by Ruskin Bond
One morning, while I sat beneath the mango tree, I saw a young girl of about nine, wearing torn clothes, darting about on the path- way and along the high banks of the tank.
Sometimes she stopped to look at me; and, when I showed that I noticed her, she felt encouraged and gave me a shy, fleeting smile. The next day I discovered her leaning over the garden wall, follow- ing my actions as I paced up and down on the grass.
In a few days an acquaintance had been formed. I began to take the girl’s presence for granted, and even to look for her; and she, in turn, would linger about on the pathway until she saw me come out of the house.
One day, as she passed the gate, I called her to me.
‘What is your name?’ I asked. ‘And where do you live?’ ‘Madhu,’ she said, brushing back her long untidy black hair and smiling at me from large black eyes. She pointed across the road: ‘I live with my grandmother.’
‘Is she very old?’ I asked.
Madhu nodded confidingly and whispered: ‘A hundred years . . .’ ‘We will never be that old,’ I said. She was very slight and frail, like a flower growing in a rock, vulnerable to wind and rain.
I discovered later that the old lady was not her grandmother but a childless woman who had found the baby girl on the banks of the tank. Madhu’s real parentage was unknown; but the wizened old woman had, out of compassion, brought up the child as her own.
My gate once entered, Madhu included the garden in her circle of activities. She was there every morning, chasing butterflies, stalking squirrels and mynahs, her voice brimming with laughter, her slight figure flitting about between the trees.
Sometimes, but not often, I gave her a toy or a new dress; and one day she put aside her shyness and brought me a present of a nose- gay, made up of marigolds and wild blue-cotton flowers.
‘For you,’ she said, and put the flowers in my lap.
‘They are very beautiful,’ I said, picking out the brightest marigold and putting it in her hair. ‘But they are not as beautiful as you.’
More than a year passed before I began to take more than a mildly patronizing interest in Madhu.
It occurred to me after some time that she should be taught to read and write, and I asked a local teacher to give her lessons in the garden for an hour every day. She clapped her hands with pleasure at the prospect of what was to be for her a fascinating new game.
In a few weeks Madhu was surprising us with her capacity for absorbing knowledge. She always came to me to repeat the lessons of the day, and pestered me with questions on a variety of subjects. How big was the world? And were the stars really like our world? Or were they the sons and daughters of the Sun and the Moon?
My interest in Madhu deepened, and my life, so empty till then, became imbued with a new purpose. As she sat on the grass beside me, reading aloud, or listening to me with a look of complete trust and belief, all the love that had been lying dormant in me during my years of self-exile surfaced in a sudden surge of tenderness.
Three years glided away imperceptibly, and at the age of 13 Madhu was on the verge of blossoming into a woman. I began to feel a certain responsibility towards her.
It was dangerous, I knew, to allow a child so pretty to live almost alone and unprotected, and to run unrestrained about the grounds. And in a censorious society she would be made to suffer if she spent too much time in my company.
She could see no need for any separation; but I decided to send her to a mission school in the next district, where I could visit her from time to time.
‘But why?’ said Madhu. ‘I can learn more from you, and from the teacher who comes. I am so happy here.’
‘You will meet other girls and make many friends,’ I told her. ‘I will come to see you. And, when you come home, we will be even happier. It is good that you should go.’
It was the middle of June, a hot and oppressive month in the Siwaliks. Madhu had expressed her readiness to go to school, and when, one evening, I did not see her as usual in the garden, I thought nothing of it; but the next day I was informed that she had fever and could not leave the house.
Illness was something Madhu had not known before, and for this reason I felt afraid. I hurried down the path which led to the old woman’s cottage. It seemed strange that I had never once entered it during my long friendship with Madhu.
It was a humble mud hut, the ceiling just high enough to enable me to stand upright, the room dark but clean. Madhu was lying on a string cot exhausted by fever, her eyes closed, her long hair unkempt, one small hand hanging over the side.
