The Lamp Is Lit

by Ruskin Bond

  We stayed on Elysium Hill; took long walks to Kasumpti and around Jakko Hill; sipped milk-shakes at Davico’s; saw plays at the Gaiety Theatre (happily still in existence); fed the monkeys at the temple on Jakko; picnicked in Chhota Simla. All this during the short summer break when my father (on leave from the Air Force) came up to see me. He told me stories of phantom-rickshaws and enchanted forests and planted in me the seeds of my writing career. I was only ten when he died. But he had already passed on to me his love for the hills. And even after I had finished school and grown to manhood, I was to return to the hills again and again—to Simla and Mussoorie, Himachal and Garhwal—because once the mountains are in your blood, there is no escape.

  * * *

  Simla beckons. I must return. And, like Kim, I will take the last bend near Summer Hill and look up and exclaim: ‘Ah! What a city!’

  ‘Romance brought up the nine-fifteen,’ wrote Kipling and there is still romance to be found on trains and at lonely stations. Small wayside stations have always fascinated me. Manned sometimes by just one or two men, and often situated in the middle of a damp sub-tropical forest, or clinging to the mountain side on the way to Simla or Darjeeling, these little stations are, for me, outposts of romance, lonely symbols of the spirit that led a certain kind of pioneer to lay tracks into the remote corners of the earth.

  Recently I was at such a wayside stop, on a line that went through the Terai forests near the foothills of the Himalayas. At about ten at night, the khilasi, or station watchman, lit his kerosene lamp and started walking up the track into the jungle. He was a Gujar, and his true vocation was the keeping of buffaloes, but the breaking up of his tribe had led him into this strange new occupation.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘To see if the tunnel is clear,’ he said. ‘The Mail train comes in twenty minutes.’

  So I went with him, a furlong or two along the tracks, through a deep cutting which led to the tunnel. Every night, the khilasi walked though the dark tunnel, and then stood outside to wave his lamp to the oncoming train as a signal that the track was clear. If the engine driver did not see the lamp, he stopped the train. It always slowed down near the cutting. Having inspected the tunnel, we stood outside, waiting for the train. It seemed a long time coming. There was no moon, and the dense forest seemed to be trying to crowd us into the narrow cutting. The sounds of the forest came to us on the night wind—the belling of a sambar, the cry of a fox, told us that perhaps a tiger or a leopard was on the prowl. There were strange nocturnal bird and insect sounds; and then silence.

  The khilasi stood outside the tunnel, trimming his lamp, listening to the faint sounds of the jungle— sounds which only he, a Gujar who had grown up on the fringe of the forest, could identify and understand. Something made him stand very still for a few moments, peering into the darkness, and I could sense that everything was not as it should be.

  ‘There is something in the tunnel,’ he said.

  I could hear nothing at first; but then there came a regular sawing sound, just like the sound of someone sawing through the branch of a tree.

  ‘Baghera!’ whispered the khilasi. He had said enough to enable me to recognize the sound—that of a leopard trying to find its mate.

  I thought how fortunate we were that it had not been there when we walked through the tunnel. A leopard is unpredictable. But so is a khilasi.

  ‘The train will be coming soon,’ he whispered urgently, ‘we must drive the animal out of the tunnel, or it will be killed.’

  He must have sensed my astonishment, because he said, ‘Do not worry, sahib. I know this leopard well. We have seen each other many times. He has a weakness for stray dogs and goats, but he will not harm us.’

  He gave me his small hand-axe to hold, and, raising his lamp high, started walking into the tunnel, shouting at the top of his voice to try and scare away the animal. I followed close behind him.

  We had gone about twenty yards into the tunnel when the light from the khilasi’s lamp fell on the leopard, who was crouching between the tracks, only about fifteen feet from us.

  He was not a big leopard, but he was lithe and sinewy. Baring his teeth in a snarl, he went down on his belly, tail twitching, and I felt sure he was going to spring.

  The khilasi and I both shouted together. Our voices rang and echoed through the tunnel. And the frightened leopard, uncertain of how many human beings were in there with him, turned swiftly and disappeared into the darkness.

