The Ruskin Bond Mini Bus

by Ruskin Bond

  At the dark windy corner in the bazaar one always found an old man bent over his charcoal fire, roasting peanuts. He was probably quite tall, but I never saw him standing up. One judged his height from his long, loose' limbs. He was very thin, probably tubercular, and the high cheekbones added to the tautness of his tightly stretched skin.

  His peanuts were always fresh, crisp and hot. They were popular with small boys who had a few coins to spend on their way to and from school.

  No one seemed to know the old man's name. One just took his presence for granted. He was as fixed a landmark as the clock tower or the old cherry tree that grew crookedly from the hillside. He seemed less perishable than the tree, more dependable than the clock. He had no family, but in a way all the world was his family because he was in continuous contact with people. And yet he was a remote sort of being; always polite, even to children, but never familiar. He was seldom alone, but he must have been lonely.

  Summer nights he rolled himself up in a thin blanket and slept on the ground beside the dying embers of his fire. During winter he waited until the last cinema show was over before retiring to the rickshaw coolies' shelter where there was protection from the freezing wind.

  He died last summer.

  That corner remained very empty, very dark, and every time I passed it, I was haunted by visions of the old peanut vendor, troubled by the questions I did not ask; and I wondered if he was really as indifferent to life as he appeared to be.

  Then, a few weeks ago, there was a new occupant of the corner, a new seller of peanuts. No relative of the old man, but a boy of 13 or 14. The human personality can impose its own nature on its surroundings. In the old man's time it seemed a dark, gloomy corner. Now it's lit up by sunshine— a sunny personality, smiling, chattering. Old age gives way to youth; and I'm glad I won't be alive when the new peanut vendor grows old. One shouldn't see too many people grow old.

  Leaving the main bazaar behind, I walk some way down the Mussoorie-Tehri road, a fine road to walk on, in spite of the dust from an occasional bus or jeep. From Mussoorie to Chamba, a distance of some 35 miles, the road seldom descends below 7,000 ft. and there is a continual vista of the snow range to the north and valleys and rivers to the south. Dhanaulti is one of the lovelier spots, and the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam has a rest house here, where one can spend an idyllic weekend.

  Leaving the Tehri Road, one can also trek down to the little Aglar river and then up to Nag Tibba, 9,000 ft., which has an oak forest and animals ranging from the barking-deer to the Himalayan bear; but this is an arduous trek and you must be prepared to spend the night in the open.

  On this particular day I reach Suakholi, and rest in a teashop, a loose stone structure with a tin-roof held down by stones. It serves the bus passengers, mule drivers, milkmen and others who use this road.

  I find a couple of mules tethered to a pine tree. The mule drivers, handsome men in tattered clothes, sit on a bench in the shade of the tree, drinking tea from brass tumblers. The shopkeeper, a man of indeterminate age—the cold dry winds from the mountain passes having crinkled his face like a walnut—greets me enthusiastically. He even produces a chair, which looks a survivor from one of Wilson's rest houses and may even be a Sheration. Fortunately, the Mussoorie kabaris do not know about it or they'd have snapped it up long ago. In any case the stuffing has come out of the seat. The shopkeeper apologises for its condition: "The rats were nesting in it." And then, to reassure me: "But they have gone now."

  I would just as soon be on the bench with the Jaunpuri mule-drivers, but I do not wish to offend Mela Ram, the teashop owner; so I take his chair.

  "How long have you kept this shop?"

  "Oh, 10–15 years, I do not remember."

  He hasn't bothered to count the years. Why should he, outside the towns in the isolation of the hills, life is simply a matter of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

  Unlike Mela Ram, the mule drivers have somewhere to go and something to deliver: sacks of potatoes! From Jaunpur to Jaunsar, the potato is probably the crop best suited to these stony, terraced fields. They have to deliver their potatoes in Landour Bazaar and return to their village before nightfall; and soon they lead their pack animals away, along the dusty road to Mussoorie.

