by Ruskin Bond
Strangely, the wind had dropped. The trees were still, not a leaf moved. The crickets were silent in the grass. The crows flew round in circles, then settled down for the night in an oak tree.
‘I must get home before dark,’ said Usha to herself, as she hurried along the path. But already the sky was darkening. The clouds, black and threatening, loomed over Haunted Hill. This was March, the month of storms.
A deep rumble echoed through the hills, and Usha felt the first heavy drop of rain hit her cheek.
She had no umbrella with her; the weather had seemed so fine just a few hours ago. Now all she could do was tie an old scarf over her head, and pull her shawl tightly across her shoulders. Holding the shopping bag close to her body, she quickened her pace. She was almost running. But the raindrops were coming down faster now. Big, heavy pellets of rain.
A sudden flash of lightning lit up the hill. The ruins stood out in clear outline. Then all was dark again. Night had fallen.
‘I won’t get home before the storm breaks,’ thought Usha. ‘I’ll have to shelter in the ruins.’ She could only see a few feet ahead, but she knew the path well and she began to run.
Suddenly, the wind sprang up again and brought the rain with a rush against her face. It was cold, stinging rain. She could hardly keep her eyes open.
The wind grew in force. It hummed and whistled. Usha did not have to fight against it. It was behind her now, and helped her along, up the steep path and on to the brow of the hill.
There was another flash of lightning, followed by a peal of thunder. The ruins loomed up before her, grim and forbidding.
She knew there was a corner where a piece of old roof remained. It would give some shelter. It would be better than trying to go on. In the dark, in the howling wind, she had only to stray off the path to go over a rocky cliff edge.
Who—whoo—whooo, howled the wind. She saw the wild plum tree swaying, bent double, its foliage thrashing against the ground. The broken walls did little to stop the wind.
Usha found her way into the ruined building, helped by her memory of the place and the constant flicker of lightning. She began moving along the wall, hoping to reach the sheltered corner. She placed her hands flat against the stones and moved sideways. Her hand touched something soft and furry. She gave a startled cry and took her hand away. Her cry was answered by another cry—half snarl, half screech—and something leapt away in the darkness.
It was only a wild cat. Usha realized this when she heard it. The cat lived in the ruins, and she had often seen it. But for a moment she had been very frightened. Now, she moved quickly along the wall until she heard the rain drumming on the remnant of the tin roof.
Once under it, crouching in the corner, she found some shelter from the wind and the rain. Above her, the tin sheets groaned and clattered, as if they would sail away at any moment. But they were held down by the solid branch of a straggling old oak tree.
Usha remembered that across this empty room stood an old fireplace, and that there might be some shelter under the blocked-up chimney. Perhaps it would be drier than it was in her corner; but she would not attempt to find it just now. She might lose her way altogether.
Her clothes were soaked and the water streamed down from her long black hair to form a puddle at her feet. She stamped her feet to keep them warm. She thought she heard a faint cry—was it the cat again or an owl?—but the sound of the storm blotted out all other sounds.
There had been no time to think of ghosts, but now that she was in one place, without any plans for venturing out again, she remembered Grandfather’s story about the lightning-blasted ruins. She hoped and prayed that lightning would not strike her as she sheltered there.
Thunder boomed over the hills, and the lightning came quicker now, only a few seconds between each burst of lightning.
Then there was a bigger flash than most, and for a second or two the entire ruin was lit up. A streak of blue sizzled along the floor of the building, in at one end and out at the other. Usha was staring straight ahead. As the opposite wall lit up, she saw, crouching in the disused fireplace, two small figures—they could only have been children!
The ghostly figures looked up, staring back at Usha. And then everything was dark again.
Usha’s heart was in her mouth. She had seen, without a shadow of a doubt, two ghostly creatures at the other side of the room, and she wasn’t going to remain in that ruined building a minute longer.
She ran out of her corner, ran towards the big gap in the wall through which she had entered. She was halfway across the open space when something—someone—fell against her. She stumbled, got up and again bumped into something. She gave a frightened scream. Someone else screamed. And then there was a shout, a boy’s shout, and Usha instantly recognized the voice.
‘Suresh!’
‘Usha!’
‘Binya!’
‘It’s me!’
‘It’s us!’
They fell into each other’s arms, so surprised and relieved that all they could do was laugh and giggle and repeat each other’s names.
Then Usha said, ‘I thought you were ghosts.’
‘We thought you were a ghost!’ said Suresh.
‘Come back under the roof,’ said Usha.
They huddled together in the corner chattering excitedly.
‘When it grew dark, we came looking for you,’ said Binya. ‘And then the storm broke.’
‘Shall we run back together?’ asked Usha. ‘I don’t want to stay here any longer.’
‘We’ll have to wait,’ said Binya. ‘The path has fallen away at one place. It won’t be safe in the dark, in all this rain.’
‘Then we may have to wait till morning,’ said Suresh. ‘And I’m feeling hungry!’
The wind and rain continued, and so did the thunder and lightning, but they were not afraid now. They gave each other warmth and confidence. Even the ruins did not seem so forbidding.
