by Ruskin Bond
Mr Oliver appeared to be a broken man. He went about his duties with a poker face, but we could all tell that he was grieving for his lost companion. In the classroom he was listless, indifferent to whether or not we followed his calculations on the blackboard. In times of personal loss, the Highest Common Factor made no sense.
Mr Oliver was not to be seen on his evening walk. He stayed in his room, playing cards with himself. He played with his food, pushing most of it aside; there were no chapattis to send home.
‘Olly needs another pet,’ said Bimal, wise in the ways of adults.
‘Or a wife,’ said Tata, who thought on those lines.
‘He’s too old. Over forty.’
‘A pet is best,’ I said. ‘What about a parrot?’
‘You can’t take a parrot for a walk,’ said Bimal. ‘Olly wants someone to walk beside him.’
‘A cat, maybe …’
‘Hitler hated cats. A cat would be an insult to Hitler’s memory.’
‘He needs another Dachshund. But there aren’t any around here.’
‘Any dog will do. We’ll ask Chippu to get us a pup.’
Chippu ran the tuck shop. He lived in the Chotta Simla bazaar, and occasionally we would ask him to bring us tops or marbles or comics or little things that we couldn’t get in school. Five of us Boy Scouts contributed a rupee each, and we gave Chippu five rupees and asked him to get us a pup. ‘A good breed,’ we told him. ‘Not a mongrel.’
The next evening Chippu turned up with a pup that seemed to be a combination of at least five different breeds—all good ones, no doubt. One ear lay flat, the other stood upright. It was spotted like a Dalmatian, but it had the legs of a Spaniel and the tail of a Pomeranian. It was quite fluffy and playful, and the tail wagged a lot, which was more than Hitler’s ever did.
‘It’s quite pretty,’ said Tata. ‘Must be a female.’
‘He may not want a female,’ said Bimal.
‘Let’s give it a try,’ I said.
During our play hour, before the bell rang for supper, we left the pup on the steps outside Mr Oliver’s front door. Then we knocked, and sped into the hibiscus bushes that lined the pathway.
Mr Oliver opened the door. He looked down at the pup with an expressionless face. The pup began to paw at Mr Oliver’s shoes, loosening one of his laces in the process.
‘Away with you!’ muttered Mr Oliver. ‘Buzz off!’ And he pushed the pup away, gently but firmly.
After a break of ten minutes we tried again, but the result was much the same. We now had a playful pup on our hands, and Chippu had gone home for the night. We would have to conceal it in the dormitory.
At first we hid it in Bimal’s locker, but it began yapping and struggling to get out. Tata took it into the shower room, but it wouldn’t stay there either. It began running around the dormitory, playing with socks, shoes, slippers and anything else it could get hold of.
‘Watch out!’ hissed one of the boys. ‘Here’s Ma Fisher!’
Mrs Fisher, the headmaster’s wife, was on her nightly rounds, checking to make sure we were all in bed and not up to some nocturnal mischief.
I grabbed the pup and hid it under my blankets. It was quiet there, happy to nibble at my toes. When Ma Fisher had gone, I let the pup loose again, and for the rest of the night it had the freedom of the dormitory.
At the crack of dawn, before first light, Bimal and I sped out of the dormitory in our pyjamas, taking the pup with us. We banged hard on Mr Oliver’s door, and kept knocking until we heard footsteps approaching. As soon as the door opened just a bit (for Mr Oliver, being a cautious man, did not open it all at once) we pushed the pup inside and ran for our lives.
Mr Oliver came to class as usual, but there was no pup with him. Three or four days passed, and still no sign of the pup! Had he passed it on to someone else, or simply let it wander off on its own?
‘Here comes Olly!’ called Bimal, from our vantage point near the school bell.
Mr Oliver was setting out for his evening walk. He was carrying a stout walnut-wood walking stick—to keep panthers at bay, no doubt. He looked neither left nor right, and if he noticed us watching him, he gave no sign of it. But then, scurrying behind him, came the pup! The creature of many good breeds was accompanying Mr Oliver on his walk. It had been well brushed and was wearing a bright red collar. Like Mr Oliver it took no notice of us, but scampered along beside its new master.
