by Ruskin Bond
Listen. Sushila, the worst has happened. Ravi has written to say that a marriage will not be possible—not now, not next year; never. Of course he makes a lot of excuses—that you must receive a complete college education (‘higher studies’), that the difference in our age is too great, that you might change your mind after a year or two—but reading between the lines, I can guess that the real reason is your grandmother. She does not want it. Her word is law and no one, least of all Ravi, would dare oppose her.
But I do not mean to give in so easily. I will wait my chance. As long as I know that you are with me, I will wait my chance.
I wonder what the old lady objects to in me. Is it simply that she is conservative and tradition-bound? She has always shown a liking for me and I don’t see why her liking should change because I want to marry her grandniece. Your mother has no objection. Perhaps that’s why your grandmother objects.
Whatever the reason, I am coming down to Delhi to find out how things stand.
Of course the worst part is that Ravi has asked me—in the friendliest terms and in a most roundabout manner—not to come to the house for some time. He says this will give the affair a chance to cool off and die a natural (I would call it an unnatural) death. He assumes, of course, that I will accept the old lady’s decision and simply forget all about you. Ravi is yet to fall in love.
Dinesh was in Lucknow. I could not visit the house. So I sat on a bench in the Talkatora Gardens and watched a group of children playing gulli danda. Then I recalled that Sunil’s school got over at three o’clock and that if I hurried I would be able to meet him outside the St Columba’s gate.
I reached the school on time. Boys were streaming out of the compound and as they were all wearing green uniforms—a young forest on the move—I gave up all hope of spotting Sunil. But he saw me first. He ran across the road, dodged a cyclist, evaded a bus and seized me about the waist.
‘I’m so happy to see you, Uncle!’
‘As I am to see you, Sunil.’
‘You want to see Sushila?’
‘Yes, but you too. I can’t come to the house, Sunil. You probably know that. When do you have to be home?’
‘About four o’clock. If I’m late, I’ll say the bus was too crowded and I couldn’t get in.’
‘That gives us an hour or two. Let’s go to the exhibition grounds. Would you like that?’
‘All right, I haven’t seen the exhibition yet.’
We took a scooter rickshaw to the exhibition grounds on Mathura Road. It was an industrial exhibition and there was little to interest either a schoolboy or a lovesick author. But a café was at hand, overlooking an artificial lake, and we sat in the sun consuming hot dogs and cold coffee.
‘Sunil, will you help me?’ I asked.
‘Whatever you say, Uncle.’
‘I don’t suppose I can see Sushila this time. I don’t want to hang about near the house or her school like a disreputable character. It’s all right lurking outside a boys’ school; but it wouldn’t do to be hanging about the Kanyadevi Pathshala or wherever it is she’s studying. It’s possible the family will change their minds about us later. Anyway, what matters now is Sushila’s attitude. Ask her this, Sunil. Ask her if she wants me to wait until she is eighteen. She will be free then to do what she wants, even to run away with me if necessary—that is, if she really wants to. I was ready to wait two years. I’m prepared to wait three. But it will help if I know she’s waiting too. Will you ask her that, Sunil?’
‘Yes, I’ll ask her.’
‘Ask her tonight. Then tomorrow we’ll meet again outside your school.’
We met briefly the next day. There wasn’t much time. Sunil had to be home early and I had to catch the night train out of Delhi. We stood in the generous shade of a peepul tree and I asked, ‘What did she say?’
‘She said to keep waiting.’
‘All right, I’ll wait.’
‘But when she is eighteen, what if she changes her mind? You know what girls are like.’
‘You’re a cynical chap, Sunil.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means you know too much about life. But tell me—what makes you think she might change her mind?’
‘Her boyfriend.’
‘Pramod? She doesn’t care for him, poor chap.’
‘Not Pramod. Another one.’
‘Another! You mean a new one?’
‘New,’ said Sunil. ‘An officer in a bank. He’s got a car.’