After an hour the rain stopped, and although the wind continued to blow, it was now taking the clouds away, so that the thunder grew more distant. Then the wind too moved on, and all was silent.
Towards dawn the whistling thrush began to sing. Its sweet broken notes flooded the rainwashed ruins with music.
‘Let’s go,’ said Usha.
‘Come on,’ said Suresh. ‘I’m hungry.’
As it grew lighter, they saw that the plum tree stood upright again, although it had lost all its blossoms.
They stood outside the ruins, on the brow of the hill, watching the sky grow pink. A light breeze had sprung up.
When they were some distance from the ruins, Usha looked back and said, ‘Can you see something there, behind the wall? It’s like a hand waving.’
‘I can’t see anything,’ said Suresh.
‘It’s just the top of the plum tree,’ said Binya.
They were on the path leading across the saddle of the hill.
‘Goodbye, goodbye …’
Voices in the wind.
‘Who said goodbye?’ asked Usha.
‘Not I,’ said Suresh.
‘Not I,’ said Binya.
‘I heard someone calling.’
‘It’s only the wind.’
Usha looked back at the ruins. The sun had come up and was touching the top of the walls. The leaves of the plum tree shone. The thrush sat there, singing.
‘Come on,’ said Suresh. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye …’
Usha heard them calling. Or was it just the wind?
From Small Beginnings
And the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die.
—Rudyard Kipling
On the first clear September day, towards the end of the rains, I visited
the pine knoll, my place of peace and power.
It was months since I’d last been there. Trips to the plains, a crisis in my affairs, involvements with other people and their troubles, and an entire monsoon had come between me and the grassy, pine-topped slope facing the Hill of Fairies (Pari Tibba to the locals). Now I tramped through late monsoon foliage—tall ferns, bushes festooned with flowering convolvulus—and crossed the stream by way of its little bridge of stones before climbing the steep hill to the pine slope.
When the trees saw me, they made as if to turn in my direction. A puff of wind came across the valley from the distant snows. A long-tailed blue magpie took alarm and flew noisily out of an oak tree. The cicadas were suddenly silent. But the trees remembered me. They bowed gently in the breeze and beckoned me nearer, welcoming me home. Three pines, a straggling oak and a wild cherry. I went among them and acknowledged their welcome with a touch of my hand against their trunks—the cherry’s smooth and polished; the pine’s patterned and whorled; the oak’s rough, gnarled, full of experience. He’d been there longest, and the wind had bent his upper branches and twisted a few, so that he looked shaggy and undistinguished. But like the philosopher who is careless about his dress and appearance, the oak has secrets, a hidden wisdom. He has learnt the art of survival!
While the oak and the pines are older than me and have been here many years, the cherry tree is exactly seven years old. I know, because I planted it.
One day I had this cherry seed in my hand, and on an impulse I thrust it into the soft earth, and then went away and forgot all about it. A few months later I found a tiny cherry tree in the long grass. I did not expect it to survive. But the following year it was two feet tall. And then some goats ate its leaves and a grass cutter’s scythe injured the stem, and I was sure it would wither away. But it renewed itself, sprang up even faster, and within three years it was a healthy, growing tree, about five feet tall.
I left the hills for two years—forced by circumstances to make a living in Delhi—but this time I did not forget the cherry tree. I thought about it fairly often, sent telepathic messages of encouragement in its direction. And when, a couple of years ago, I returned in the autumn, my heart did a somersault when I found my tree sprinkled with pale pink blossom. (The Himalayan cherry flowers in November.) And later, when the fruit was ripe, the tree was visited by finches, tits, bulbuls and other small birds, all come to feast on the sour, red cherries.
Last summer I spent a night on the pine knoll, sleeping on the grass beneath the cherry tree. I lay awake for hours, listening to the chatter of the stream and the occasional tonk-tonk of nightjars, and watching through the branches overhead, the stars turning in the sky. And I felt the power of the sky and the earth, and the power of a small cherry seed …
And so when the rains are over, this is where I come, that I might feel the peace and power of this place.
This is where I will write my stories. I can see everything from here—my cottage across the valley; behind and above me, the town and the bazaar, straddling the ridge; to the left, the high mountains and the twisting road to the source of the great river; below me, the little stream and the path to the village; ahead, the Hill of Fairies and the fields beyond; the wide valley below, and another range of hills and then the distant plains. I can even see Prem Singh in the garden, putting the mattresses out in the sun.
From here he is just a speck on the far hill, but I know it is Prem by the way he stands. A man may have a hundred disguises, but in the end it is his posture that gives him away. Like my grandfather, who was a master of disguise and successfully roamed the bazaars as fruit vendor or basket maker. But we could always recognize him because of his pronounced slouch.
Prem Singh doesn’t slouch, but he has this habit of looking up at the sky (regardless of whether it’s cloudy or clear), and at the moment he’s looking at the sky.
Eight years with Prem. He was just a sixteen-year-old boy when I first saw him, and now he has a wife and child.
