by Ruskin Bond
I like to think that I invented the zigzag walk. Tiring of walking in straight lines, or on roads that led directly to a destination, I took to going off at tangents—taking sudden unfamiliar turnings, wandering down narrow alleyways, following cart tracks or paths through fields instead of the main roads, and in general making the walk as complicated as possible.
In this way I saw much more than I would normally have seen. Here a temple, there a mosque; now an old church; a railway siding; follow the railway line; here’s a pond full of buffaloes, there a peacock preening itself under a tamarind tree; and now I’m in a field of mustard, and soon I’m walking along a canal bank, and the canal leads me back into the town, and I follow the line of the mango trees until I am home.
The adventure is not in arriving, it’s the on-the-way experience. It is not the expected; it’s the surprise. You are not choosing what you shall see in the world, but are giving the world an even chance to see you.
It’s like drawing lines from star to star in the night sky, not forgetting many dim, shy, out-of-the-way stars, which are full of possibilities. The first turning to the left, the next to the right! I am still on my zigzag way, pursuing the diagonal between reason and the heart.
A Knock at the Door
For Sherlock Holmes, it usually meant an impatient client waiting below in the street. For Nero Wolfe, it was the doorbell that rang, disturbing the great man in his orchid rooms. For Poe or Walter de la Mare, that knocking on a moonlit door could signify a ghostly visitor—no one outside!—or, even more mysterious, no one in the house …
Well, clients I have none, and ghostly visitants don’t have to knock; but as I spend most of the day at home, writing, I have learnt to live with the occasional knock at the front door. I find doorbells even more startling than ghosts, and ornate brass knockers have a tendency to disappear when the price of brassware goes up; so my callers have to use their knuckles or fists on the solid mahogany door. It’s a small price to pay for disturbing me.
I hear the knocking quite distinctly, as the small front room adjoins my even smaller study-cum-bedroom. But sometimes I keep up a pretense of not hearing anything straight away. Mahogany is good for the knuckles! Eventually, I place a pencil between my teeth and holding a sheet of blank foolscap in one hand, move slowly and thoughtfully toward the front door, so that, when I open it, my caller can see that I have been disturbed in the throes of composition. Not that I have ever succeeded in making any one feel guilty about it; they stay as long as they like. And after they have gone, I can get back to listening to my tapes of old Hollywood operettas.
Impervious to both literature and music, my first caller is usually a boy from the village, wanting to sell me his cucumbers or ‘France-beans’. For some reason he won’t call them French beans. He is not impressed by the accoutrements of my trade. He thrusts a cucumber into my arms and empties the beans on a coffee-table book which has been sent to me for review. (There is no coffee-table, but the book makes a good one.) He is confident that I cannot resist his ‘France-beans’, even though this sub-Himalayan variety is extremely hard and stringy. Actually, I am a sucker for cucumbers, but I take the beans so I can get the cucumber cheap. In this fashion, authors survive.
The deal done, and the door closed, I decide it’s time to do some work. I start this little essay. If it’s nice and gets published, I will be able to take care of the electricity bill. There’s a knock at the door. Some knocks I recognize, but this is a new one. Perhaps it’s someone asking for a donation. Cucumber in hand, I stride to the door and open it abruptly only to be confronted by a polite, smart-looking chauffeur who presents me with a large bouquet of flowering gladioli!
‘With the compliments of Mr B.P. Singh,’ he announces, before departing smartly with a click of the heels. I start looking for a receptacle for the flowers, as Grandmother’s flower vase was really designed for violets and forget-me-nots.
B.P. Singh is a kind man who had the original idea of turning his property outside Mussoorie into a gladioli farm. A bare hillside is now a mass of gladioli from May to September. He sells them to flower shops in Delhi, but his heart bleeds at harvesting time.
Gladioli arranged in an ice-bucket, I return to my desk and am just wondering what I should be writing next, when there is a loud banging on the door. No friendly knock this time. Urgent, peremptory, summoning! Could it be the police? And what have I gone and done? Every good citizen has at least one guilty secret, just waiting to be discovered! I move warily to the door and open it an inch or two. It is a policeman!
Hastily, I drop the cucumber and politely ask him if I can be of help. Try to look casual, I tell myself. He has a small packet in his hands. No, it’s not a warrant. It turns out to be a slim volume of verse, sent over by a visiting DIG of Police, who has authored it. I thank his emissary profusely, and, after he has gone, I place the volume reverently on my bookshelf, beside the works of other poetry-loving policemen. These men of steel, who inspire so much awe and trepidation in the rest of us, they too are humans and some of them are poets!
Now it’s afternoon, and the knock I hear is a familiar one, and welcome, for it heralds the postman. What would writers do without postmen? They have more power than literary agents. I don’t have an agent (I’ll be honest and say an agent won’t have me), but I do have a postman, and he turns up every day except when there’s a landslide.
Yes, it’s Prakash the postman who makes my day, showering me with letters, books, acceptances, rejections, and even the occasional cheque. These postmen are fine fellows, they do their utmost to bring the good news from Ghent to Aix.