  "Tea or lassi?" Mela Ram offers me a choice, and I choose the curd preparation, which is sharp and sour and very refreshing. The wind sighs gently in the upper branches of the pine trees, and I relax in my Sheration chair like some eighteenth-century nawab who has brought his own furniture into the wilderness.

  Having wandered some way down the Tehri road, it is quite late by the time I return to the Landour Bazaar. Lights still twinkle on the hills, but shop fronts are shuttered and the little bazaar is silent. The people living on either side of the narrow street can hear my footsteps, and I hear their casual remarks, music, a burst of laughter.

  Through a gap in the rows of buildings, I can see Pari Tibba outlined in the moonlight. A greenish phosphorescent glow appears to move here and there about the hillside. This is the "fairy light" that gives the hill its name Pari Tibba, Fairy Hill. I have no explanation for it, and I don't know anyone else who has been able to explain it satisfactorily; but often from my window I see this greenish light zigzagging about the hill.

  A three-quarter moon is up, and the tin roofs of the bazaar, drenched with drew, glisten in the moonlight. Although the street is unlit, I need no torch. I can see every step of the way. I can even read the headlines on the discarded newspaper lying in the gutter.

  Although I am alone on the road, 1 am aware of the life pulsating around me. It is a cold night, doors and windows are shut; but through the many chinks, narrow fingers of light reach out into the night. Who could still be up? A shopkeeper going through his accounts, a college student preparing for his exams, someone coughing and groaning in die dark.

  A jackal slinks across the road, looking right and left he knows his road-drill to make sure the dogs have gone; A field rat wriggles through a hole in a rotting plank on its nightly foray among sacks of grain and pulses.

  Yes, this is an old bazaar. The bakers, tailors, silversmith and wholesale merchants are the grandsons of those who followed the mad sahibs to this hilltop in the 30s and 40s of the last century. Most of them are plainsmen, quite prosperous even though many of their houses are crooked and shaky.

  Although the shopkeepers and tradesmen are fairly prosperous, the hill people, those who come from the surrounding Tehri and Jaunpur villages, are usually poor. Their small holdings and rocky fields do not provide them with much of a living, and men and boys have often to come into the hill station or go down to the cities in search of a livelihood. They pull rickshaws or work in hotels and restaurants. Most of them have somewhere to stay.

  But as I pass along the deserted street, under the shadow of the clock tower, I find a boy huddled in a recess, a thin shawl wrapped around his shoulders. He is wide awake and shivering.

  I pass by, my head down, my thoughts already on the warmth of my small cottage only a mile away. And then I stop. It is almost as though the bright moonlight has stopped me, holding my shadow in thrall.

  'If I am not for myself

  who will be for me?

  And if I am not for others,

  what am I?

  And if not now, when ?'

  The words of an ancient sage beat upon my mind. 1 walk back to the shadows where the boy crouches. He does not say anything, but he looks up at me, puzzled and apprehensive. All the warnings of well-wishers crowd in upon me—stories of crime by night, of assault and robber, "ill met by moonlight."

  But this is not Northern Ireland or the Lebanon or the streets of New York. This is Landour in the Garhwal Himalayas. And the boy is no criminal. I can tell from his features that he comes from the hills beyond Tehri. He has come here looking for work and he has yet to find any.

  "Have you somewhere to stay?" I asked.

  He shakes his head; but something about my tone of voice has given him
confidence, because there is a glimmer of hope, a friendly appeal in his eyes.

  I have committed myself. I cannot pass on. A shelter for the night—that's the very least one human should be able to expect from another.

  "If you can walk some way," I offer, "I can give you a bed and blanket."

  He gets up immediately, a thin boy, wearing only a shirt and part of an old track-suit. He follows me without any hesitation. I cannot now betray his trust. Nor can I fail to trust him.

  The Old Lama

  meet him on the road every morning, on my walk up to the Landour post office. He is a lean old man in a long maroon robe, a Tibetan monk of uncertain age. I'm told he's about 85. But age is really immaterial in the mountains. Some grow old at their mother's breasts, and there are others who do not age at all.

  If you are like this old Lama, you go on forever. For he is a walking man, and there is no way you can stop him from walking.

