DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES

by Ruskin Bond

While Bhabiji talks, Popat sneaks off and goes for a ride on the bicycle. It is a very old bicycle and is constantly undergoing repairs. ‘The soul has gone out of it,’ says Vinod philosophically and makes his way on to the roof, where he keeps a store of pornographic literature. Up there, he cannot be seen and cannot be remembered, and so avoids being sent out on errands.

  One of the boys is bathing at the hand pump. Manju, who should have gone to school with Madhu, is stretched out on a cot, complaining of fever. But she will be up in time to attend the marriage party …

  Towards evening, as the birds return to roost in the guava tree, their chatter is challenged by the tumult of people in the house getting ready for the marriage party.

  Manju presses her tight pyjamas but neglects to darn them. She wears a loose-fitting, diaphanous shirt. She keeps flitting in and out of the front room so that I can admire the way she glitters. Shobha has used too much powder and lipstick in an effort to look like the femme fatale which she indubitably is not. Shiv’s more conservative wife floats around in loose, old-fashioned pyjamas. Bhabiji is sober and austere in a white sari. Madhu looks neat. The men wear their suits.

  Popat is holding up a mirror for his Uncle Kishore, who is combing his long hair. (Kishore kept his hair long, like a court musician at the time of Akbar, before the hippies had been heard of.) He is nodding benevolently, having fortified himself from a bottle labelled ‘Som Ras’ (‘nectar of the gods’), obtained cheaply from an illicit still.

  Kishore: ‘Don’t shake the mirror, boy!’

  Popat: ‘Uncle, it’s your head that’s shaking.’

  Shobha is happy. She loves going out, especially to marriages, and she always takes her two small boys with her, although they invariably spoil the carpets.

  Only Kamal, Popat and I remain behind. I have had more than my share of marriage parties.

  The house is strangely quiet. It does not seem so small now, with only three people left in it. The kitchen has been locked (Bhabiji will not leave it open while Popat is still in the house), so we visit the dhaba, the wayside restaurant near the main road, and this time I pay the bill with my own money. We have kababs and chicken curry.

  Yesterday, Kamal and I took our lunch on the grass of the Buddha Jayanti Gardens (Buddha’s Birthday Gardens). There was no college for Kamal, as the majority of Delhi’s students had hijacked a number of corporation buses and headed for the Pakistan high commission, with every intention of levelling it to the ground if possible, as a protest against the hijacking of an Indian plane from Srinagar to Lahore. The students were met by the Delhi police in full strength, and a pitched battle took place, in which stones from the students and tear gas shells from the police were the favoured missiles. There were two shells fired every minute, according to a newspaper report. And this went on all day. A number of students and policemen were injured, but by some miracle no one was killed. The police held their ground, and the Pakistan high commission remained inviolate. But the Australian high commission, situated to the rear of the student brigade, received most of the tear gas shells, and had to close down for the day.

  Kamal and I attended the siege for about an hour, before retiring to the Gardens with our ham sandwiches. A couple of friendly squirrels came up to investigate, and were soon taking bread from our hands. We could hear the chanting of the students in the distance. I lay back on the grass and opened my copy of Barchester Towers. Whenever life in Delhi, or in Bhabiji’s house (or anywhere, for that matter), becomes too tumultuous, I turn to Trollope. Nothing could be further removed from the turmoil of our times than an English cathedral town in the nineteenth century. But I think Jane Austen would have appreciated life in Bhabiji’s house.

  By ten o’clock, everyone is back from the marriage. (They had gone for the feast, and not for the ceremonies, which continue into the early hours of the morning.) Shobha is full of praise for the bridegroom’s good looks and fair complexion. She describes him as being gora chitta—very white! She does not have a high opinion of the bride.

  Shiv, in a happy and reflective mood, extols the qualities of his own wife, referring to her as The Barrel. He tells us how, shortly after their marriage, she had threatened to throw a brick at the next-door girl. This little incident remains fresh in Shiv’s mind, after eighteen years of marriage.

  He says: ‘When the neighbours came and complained, I told them, “It is quite possible that my wife will throw a brick at your daughter. She is in the habit of throwing bricks.” The neighbours held their peace.’

