Book Humour

by Ruskin Bond

  George worked for British Railways. He was a ticket-collector at one of the underground stations. He liked his work, and received about ten pounds a week for collecting tickets. A large, stout man, with huge hands and feet, he always had a gentle, kindly expression on his mobile face. Amongst other accomplishments he could play the piano, and as there was an old, rather dilapidated piano in my room, he would often come over in the evenings to run his fat, heavy fingers over the keys, playing tunes that ranged from hymns to jazz pieces. I thought he would be a nice person to spend Christmas with, so I asked him to come and share the pudding my landlady had made, and a bottle of sherry I had procured.

  Little did I realize that an invitation to George would be interpreted as an invitation to all George’s friends and relations—in fact, anyone who had known him in Trinidad—but this was the way he looked at it, and at eight o’clock on Christmas Eve, while a chilly wind blew dead leaves down from Hampstead Heath, I saw a veritable army of West Indians marching down Belsize Avenue, with George in the lead.

  Bewildered, I opened my door to them; and in streamed George, George’s cousins, George’s nephews and George’s friends. They were all smiling and they all shook hands with me, making complimentary remarks about my room (‘Man, that’s some piano!’ ‘Hey, look at that crazy picture!’ ‘This rocking chair gives me fever!’) and took no time at all to feel and make themselves at home. Everyone had brought something along for the party. George had brought several bottles of beer. Eric, a flashy, coffee-coloured youth, had brought cigarettes and more beer. Marian, a buxom woman of thirty-five, who called me ‘darling’ as soon as we met, and kissed me on the cheeks saying she adored pink cheeks, had brought bacon and eggs. Her daughter Lucy, who was sixteen and in the full bloom of youth, had brought a gramophone, while the little nephews carried the records. Other friends and familiars had also brought beer; and one enterprising fellow produced a bottle of Jamaican rum.

  Then everything began to happen at once.

  Lucy put a record on the gramophone, and the strains of Basin Street Blues filled the room. At the same time George sat down at the piano to hammer out an accompaniment to the record. His huge hands crushed down on the keys as though he were chopping up hunks of meat. Marian had lit the gas-fire and was busy frying bacon and eggs. Eric was opening beer bottles. In the midst of the noise and confusion I heard a knock on the door—a very timid, hesitant sort of knock—and opening it, found my landlady standing on the threshold.

  ‘Oh, Mr Bond, the neighbours—’ she began, and glancing into the room was rendered speechless.

  ‘It’s only tonight,’ I said. ‘They’ll all go home after an hour. Remember, it’s Christmas!’

  She nodded mutely and hurried away down the corridor, pursued by something called Be Bop A-Lula. I closed the door and drew all the curtains in an effort to stifle the noise; but everyone was stamping about on the floorboards, and I hoped fervently that the downstairs people had gone to the theatre. George had started playing calypso music, and Eric and Lucy were strutting and stomping in the middle of the room, while the two nephews were improvising on their own. Before I knew what was happening, Marian had taken me in her strong arms and was teaching me to do the calypso. The song playing, I think, was Banana Boat Song.

  Instead of the party lasting an hour, it lasted three hours. We ate innumerable fried eggs and finished off all the beer. I took turns dancing with Marian, Lucy, and the nephews. There was a peculiar expression they used when excited. ‘Fire!’ they shouted. I never knew what was supposed to be on fire, or what the exclamation implied, but I too shouted ‘Fire!’ and somehow it seemed a very sensible thing to shout.

  Perhaps their hearts were on fire, I don’t know; but for all their excitability and flashiness and brashness they were lovable and sincere friends, and today, when I look back on my two years in London, that Christmas party is the brightest, most vivid memory of all, and the faces of George and Marian, Lucy and Eric, are the faces I remember best.

  At midnight someone turned out the light. I was dancing with Lucy at the time, and in the dark she threw her arms around me and kissed me full on the lips. It was the first time I had been kissed by a girl, and when I think about it, I am glad that it was Lucy who kissed me.