  Kim's Lama, rejuvenated by the mountain air, strode along with "steady, driving strokes," leaving his disciple far behind. My Lama, older and feebler than Kim's, walks very slowly, with the aid of an old walnut walking-stick. The ferrule keeps coming off the end of the stick, but he puts it back with coal-tar left behind by the road repairers.

  He plods and shuffles along. In fact, he is very like the tortoise in the story of the hare and the tortoise. I see him walking past my window, and five minutes later when I start out on the same road, I feel sure of overtaking him half way up the hill. But invariably I find him standing near the post-office when I get there.

  He smiles when he sees me. We are always smiling at each other. His English is limited, and I have absolutely no Tibetan. He has a few words of Hindi, enough to make his needs known, but that is about all. He is quite happy to converse silently with all the creatures and people who take notice of him on the road.

  It is the same walk he takes every morning. At nine o'clock, if I look out of my window, I can see a line of Tibetan prayer-flags fluttering over an old building in the cantonment. He emerges from beneath the flags and starts up the steep road. Ten minutes later he is below my window, and sometimes he stops to sit and rest on my steps, or on a parapet further along the road. Sooner or later, coming or going, I shall pass him on the road or up near the post-office. His eyes will twinkle behind thick-lensed glasses, and he will raise his walking-stick slightly in salutation. If I say something to him, he just smiles and nods vigorously in agreement.

  An agreeable man. He was one of those who came to India in 1959, fleeing the Chinese occupation of Tibet. His Holiness the Dalai Lama found sanctuary in India, and lived in Mussoorie for a couple of years; many of his followers settled here. A new generation of Tibetans has grown up in the hill-station, and those under 30 years have never seen their homeland. But for almost all of them—and there are several thousand in this district alone—Tibet is their country, their real home, and they are quick to express their determination to go back when their land is free again.

  Even a 20-year-old girl like Tseten, who has grown up knowing English and Hindi, speaks of the day when she will return to Tibet with her parents. She has given me a painting of Milarepa, the Buddhist monk-philosopher, meditating beneath a fruit-laden peach tree, the eternal snows in the background. This is, perhaps, her vision of the Tibet she would like to see, some day. Meanwhile, she works as a typist in the office of the Tibetan Homes Foundation.

  My old Lama will, I am sure, be among the first to return, even if he has to walk all the way, over the mountain passes. Maybe, that's why he plods up and around this hill every day. He is practising for the long walk back to Tibet. Here he is again, pausing at the foot of my steps. It's a cool, breezy morning, and he does not feel the need to sit down.

  "Tashi-tilay!" (Good day!) I greet him, in the only Tibetan I know.

  "Tashi-tilay!" he responds, beaming with delight.

  "Will you go back to Tibet one day?" I ask him for the first time.

  In spite of his limited Hindi, he understands me immediately, and nods vigorously.

  "Soon, soon!" he exclaims, and raises his walking stick to emphasise his words.

  Yes, if the Tibetans are able to return to their country, he will be among the first to go back. His heart is still on that high plateau. And like the tortoise, he will be there waiting for the young hare to catch up with him.

  If he goes, I shall certainly miss him on my walks.

  Visitors from the Forest

  hen mist fills the Himalayan valleys, and heavy monsoon rain sweeps across the hills, it is natural for wild creatures to seek shelter. And sometimes my cottage in the forest is the most convenient refuge.

  There is no doubt I make things easier for all concerned by leaving most of my windows open. I like plenty of fresh air indoors, and if a few birds, beasts and insects come in too, they're welcome, provided they don't make too much of a nuisance of themselves.

  I must confess, I did lose patience with a bamboo beetle who blundered in the other night and fell into the water jug. I rescued him and pushed him out of the window. A few seconds later he came whirring in again, and with unerring accuracy landed with a plop in the same jug. I fished him out once more and offered him the freedom of the night. But attracted no doubt by the light and warmth of my small sitting-room, he came buzzing back, circling the room like a helicopter looking for a place to land. Quickly I covered the water jug. He landed in a bowl of wild dahlias, and I allowed him to remain there, comfortably curled up in the hollow of a flower.