  As we returned to the tunnel entrance, the rails began to hum and we knew the train was coming.

  I put my hand to one of the rails and felt its tremor. And then the engine came round the bend, hissing at us, scattering sparks into the darkness, defying the jungle as it roared through the steep sides of the cutting. It charged straight at the tunnel, and into it, thundering past us like some beautiful dragon from my childhood dreams. And when it had gone the silence returned, and the forest breathed again. Only the rails still trembled with the passing of the train.

  As they tremble now to the passing of my own train, rushing through the night with its complement of precious humans, while somewhere at a lonely cutting in the foothills, a small thin man, who must always remain a firefly to these travelling thousands, lights up the darkness for steam engines and panthers.

  And yet, for the khilasi himself, the incident I have recalled was not an adventure; it was a duty, a job of work, an everyday incident.

  For me, all are significant: the lighted compartment with its farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, clerks and occasional pickpockets; and the lonely wayside stop, with its uncorrupted lamplighter.

  Romance still rides the nine-fifteen.

  Life with Uncle Ken

  Granny’s Fabulous Kitchen

  As kitchens went, it wasn’t all that big. It wasn’t as big as the bedroom or the living room, but it was big enough, and there was a pantry next to it. What made it fabulous was all that came out of it: good things to eat like cakes and curries, chocolate fudge and peanut toffee, jellies and jam tarts, meat pies, stuffed turkeys, stuffed chickens, stuffed eggplants, and hams stuffed with stuffed chickens.

  As far as I was concerned, Granny was the best cook in the whole wide world.

  Two generations of Clerkes had lived in India and my maternal grandmother had settled in a small town in the foothills, just where the great plain ended and the Himalayas began. The town was called Dehra Dun. It’s still there, though much bigger and busier now. Granny had a house, a large rambling bungalow, on the outskirts of the town, on Old Survey Road. In the grounds were many trees, most of them fruit trees. Mangoes, lichees, guavas, bananas, papayas, lemons— there was room for all of them, including a giant jackfruit tree casting its shadow on the walls of the house.

  Blessed is the house upon whose walls

  The shade of an old tree softly falls. . .

  I remember those lines of Granny’s. They were true words, because it was a good house to live in, especially for a nine-year-old with a tremendous appetite. If Granny was the best cook in the world, I must have been the boy with the best appetite.

  Every winter, when I came home from boarding school, I would spend about a month with Granny before going on to spend the rest of the holidays with my mother and stepfather. My parents couldn’t cook. They employed a khansama—a professional cook—who made a good mutton curry but little else. Mutton curry for lunch and mutton curry for dinner can be a bit tiring, especially for a boy who liked to eat almost everything.

  Granny was glad to have me because she lived alone most of the time. Not entirely alone, though. . . There was a gardener, Dhuki, who lived in an outhouse. And he had a son called Mohan, who was about my age. And there was Ayah, an elderly maidservant, who helped with the household work. And there was a Siamese cat with bright blue eyes, and a mongrel dog called Crazy because he ran circles round the house.

  And of course there was Uncle Ken, Granny’s nephew, who came to stay whenever he was out of
a job (which was quite often) or when he felt like enjoying some of Granny’s cooking.

  So Granny wasn’t really alone. All the same, she was glad to have me. She didn’t enjoy cooking for herself, she said; she had to cook for someone. And although the cat and the dog and sometimes Uncle Ken appreciated her efforts, a good cook likes to have a boy to feed, because boys are adventurous and ready to try the most unusual dishes.

  Whenever Granny tried out a new recipe on me, she would wait for my comments and reactions, and then make a note in one of her exercise books. These notes were useful when she made the dish again, or when she tried it out on others.

  ‘Do you like it?’ she’d ask, after I’d taken a few mouthfuls.

  ‘Yes, Gran.’

  ‘Sweet enough?’

  ‘Yes, Gran.’

  ‘Not too sweet?’

  ‘No, Gran.’

  ‘Would you like some more?’

  ‘Yes, please, Gran.’

  ‘Well, finish it off.’

  ‘If you say so, Gran.’