‘Oh,’ I said despondently. ‘I can’t compete with a car.’
‘No,’ said Sunil. ‘Never mind, Uncle. You still have me for your friend. Have you forgotten that?’
I had almost forgotten but it was good to be reminded.
‘It is time to go,’ he said. ‘I must catch the bus today. When will you come to Delhi again?’
‘Next month. Next year. Who knows? But I’ll come. Look after yourself, my friend.’
He ran off and jumped on to the footboard of a moving bus. He waved to me until the bus went round the bend in the road.
It was lonely under the peepul tree. It is said that only ghosts live in peepul trees. I do not blame them, for peepul trees are cool and shady and full of loneliness.
I may stop loving you, Sushila, but I will never stop loving the days I loved you.
Listen to the Wind
March is probably the most uncomfortable month in the hills. The rain is cold, often accompanied by sleet and hail, and the wind from the north comes tearing down the mountain passes with tremendous force. Those few people who pass the winter in the hill station remain close to their fires. If they can’t afford fires, they get into bed.
I found old Miss Mackenzie tucked up in bed with three hot-water bottles for company. I took the bedroom’s single easy chair, and for some time Miss Mackenzie and I listened to the thunder and watched the play of lightning. The rain made a tremendous noise on the corrugated tin roof, and we had to raise our voices in order to be heard. The hills looked blurred and smudgy when seen through the rain-spattered windows. The wind battered at the doors and rushed round the cottage, determined to make an entry; it slipped down the chimney, but stuck there choking and gurgling and protesting helplessly.
‘There’s a ghost in your chimney and he can’t get out,’ I said.
‘Then let him stay there,’ said Miss Mackenzie.
A vivid flash of lightning lit up the opposite hill, showing me for a moment a pile of ruins which I never knew were there.
‘You’re looking at Burnt Hill,’ said Miss Mackenzie. ‘It always gets the lightning when there’s a storm.’
‘Possibly there are iron deposits in the rocks,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t know. But it’s the reason why no one ever lived there for long. Almost every dwelling that was put up was struck by lightning and burnt down.’
‘I thought I saw some ruins just now.’
‘Nothing but rubble. When they were first settling in the hills they chose that spot. Later they moved to the site where the town now stands. Burnt Hill was left to the deer and the leopards and the monkeys—and to its ghosts, of course …’
‘Oh, so it’s haunted, too.’
‘So they say. On evenings such as these. But you don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’
‘No. Do you?’
‘No. But you’ll understand why they say the hill is haunted when you hear its story. Listen.’
I listened, but at first I could hear nothing but the wind and the rain. Then Miss Mackenzie’s clear voice rose above the sound of the elements, and I heard her saying:
‘… it’s really the old story of ill-starred lovers, only it’s true. I’d met Robert at his parents’ house some weeks before the tragedy took place. He was eighteen, tall and fresh-looking, and full of manhood. He’d been born out here, but his parents were hoping to return to England when Robert’s father retired. His father was a magistrate, I think—but that hasn’t any bearing on the story.
‘Their plans didn’t work out the way they expected. You see, Robert fell in love. Not with an English girl, mind you, but with a hill girl, the daughter of a landholder from the village behind Burnt Hill. Even today it would be unconventional. Twenty-five years ago, it was almost unheard of! Robert liked walking, and he was hiking through the forest when he saw or rather heard her. It was said later that he fell in love with her voice. She was singing, and the song—low and sweet and strange to his ears—struck him to the heart. When he caught sight of the girl’s face, he was not disappointed. She was young and beautiful. She saw him and returned his awestruck gaze with a brief, fleeting smile.
‘Robert, in his impetuousness, made inquiries at the village, located the girl’s father, and without much ado asked for her hand in marriage. He probably thought that a sahib would not be refused such a request. At the same time, it was really quite gallant on his part, because any other young man might simply have ravished the girl in the forest. But Robert was in love and, therefore, completely irrational in his behaviour.