Mr Oliver and the pup were soon inseparable companions, and my friends and I were quite pleased with ourselves. Mr Oliver gave absolutely no indication that he knew where the pup had come from, but when the end-of-term exams were over, and Bimal and I were sure we had failed our maths paper, we were surprised to find that we had passed after all—with grace marks!
‘Good old Olly!’ said Bimal. ‘So he knew all the time.’
Tata, of course, did not need grace marks; he was a whiz at maths. But Bimal and I decided we would thank Mr Oliver for his kindness.
‘Nothing to thank me for,’ said Mr Oliver brusquely. ‘I’ve seen enough of you two in junior school. It’s high time you went up to the senior school—and God help you there!’
Susanna’s Seven Husbands
Locally the tomb was known as ‘the grave of the seven times married one’.
You’d be forgiven for thinking it was Bluebeard’s grave; he was reputed to have killed several wives in turn because they showed undue curiosity about a locked room. But this was the tomb of Susanna Anna-Maria Yeates, and the inscription (most of it in Latin) stated that she was mourned by all who had benefited from her generosity, her beneficiaries having included various schools, orphanages and the church across the road. There was no sign of any other grave in the vicinity and presumably her husbands had been interred in the old Rajpur graveyard, below the Delhi Ridge.
I was still in my teens when I first saw the ruins of what had once been a spacious and handsome mansion. Desolate and silent, its well-laid paths were overgrown with weeds, and its flower beds had disappeared under a growth of thorny jungle. The two-storeyed house had looked across the Grand Trunk Road. Now abandoned, feared and shunned, it stood encircled in mystery, reputedly the home of evil spirits.
Outside the gate, along the Grand Trunk Road, thousands of vehicles sped by—cars, trucks, buses, tractors, bullock carts—but few noticed the old mansion or its mausoleum, set back as they were from the main road, hidden by mango, neem and peepul trees. One old and massive peepul tree grew out of the ruins of the house, strangling it much as its owner was said to have strangled one of her dispensable paramours.
As a much-married person with a quaint habit of disposing of her husbands whenever she tired of them, Susanna’s malignant spirit was said to haunt the deserted garden. I had examined the tomb, I had gazed upon the ruins, I had scrambled through shrubbery and overgrown rose bushes, but I had not encountered the spirit of this mysterious woman. Perhaps, at the time, I was too pure and innocent to be targeted by malignant spirits. For malignant she must have been, if the stories about her were true.
The vaults of the ruined mansion were rumoured to contain a buried treasure—the amassed wealth of the lady Susanna. But no one dared go down there, for the vaults were said to be occupied by a family of cobras, traditional guardians of buried treasure. Had she really been a woman of great wealth, and could treasure still be buried there? I put these questions to Naushad, the furniture maker, who had lived in the vicinity all his life, and whose father had made the furniture and fittings for this and other great houses in Old Delhi.
‘Lady Susanna, as she was known, was much sought after for her wealth,’ recalled Naushad. ‘She was no miser, either. She spent freely, reigning in state in her palatial home, with many horses and carriages at her disposal. Every evening she rode through the Roshanara Gardens, the cynosure of all eyes, for she was beautiful as well as wealthy. Yes, all men sought her favours, and she could choose from the best of them. Many were fortune hunters. She did not discourage them. S
ome found favour for a time, but she soon tired of them. None of her husbands enjoyed her wealth for very long!
‘Today no one enters those ruins, where once there was mirth and laughter. She was a zamindari lady, the owner of much land, and she administered her estate with a strong hand. She was kind if rents were paid when they fell due, but terrible if someone failed to pay.
‘Well, over fifty years have gone by since she was laid to rest, but still men speak of her with awe. Her spirit is restless, and it is said that she often visits the scenes of her former splendour. She has been seen walking through this gate, or riding in the gardens, or driving in her phaeton down the Rajpur road.’