And what has Prakash brought me today? A reminder: I haven’t paid my subscription to the Author’s Guild. I’d better send it off, or I shall be a derecognized author. A letter from a reader: would I like to go through her 800-page dissertation on the Gita? Some day, my love … A cheque, a cheque! From Sunflower Books, for nineteen rupees only, representing the sale of six copies of one of my books during the previous year. Never mind. Six wise persons put their money down for my book. No fresh acceptances, but no rejections either. A postcard from Goa, where one of my publishers is taking a holiday. So the post is something of an anti-climax. But I mustn’t complain. Not every knock on the door brings gladioli fresh from the fields. Tomorrow’s another day, and the postman comes six days a week.
Respect Your Breakfast
‘Laugh and be fat, sir!’ Thus spoke Ben Jonson, poet and playwright, Shakespeare’s contemporary, and a lover of good food, wine and laughter.
Merriment usually accompanies food and drink, and laughter is usually enjoyed in the company of friends and people of goodwill. Laugh when you’re alone, and you are likely to end up in a lunatic asylum.
‘Honour your food,’ said Manu, the law-giver, ‘Receive it thankfully. Do not hold it in contempt.’ He did go on to say that we should avoid excess and gluttony, but his message was we should respect what is placed before us.
This was Granny’s message, too. ‘Better a small fish than an empty dish,’ was one of the sayings inscribed on her kitchen accounts notebook. She was apt to quote several of these little proverbs, and one of them was directed at me whenever I took too large a second helping of my favourite kofta curry.
‘Don’t let your tongue cut your throat,’ she would say ominously. ‘You don’t want to grow up to be like Billy Bunter.’ She referred to the Fat Boy of Greyfriars School, a popular fictional character in the late 1930s.
‘Just one more kofta, Granny,’ I’d beg, ‘I promise, I won’t take a third helping.’
Sixty-five years later, I’m still trying to keep that promise. I keep those second helpings small, just in case I’m tempted into a third one. I’m not quite a Bunter yet, possibly because I still walk quite a bit. But the trouble with walking is it gives you an appetite, and that means you are inclined to tuck in when you get to the dining table.
Last winter, when I was staying at the India International Centre (IIC), I wo
uld go for an early morning walk in the Lodi Gardens, followed by breakfast at the Centre. They give you a good breakfast at IIC, and I did full justice to the scrambled eggs, buttered toasts, marmalade and coffee. I could have done with a little bacon, too, but apparently it wasn’t the season for it. Well, when I looked across at the next table I saw solitary figure breakfasting on water-melon—and nothing else! This made me feel terribly guilty, and I refrained from finishing off the marmalade.
‘Aren’t you Bond?’ asked the man at the next table.
I confessed I was—not the other Bond, but the real one—and it turned out that we’d been at school together, in the dim distant past.
‘You were always a good eater,’ he said reflectively. ‘In fact, you used to help yourself to my jam tarts when I wasn’t looking.’
We chatted about our school days and companions of that era, and then he went on to tell me that he was suffering from various ailments—hence the frugal water-melon breakfast. As I wasn’t suffering from anything worse than a bruised shin (due to falling over a courting couple in the Gardens) I felt better about my breakfast, and immediately ordered more marmalade and a third toast. When we parted, he urged me to switch to water-melons for breakfast, though I couldn’t help noticing that he eyed my scrambled egg with a look that was full of longing. I guess healthy eating and happy eating are two different things.
Diwali, Christmas and the New Year are appropriate times for a little indulgence, and if someone were to send me a Christmas pudding I would respect the giver and the pudding by at least enjoying a slice or two—and sharing the rest!
But strictly speaking I’m a breakfast person, and I stand by another of Granny’s proverbs: ‘If the breakfast is bad, the rest of the day will go wrong.’ So make it a good breakfast; linger over it, enjoy the flavours. And if you happen to be someone who must prepare their own breakfast, do so with loving care and precision. As Granny said, ‘There is skill in all things, even in scrambling eggs.’
Battles Long Ago
Dhuki the old gardener, spent a lot of time on his haunches, digging with a little spade called khurpi. He’d dig up weeds, turn the soil in order to sow new seeds or transplant delicate young seedlings, or just fuss around the zinnias and rose bushes.
I liked to dig too, and made several attempts to help, but Dhuki just sent me away, saying I was spoiling his arrangements or damaging the stems of Granny’s prize sweet peas. I guess dedicated gardeners are like that—they hate interference!
So I decided I’d have a patch of my own to cultivate. I wasn’t sure what I’d grow in it, but I liked the idea of digging up the soil and planting something—anything!—in the good earth. And Granny said I could use a patch of wasteland near the old wall behind the bungalow.
‘Dig to your heart’s content,’ she said. ‘And while you’re about it, you can remove that patch of nettles!’
Dutifully I removed the stinging-nettles, getting a few blisters in the process. But what are a few stings to a small boy who is enjoying himself? Armed with pitch-fork and spade, I was soon digging up the stonysoil near our boundary wall.
‘You won’t get far with that little spade,’ said Grandfather, who had come over to watch my progress. ‘Here, try this shovel.’