It struck me then how little, during all this time, I had thought of her physical comforts. There was no chair; I knelt down, and took her hand in mine. I knew, from the fierce heat of her body, that she was seriously ill.
She recognized my touch, and a smile passed across her face before she opened her eyes. She held on to my hand, then laid it across her cheek.
I looked round the little room in which she had grown up. It had scarcely an article of furniture apart from two string cots, on one of which the old woman sat and watched us, her white, wizened head nodding like a puppet’s.
In a corner lay Madhu’s little treasures. I recognized among them the presents which during the past four years I had given her. She had kept everything. On her dark arm she still wore a small piece of ribbon which I had playfully tied there about a year ago. She had given her heart, even before she was conscious of possessing one, to a stranger unworthy of the gift.
As the evening drew on, a gust of wind blew open the door of the dark room, and a gleam of sunshine streamed in, lighting up a portion of the wall. It was the time when every evening she would join me under the mango tree. She had been quiet for almost an hour, and now a slight pressure of her hand drew my eyes back to her face.
‘What will we do now?’ she said. ‘When will you send me to school?’
‘Not for a long time. First you must get well and strong. That is all that matters.’
She didn’t seem to hear me. I think she knew she was dying, but she did not resent its happening.
‘Who will read to you under the tree?’ she went on. ‘Who will look after you?’ she asked, with the solicitude of a grown woman.
‘You will, Madhu. You are grown up now. There will be no one else to look after me.’
The old woman was standing at my shoulder. A hundred years — and little Madhu was slipping away. The woman took Madhu’s hand from mine, and laid it gently down. I sat by the cot a little longer, and then I rose to go, all the loneliness in the world pressing upon my heart.
The Cherry Tree
One day, when Rakesh was six, he walked home from the Mus- soorie bazaar eating cherries. They were a little sweet, a little sour; small, bright red cherries, which had come all the way from the Kashmir Valley.
Here in the Himalayan foothills where Rakesh lived, there were not many fruit trees. The soil was stony, and the dry cold winds stunted the growth of most plants. But on the more sheltered slopes there were forests of oak and deodar.
Rakesh lived with his grandfather on the outskirts of Mussoorie, just where the forest began. His father and mother lived in a small village fifty miles away, where they grew maize and rice and barley in narrow terraced fields on the lower slopes of the mountain. But there were no schools in the village, and Rakesh’s parents were keen that he should go to school. As soon as he was of school-going age, they sent him to stay with his grandfather in Mussoorie.
Grandfather was a retired forest ranger. He had a little cottage outside the town.
Rakesh was on his way home from school when he bought the cherries. He paid fifty paise for the bunch. It took him about half-an-hour to walk home, and by the time he reached the cottage there were only three cherries left.
‘Have a cherry, Grandfather,’ he said, as soon as he saw his grand- father in the garden.
Grandfather took one cherry and Rakesh promptly ate the other two. He kept the last seed in this mouth for some time
, rolling it round and round on his tongue until all the tang had gone. Then he placed the seed on the palm of his hand and studied it.
‘Are cherry seeds lucky?’ asked Rakesh.
‘Of course.’
‘Then I’ll keep it.’
‘Nothing is lucky if you put it away. If you want luck, you must put it to some use.’
‘What can I do with a seed?’
‘Plant it.’
So Rakesh found a small spade and began to dig up a flower-bed. ‘Hey, not there,’ said Grandfather. ‘I’ve sown mustard in that bed. Plant it in that shady corner, where it won’t be disturbed.’
Rakesh went to a corner of the garden where the earth was soft and yielding. He did not have to dig. He pressed the seed into the soil with his thumb and it went right in.
Then he had his lunch, and ran off to play cricket with his friends, and forgot all about the cherry seed.