‘And what happened to all those husbands?’ I asked.
‘Most of them died mysterious deaths. Even the doctors were baffled. Tomkins Sahib drank too much. The lady soon tired of him. A drunken husband is a burdensome creature, she was heard to say. He would eventually have drunk himself to death, but she was an impatient woman and was anxious to replace him. You see those datura bushes growing wild in the grounds? They have always done well here.’
‘Belladonna?’ I suggested.
‘That’s right, huzoor. Introduced in the whisky-soda, it put him to sleep forever.’
‘She was quite humane in her way.’
‘Oh, very humane, sir. She hated to see anyone suffer. One sahib, I don’t know his name, drowned in the tank behind the house, where the water lilies grew. But she made sure he was half-dead before he fell in. She had large, powerful hands, they said.’
‘Why did she bother to marry them? Couldn’t she just have had men friends?’
‘Not in those days, huzoor. Respectable society would not have tolerated it. Neither in India nor in the West would it have been permitted.’
‘She was born out of her time,’ I remarked.
‘True, sir. And remember, most of them were fortune hunters. So we need not waste too much pity on them.’
‘She did not waste any.’
‘She was without pity. Especially when she found out what they were really after. Snakes had a better chance of survival.’
‘How did the other husbands take their leave of this world?’
‘Well, the Colonel Sahib shot himself while cleaning his rifle. Purely an accident, huzoor. Although some say she had loaded his gun without his knowledge. Such was her reputation by now that she was suspected even when innocent. But she bought her way out of trouble. It was easy enough, if you were wealthy.’
‘And the fourth husband?’
‘Oh, he died a natural death. There was a cholera epidemic that year, and he was carried off by the haija. Although, again, there were some who said that a good dose of arsenic produced the same symptoms! Anyway, it was cholera on the death certificate. And the doctor who signed it was the next to marry her.’
‘Being a doctor, he was probably quite careful about what he ate and drank.’
‘He lasted about a year.’
‘What happened?’
‘He was bitten by a cobra.’
‘Well, that was just bad luck, wasn’t it? You could hardly blame it on Susanna.’
‘No, huzoor, but the cobra was in his bedroom. It was coiled around the bedpost. And when he undressed for the night, it struck! He was dead when Susanna came into the room an hour later. She had a way with snakes. She did not harm them and they never attacked her.’
‘And there were no antidotes in those days. Exit the doctor. Who was the sixth husband?’
‘A handsome man. An indigo planter. He had gone bankrupt when the indigo trade came to an end. He was hoping to recover his fortune with the good lady’s help. But our Susanna mem, she did not believe in sharing her fortune with anyone.’
‘How did she remove the indigo planter?’
‘It was said that she lavished strong drink upon him, and when he lay helpless, she assisted him on the road we all have to take by pouring molten lead in his ears.’
‘A painless death, I’m told.’
‘But a terrible price to pay, huzoor, simply because one is no longer needed …’
We walked along the dusty highway, enjoying the evening breeze, and some time later we entered the Roshanara Gardens, in those days Delhi’s most popular and fashionable meeting place.
‘You have told me how six of her husbands died, Naushad. I thought there were seven?’
‘Ah, the seventh was a gallant young magistrate who perished right here, huzoor. They were driving through the park after dark when the lady’s carriage was attacked by brigands. In defending her, the young man received a fatal sword wound.’
‘Not the lady’s fault, Naushad.’
‘No, huzoor. But he was a magistrate, remember, and the assailants, one of whose relatives had been convicted by him, were out for revenge. Oddly enough, though, two of the men were given employment by the lady Susanna at a later date. You may draw your own conclusions.’
‘And were there others?’
‘Not husbands. But an adventurer, a soldier of fortune came along. He found her treasure, they say. And he lies buried with it, in the cellars of the ruined house. His bones lie scattered there, among gold and silver and precious jewels. The cobras guard them still! But how he perished was a mystery, and remains so till this day.’