  * * *

  Roast Duck. This was one of Granny’s specials. The first time I had roast duck at Granny’s place, Uncle Ken was there too.

  He’d just lost a job as a railway guard, and had come to stay with Granny until he could find another job. He always stayed as long as he could, only moving on when Granny offered to get him a job as an assistant master in Padre Lal’s Academy for Small Boys. Uncle Ken couldn’t stand small boys. They made him nervous, he said. I made him nervous too, but there was only one of me, and there was always Granny to protect him. At Padre Lal’s, there were over a hundred small boys.

  Although Uncle Ken had a tremendous appetite, and ate just as much as I did, he never praised Granny’s dishes. I think this is why I was annoyed with him at times, and why sometimes I enjoyed making him feel nervous.

  Uncle Ken looked down at the roast duck, his glasses slipping down to the edge of his nose.

  ‘Hm . . . Duck again, Aunt Ellen?’

  ‘What do you mean, duck again? You haven’t had duck since you were here last month.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Uncle Ken. ‘Somehow, one expects more variety from you, Aunt.’

  All the same, he took two large helpings and ate most of the stuffing before I could get at it. I took my revenge by emptying all the apple sauce onto my plate. Uncle Ken knew I loved the stuffing; and I knew he was crazy about Granny’s apple sauce. So we were even.

  ‘When are you joining your parents?’ he asked hopefully, over the jam tart.

  ‘I may not go to them this year,’ I said. ‘When are you getting another job, Uncle?’

  ‘Oh, I’m thinking of taking a rest for a couple of months.’

  I enjoyed helping Granny and Ayah with the washing up. While we were at work, Uncle Ken would take a siesta on the veranda or switch on the radio to listen to dance music. Glenn Miller and his Swing Band was all the rage then.

  ‘And how do you like your Uncle Ken?’ asked Granny one day, as she emptied the bones from his plate into the dog’s bowl.

  ‘I wish he was someone else’s Uncle,’ I said.

  ‘He’s not so bad, really. Just eccentric.’

  ‘What’s eccentric?’

  ‘Oh, just a little crazy.’

  ‘At least Crazy runs round the house,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen Uncle Ken running.’

  * * *

  But I did one day.

  Mohan and I were playing marbles in the shade of the mango grove when we were taken aback by the sight of Uncle Ken charging across the compound, pursued by a swarm of bees. He’d been smoking a cigar under a silk-cotton tree, and the fumes had disturbed the wild bees in their hive, directly above him. Uncle Ken fled indoors and leapt into a tub of cold water. He had received a few stings and decided to remain in bed for three days. Ayah took his meals to him on a tray.

  ‘I didn’t know Uncle Ken could run so fast,’ I said, later that day.

  ‘It’s nature’s way of compensating,’ said Granny.

  ‘What’s compensating?’

  ‘Making up for things. . . Now at least Uncle Ken knows that he can run. Isn’t that wonderful?’

  * * *

  Whenever Granny made vanilla or chocolate fudge, she gave me some to take to Mohan, the gardener’s son. It was no use taking him roast duck or curried chicken, because in his house no one ate meat. But Mohan liked sweets—Indian sweets, which were made with lots of milk and lots of sugar, as well as Granny’s home-made English sweets.

  We would climb into the branches of the jackfruit tree and eat fudge or peppermints or sticky toffee. We couldn’t eat the jackfruit, except when it was cooked as a vegetable or made into a pickle. But the tree itself was wonderful for climbing. And some wonderful creatures lived in it—squirrels and fruit-bats and a pair of green parrots. The squirrels were friendly and soon got into the habit of eating from our hands. They, too, were fond of chocolate fudge. One young squirrel would even explore my pockets to see if I was keeping anything from him.

  Mohan and I could climb almost any tree in the garden, and if Granny was looking for us, she’d call from the front veranda and then from the back veranda and then from the pantry at the side of the house and finally from her bathroom window on the other side of the house. There were trees on all sides, and it was impossible to tell which one we were in, until we answered her call. Sometimes Crazy would give us away by barking beneath our tree.

