by Ruskin Bond
no man is an island
Ruskin Bond has been writing for over sixty years, and has now over 120 titles in print—novels, collections of stories, poetry, essays, anthologies and books for children. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, received the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys award in 1957. He has also received the Padma Shri, and two awards from the Sahitya Akademi—one for his short stories and another for his writings for children. In 2012, the Delhi government gave him its Lifetime Achievement award.
Born in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Shimla, New Delhi and Dehradun. Apart from three years in the UK, he has spent all his life in India, and now lives in Mussoorie with his adopted family.
A shy person, Ruskin says he likes being a writer because ‘When I’m writing there’s nobody watching me. Today, it’s hard to find a profession where you’re not being watched!’
Published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2013
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Copyright © Ruskin Bond 2013
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
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Typeset in Utopia Std 10.5/14.8
Printed by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd., India
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
For
Mahendra Prasad
and family,
with thanks for many
kindnesses to me and my family.
Contents
Introduction
Untouchable
The Thief
The Last Truck Ride
The Window
The Fight
The Crooked Tree
The Flute Player
Calypso Christmas
The Story of Madhu
The Prospect of Flowers
My Father’s Trees in Dehra
Friends of My Youth
The Playing Fields of Shimla
From Small Beginnings
The Pool
The Tunnel
The Woman on Platform No. 8
‘Let’s Go to the Pictures!’
And Now We Are Twelve
Remember the Old Road
All Is Life
Introduction
In a sense, every man and woman is an island. We communicate with each other, sometimes we share each other’s lives, but our inner selves remain inviolate, our very own. There are some things, some thoughts, we do not share. But life can be very lonely on our individual islands. We need to reach out, touch each other, feel the warmth of another personality, enjoy another’s company, recognize a kindred spirit—find a friend! And then, you are no longer an island.
Friendship had been a theme in many of my stories. It was there in one of my earliest stories, ‘Untouchable,’ which was published in The Illustrated Weekly of India in 1952, the year after I left school. Over the next seven or eight years, the Weekly’s editor, an amiable Irishman named C.R. Mandy, published at least twenty-five of my short stories, and many of them—‘The Thief’, ‘The Crooked Tree’ ‘Madhu,’ ‘The Woman on Platform No. 8’—were about friendships, bonding, developing out of shared experience, or sometimes two people just being thrown together at random.
I think of my father as a friend, because he gave me so much companionship, so much of his time, even when he was desperately ill. When I lost him, I retreated to my island, living in my own head most of the time. Slowly, I began to respond to overtures of friendship from other boys. You can read about some of them in ‘The Pool,’ ‘Friends of my Youth’ and ‘The Playing Fields of Shimla’. As I grew older, I realized how important it was for me to befriend those who were lonely or without support.
Much of my writing is autobiographical, and that is especially true of the stories in this collection. There really was a Calypso Christmas, a pool in the forest, a kind manager of a cinema, a khilasi who befriended a leopard; and Omar and Madhu and Miss Mackenzie were real people. Some of them are still around. What I have done is to try to make them live again on the written page. People who have led humble but meaningful lives deserve to be remembered as much as the rich and the famous. Their lives run deep. In writing about them I pay tribute to the human soul. Every other man is a piece of myself, for I am a part of mankind. Life only begins to make sense when we admit, with John Donne, that ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’
Ruskin Bond
January 2013
Untouchable
he sweeper boy splashed water over the khus matting that hung in the doorway and for a while the air was cooled. I sat on the edge of my bed, staring out of the open window, brooding upon the dusty road shimmering in the noonday heat. A car passed and the dust rose in billowing clouds.
Across the road lived the people who were supposed to look after me while my father lay in hospital with malaria. I was supposed to stay with them, sleep with them. But except for meals, I kept away. I did not like them and they did not like me.
For a week, longer probably, I was going to live alone in the red-brick bungalow on the outskirts of the town, on the fringe of the jungle. At night the sweeper boy would keep guard, sleeping in the kitchen. Apart from him, I had no company; only the neighbours’ children, and I did not like them and they did not like me.
Their mother said, ‘Don’t play with the sweeper boy, he is unclean. Don’t touch him. Remember, he is a servant. You must come and play with my boys.’
Well, I did not intend playing with the sweeper boy; but neither did I intend playing with her children. I was going to sit on my bed all week and wait for my father to come home.
Sweeper boy…all day he pattered up and down between the house and the water tank, with the bucket clanging against his knees.
Back and forth, with a wide, friendly smile.
I frowned at him.
He was about my age, ten. He had short-cropped hair, very white teeth, and muddy feet, hands, and face. All he wore was an old pair of khaki shorts; the rest of his body was bare, burnt a deep brown.