I had been in the cottage for just over a year … He stood on the landing outside the kitchen door. A tall boy, dark, with good teeth and brown, deep-set eyes, dressed smartly in white drill—his only change of clothes. Looking for a job. I liked the look of him, but—
‘I already have someone working for me,’ I said.
‘Yes, sir. He is my uncle.’
In the hills, everyone is a brother or an uncle.
‘You don’t want me to dismiss your uncle?’
‘No, sir. But he says you can find a job for me.’
‘I’ll try. I’ll make inquiries. Have you just come from your village?’
‘Yes. Yesterday I walked ten miles to Pauri. There I got a bus.’
‘Sit down. Your uncle will make some tea.’
He sat down on the steps, removed his white keds, wriggled his toes. His feet were both long and broad, large feet but not ugly. He was unusually clean for a hill boy. And taller than most.
‘Do you smoke?’ I asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘It is true,’ said his uncle. ‘He does not smoke. All my nephews smoke but this one. He is a little peculiar, he does not smoke—neither beedi nor hookah.’
‘Do you drink?’
‘It makes me vomit.’
‘Do you take bhang?’
‘No, sahib.’
‘You have no vices. It’s unnatural.’
‘He is unnatural, sahib,’ said his uncle.
‘Does he chase girls?’
‘They chase him, sahib.’
‘So he left the village and came looking for a job.’ I looked at him. He grinned, then looked away and began rubbing his feet.
‘Your name is …?’
‘Prem Singh.’
‘All right, Prem, I will try to do something for you.’
I did not see him for a couple of weeks. I forgot about finding him a job. But when I met him again, on the road to the bazaar, he told me that he had got a temporary job in the Survey, looking after the surveyor’s tents.
‘Next week we will be going to Rajasthan,’ he said.
‘It will be very hot. Have you been in the desert before?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It is not like the hills. And it is far from home.’
‘I know. But I have no choice in the matter. I have to collect some money in order to get married.’
In his region there was a bride price, usually of two thousand rupees.
‘Do you have to get married so soon?’
‘I have only one brother and he is still very young. My mother is not well. She needs a daughter-in-law to help her in the fields and the house, and with the cows. We are a small family, so the work is greater.’
Every family has its few terraced fields, narrow and stony, usually perched on a hillside above a stream or river. They grow rice, barley, maize, potatoes—just enough to live on. Even if their produce is sufficient for marketing, the absence of roads makes it difficult to get the produce to the market towns. There is no money to be earned in the villages, and money is needed for clothes, soap, medicines, and for recovering the family jewellery from the moneylenders. So the young men leave their villages to find work, and to find work they must go to the plains. The lucky ones get into the army. Others enter domestic service or take jobs in garages, hotels, wayside tea shops, schools …
In Mussoorie the main attraction is the large number of schools which employ cooks and bearers. But the schools were full when Prem arrived. He’d been to the recruiting centre at Roorkee, hoping to get into the army; but they found a deformity in his right foot, the result of a bone broken when a landslip carried him away one dark monsoon night. He was lucky, he said, that it was only his foot and not his head that had been broken.
He came to the house to inform his uncle about the job and to say goodbye. I thought, another nice person I probably won’t see again; another ship passing in the night, the friendly twinkle of its lights soon vanishing in the darkness. I said ‘C
ome again’, held his smile with mine so that I could remember him better, and returned to my study and my typewriter. The typewriter is the repository of a writer’s loneliness. It stares unsympathetically back at him every day, doing its best to be discouraging. Maybe I’ll go back to the old-fashioned quill pen and marble inkstand; then I can feel like a real writer—Balzac or Dickens—scratching away into the endless reaches of the night … Of course, the days and nights are seemingly shorter than they need to be! They must be, otherwise why do we hurry so much and achieve so little, by the standards of the past …
Prem goes, disappears into the vast faceless cities of the plains, and a year slips by, or rather I do, and then here he is again, thinner and darker and still smiling and still looking for a job. I should have known that hill men don’t disappear altogether. The spirit-haunted rocks don’t let their people wander too far, lest they lose them forever.
I was able to get him a job in the school. The headmaster’s wife needed a cook. I wasn’t sure if Prem could cook very well but I sent him along and they said they’d give him a trial. Three days later the headmaster’s wife met me on the road and started gushing all over me. She was the type who gushed.
‘We’re so grateful to you! Thank you for sending me that lovely boy. He’s so polite. And he cooks very well. A little too hot for my husband, but otherwise delicious—just delicious! He’s a real treasure—a lovely boy.’ And she gave me an arch look—the famous look which she used to captivate all the good-looking young prefects who became prefects, it was said, only if she approved of them.
I wasn’t sure that she didn’t want something more than a cook, and I only hoped that Prem would give every satisfaction.
He looked cheerful enough when he came to see me on his off-day.
‘How are you getting on?’ I asked.
‘Lovely,’ he said, using his mistress’s favourite expression.
‘What do you mean—lovely? Do they like your work?’
‘The memsahib likes it. She strokes me on the cheek whenever she enters the kitchen. The sahib says nothing. He takes medicine after every meal.’