  When they left, they went in a bunch, just as they had come. I stood at the gate and watched them saunter down the dark, empty street. The buses and tubes had stopped running at midnight, and George and his friends would have to walk all the way back to their rooms at Highgate and Golders Green.

  After they had gone, the street was suddenly empty and silent, and my own footsteps were the only sounds I could hear. The cold came clutching at me, and I turned up my collar. I looked up at the windows of my house, and at the windows of all the other houses in the street. They were all in darkness. It seemed to me that we were the only ones who had really celebrated Christmas.

  Crazy Writer

  A Handful of Nuts

  It wasn’t the room on the roof, but it was a large room with a balcony in front and a small veranda at the back. On the first floor of an old shopping complex, still known as Astley Hall, it faced the town’s main road, although a walled-in driveway separated it from the street pavement. A neem tree grew in front of the building, and during the early rains, when the neem-pods fell and were crushed underfoot, they gave off a rich, pungent odour which I can never forget.

  I had taken the room at the very modest rent of thirty-five rupees a month, payable in advance to the stout Punjabi widow who ran the provisions store downstairs. Her provisions ran to rice, lentils, spices and condiments, but I wasn’t doing any cooking then, there wasn’t time, so for a quick snack I’d cross the road and consume a couple of samosas or vegetable patties. Whenever I received a decent fee for a story, I’d treat myself to some sliced ham and a loaf of bread, and make myself ham sandwiches. If any of my friends were around, like Jai Shankar or William Matheson, they’d make short work of the ham sandwiches.

  I opened my eyes to find Sitaram, the washerman’s son, sitting at the foot of my bed.

  Sitaram must have been about sixteen, a skinny boy with large hands, large feet and large ears. He had loose sensual lips. An unprepossessing youth, whom I found irritating in the extreme; but as he lived with his parents in the quarters behind the flat, there was no avoiding him.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ I asked brusquely.

  ‘The door was open.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you can walk right in. What do you want?’

  ‘Don’t you have any clothes for washing? My father asked.’

  ‘I wash my own clothes.’

  ‘And sheets?’ He studied the sheet I was lying on. ‘Don’t you wash your sheet? It is very dirty.’

  ‘Well, it’s the only one I’ve got. So buzz off.’

  But he was already pulling the sheet out from under me. ‘I’ll wash it for you free. You are a nice man. My mother says you are seeda-saada, very innocent.’

  ‘I am not innocent. And I need the sheet.’

  ‘I will bring you another. I will lend it to you free. We get lots of sheets to wash. Yesterday six sheets came from the hospital. Some people were killed in a bus accident.’

  ‘You mean the sheets came from the morgue—they were used to cover dead bodies? I don’t want a sheet from the morgue.’

  ‘But it is very clean. You know khatmals can’t live on dead bodies. They like fresh blood.’

  He went away with my sheet and came back five minutes later with a freshly-pressed bed sheet.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s not from the hospital.’

  ‘Where is this one from?’

  ‘Indiana Hotel. I will give them a hospital sheet in exchange.’

  There was some excitement, as Stewart Granger, the British film actor, was in town.

  Stewart Granger in Dehradun? Occasionally, a Bombay film star passed through, but this was the first time we were going to see a foreign star. We all knew what he l
ooked like, of course. The Odeon and Orient Cinemas had been showing British and American films since the days of the silent movies. Occasionally, they still showed ‘silents’, as their sound systems were antiquated and the protectors rattled a good deal, drowning the dialogue. This did not matter if the star was John Wayne (or even Stewart Granger) as their lines were quite predictable, but it, made a difference if you were trying to listen to Nelson Eddy sing At the Balalaika or Hope and Crosby exchanging wisecracks.

  We had assembled outside the Indiana and were discussing the phenomenon of having Stewart Granger in town. What was he doing here?