  I think Shiv is rather proud of his wife’s militancy when it comes to taking on neighbours; recently she vanquished the woman next door (a formidable Sikh lady) after a verbal battle that lasted three hours. But in arguments or quarrels with Bhabiji, Shiv’s wife always loses, because Shiv takes his mother’s side.

  Arun, on the other hand, is afraid of both wife and mother, and simply makes himself scarce when a quarrel develops. Or he tells his mother she is right, and then, to placate Shobha, takes her to the pictures.

  Kishore turns up just as everyone is about to go to bed. Bhabiji is annoyed at first, because he has been drinking too much; but when he produces a bunch of cinema tickets, she is mollified and asks him to stay the night. Not even Bhabiji likes missing a new picture. Kishore is urging me to write his life story.

  ‘Your life would make a most interesting story,’ I tell him. ‘But it will be interesting only if I put in everything—your successes and your failures.’

  ‘No, no, only successes,’ exhorts Kishore. ‘I want you to describe me as a popular music director.’

  ‘But you have yet to become popular.’

  ‘I will be popular if you write about me.’

  Fortunately we are interrupted by the cots being brought in. Then Bhabiji and Shiv go into a huddle, discussing plans for building an extra room. After all, Kamal may be married soon.

  One by one, the children get under their quilts. Popat starts massaging Bhabiji’s back. She gives him her favourite blessing: ‘God protect you and give you lots of children.’ If God listens to all Bhabiji’s prayers and blessings, there will never be a fall in the population.

  The lights are off and Bhabiji settles down for the night. She is almost asleep when a small voice pipes up: ‘Bhabiji, tell us a story.’

  At first Bhabiji pretends not to hear; then, when the request is repeated, she says: ‘You’ll keep Aunty Shobha awake, and then she’ll have an excuse for getting up late in the morning.’ But the children know Bhabiji’s one great weakness, and they renew their demand.

  ‘Your grandmother is tired,’ says Arun. ‘Let her sleep.’

  But Bhabiji’s eyes are open. Her mind is going back over the crowded years, and she remembers something very interesting that happened when her younger brother’s wife’s sister married the eldest son of her third cousin …

  Before long, the children are asleep, and I am wondering if I will ever sleep, for Bhabiji’s voice drones on, into the darker reaches of the night.

  Masterji

  I was strolling along the platform, waiting for the arrival of the Amritsar Express, when I saw Mr Khushal, handcuffed to a policeman.

  I hadn’t recognized him at first—a paunchy gentleman with a lot of grey in his beard and a certain arrogant amusement in his manner. It was only when I came closer, and we were almost face to face, that I recognized my old Hindi teacher.

  Startled, I stopped and stared. And he stared back at me, a glimmer of recognition in his eyes. It was over twenty years since I’d last seen him, standing jauntily before the classroom blackboard, and now here he was tethered to a policeman and looking as jaunty as ever …

  ‘Good—good evening, sir,’ I stammered, in my best public school manner. (You must always respect your teacher, no matter what the circumstances.)

  Mr Khushal’s face lit up with pleasure. ‘So you remember me! It’s nice to see you again, my boy.’

  Forgetting that his right hand was shackled to the policeman’s
left, I made as if to shake hands. Mr Khushal thoughtfully took my right hand in his left and gave it a rough squeeze. A faint odour of cloves and cinnamon reached me, and I remembered how he had always been redolent of spices when standing beside my desk, watching me agonize over my Hindi–English translation.

  He had joined the school in 1948, not long after the Partition. Until then there had been no Hindi teacher; we’d been taught Urdu and French. Then came a ruling that Hindi was to be a compulsory subject, and at the age of sixteen I found myself struggling with a new script. When Mr Khushal joined the staff (on the recommendation of a local official), there was no one else in the school who knew Hindi, or who could assess Mr Khushal’s abilities as a teacher …

  And now once again he stood before me, only this time he was in the custody of the law.

