraj. ‘Never mind, I will make another.’
I could picture the flute lying in the dust on the roadside and somehow this made me feel sad. But Suraj was full of high spirits as we walked across the railway-lines and through the fields.
‘The rains are over,’ he said, kicking off his chappals and lying down on the grass. ‘You can smell the autumn in the air. Somehow, it makes me feel light-hearted. Yesterday I was sad, and tomorrow I might be sad again, but today I know that I am happy. I want to live on and on. One lifetime cannot satisfy my heart.’
‘A day in a lifetime,’ I said ‘I’ll remember this day — the way the sun touches us, the way the grass bends, the smell of this leaf as I crush it . . .’
XVIII
At six every morning the first bus arrives, and the passengers alight, looking sleepy and dishevelled, and rather discouraged by their first sight of Pipalnagar. When they have gone their various ways, the bus is driven into the shed. Cows congregate at the dustbin, and the pavement dwellers come to life, stretching their tired limbs on the hard stone steps. I carry the bucket up the steps to my room, and bathe for the last time on the open balcony. In the villages, the buffaloes are wallowing in green ponds, while naked urchins sit astride them, scrubbing their backs, and a crow or water-bird perches on their glistening necks. The parrots are busy in the crooked tree, and a slim green snake basks in the sun on our island near the brick-kiln. In the hills, the mists have lifted and the distant mountains are fringed with snow.
It is autumn, and the rains are over. The earth meets the sky in one broad, bold sweep.
A land of thrusting hills. Terraced hills, wood-covered and wind- swept. Mountains where the Gods speak gently to the lonely. Hills of green grass and grey rock, misty at dawn, hazy at noon, molten at sunset, where fierce fresh torrents rush to the valleys below. A quiet land of fields and ponds, shaded by ancient trees and ringed with palms, where sacred rivers are touched by temples, where temples are touched by southern seas.
This is the land I should write about. Pipalnagar should be forgot- ten: I should turn aside from it to sing instead of the splendours of exotic places.
But only yesterdays are truly splendid . . . And there are other singers, sweeter than I, to sing of tomorrow. I can only write of today, of Pipalnagar, where I have lived and loved.
The Garlands on His Brow
Fame has but a fleeting hold
on the reins in our fast-paced society;
so many of yesterday’s
heroes crumble.
Shortly after my return from England, I was walking down the main road of my old home town of Dehra, gazing at the shops and passers-by to see what changes, if any, had taken place during my absence. I had been away three years. Still a boy when I went abroad, I was twenty-one when I returned with some mediocre qualifications to flaunt in the faces of my envious friends.(I did not tell them of the loneliness of those years in exile; it would not have impressed them). I was nearing the clock tower when I met a beggar coming from the opposite directon. In one respect, Dehra had not changed. The beggars were as numerous as ever, though I must admit they looked healthier
.
This beggar had a straggling beard, a hunch, a cavernous chest, and unsteady legs on which a number of purple sores were fester- ing. His shoulders looked as though they had once been powerful, and his hands thrusting a begging-bowl at me,were still strong.
He did not seem sufficiently decrepit to deserve of my charity, and I was turning away when I thought I discerned a gleam of recognition in his eyes. There was something slightly familiar about the man; perhaps he was a beggar who remembered me from ear- lier years. He was even attempting a smile; showing me a few broken yellow fangs; and to get away from him, I produced a coin, dropped it in his bowl, and hurried away.
I had gone about a hundred yards when, with a rush of memory, I knew the identity of the beggar. He was the hero of my childhood, Hassan, the most magnificent wrestler in the entire district.
I turned and retraced my steps, half hoping I wouldn’t be able to catch up with the man; and he had indeed been lost in the bazaar crowd. Well, I would doubtless be confronted by him again in a day or two . . . Leaving the road, I went into the Municipal gardens and stretching myself out on the fresh green February grass, allowed my memory to journey back to the days when I was a boy of ten, full of health and optimism, when my wonder at the great game of living had yet to give way to disillusionment at its shabbiness.
On those precious days when I played truant from school — and I would have learnt more had I played truant more often— I would sometimes make my way to the akhara at the corner of the gardens to watch the wrestling-pit. My chin cupped in my hands, I would lean against a railing and gaze in awe at their rippling muscles, applauding with the other watchers whenever one of the wrestlers made a particularly clever move or pinned an opponent down on his back.
Amongst these wrestlers the most impressive and engaging young man was Hassan, the son of a kite-maker. He had a magnificent build, with great wide shoulders and powerful legs, and what he lacked in skill he made up for in sheer animal strength and vigour. The idol of all small boys, he was followed about by large numbers of us, and I was a particular favourite of his. He would offer to lift me on to his shoulders and carry me across the akhara to introduce me to his friends and fellow-wrestlers.
From being Dehra’s champion, Hassan soon became the out- standing representative of his art in the entire district. His technique improved, he began using his brain in addition to his brawn, and it was said by everyone that he had the making of a national champion.
It was during a large fair towards the end of the rains that destiny took a hand in the shaping of his life. The Rani of—was visiting the fair, and she stopped to watch the wrestling bouts. When she saw Hassan stripped and in the ring, she began to take more than a casual interest in him. It has been said that she was a woman of a passionate and amoral nature, who could not be satisfied by her weak and ailing husband. She was struck by Hassan’s perfect man hood, and through an official offered him the post of her personal bodyguard.