At every trip to the water tank he bathed, and returned dripping and glistening from head to toe.
I dripped with sweat.
It was supposedly below my station to bathe at the tank, where the gardener, water-carrier, cooks, ayahs, sweepers, and their children all collected. I was the son of a ‘sahib’ and convention ruled that I did not play with servant children.
But I was just as determined not to play with the other sahibs’ children, for I did not like them and they did not like me.
I watched the flies buzzing against the windowpane, the lizards scuttling across the rafters, the wind scattering petals of scorched, long-dead flowers.
The sweeper boy smiled and saluted in play. I avoided his eyes and said, ‘Go away.’
He went into the kitchen.
I rose and crossed the room, and lifted my sun helmet off the hatstand.
A centipede ran down the wall, across the floor.
I screamed and jumped on the bed, shouting for help.
The sweeper boy darted in. He saw me on the bed,
the centipede on the floor; and picking a large book off the shelf, slammed it down on the repulsive insect.
I remained standing on my bed, trembling with fear and revulsion.
He laughed at me, showing his teeth, and I blushed and said, ‘Get out!’
I would not, could hot, touch or approach the hat or hatstand. I sat on the bed and longed for my father to come home.
A mosquito passed close by me and sang in my ear. Half-heartedly, I clutched at it and missed; and it disappeared behind the dressing table.
That mosquito, I reasoned, gave the malaria to my father. And now it was trying to give it to me!
The next-door lady walked through the compound and smiled thinly from outside the window. I glared back at her.
The sweeper boy passed with the bucket, and grinned. I turned away.
In bed at night, with the lights on, I tried reading. But even books could not quell my anxiety.
The sweeper boy moved about the house, bolting doors, fastening windows. He asked me if I had any orders.
I shook my head.
He skipped across to the electric switch, turned off the light, and slipped into his quarters. Outside, inside, all was dark; only one shaft of light squeezed in through a crack in the sweeper boy’s door, and then that too went out.
I began to wish I had stayed with the neighbours. The darkness worried me—silent and close—silent, as if in suspense.
Once a bat flew flat against the window, falling to the ground outside; once an owl hooted. Sometimes a dog barked. And I tautened as a jackal howled hideously in the jungle behind the bungalow. But nothing could break the overall stillness, the night’s silence…
Only a dry puff of wind…
It rustled in the trees, and put me in mind of a snake slithering over dry leaves and twigs. I remembered a tale I had been told not long ago, of a sleeping boy who had been bitten by a cobra.
I would not, could not, sleep. I longed for my father…
The shutters rattled, the doors creaked. It was a night for ghosts.
Ghosts!
God, why did I have to think of them?
My God! There, standing by the bathroom door…
My father! My father dead from the malaria, and come to see me!
I threw myself at the switch. The room lit up. I sank down on the bed in complete exhaustion, the sweat soaking my nightclothes.
It was not my father I had seen. It was his dressing gown hanging on the bathroom door. It had not been taken with him to the hospital.
I turned off the light.
The hush outside seemed deeper, nearer. I remembered the centipede, the bat, thought of the cobra and the sleeping boy; pulled the sheet tight over my head. If I could see nothing, well then, nothing could see me.
A thunderclap shattered the brooding stillness.
A streak of lightning forked across the sky, so close that even through the sheet I saw a tree and the opposite house silhouetted against the flashing canvas of gold.
I dived deeper beneath the bedclothes, gathered the pillow about my ears.
But at the next thunderclap, louder this time, louder than I had ever heard, I leapt from my bed. I could not stand it. I fled, blundering into the sweeper boy’s room.
The boy sat on the bare floor.
‘What is happening?’ he asked.
The lightning flashed, and his teeth and eyes flashed with it. Then he was a blur in the darkness.
‘I am afraid,’ I said.
I moved towards him and my hand touched a cold shoulder.
‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I too am afraid.’
I sat down, my back against the wall; beside the untouchable, the outcaste…and the thunder and lightning ceased, and the rain came down, swishing and drumming on the corrugated roof.
‘The rainy season has started,’ observed the sweeper boy, turning to me. His smile played with the darkness, and then he laughed. And I laughed too, but feebly.
But I was happy and safe. The scent of the wet earth blew in through the skylight and the rain fell harder.
(This was my first short story, written when I was sixteen.)
The Thief
was still a thief when I met Arun and though I was only fifteen I was an experienced and fairly successful hand.