‘Of course, the girl’s father would have nothing to do with the proposal. He was a Brahmin, and he wasn’t going to have the good name of his family ruined by marrying off his only daughter to a foreigner. Robert did not argue with the father; nor did he say anything to his own parents, because he knew their reaction would be one of shock and dismay. They would do everything in their power to put an end to his madness.
‘But Robert continued to visit the forest—you see it there, that heavy patch of oak and pine—and he often came across the girl, for she would be gathering fodder or fuel. She did not seem to resent his attentions, and, as Robert knew something of the language, he was soon able to convey his feelings to her. The girl must at first have been rather alarmed, but the boy’s sincerity broke down her reserve. After all, she was young too—young enough to fall in love with a devoted swain, without thinking too much of his background. She knew her father would never agree to a marriage—and he knew his parents would prevent anything like that happening. So they planned to run away together. Romantic, isn’t it? But it did happen. Only they did not live happily ever after.’
‘Did their parents come after them?’
‘No. They had agreed to meet one night in the ruined building on Burnt Hill—the ruin you saw just now; it hasn’t changed much, except that there was a bit of roof to it then. They left their homes and made their way to the hill without any difficulty. After meeting, they planned to take the little path that followed the course of a stream until it reached the plains. After that—but who knows what they had planned, what dreams of the future they had conjured up? The storm broke soon after they’d reached the ruins. They took shelter under the dripping ceiling. It was a storm just like this one—a high wind and great torrents of rain and hail, and the lightning flitting about and crashing down almost every minute. They must have been soaked, huddled together in a corner of that crumbling building, when lightning struck. No one knows at what time it happened. But next morning their charred bodies were found on the worn yellow stones of the old building.’
Miss Mackenzie stopped speaking, and I noticed that the thunder had grown distant and the rain had lessened; but the chimney was still coughing and clearing its throat.
‘That is true, every word of it,’ said Miss Mackenzie. ‘But as to Burnt Hill being haunted, that’s another matter. I’ve no experience of ghosts.’
‘Anyway, you need a fire to keep them out of the chimney,’ I said, getting up to go. I had my raincoat and umbrella, and my own cottage was not far away.
Next morning, when I took the steep path up to Burnt Hill, the sky was clear, and though there was still a stiff wind, it was no longer menacing. An hour’s climb brought me to the old ruin—now nothing but a heap of stones, as Miss Mackenzie had said. Part of a wall was left, and the corner of a fireplace. Grass and weeds had grown up through the floor, and primroses and wild saxifrage flowered amongst the rubble.
Where had they sheltered, I wondered, as the wind tore at them and fire fell from the sky.
I touched the cold stones, half expecting to find in them some traces of the warmth of human contact. I listened, waiting for some ancient echo, some returning wave of sound, that would bring me nearer to the spirits of the dead lovers; but there was only the wind coughing in the lovely pines.
I thought I heard voices in the wind; and perhaps I did. For isn’t the wind the voice of the undying dead?
The Garlands on His Brow
Fame has but a fleeting hold
On the reins in our fast-paced society;
So many of yesterday’s heroes crumble.
Shortly after my return from England, I was walking down the main road of my old hometown of Dehra, gazing at the shops and passers-by to see what changes, if any, had taken place during my absence. I had been away three years. Still a boy when I went abroad, I was twenty-one when I returned with some mediocre qualifications to flaunt in the faces of my envious friends. (I did not tell them of the loneliness of those years in exile; it would not have impressed them.) I was nearing the clock tower when I met a beggar coming from the opposite direction. In one respect, Dehra had not changed. The beggars were as numerous as ever, though I must admit they looked healthier.
This beggar had a straggling beard, a hunch, a cavernous chest and unsteady legs on which a number of purple sores were festering. His shoulders looked as though they had once been powerful, and his hands thrusting a begging bowl at me, were still strong.