  I was still recovering from the shock when the train drew in, and everyone on the platform began making a rush for the compartment doors. As the policeman elbowed his way through the crowd, I kept close behind him and his charge, and as a result I managed to get into the same third-class compartment. I found a seat right opposite Mr Khushal. He did not seem to be the least bit embarrassed by the handcuffs, or by the stares of his fellow-passengers. Rather, it was the policeman who looked unhappy and ill-at-ease.

  As the train got under way, I offered Mr Khushal one of the parathas made for me by my Ferozepur landlady. He accepted it with alacrity. I offered one to the constable as well, but although he looked at it with undisguised longing, he felt duty-bound to decline.

  ‘Why have they arrested you, sir?’ I asked. ‘Is it very serious?’

  ‘A trivial matter,’ said Mr Khushal. ‘Nothing to worry about. I shall be at liberty soon.’

  ‘But what did you do?’

  Mr Khushal leant forward. ‘Nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said in a confiding tone. ‘Even a great teacher like Socrates fell foul of the law.’

  ‘You mean—one of your pupils—made a complaint?’

  ‘And why should one of my pupils make a complaint?’ Mr Khushal looked offended. ‘They were the beneficiaries—it was for them.’ He noticed that I looked mystified, and decided to come straight to the point: ‘It was simply a question of false certificates.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, feeling deflated. Public school boys are always prone to jump to the wrong conclusions …

  ‘Your certificates, sir?’

  ‘Of course not. Nothing wrong with my certificates—I had them printed in Lahore, in 1946.’

  ‘With age comes respectability,’ I remarked. ‘In that case, whose …?’

  ‘Why, the matriculation certificates I’ve been providing all these years to the poor idiots who would never have got through on their own!’

  ‘You mean you gave them your own certificates?’

  ‘That’s right. And if it hadn’t been for so many printing mistakes, no one would have been any wiser. You can’t find a good press these days, that’s the trouble … It was a public service, my boy, I hope you appreciate that … It isn’t fair to hold a boy back in life simply because he can’t get through some puny exam … Mind you, I don’t give my certificates to anyone. They come to me only after they have failed two or three times.’

  ‘And I suppose you charge something?’

  ‘Only if they can pay. There’s no fixed sum. Whatever they like to give me. I’ve never been greedy in these matters, and you know I am not unkind …’

  Which is true enough, I thought, looking out of the carriage window at the green fields of Moga and remembering the half-yearly Hindi exam when I had stared blankly at the question paper, knowing that I was totally incapable of answering any of it. Mr Khushal had come walking down the line of desks and stopped at mine, breathing cloves all over me. ‘Come on, boy, why haven’t you started?’

  ‘Can’t do it, sir,’ I’d said. ‘It’s too difficult.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he’d urged in a whisper. ‘Do something. Copy it out, copy it out!’

  And so, to pass the time, I’d copied out the entire paper, word for word. And a fortnight later, when the results were out, I found I had passed!

  ‘But, sir,’ I had stammered, approaching Mr Khushal when I found him alone. ‘I never answered the paper. I couldn’t translate the passage. All I did was copy it out!’

  ‘That’s why I gave you pass marks,’ he’d answered imperturbably. ‘You have such neat handwriting. If ever you do learn Hindi, my boy, you’ll write a beautiful script!’

  And remembering that moment, I was now filled with compassion for my old teacher; and leaning across, I placed my hand on his knee and said: ‘Sir, if they convict you, I hope it won’t be for long. And when you come out, if you happen to be in Delhi or Ferozepur, please look me up. You see, I’m still rather hopeless at Hindi, and perhaps you could give me tuition. I’d be glad to pay …’

  Mr Khushal threw back his head and laughed, and the entire compartment shook with his laughter.

  ‘Teach you Hindi!’ he cried. ‘My dear boy, what gave you the idea that I ever knew any Hindi?’

  ‘But, sir—if not Hindi what were you teaching us all the time at school?’

  ‘Punjabi!’ he shouted, and everyone jumped in their seats. ‘Pure Punjabi! But how were you to know the difference?’

