by Ruskin Bond
Sita noticed a number of birds in the paddy fields. There were black-and-white curlews and cranes with pink coat-tails. A good monsoon means plenty of birds. But Hukam Singh was not happy about the cranes.
‘They do great damage in the wheat fields,’ he said. Lighting up a small, hand-held hookah pipe, he puffed at it and became philosophical again: ‘Life is one long struggle for the farmer. When he has overcome the drought, survived the flood, hunted off the pig, killed the crane and reaped the crop, then comes that blood-sucking ghoul, the moneylender. There is no escaping him! Is your father in debt to a moneylender, boy?’
‘No,’ said Vijay.
‘That is because he doesn’t have daughters who must be married! I have two. As they resemble Phambiri, they will need generous dowries.’
In spite of his grumbling, Hukam Singh seemed fairly content with his lot. He’d had a good maize crop, and the front of his cart was piled high with corn. He would sell the crop at the fair, along with some cucumbers, eggplants and melons.
The bad road had slowed them down so much that when darkness came, they were still far from Karauli. In India there is hardly any twilight. Within a short time of the sun’s going down, the stars come out.
‘Six miles to go,’ said Hukam Singh. ‘In the dark our wheels may get stuck again. Let us spend the night here. If it rains, we can pull an old tarpaulin over the cart.’
Vijay made a fire in the charcoal burner which Hukam Singh had brought along, and they had a simple meal, roasting the corn over the fire and flavouring it with salt and spices and a squeeze of lemon. There was some milk, but not enough for everyone because Phambiri drank three tumblers by himself.
‘If I win tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I will give all of you a feast!’
They settled down to sleep in the bullock cart, and Phambiri and his father were soon snoring. Vijay lay awake, his arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the stars. Sita was very tired but she couldn’t sleep. She was worrying about her grandparents and wondering when she would see them again.
The night was full of sounds. The loud snoring that came from Phambiri and his father seemed to be taken up by invisible sleepers all around them, and Sita, becoming alarmed, turned to Vijay and asked, ‘What is that strange noise?’
He smiled in the darkness, and she could see his white teeth and the glint of laughter in his eyes.
‘Only the spirits of lost demons,’ he said, and then laughed. ‘Can’t you recognize the music of the frogs?’
And that was what they heard—a sound more hideous than the wail of demons, a rising crescendo of noise—wurrk, wurrk, wurrk—coming from the flooded ditches on either side of the road. All the frogs in the jungle seemed to have gathered at that one spot, and each one appeared to have something to say for himself. The speeches continued for about an hour. Then the meeting broke up and silence returned to the forest.
A jackal slunk across the road. A puff of wind brushed through the trees. The bullocks, freed from the cart, were asleep beside it. The men’s snores were softer now. Vijay slept, a half-smile on his face. Only Sita lay awake, worried and waiting for the dawn.
At the Fair
Already, at nine o’clock, the fairground was crowded. Cattle were being sold or auctioned. Stalls had opened, selling everything from pins to ploughs. Foodstuffs were on sale—hot food, spicy food, sweets and ices. A merry-go-round, badly oiled, was squeaking and groaning, while a loudspeaker blared popular film music across the grounds.
While Phambiri was preparing for his wrestling match, Hukam Singh was busy haggling over the price of pumpkins. Sita and Vijay wandered on their own among the stalls, gazing at toys and kites and bangles and clothing, at brightly coloured, syrupy sweets. Some of the rural people had transistor radios dangling by straps from their shoulders, the radio music competing with the loudspeaker. Occasionally a buffalo bellowed, drowning all other sounds.
Various people were engaged in roadside professions. There was the fortune teller. He had slips of paper, each of them covered with writing, which he kept in little trays along with some grain. He had a tame sparrow. When you gave the fortune teller your money, he allowed the little bird to hop in and out among the trays until it stopped at one and started pecking at the grain. From this tray the fortune teller took the slip of paper and presented it to his client. The writing told you what to expect over the next few months or years.