Arun was watching the wrestlers when I approached him. He was about twenty, a tall, lean fellow, and he looked kind and simple enough for my purpose. I hadn’t had much luck of late and thought I might be able to get into this young person’s confidence. He seemed quite fascinated by the wrestling. Two well-oiled men slid about in the soft mud, grunting and slapping their thighs. When I drew Arun into conversation he didn’t seem to realize I was a stranger.
‘You look like a wrestler yourself,’ I said.
‘So do you,’ he replied, which put me out of my stride for a moment because at the time I was rather thin and bony and not very impressive physically.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I wrestle sometimes.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Deepak,’ I lied.
Deepak was about my fifth name. I had earlier called myself Ranbir, Sudhir, Trilok and Surinder.
After this preliminary exchange Arun confined himself to comments on the match, and I didn’t have much to say. After a while he walked away from the crowd of spectators. I followed him.
‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘Enjoying yourself?’
I gave him my most appealing smile. ‘I want to work for you,’ I said.
He didn’t stop walking. ‘And what makes you think I want someone to work for me?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve been wandering about all day looking for the best person to work for. When I saw you I knew that no one else had a chance.’
‘You flatter me,’ he said.
‘That’s all right.’
‘But you can’t work for me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I can’t pay you.’
I thought that over for a minute. Perhaps I had misjudged my man.
‘Can you feed me?’ I asked.
‘Can you cook?’ he countered.
‘I can cook,’ I lied.
‘If you can cook,’ he said,
‘I’ll feed you.’
He took me to his room and told me I could sleep in the veranda. But I was nearly back on the street that night. The meal I cooked must have been pretty awful because Arun gave it to the neighbour’s cat and told me to be off. But I just hung around smiling in my most appealing way and then he couldn’t help laughing. He sat down on the bed and laughed for a full five minutes and later patted me on the head and said, never mind, he’d teach me to cook in the morning.
Not only did he teach me to cook but he taught me to write my name and his and said he would soon teach me to write whole sentences and add money on paper when you didn’t have any in your pocket!
It was quite pleasant working for Arun. I made the tea in the morning and later went out shopping. I would take my time buying the day’s supplies and make a profit of about twenty-five paise a day. I would tell Arun that rice was fifty-six paise a pound (it generally was), but I would get it at fifty paise a pound. I think he knew I made a little this way but he didn’t mind. He wasn’t giving me a regular wage.
I was really grateful to Arun for teaching me to write. I knew that once I could write like an educated man there would be no limit to what I could achieve. It might even be an incentive to be honest.
Arun made money by fits and starts. He would be borrowing one week, lending the next. He would keep worrying about his next cheque but as soon as it arrived he would go out and celebrate lavishly.
One evening he came home with a wad of notes and at night I saw him tuck the bundles under his mattress at the head of the bed.
I had been working for Arun for nearly a fortnight and, apart from the shopping hadn’t done much to exploit him. I had every opportunity for doing so. I had a key to the front door which meant I had access to the room whenev
er Arun was out. He was the most trusting person I had ever met. And that was why I couldn’t make up my mind to rob him.
It’s easy to rob a greedy man because he deserves to be robbed. It’s easy to rob a rich man because he can afford to be robbed. But it’s difficult to rob a poor man, even one who really doesn’t care if he’s robbed. A rich man or a greedy man or a careful man wouldn’t keep his money under a pillow or mattress. He’d lock it up in a safe place. Arun had put his money where it would be child’s play for me to remove it without his knowledge.
It’s time I did some real work, I told myself. I’m getting out of practice… If I don’t take the money, he’ll only waste it on his friends… He doesn’t even pay me…
Arun was asleep. Moonlight came in from the veranda and fell across the bed. I sat up on the floor, my blanket wrapped round me, considering the situation. There was quite a lot of money in that wad and if I took it I would have to leave town—I might make the 10.30 express to Amritsar…
Slipping out of the blanket, I crept on all fours through the door and up to the bed and peeped at Arun. He was sleeping peacefully with a soft and easy breathing. His face was clear and unlined. Even I had more markings on my face, though mine were mostly scars.
My hand took on an identity of its own as it slid around under the mattress, the fingers searching for the notes. They found them and I drew them out without a crackle.
Arun sighed in his sleep and turned on his side, towards me. My free hand was resting on the bed and his hair touched my fingers.
I was frightened when his hair touched my fingers, and crawled quickly and quietly out of the room.
When I was in the street I began to run. I ran down the bazaar road to the station. The shops were all closed but a few lights were on in the upper windows. I had the notes at my waist, held there by the string of my pyjamas. I felt I had to stop and count the notes though I knew it might make me late for the train. It was already 10.20 by the clock tower. I slowed down to a walk and my fingers flicked through the notes. There were about a hundred rupees in fives. A good haul. I could live like a prince for a month or two.