  ‘Making a film, I suppose,’ I ventured.

  Suresh Mathur, the lawyer, demurred, ‘What about? Nobody’s written a book about Dehra, except you, Ruskin, and no one has read yours. Has someone bought the film rights?’

  ‘No such luck. And besides, the hero is sixteen and Stewart Granger is thirty-six.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. They’ll change the story.’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  William Matheson had another theory.

  ‘He’s visiting his old aunt in Rajpur.’

  ‘We never knew he had an aunt in Rajpur.’

  ‘Nor did I. It’s just a theory.’

  ‘You and your theories. We’ll ask the owner of Indiana. Stewart Granger is going to stay there, isn’t he?’

  Mr Kapoor of Indiana enlightened us. ‘They’re location-hunting for a shikar movie. It’s called Harry Black and the Tiger.’

  ‘Stewart Granger is playing a black man?’ asked William.

  ‘No, no, that’s an English surname.’

  ‘English is a funny language,’ said William, who believed in the superiority of the French tongue.

  ‘We don’t have any tigers left in these forests,’ I said.

  ‘They’ll bring in a circus tiger and let it loose,’ said Suresh.

  ‘In the jungle, I hope,’ said William. ‘Or will they let it loose on Rajpur Road?’

  ‘Preferably in the Town Hall,’ said Suresh, who was having some trouble with the municipality over his house tax.

  Stewart Granger did not disappoint.

  At about two in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, he arrived in an open Ford convertible, shirtless and vestless. He was in his prime then, in pretty good condition after playing opposite Ava Gardner in Bhowani Junction, and everyone remarked on his fine torso and general good looks. He made himself comfortable in a cool corner of the Indiana and proceeded to down several bottles of chilled beer, much to everyone’s admiration. Larry Gomes, at the piano, started playing Sweet Rosie O’ Grady until Granger, who wasn’t Irish stopped him and asked for something more modern. Larry obliged with Goodnight Irene, and Stewart, now into his third bottle of beer, began singing the refrain. At the next table, William, Suresh and I, trying to keep pace with the star’s consumption of beer, joined in the chorus, and before long there was a mad sing-song in the restaurant.

  The editor of the local paper, The Doon Chronicle, tried interviewing the star, but made little progress. Someone gave him an information and publicity sheet which did the rounds. It said Stewart Granger was born in 1913, and that he had black hair and brown eyes. He still had them—unless the hair was a toupee. It said his height was 6ft. 2 inches, and that he weighed 196 pounds. He looked every pound of it. It also said his youthful ambition was to become a ‘nerve specialist’. We looked at him with renewed respect, although none of us was quite sure what a ‘nerve specialist’ was supposed to do.

  ‘We just get on your nerves,’ said Mr Granger when asked, and everyone laughed.

  He tucked into his curry and rice with relish, downed another beer, and returned to his waiting car. A few good-natured jests, a wave and a smile, and the star and his entourage drove off into the foothills.

  We heard, later, that they had decided to make the film in Mysore, in distant south India.

  No wonder it turned out to be a flop. Sorry, Stewart.

  Two months later, Yul Brynner passed through but he didn’t cause the same excitement. We were getting used to film stars. His film wasn’t made in Dehra, either. They did it in Spain. Another flop.

  In a couple of weeks’ time it would be my twenty-first birthday, and I was feeling good about it.

  I had mentioned the date to someone—Suresh Mathur, I think—and before long I was being told by everyone I knew that I would have to celebrate the event in a big way, twenty-one being an age of great significance in a young man’s life.

  And where would the money come from for all these celebrations? My bank balance stood at a little over three hundred rupees—enough to pay the rent and the food bill at Komal’s and make myself a new pair of trousers. The pair I’d bought on the Mile End Road in London, two years previously, were now very baggy and had a shine on the seat. The other pair, made of non-shrink material, got smaller at every wash; I had given them to a tailor to turn into a pair of shorts.