A harassed, middle-aged man, who was surrounded by six noisy sons and daughters, was looking a little concerned, because his slip of paper said: ‘Do not lose hope. You will have a child soon.’
Some distance away sat a barber, and near him a professional ear cleaner. Several children clustered around a peepshow, which was built into an old gramophone cabinet. While one man wound up the gramophone and placed a well-worn record on the turntable, his partner pushed coloured pictures through a slide viewer.
A young man walked energetically up and down the fairground, beating a drum and announcing the day’s attractions. The wrestling bouts were about to start. The main attraction was going to be the fight between Phambiri, described as a man ‘whose thighs had the thickness of an elephant’s trunk’, and the local champion, Sher Dil (tiger’s heart)—a wild-looking man, with hairy chest and beetling brow. He was heavier than Phambiri but not so tall.
Sita and Vijay joined Hukam Singh at one corner of the akhara, the wrestling pit. Hukam Singh was massaging his son’s famous thighs.
A gong sounded and Sher Dil entered the ring, slapping himself on the chest and grunting like a wild boar. Phambiri advanced slowly to meet him.
They came to grips immediately, and stood swaying from side to side, two giants pitting their strength against each other. The sweat glistened on their well-oiled bodies.
Sher Dil got his arms round Phambiri’s waist and tried to lift him off his feet, but Phambiri had twined one powerful leg around his opponent’s thigh, and they both came down together with a loud squelch, churning up the soft mud of the wrestling pit. But neither wrestler had been pinned down.
Soon they were so covered with mud that it was difficult to distinguish one from the other. There was a flurry of arms and legs. The crowd was cheering and Sita and Vijay were cheering too, but the wrestlers were too absorbed in their struggle to be aware of their supporters. Each sought to turn the other on to his back. That was all that mattered. There was no count.
For a few moments Sher Dil had Phambiri almost helpless, but Phambiri wriggled out of a crushing grip, and using his legs once again, sent Sher Dil rocketing across the akhara. But Sher Dil landed on his belly, and even with Phambiri on top of him, it wasn’t victory.
Nothing happened for several minutes, and the crowd became restless and shouted for more action. Phambiri thought of twisting his opponent’s ear but he realized that he might get disqualified for doing that, so he restrained himself. He relaxed his grip slightly, and this gave Sher Dil a chance to heave himself up and send Phambiri spinning across the akhara. Phambiri was still in a sitting position when the other took a flying leap at him. But Phambiri dived forward, taking his opponent between the legs, and then rising, flung him backwards with a resounding thud. Sher Dil was helpless, and Phambiri sat on his opponent’s chest to remove all doubts as to who was the winner. Only when the applause of the spectators told him that he had won did he rise and leave the ring.
Accompanied by his proud father, Phambiri accepted the prize money, thirty rupees, and then went in search of a tap. After he had washed the oil and mud from his body, he put on fresh clothes. Then, putting his arms around Vijay and Sita, he said, ‘You have brought me luck, both of you. Now let us celebrate!’ And he led the way to the sweet shops.
They ate syrupy rasgollas (made from milk and sugar) and almond-filled fudge, and little pies filled with minced meat, and washed everything down with a fizzy orange drink.
‘Now I will buy each of you a small present,’ said Phambiri.
He bought a bright blue sports shirt for V
ijay. He bought a new hookah bowl for his father. And he took Sita to a stall where dolls were sold, and asked her to choose one.
There were all kinds of dolls—cheap plastic dolls, and beautiful dolls made by hand, dressed in the traditional costumes of different regions of the country. Sita was immediately reminded of Mumta, her own rag doll, who had been made at home with Grandmother’s help. And she remembered Grandmother, and Grandmother’s sewing machine, and the home that had been swept away, and the tears started to her eyes.
The dolls seemed to smile at Sita. The shopkeeper held them up one by one, and they appeared to dance, to twirl their wide skirts, to stamp their jingling feet on the counter. Each doll made her own special appeal to Sita. Each one wanted her love.