‘And Susanna? What happened to her?’
‘She lived to a ripe old age. If she paid for her crimes, it wasn’t in this life! She had no children, but she started an orphanage and gave generously to the poor and to various schools and institutions, including a home for widows. She died peacefully in her sleep.’
‘A merry widow,’ I remarked. ‘The Black Widow spider!’
Don’t go looking for Susanna’s tomb. It vanished some years ago, along with the ruins of her mansion. A smart new housing estate has come up on the site, but not before several workmen and a contractor succumbed to snake bite! Occasionally, residents complain of a malignant ghost in their midst, who is given to flagging down cars, especially those driven by single men. There have also been one or two mysterious disappearances.
And after dusk, an old-fashioned horse and carriage can sometimes be seen driving through the Roshanara Gardens. If you chance upon it, ignore it, my friend. Don’t stop to answer any questions from the beautiful fair lady who smiles at you from behind lace curtains. She’s still looking for her final victim.
What’s Your Dream?
An old man, a beggar man bent double, with a flowing white beard and piercing grey eyes, stopped on the road on the other side of the garden wall and looked up at me, where I perched on the branch of a litchi tree.
‘What’s your dream?’ he asked.
It was a startling question coming from that raggedy old man on the street. Even more startling that it should have been made in English. English-speaking beggars were a rarity in those days.
‘What’s your dream?’ he repeated.
‘I don’t remember,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I had a dream last night.’
‘That’s not what I mean. You know it isn’t what I mean. I can see you’re a dreamer. It’s not the litchi season, but you sit in that tree all afternoon, dreaming.’
‘I just like sitting here,’ I said. I refused to admit that I was a dreamer. Other boys didn’t dream, they had catapults.
‘A dream, my boy, is what you want most in life. Isn’t there something that you want more than anything else?’
‘Yes,’ I said promptly. ‘A room of my own.’
‘Ah! A room of your own, a tree of your own, it’s the same thing. Not many people can have their own rooms, you know. Not in a land as crowded as ours.’
‘Just a small room.’
‘And what kind of room do you live in at present?’
‘It’s a big room, but I have to share it with my brothers and sisters and even my aunt when she visits.’
‘I see. What you really want is freedom. Your own tree, your own room, your own small place in the sun.’
‘Yes,
that’s all.’
‘That’s all? That’s everything! When you have all that, you’ll have found your dream.’
‘Tell me how to find it!’
‘There’s no magic formula, my friend. If I was a godman, would I be wasting my time here with you? You must work for your dream and move towards it all the time, and discard all those things that come in the way of finding it. And then, if you don’t expect too much too quickly, you’ll find your freedom, a room of your own. The difficult time comes afterwards.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘Yes, because it’s so easy to lose it all, to let someone take it away from you. Or you become greedy, or careless, and start taking everything for granted, and—poof!—suddenly the dream has gone, vanished!’
‘How do you know all this?’ I asked.
‘Because I had my dream and lost it.’
‘Did you lose everything?’
‘Yes, just look at me now, my friend. Do I look like a king or a godman? I had everything I wanted, but then I wanted more and more … You get your room, and then you want a building, and when you have your building you want your own territory, and when you have your own territory you want your own kingdom—and all the time it’s getting harder to keep everything. And when you lose it—in the end, all kingdoms are lost—you don’t even have your room any more.’
‘Did you have a kingdom?’
‘Something like that … Follow your own dream, boy, but don’t take other people’s dreams, don’t stand in anyone’s way, don’t take from another man his room or his faith or his song.’ And he turned and shuffled away, intoning the following verse which I have never heard elsewhere, so it must have been his own—
Live long, my friend, be wise and strong,
But do not take from any man his song.
I remained in the litchi tree, pondering his wisdom and wondering how a man so wise could be so poor. Perhaps he became wise afterwards. Anyway, he was free, and I was free, and I went back to the house and demanded (and got) a room of my own. Freedom, I was beginning to realize is something you have to insist upon.