When it was winter in the hills, a cold wind blew down from the snows and went whoo-whoo-whoo in the deodar trees, and the garden was dry and bare. In the evenings Grandfather and Rakesh sat over a charcoal fire, and Grandfather told Rakesh stories — stories, about people who turned into animals, and ghosts who lived in trees, and beans that jumped and stones that wept — and in turn Rakesh would read to him from the newspaper, Grandfather’s eyesight being rather weak. Rakesh found the newspaper very dull — especially after the stories — but Grandfather wanted all the news . . .
They knew it was spring when the wild duck flew north again, to Siberia. Early in the morning, when he got up to chop wood and light a fire, Rakesh saw the V. shaped formation streaming north- wards, the calls of the birds carrying clearly through the thin moun- tain air.
One morning in the garden he bent to pick up what he thought was a small twig and found to his surprise that it was well rooted. He stared at it for a moment, then ran to fetch Grandfather, calling, ‘Dada, come and look, the cherry tree has come up!’
‘What cherry tree?’ asked Grandfather, who had forgotten about it. ‘The seed we planted last year — look, it’s come up!’
Rakesh went down on his haunches, while Grandfather bent almost double and peered down at the tiny tree. It was about four inches high.
‘Yes, it’s a cherry tree,’ said Grandfather. ‘You should water it now and then.’
Rakesh ran indoors and came back with a bucket of water. ‘Don’t drown it!’ said Grandfather.
Rakesh gave it a sprinkling and circled it with pebbles.
‘What are the pebbles for?’ asked Grandfather.
‘For privacy,’ said Rakesh.
He looked at the tree every morning but it did not seem to be growing very fast. So he stopped looking at it — except quickly, out of the corner of his eye. And, after a week or two, when he allowed himself to look at it properly, he found that it had grown — at least an inch!
That year the monsoon rains came early and Rakesh plodded to and from school in raincoat and gum boots. Ferns sprang from the trunks of trees, strange looking lilies came up in the long grass, and even when it wasn’t raining the trees dripped and mist came curling up the valley. The cherry tree grew quickly in this season.
It was about two feet high when a goat entered the garden and ate all the leaves. Only the main stem and two thin branches remained.
‘Never mind,’ said Grandfather, seeing that Rakesh was upset. ‘It will grow again, cherry trees are tough.’
Towards the end of the rainy season new leaves appeared on the tree. Then a woman cutting grass scrambled down the hillside, her scythe swishing through the heavy monsoon foliage. She did not try to avoid the tree: one sweep, and the cherry tree was cut in two.
When Grandfather saw what had happened, he went after the woman and scolded her; but the damage could not be repaired.
‘Maybe it will die now,’ said Rakesh.
‘Maybe,’ said Grandfather.
But the cherry tree had no intention of dying.
By the time summer came round again, it had sent out several new shoots with tender green leaves. Rakesh had grown taller too He was eight now, a sturdy boy with curly black hair and deep black eyes. ‘Blackberry eyes,’ Grandfather called them.
That monsoon Rakesh went home to his village, to help his father and mother with the planting and ploughing and sowing. He was thinner but stronger when he came back to Grandfather’s house at the end of the rains, to find that the cherry tree had grown another foot. It was now up to his chest.
Even when there was rain, Rakesh would sometimes water the tree. He wanted it to know that he was there.
One day he found a bright green praying-mantis perched on a branch, peering at him with bulging eyes. Rakesh let it remain there. It was the cherry tree’s first visitor.
The next visitor was a hairy caterpillar, who started making a meal of the leaves. Rakesh removed it quickly and dropped it on a heap of dry leaves.
‘Come back when you’re a butterfly,’ he said.
Winter came early. The cheery tree bent low with the weight of snow. Field-mice sought shelter in the roof of the cottage. The road from the valley was blocked, and for several days there was no newspaper, and this made Grandfather quite grumpy. His stories began to have unhappy endings.
In February it was Rakesh’s birthday. He was nine — and the tree was four, but almost as tall as Rakesh.
One morning, when the sun came out, Grandfather came into the garden to ‘let some warmth get into my bones,’ as he put it. He stopped in front of the cherry tree, stared at it for a few moments, and then called out, ‘Rakesh! Come and look! Come quickly before it falls!’