‘Which one will you have?’ asked Phambiri. ‘Choose the prettiest, never mind the price!’
But Sita could say nothing. She could only shake her head. No doll, no matter how beautiful, could replace Mumta. She would never keep a doll again. That part of her life was over.
So instead of a doll Phambiri bought her bangles—coloured glass bangles which slipped easily on Sita’s thin wrists. And then he took them into a temporary cinema, a large shed made of corrugated tin sheets.
Vijay had been to a cinema before—the towns were full of cinemas—but for Sita it was another new experience. Many things that were common enough for other boys and girls were strange and new for a girl who had spent nearly all her life on a small island in the middle of a big river.
As they found seats, a curtain rolled up and a white sheet came into view. The babble of talk dwindled into silence. Sita became aware of a whirring noise somewhere not far behind her. But, before she could turn her head to see what it was, the sheet became a rectangle of light and colour. It came to life. People moved and spoke. A story unfolded.
But, long afterwards, all that Sita could remember of her first film was a jumble of images and incidents. A train in danger, the audience murmuring with anxiety, a bridge over a river (but smaller than hers), the bridge being blown to pieces, the engine plunging into the river, people struggling in the water, a woman rescued by a man who immediately embraced her, the lights coming on again, and the audience rising slowly and drifting out of the theatre, looking quite unconcerned and even satisfied. All those people struggling in the water were now quite safe, back in the little black box in the projection room.
Catching the Train
And now a real engine, a steam engine belching smoke and fire, was on its way towards Sita.
She stood with Vijay on the station platform along with over a hundred other people waiting for the Shahganj train.
The platform was littered with the familiar bedrolls (or holdalls) without which few people in India ever travel. On these rolls sat women, children, great-aunts and great-uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers and grandchildren, while the more active adults hovered at the edge of the platform, ready to leap on to the train as soon as it arrived and reserve a space for the family. In India, people do not travel alone if they can help it. The whole family must be taken along—especially if the reason for the journey is a marriage, a pilgrimage, or simply a visit to friends or relations.
Moving among the piles of bedding and luggage were coolies; vendors of magazines, sweetmeats, tea and betel-leaf preparations; also stray dogs, stray people and sometimes a stray stationmaster. The cries of the vendors mingled with the general clamour of the station and the shunting of a steam engine in the yard. ‘Tea, hot tea!’, ‘Fresh limes!’ Sweets, papads, hot stuff, cold drinks, mangoes, toothpowder, photos of film stars, bananas, balloons, wooden toys! The platform had become a bazaar. What a blessing for those vendors that trains ran late and that people had to wait, and waiting, drank milky tea, bought toys for children, cracked peanut shells, munched bananas and chose little presents for the friends or relations on whom they were going to descend very shortly.
But there came the train!
The signal was down. The crowd surged forward, swamping an assistant stationmaster. Vijay took Sita by the hand and led her forward. If they were too slow, they would not get a place on the crowded train. In front of them was a tall, burly, bearded Sikh from the Punjab. Vijay decided it would be a wise move to stand behind him and move forward at the same time.
The station bell clanged and a big, puffing, black steam engine appeared in the distance. A stray dog, with a lifetime’s experience of trains, darted away across the railway lines. As the train came alongside the platform, doors opened, window shutters fell, eager faces appeared in the openings, and even before the train had come to a stop, people were trying to get in or out.
For a few moments there was chaos. The crowd surged backwards and forwards. No one could get out. No one could get in! Fifty people were leaving the train, a hundred were catching it! No one wanted to give way. But every problem has a solution somewhere, provided one looks for it. And this particular problem was solved by a man climbing out of a window. Others followed his example. The pressure at the doors eased and people started squeezing into the compartments.