He did not seem sufficiently decrepit to deserve my charity, and I was turning away when I thought I discerned a gleam of recognition in his eyes. There was something slightly familiar about the man; perhaps he was a beggar who remembered me from earlier years. He was even attempting a smile; showing me a few broken yellow fangs; and to get away from him, I produced a coin, dropped it in his bowl and hurried away.
I had gone about a hundred yards when, with a rush of memory, I knew the identity of the beggar. He was the hero of my childhood, Hassan, the most magnificent wrestler in the entire district.
I turned and retraced my steps, half hoping I wouldn’t be able to catch up with the man and he had indeed got lost in the bazaar crowd. Well, I would doubtless be confronted by him again in a day or two … Leaving the road, I went into the municipal gardens and stretching myself out on the fresh green February grass, allowed my memory to journey back to the days when I was a boy of ten, full of health and optimism, when my wonder at the great game of living had yet to give way to disillusionment at its shabbiness.
On those precious days when I played truant from school—and I would have learnt more had I played truant more often—I would sometimes make my way to the akhara at the corner of the gardens to watch the wrestling pit. My chin cupped in my hands, I would lean against a railing and gaze in awe at the rippling muscles, applauding with the other watchers whenever one of the wrestlers made a particularly clever move or pinned an opponent down on his back.
Amongst these wrestlers the most impressive and engaging young man was Hassan, the son of a kite maker. He had a magnificent build, with great wide shoulders and powerful legs, and what he lacked in skill he made up for in sheer animal strength and vigour. The idol of all small boys, he was followed about by large numbers of us, and I was a particular favourite of his. He would offer to lift me on to his shoulders and carry me across the akhara to introduce me to his friends and fellow-wrestlers.
From being Dehra’s champion, Hassan soon became the outstanding representative of his art in the entire district. His technique improved, he began using his brain in addition to his brawn, and it was said by everyone that he had the makings of a national champion.
It was during a large fair towards the end of the rains that destiny took a hand in the shaping of his life. The Rani of ——was visiting the fair, and she stopped to watch the wrestling bouts. When she saw Hassan stripped and in the ring, she began to take more than a casual interest in him. It has been
said that she was a woman of a passionate and amoral nature, who could not be satisfied by her weak and ailing husband. She was struck by Hassan’s perfect manhood, and through an official offered him the post of her personal bodyguard.
The rani was rich and, in spite of having passed her fortieth summer, was a warm and attractive woman. Hassan did not find it difficult to make love according to the bidding, and on the whole he was happy in her service. True, he did not wrestle as often as in the past; but when he did enter a competition, his reputation and his physique combined to overawe his opponents, and they did not put up much resistance. One or two well-known wrestlers were invited to the district. The rani paid them liberally, and they permitted Hassan to throw them out of the ring. Life in the rani’s house was comfortable and easy, and Hassan, a simple man, felt himself secure. And it is to the credit of the rani (and also of Hassan) that she did not tire of him as quickly as she had of others.
But ranis, like washerwomen, are mortal; and when a long-standing and neglected disease at last took its toll, robbing her at once of all her beauty, she no longer struggled against it, but allowed it to poison and consume her once magnificent body. It would be wrong to say that Hassan was heartbroken when she died. He was not a deeply emotional or sensitive person. Though he could attract the sympathy of others, he had difficulty in producing any of his own. His was a kindly but not compassionate nature.
He had served the rani well, and what he was most aware of now was that he was without a job and without any money. The raja had his own personal amusements and did not want a wrestler who was beginning to sag a little about the waist.
Times had changed. Hassan’s father was dead, and there was no longer a living to be had from making kites; so Hassan returned to doing what he had always done: wrestling. But there was no money to be made at the akhara. It was only in the professional arena that a decent living could be made. And so, when a travelling circus of professionals—a Negro, a Russian, a Cockney-Chinese and a giant Sikh—came to town and offered a hundred rupees and a contract to the challenger who could stay five minutes in the ring with any one of them, Hassan took up the challenge.