  Sometimes during the day a bird visits me—a deep blue whistling thrush, hopping about on long, dainty legs, too nervous to sing. She perches on the window-sill, looking out at the rain. She does not permit any familiarity. But if I sit quietly in my chair she will sit quietly on my window sill, glancing quickly at me now and then to make sure I am keeping my distance. When the rain stops, she glides away, and it is only then, confident in her freedom, that she bursts into full-throated song, her broken but haunting melody echoing down the ravine.

  A squirrel comes sometimes, when his home in the oak tree gets water-logged. Apparently he is a bachelor; anyway, he lives alone. He knows me well, this squirrel, and is bold enough to climb on to the dining table looking for titbits which he always finds because I leave them there deliberately. Had I met him when he was a youngster, he would have learnt to eat from my hand; but I have only been here for a few months. I like it this way. I am not looking for pets; these are simply guests.

  Last week, as I was sitting down at my desk to write a long-deferred article, I was startled to see an emerald-green praying mantis sitting on my writing-pad. He peered at me with his protuberant glass-bead eyes, and I stared clown at him through my glasses. When I gave him a prod, he moved off in a leisurely way. Later, I found him examining the binding of Leaves of Grass; perhaps he had found a succulent bookworm. He disappeared for a couple of days, and then I found him on my dressing-table, preening himself before the mirror.

  Out in the garden, I spotted another mantis, perched on the jasmine bush. Its arms were raised like a boxer's. Perhaps they are a pair, I thought, and went indoors, fetched my mantis and placed him on the jasmine bush opposite his fellow insect. He did not like what he saw—no comparison with his own image!—and made off in a hurry.

  My most interesting visitor comes at night, when the lights are still burning—a tiny bat who prefers to fly in through the open door, and will use the window only if there is no alternative. His object is to snap up the moths who cluster round the lamps.

  All the bats I have seen fly fairly high, keeping near the ceiling; but this particular bat flies in low like a dive bomber, zooming in and out of chair legs and under tables. Once he passed straight between my legs. Has his radar gone wrong, I wondered, or is he just plain mad?

  I went to my shelves of natural history and looked up bats, but could find no explanation for this erratic behaviour. As a last resort I turned to an ancient volume, Sterndale's Indian Mammalia (Calcutta, 18
84), and in it, to my delight, found what I was looking for: "A bat found near Mussoorie by Captain Hutton, on the southern range of hills at 1,800 metres; head and body about three centimetres, skims close to the ground, instead of flying high as bats generally do. Habitat, Jharipani, north-west Himalayas." Apparently, the bat was rare even in 1884.

  Perhaps I have come across one of the few surviving members of the species. Jharipani is only three kilometres from where I live. I am happy that this bat survives in my small corner of the woods, and I undertake to celebrate it in prose and verse. Once, I found it suspended upside down from the railing at the foot of my bed. I decided to leave it there. For a writer alone in the woods, even an eccentric bat is welcome company.

  Sanctuary Features

  A Bouquet of Love

  he Oaks, Hunter's Lodge, The Parsonage, The Pines, Dumbarnie, Mackinnon's Hall and Windamere—these are names of some of the old houses that still stand on the outskirts of our hill-stations. They were built over a hundred years ago by British settlers who sought relief from the searing heat of the plains. Most have fallen into decay and are now inhabited by wild cats, owls, goats, and the occasional mule-driver.

  But among these neglected mansions stands a neat, white-washed cottage, Mulberry Lodge. And in it lived an elderly English spinster named Miss Mackenzie. She was well over eighty, but no one would have guessed it. She was sprightly and wore old-fashioned but well-preserved dresses. Once a week, she walked to town and bought butter, jam, soap and sometimes a bottle of eau-de-cologne.

  Miss Mackenzie had lived there since her teens, before World War I. Her parents, brother and sister were dead. She had no relatives in India, and lived on a small pension and gift parcels sent from a childhood friend. She had few visitors—the local padre, the postman, the milkman. Like other lonely old people, she kept a pet, a large black cat with bright, yellow eyes.