Rakesh and Grandfather gazed at the tree as though it had per- formed a miracle. There was a pale pink blossom at the end of a branch.
The following year there were more blossoms. And suddenly the tree was taller than Rakesh, even though it was less than half his age. And then it was taller than Grandfather, who was older than some of the oak trees.
But Rakesh had grown too. He could run and jump and climb trees as well as most boys, and he read a lot of books, although he still liked listening to Grandfather’s tales.
In the cherry tree, bees came to feed on the nectar in the blos- soms, and tiny birds pecked at the blossoms and broke them off. But the tree kept blossoming right through the spring, and there were always more blossoms than birds.
That summer there were small cherries on the tree. Rakesh tasted one and spat it out.
‘It’s too sour,’ he said.
‘They’ll be better next year,’ said Grandfather.
But the birds liked them — especially the bigger birds, such as the bulbuls and scarlet minivets — and they flitted in and out of the foliage, feasting on the cherries.
On a warm sunny afternoon, when even the bees looked sleepy, Rakesh was looking for Grandfather without finding him in any of his favourite places around the house. Then he looked out of the bedroom window and saw Grandfather reclining on a cane chair under the cherry tree.
‘There’s just the right amount of shade here,’ said Grandfather. ‘And I like looking at the leaves.’
‘They’re pretty leaves,’ said Rakesh. ‘And they are always ready to dance. If there’s breeze.’
After Grandfather had come indoors, Rakesh went into the garden and lay down on the grass beneath the tree. He gazed up through the leaves at the great blue sky; and turning on his side, he could see the mountain striding away into the clouds. He was still lying beneath the tree when the evening shadows crept across the garden. Grandfather came back and sat down beside Rakesh, and they waited in silence until the stars came out and the nightjar began to call. In the forest below, the crickets and cicadas began tuning up; and suddenly the trees were full of the sound of insects.
‘There are so many trees in the forest,’ said Rakesh. ‘What’s so special about this tree? Why do we like it so much?’
‘We planted it ourselves,’ said Grandfather. ‘That’s why it’s special.’
/> ‘Just one small seed,’ said Rakesh, and he touched the smooth bark of the tree that had grown. He ran his hand along the trunk of the tree and put his finger to the tip of a leaf. ‘I wonder,’ he whispered. ‘Is this what it feels to be God?
My Father’s Trees in Dehra
Our trees still grow in Dehra. This is one part of the world where trees are a match for man. An old peepul may be cut down to make way for a new building; two peepul trees will sprout from the walls of the building. In Dehra the air is moist, the soil hospitable to seeds and probing roots. The valley of Dehra Dun lies between the first range of the Himalayas and the smaller but older Siwalik range. Dehra is an old town, but it was not in the reign of Rajput prince or Mogul king that it really grew and flourished; it acquired a certain size and importance with the coming of British and Anglo-Indian settlers. The English have an affinity with trees, and in the rolling hills of Dehra they discovered a retreat which, in spite of snakes and mosquitoes, reminded them, just a little bit, of England’s green and pleasant land.
The mountains to the north are austere and inhospitable; the plains to the south are flat, dry and dusty. But Dehra is green. I look out of the train window at daybreak, to see the sal and shisham trees sweep by majestically, while trailing vines and great clumps of bamboo give the forest a darkness and density which add to its mystery. There are still a few tigers in these forests; only a few, and perhaps they will survive, to stalk the spotted deer and drink at forest pools.
I grew up in Dehra. My grandfather built a bungalow on the outskirts of the town, at the turn of the century. The house was sold a few years after independence. No one knows me now in Dehra, for it is over twenty years since I left the place, and my boyhood friends are scattered and lost; and although the India of Kim is no
more, and the Grand Trunk Road is now a procession of trucks instead of a slow-moving caravan of horses and camels, India is still a country in which people are easily lost and quickly forgotten.