Vijay stayed close to the Sikh who forged a way through the throng. The Sikh reached an open doorway and was through. Vijay and Sita were through! They found somewhere to sit and were then able to look down at the platform, into the whirlpool and enjoy themselves a little. The vendors had abandoned the people on the platform and had started selling their wares at the windows. Hukam Singh, after buying their tickets, had given Vijay and Sita a rupee to spend on the way. Vijay bought a freshly split coconut, and Sita bought a comb for her hair. She had never bothered with her hair before.
They saw a worried man rushing along the platform searching for his family; but they were already in the compartment, having beaten him to it, and eagerly helped him in at the door. A whistle shrilled and they were off! A couple of vendors made last-minute transactions, then jumped from the slow-moving train. One man did this expertly with a tray of teacups balanced on one hand.
The train gathered speed.
‘What will happen to all those people still on the platform?’ asked Sita anxiously. ‘Will they all be left behind?’
She put her head out of the window and looked back at the receding platform. It was strangely empty. Only the vendors and the coolies and the stray dogs and the dishevelled railway staff were in evidence. A miracle had happened. No one—absolutely no one—had been left behind!
Then the train was rushing through the night, the engine throwing out bright sparks that danced away like fireflies. Sometimes the train had to slow down, as flood water had weakened the embankments. Sometimes it stopped at brightly lit stations.
When the train started again and moved on into the dark countryside, Sita would stare through the glass of the window, at the bright lights of a town or the quiet glow of village lamps. She thought of Phambiri and Hukam Singh, and wondered if she would ever see them again. Already they were like people in a fairy tale, met briefly on the road and never seen again.
There was no room in the compartment in which to lie down; but Sita soon fell asleep, her head resting against Vijay’s shoulder.
A Meeting and a Parting
Sita did not know where to look for her grandfather. For an hour she and Vijay wandered through the Shahganj bazaar, growing hungrier all the time. They had no money left and they were hot and thirsty.
Outside the bazaar, near a small temple, they saw a tree in which several small boys were helping themselves to the sour, purple fruit.
It did not take Vijay long to join the boys in the tree. They did not object to his joining them. It wasn’t their tree, anyway.
Sita stood beneath the tree while Vijay threw the jamuns down to her. They soon had a small pile of the fruit. They were on the road again, their faces stained with purple juice.
They were asking the way to the Shahganj hospital, when Sita caught a glimpse of her grandfather on the road.
At first the old man did not recognize her. He was walking stiffly down the
road, looking straight ahead, and would have walked right past the dusty, dishevelled girl, had she not charged straight at his thin, shaky legs and clasped him round the waist.
‘Sita!’ he cried, when he had recovered his wind and his balance. ‘Why are you here? How did you get off the island? I have been very worried—it has been bad, these last two days …’
‘Is Grandmother all right?’ asked Sita.
But even as she spoke, she knew that Grandmother was no longer with them. The dazed look in the old man’s eyes told her as much. She wanted to cry—not for Grandmother, who could suffer no more, but for Grandfather, who looked so helpless and bewildered. She did not want him to be unhappy. She forced back her tears and took his gnarled and trembling hand, and with Vijay walking beside her, led the old man down the crowded street.
She knew, then, that it would be on her shoulder that Grandfather would lean in the years to come.
They decided to remain in Shahganj for a couple of days, staying at a dharamsala—a wayside rest house—until the flood waters subsided. Grandfather still had two of the goats—it had not been necessary to sell more than one—but he did not want to take the risk of rowing a crowded boat across to the island. The river was still fast and dangerous.
But Vijay could not stay with Sita any longer.
‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘My father and mother will be very worried and they will not know where to look for me. In a day or two the water will go down, and you will be able to go back to your home.’
‘Perhaps the island has gone forever,’ said Sita.
‘It will be there,’ said Vijay. ‘It is a rocky island. Bad for crops but good for a house!’
‘Will you come?’ asked Sita.
What she really wanted to say was, ‘Will you come to see me?’ but she was too shy to say it; and besides, she wasn’t sure if Vijay would want to see her again.