Soon I was toiling away with the shovel, my shirt soaked in perspiration; for it was April, already hot weather in our small town in north India.
Uncle Ken strolled by and stopped to watch me at work. He was munching a chicken sandwich. Uncle Ken did not go in for physical activity of any kind, but he did believe in a constant supply of food and refreshment.
‘All that digging should give you a good appetite,’ he said approvingly. ‘Lunch is only an hour away!’ And he finished his sandwich and wandered off.
Next day, when I was digging again and beginning to wonder if it was all too much of a bother, my spade struck something hard and I found I’d dug up a small round iron ball, a little bigger than one of my marbles.
I went in search of Grandfather and found him on the veranda steps, feeding the sparrows.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, showing him the iron ball. ‘I found it while digging.’
‘It looks like an old musket-ball,’ he said, examing it closely. ‘Interesting that you should find it here.’
‘It must have been here a long time,’ I said.
‘A hundred years, at least. Probably during the battle for this town. Muskets were used at that time. Sit down while I tell you something about those times.’
Grandfather sat back in his favourite arm-chair and I sat on the veranda steps, and he said, ‘Once upon a time these hills were held by the Gurkhas, fighting men from Nepal. They were at war with the British who were in control of the territory across the river—all a part of India at a period when rival powers were fighting over a land that wasn’t theirs to begin with! Well, the Gurkhas held the steep hill that you see from our boundary wall. They’d build a stockade on the summit and it gave them a vantage point from which they could fire upon the advancing British force. The British lost many officers and men before they were able to occupy the Gurkha stronghold. I think our house is situated on the plain where the soldiers formed up with their scaling ladders.’
‘Did they use swords then?’ I asked.
‘They had swords, but they also had muskets and small cannons. They couldn’t bring heavy cannons up this incline. I’m sure you’ll find more musket-balls if you keep digging.’
I kept digging, of course. And I’d forgotten about having my own flower-bed. I’d become an archaeologist, digging up the past! Although I did not find another musket-ball, I did turn up a belt-buckle—‘it must have come off a soldier’s uniform,’ said Grandfather—and then, after three or four days of digging in different places, a small piece of metal with some lettering on it.
‘What’s this?’ I asked Grandfather. I’d had enough of hard labour by then, and was ready to turn to some other activity, such as making sandwiches in the manner of Uncle Ken!
‘Very interesting,’ said Grandfather. ‘It looks like a piece of silver. It’s been flattened out, but I think it might have been a card case. They were quite fashionable then. A young officer might have had one. Look, that’s a name engraved on one side. See if you can read it, Ruskin, I’m wearing the wrong glasses.’
‘A-n-s-e,’ I spelt out. ‘I think one or two letters are missing.’
‘Well, let’s clean it up and take good care of it,’ said Grandfather. ‘It’s a bit of history, after all.’
Encouraged by this, I began to excavate different parts of the garden and compound, much to Granny’s horror. She swooped down on me and forbade me from going anywhere near her flower-beds. Her sweet peas were in full bloom, tipped to win a prize at the local flower show. Granny allowed me to dig around the cucumber patch in the back garden, but I found no more treasures apart from a soap dish and a broken chamber-pot.
‘Very ancient, that pot,’ said Grandfather. ‘I remember breaking it when I was boy.’
He had been going through his collection of old books, and late one afternoon he called out to me from his arm-chair on the veranda.
‘Look here, Ruskin, I think I’ve found that name!’ He had been reading through an account of the Gurkha War, and had come across a list of British officers who had fallen in the battle nearby. He pointed at a name half way down the list: ‘Lieutenant Ansell. Killed in action, May 5, 1818, at the storming of Kalinga Fort.’
‘That must be our man,’ said Grandfather with certainity.
‘And we have his belt-buckle and card case,’ I added. ‘Do you think he could be buried in the garden? Under Granny’s sweet peas?’
‘Now don’t let your imagination run away with you,’ said Grandfather with a laugh. ‘Those who fell in the fighting would have been carried away behind the regimental lines. But I have an idea, Ruskin. Why don’t you start your own museum with the things you’ve found? You can use that little store-room on the roof.’
S
o Grandfather helped me clear out the storeroom, and I set up my exhibits on a couple of old trunks. But I didn’t have much to put on display—just the musket-ball, the belt-buckle and the card case. Granny had thrown away the chamber-pot.
‘Never mind,’ said Grandfather. ‘Keep digging. You’re sure to find something.’
‘It should keep him out of mischief,’ said Granny. ‘And thanks to all his digging, I now have somewhere to grow sunflowers!’
But after some time I missed my bicycle and my exploration of the town and its surroundings. All digging was left to Dhuki the gardener. He’d been digging for years, and when he stood up he looked like a question-mark.
‘Are you going to look like a question-mark too?’ teased Uncle Ken.
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I shall be an exclamation mark!’
And here I must confess that I did not grow up to be an archaeologist. Or a gardener. Or the curator of a museum. But I’ve always found history interesting, and it helps me when I have a story to write!
THE BEGINNING
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