  Sitaram, of course, was willing to lend me any number of trousers provided I wasn’t fussy about who the owners were, and gave them back in time for them to be washed and pressed again before being delivered to their rightful owners. I did, on an occasion, borrow a pair made of a nice checked material, and was standing outside the Indiana, chatting to the owner, when I realized that he was staring hard at the trousers.

  ‘I have a pair just like yours,’ he remarked.

  ‘It shows you have good taste,’ I said, and gave Sitaram an earful when I got back to the flat.

  ‘I can’t trust you with other people’s trousers!’ I shouted. ‘Couldn’t you have lent me a pair belonging to someone who lives far from here?’

  He was genuinely contrite. ‘I was looking for the right size,’ he said. ‘Would you like to try a dhoti? You will look good in a dhoti. Or a lungi. There’s a purple lungi here, it belongs to a sub-inspector of police.’

  ‘A purple lungi? The police are human, after all.’

  Someone was getting married, and the wedding band, brought up on military marches, unwittingly broke into the Funeral March. And they played loud enough to wake the dead.

  After a medley of Souza marches, they switched to Hindi film tunes, and Sitaram came in, flung his arms around, and shattered my ear-drums with Talat Mehmood’s latest love ballad. I responded with the Volga Boatmen in my best Nelson Eddy manner, and my landlady came running out of her shop downstairs wanting to know if the washerman had strangled his wife or vice-versa.

  Anyway, it was to be a week of celebrations …

  When I opened my eyes next day, it was to find a bright red geranium staring me in the face, accompanied by the aromatic odour of a crushed geranium leaf. Sitaram was thrusting a potted geranium at me and wishing me a happy birthday. I brushed a caterpillar from my pillow and sat up. Wordsworthian though I was in principle, I wasn’t prepared for nature red in tooth and claw.

  I picked up the caterpillar on its leaf and dropped it outside.

  ‘Come back when you’re a butterfly,’ I said.

  Sitaram had taken his morning bath and looked very fresh and spry. Unfortunately, he had doused his head with some jasmine-scented hair oil, and the room was reeking of it. Already a bee was buzzing around him.

  ‘Thank you for the present,’ I said. ‘I’ve always wanted a geranium.’

  ‘I wanted to bring a rose-bush but the pot was too heavy.’

  ‘Never mind. Geraniums do better on verandas.’

  I placed the pot in a sunny corner of the small balcony, and it certainly did something for the place. There’s nothing like a red geranium for bringing a balcony to life.

  While we were about to plan the day’s festivities, a stranger walked through my open door (one day, I’d have to shut it), and declared himself the inventor of a new flush-toilet which, he said, would revolutionise the sanitary habits of the town. We were still living in the thunderbox era, and only the very rich could afford Western-style lavatories. My visitor showed me diagrams of a seat which,
he said, combined the best of East and West. You could squat on it, Indian-style, without putting too much strain on your abdominal muscles, and if you used water to wash your bottom, there was a little sprinkler attached which, correctly aimed, would do that job for you. It was comfortable, efficient, safe. Your effluent would be stored in a little tank, which could be detached when full, and emptied—where? He hadn’t got around to that problem as yet, but he assured me that his invention had a great future.

  ‘But why are you telling me all this?’ I asked, ‘I can’t afford a fancy toilet-seat.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t expect you to buy one.’

  ‘You mean I should demonstrate?’

  ‘Not at all. But you are a writer, I hear. I want a name for my new toilet-seat. Can you help?’

  ‘Why not call it the Sit-Safe?’ I suggested.

  ‘The Sit-Safe! How wonderful. Young Mr Bond, let me show my gratitude with a small present.’ And he thrust a ten-rupee note into my hand and left the room before I could protest. ‘It’s definitely my birthday,’ I said. ‘Complete strangers walk in and give me money.’

  ‘We can see three films with that,’ said Sitaram.