  When there was fruit to be picked, Mohan did the picking. The mangoes and lichees came into season during the summer, when I was away at boarding school, so I couldn’t help with the fruit gathering. The papayas were in season during the winter, but you don’t climb papaya trees, they are too slender and wobbly. You knock the papayas down with a long pole.

  Mohan also helped Granny with the pickling. She was justly famous for her pickles. Green mangoes, pickled in oil, were always popular. So was her hot lime pickle. And she was equally good at pickling turnips, carrots, cauliflowers, chillies, and other fruits and vegetables. She could pickle almost anything, from a nasturtium seed to a jackfruit Uncle Ken didn’t care for pickles, so I was always urging Granny to make more of them.

  My own preference was for sweet chutneys and sauces, but I ate pickles too, even the very hot ones.

  One winter, when Granny’s funds were low, Mohan and I went from house to house, selling pickles for her.

  Inspite of all the people and pets she fed, Granny wasn’t rich. The house had come to her from Grandfather, but there wasn’t much money in the bank. The mango crop brought in a fair amount every year, and there was a small pension from the Railways (Grandfather had been one of the pioneers who’d helped bring the railway line to Dehra at the turn of the century), but there was no other income. And now that I come to think of it, all those wonderful meals consisted only of the one course, followed by a sweet dish. It was Granny’s cooking that turned a modest meal into a feast.

  I wasn’t ashamed to sell pickles for Granny. It was great fun. Mohan and I armed ourselves with baskets filled with pickle bottles, then set off to cover all the houses in our area.

  Major Wilkie, across the road, was our first customer. He had a red beard and bright blue eyes and was almost always good-humoured.

  ‘And what have you got there, young Bond?’ he asked

  ‘Pickles, sir.’ ‘Pickles! Have you been making them?’

  ‘No, sir, they’re my grandmother’s. We’re selling them, so we can buy a turkey for Christmas.’

  ‘Mrs Clerke’s pickles, eh? Well, I’m glad mine is the first house on your way, because I’m sure that basket will soon be empty. There is no one who can make a pickle like your grandmother, son, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, she’s God’s gift to a world that’s terribly short of good cooks. My wife’s gone shopping, so I can talk quite freely, you see . . . What have you got this time? Stuffed chillies, I trust. She knows they’re my favourite. I shall be deeply wounded if there are no stuf
fed chillies in that basket.’

  There were, in fact, three bottles of stuffed red chillies in the basket, and Major Wilkie took all of them.

  Our next call was at Miss Kellner’s house. Miss Kellner couldn’t eat hot food, so it was no use offering her pickles. But she bought a bottle of preserved ginger. And she gave me a little prayer book. Whenever I went to see her, she gave me a new prayer book. Soon I had quite a collection of prayer books. What was I to do with them? Finally, Uncle Ken took them off me, and sold them to the Children’s Academy.

  Further down the road, Dr Dutt, who was in charge of the hospital, bought several bottles of lime pickles, saying it was good for his liver. And Mr Hari, who owned a garage at the end of the road and sold all the latest cars, bought two bottles of pickled onions and begged us to bring him another two the following month.

  By the time we got home, the basket would usually be empty, and Granny richer by twenty or thirty rupees—enough, in those days, for a turkey.

  * * *

  ‘It’s high time you found a job,’ said Granny to Uncle Ken one day.

  ‘There are no jobs in Dehra,’ complained Uncle Ken.

  ‘How can you tell? You’ve never looked for one. And anyway, you don’t have to stay here for ever. Your sister Emily is headmistress of a school in Lucknow. You could go to her. She said before that she was ready to put you in charge of a dormitory.’

  ‘Bah! said Uncle Ken. ‘Honestly, Aunt, you don’t expect me to look after a dormitory seething with forty or fifty demented small boys?’

  ‘What’s demented?’ I asked.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Uncle Ken.

  ‘It means crazy,’ said Granny.

  ‘So many words mean crazy,’ I complained. ‘Why don’t we just say crazy. We have a crazy dog, and now Uncle Ken is crazy too.’

  Uncle Ken clipped me over my ear, and Granny said, ‘Your Uncle isn’t crazy, so don’t be disrespectful. He’s just lazy.’