The Rani was rich and, in spite of having passed her fortieth summer,was a warm and attractive woman. Hassan did not find it difficult to make love according to the bidding, and on the whole he was happy in her service. True, he did not wrestle as often as in the past; but when he did enter a competition, his reputation and his physique combined to overawe his opponents, and they did not put up much resistance. One or two well-known wrestlers were invited to the district. The Rani paid them liberally, and they permitted Hassan to throw them out of the ring. Life in the Rani’s house was comfortable and easy, and Hassan, a simple man, felt himself secure. And it is to the credit of the Rani (and also of Hassan) that she did not tire of him as quickly as she had of others.
But Ranis, like washerwomen, are mortal; and when a long- standing and neglected disease at last took its toll, robbing her at once of all her beauty, she no longer struggled against it, but allowed it to poison and consume her once magnificent body.
It would be wrong to say that Hassan was heart-broken when she died. He was not a deeply emotional or sensitive person. Though he could attract the sympathy of others, he had difficulty in producing any of his own. His was a kindly but not compassionate nature.
He had served the Rani well, and what he was most aware of now was that he was without a job and without any money. The Raja had his own personal amusements and did not want a wrestler who was beginning to sag a little about the waist.
Times had changed. Hassan’s father was dead, and there was no longer a living to be had from making kites; so Hassan returned to doing what he had always done: wrestling. But there was no money to be made at the akhara. It was only in the professional arena that a decent living could be made. And so, when a travelling circus of professionals — a Negro, a Russian, a Cockney-Chinese and a giant Sikh — came to town and offered a hundred rupees and a contract to the challenger who could stay five minutes in the ring with any one of them, Hassan took up the challenge.
He was pitted against the Russian, a bear of a man, who wore a black mask across his eyes; and in two minutes Hassan’s Dehra supporters saw their hero slung about the ring, licked in the head and groin, and finally flung unceremoniously through the ropes.
After this humiliation, Hassan did not venture into competitive bouts again. I saw him sometimes at the akhara, where he made a few rupees giving lessons to children. He had a paunch, and folds were beginning to accumulate beneath his chin. I was no longer a small boy, but he always had a smile and a hearty back-slap reserved for me.
I remember seeing him a few days before I went abroad. He was moving heavily about the akhara; he had lost the lightning swiftness that had once made him invincible. Yes, I told myself.
The garlands wither on your brow;
Then boast no more your mighty deeds . . .
That had been over three years ago. And for Hassan to have been reduced to begging was indeed a sad reflection of both the passing of time and the changing times. Fifty years ago a popular local wrestler would never have been allowed to fall into a state of pov- erty and neglect. He would have been fed by his old friends and stories would have been told of his legendary prowess. He would not have been forgotten. But those were more leisurely times, when the individual had his place in society,when a man was praised for his past achievements and his failures were tolerated and forgiven. But life had since become fast and cruel and unreflective, and peo- ple were too busy counting their gains to bother about the idols of their youth.
It was a few days after my last encounter with Hassan that I found a small crowd gathered at the side of the road, not far from the clock tower. They were staring impassively at something in the drain, at the same time keeping at a discreet distance. Joining the group, I saw that the object of their disinterested curiosity was a corpse, its head hidden under a culvert, legs protruding into the open drain. It looked as though the man had crawled into the drain to die, and had done so with his head in the culvert so the world would not witness his last unavailing struggle.
When the municipal workers came in their van, and lifted the body out of the gutter, a cloud of flies and bluebottles rose from the corpse with an angry buzz of protest. The face was muddy, but I recognized the beggar who was Hassan.
In a way, it was a consolation to know that he had been forgotten, that no one present could recognize the remains of the man who had once looked like a young God. I did not come forward to identify the body. Perhaps I saved Hassan from one final humiliation.
A Guardian Angel
I can still picture the little Dilaram bazaar as I first saw it 20 years ago. Hanging on the hem of Aunt Mariam’s sari, I had followed her along the sunlit length of the dusty road and up the wooden stair- case to her rooms above the barber’s shop.
There were number of children playing in the road, and they all stared at me. They must have wondered what my dark, black haired aunt was doing with a strange child who was fairer than most. She did not bother to explain my presence, and it was several weeks before the bazaar people learned somet
hing of my origins.
Aunt Mariam, my mother’s younger sister, was at that time about 30. She came from a family of Christian converts, originally Muslims of Rampur. My mother had married an Englishman, who died while I was still a baby, she herself was not a strong woman, and fought a losing battle with tuberculosis while bringing me up.
My sixth birthday was approaching when she died, in the middle of the night, without my being aware of it, and I woke up to expe- rience, for a day, all the terrors of abandonment.
But that same evening Aunt Mariam arrived. Her warmth,worldli- ness and carefree chatter gave me the reassurance I needed so badly. She slept beside me that night and next morning, after the funeral, took me with her to her rooms in the bazaar. This small flat was to be my home for the next year-and-a-half.
Before my mother’s death I had seen very little of my aunt. From the remarks I occasionally overheard, it appeared that Aunt Mariam had, in some indefinable way, disgraced the family. My mother was cold towards her, and I could not help wondering why because a more friendly and cheerful extrovert than Aunt Mariam could hardly be encountered.
There were other relatives, but they did not come to my rescue with the same readiness. It was only later, when the financial issues became clearer, that innumerable uncle and aunts appeared on the scene.
The age of six is the beginning of an interesting period in the life of a day, and the months I spent with Aunt Mariam are not difficult to recall. She was a joyous, bubbling creature — a force of nature rather than a woman — and every time I think of her I am tempted to put down on paper some aspect of her conversation, or her gestures, or her magnificent physique.
She was a strong woman, taller than most men in the bazaar, but this did not detract from her charms. Her voice was warm and deep, her face was a happy one, broad and unlined, and her teeth gleamed white in the dark brilliance of her complexion.