  As Time Goes By

  Prem’s boys are growing tall and healthy, on the verge of manhood. How can I think of death, when faced with the full vigour and confidence of youth? They remind me of Somi and Daljit, who were the same age when I knew them in Dehra during our schooldays. But remembering Somi and Dal reminds me of death again—for Dal had died a young man—and I look at Prem’s boys again, haunted by the thought of suddenly leaving this world, and pray that I can be with them a little longer.

  Somi and Dal … I remember: it was going to rain. I could see the rain moving across the hills, and I could smell it on the breeze. But instead of turning back, I walked on through the leaves and brambles that grew over the disused path, and wandered into the forest. I had heard the sound of rushing water at the bottom of the hill, and there was no question of returning until I had found the water.

  I had to slide down some smooth rocks into a small ravine, and there I found the stream running across a bed of shingle. I removed my shoes and socks and started walking up the stream. Water trickled down from the hillside, from amongst ferns and grass and wild flowers, and the hills, rising steeply on either side, kept the ravine in shadow. The rocks were smooth, almost soft, and some of them were grey and some yellow. The pool was fed by a small waterfall, and it was deep beneath the waterfall. I did not stay long, because now the rain was swishing over the sal trees, and I was impatient to tell the others about the pool. Somi usually chose the adventures we were to have, and I would just grumble and get involved in them; but the pool was my own discovery, and both Somi and Daljit gave me credit for it.

  I think it was the pool that brought us together more than anything else. We made it a secret, private pool, and invited no others. Somi was the best swimmer. He dived off rocks and went gliding about under the water, like a long, golden fish. Dal threshed about with much vigour but little skill. I could dive off a rock too, but I usually landed on my belly.

  There were slim silverfish in the waters of the stream. At first we tried catching them with a line, but they usually took the bait and left the hook. Then we brought a bedsheet and stretched it across one end of the stream, but the fish wouldn’t come near it. Eventually Somi, without telling us, brought along a stick of dynamite, and Dal and I were startled out of a siesta by a flash across the water and a deafening explosion. Half the hillside tumbled into the pool, and Somi along with it; but we got him out, as well as a good supply of stunned fish which were too small for eating.

  The effects of the explosion gave Somi another idea, and that was to enlarge our pool by building a dam across one end. This he accomplished with Dal’s and my labour. But one afternoon, when it rained heavily, a torrent of water came rushing down the s
tream, bursting the dam and flooding the ravine; our clothes were all carried away by the current, and we had to wait for night to fall before creeping home through the darkest alleyways, for we used to bathe quite naked; it would have been umnanly to do otherwise.

  Our activities at the pool included wrestling and buffalo riding. We wrestled on a strip of sand that ran beside the stream, and rode on a couple of buffaloes that sometimes came to drink and wallow in the more muddy parts of the stream. We would sit astride the buffaloes, and kick and yell and urge them forward, but on no occasion did we ever get them to move. At the most, they would roll over on their backs, taking us with them into a pool of slush.

  But the buffaloes were always comfortable to watch. Solid, earthbound creatures, they liked warm days and cool, soft mud. There is nothing so satisfying to watch than buffaloes wallowing in mud, or ruminating over a mouthful of grass, absolutely oblivious to everything else. They watched us with sleepy, indifferent eyes, and tolerated the pecking of crows. Did they think all that time, or did they just enjoy the sensuousness of soft, wet mud, while we perspired under a summer sun …? No, thinking would have been too strenuous for those supine creatures; to get neck-deep in water was their only aim in life.

  It didn’t matter how muddy we got ourselves, because we had only to dive into the pool to get rid of the muck. In fact, mud fighting was one of our favourite pastimes. It was like playing snowballs, only we used mud balls.

  If it was possible for Somi and Dal to get out of their houses undetected at night, we would come to the pool and bathe by moonlight, and at these times we would bathe silently and seriously, because there was something subduing about the stillness of the jungle at night.

  I don’t exactly remember how we broke up, but we hardly noticed it at the time. That was because we never really believed we were finally parting, or that we would not be seeing the pool again. After about a year, Somi passed his matriculation and entered the military academy. The last time I saw him, about twenty-five years ago, he was about to be commissioned, and sported a fierce and very military moustache. He remembered the pool in a sentimental, military way, but not as I remembered it.