Tales of the Open Road

by Ruskin Bond

  During the rains, when the river flowed strong and deep, it was impossible to get across except on a hand-operated ropeway (which is still used), but in the dry months, when the river was a trickle, the tonga horse went splashing through, the carriage wheels churning through the clear mountain water. If the horse found the going difficult, we removed our shoes, rolled up our pants, and waded across, the driver leading the horse by the muzzle.

  Long before my time, in fact, before the turn of the century, when the ‘Scinde Punjab and Delhi Railway’ went no further than Saharanpur, the only way of getting to Dehra was by the ‘night mail’, better known as the dak ghari.

  Dak ghari ponies were difficult animals, always attempting to turn around and get into the ghari with the passengers. It was only when the coachman used his whip liberally, and reviled the ponies’ ancestors as far back as their third and fourth generations, that the beasts could be persuaded to move. And once they started, there was no stopping them; it was gallop all the way to the first stage, where the ponies were changed to the accompaniment of a bugle blown by the coachman in almost Dickensian fashion.

  Besides the dak ghari, there was also the ‘kart mel’, a sort of two-wheeled pony cart. It could carry two passengers—one sat in front beside the driver, the other at the back beside the syce.

  Travelling by dak ghari was by no means cheap. A full ghari was forty rupees for the trip; a single seat was twenty-five. Alternately, a seat in the mail cart could be had for eleven rupees. The distance was forty-nine miles.

  If you preferred to spent the night at Saharanpur, and make the journey by day, there was the pleasure of driving through the Siwaliks, one of the loveliest ranges in the country.

  The journey through the Siwaliks began—as it begins today—at the Mohand Pass. The ascent starts with a gentle gradient, which increases as the road becomes more steep and winding. The hills are abrupt and perpendicular on the southern side, but slope gently away to the north.

  The first stage in the pass was Tunbara, under a huge rock on the right bank of the river. At the next stage, Landibara, the road became very steep, and it wasn’t unusual to harness bullocks instead of ponies, in order to cover the distance to the tunnel driven through the crest of the hill from where the descent into the Dun commenced.

  At this stage of the journey, drums were beaten, if it was day, and torches were lit, if it was night, because sometimes wild elephants resented the approach of this clumsy caravan, and trumpeting a challenge, would throw the bullocks into panic and confusion.

  The Siwaliks, near Mohand, once so full of game, have now been denuded of their wealth. Shikaris have wiped out most of the animals, and timber merchants have ruined the forests. The dak ghari has given way to the tonga, and the tonga to the bus.

  Today, it is the tonga that is nearing extinction. With the emergence of a prosperous middle class in many of our cities, the machine has been given preference as a form of conveyance. Scooters, motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, ply on routes that were once the monopoly of tonga ponies and tramcars. Our roads, never built for such heavy traffic, are frequently cracking up.

  Tongas are still to be seen in our towns, but they are confined to roads where taxis and buses do not penetrate; most tonga-drivers refuse to change with the times, and still ply their tongas, despite a diminishing income. Their ponies seem to have more traffic sense than some of our taxi drivers; they deal very well with traffic jams, seldom panic, and are involved in few accidents.

  But give a tonga a straight stretch of clear road, and it will go into action, racing at breakneck speed, while its passengers cling to their seats for dear life, and the exhilarated driver cracks his whip, calls endearments to the pony, and breaks into the latest and most popular film song.

  Tonga drivers vary according to the towns they belong to. In Lucknow, they are still courteous, garrulous, self-styled decendants of Nawabs. In Delhi—where you can see them only in the old city—they are aggressive and shrewd, matching the temper of the city. Many of them have sold their ponies and bought auto rickshaws. Everywhere, they are fading away.

  Tongas, like tramcars, are becoming part of our nostalgia for the past. Good for the animal, perhaps. Though I have never met a tonga driver who starved his pony. And the greater the distance we put between our world and the world of animals, the less human we become.

  And here’s another fantasy journey I will never make: a leisurely tonga ride, over days, even weeks, from Dehra to Hardwar and on to Chandni Chowk in Delhi.

  Plain Tales

  Beer at Chhutmalpur and Other Small-Town Charms

  On the way back from Delhi, just outside the small market-town of Chhutmalpur, I am greeted by a large signboard above a small shop with just two words on it: COLD BEER. After a gruelling five-hour drive in the heat and dust of summer, a glass of chilled beer is welcome, so I ask the driver to stop. Otherwise I would have no reason to break my journey here.

  Chhutmalpur is not the sort of place you would choose to retire in. It was last in the news when a young Dalit couple was burnt alive by their disapproving families. Only its Sunday market gives it some charm, when the varied produce of the rural interior finds its way on to the dusty pavements and the air is rich with noise, colour and odours. There are carpets of red chillies and stacks of grain, vegetables and seasonal fruits; bangles of lac and wooden artifacts; colourful underwear; cheap toys for the children; sweets of every description and churan to go with them. (‘Lakar hajam, patther hajam!’ cries the churan-seller. Digest wood, digest stones. When I tried the digestive pill, it appeared to be one part asafoetida and one part gunpowder.) Apart from this, Chhutmalpur has little to recommend it.

  Which could also be said about Najibabad, where I stopped some forty years ago while on my way to Pauri-Garhwal. I was accompanying a friend to his village above the Nayar river. Getting there involved taking a train from Dehra Dun upto Luxor (across the Ganga), hopping on to another train, then getting off again at Najibabad and waiting for a bus to take us through the Tarai to Kotdwar, a little town in the foothills that seemed to lack any kind of character.

  Najibabad must have been one of the least inspiring places on earth. Hot, dusty, apparently lifeless. We spent two hours at the bus stand—waiting for the bus driver who had gone missing—in the company of several donkeys, also quartered there. We were told that the area had once been the favourite hunting ground of a notorious dacoit, Sultana Daku, whose fortress overlooked the barren plain. I could understand him taking up dacoity—what else was there to do in such a place?—and presumed that he looked elsewhere for his loot, for in Najibabad there was nothing worth taking. In due course he was betrayed and was hanged by the British, when they should instead have given him an OBE for stirring up the sleepy countryside.

  It was close to noon before the missing bus driver turned up, a little worse for some late-night drinking. I could sympathize with him. If in 1940 Najibabad drove you to dacoity, in 1960 it drove you to drink.

  Chhutmalpur and Najibabad are not unique. The genuine small town of the great plains is still a desperate place. The following lines I wrote about a town I visited briefly in the late 1950s could apply to any small town in UP or Bihar or Bengal:

  ‘Every mohalla was congested and insanitary, and all the roads narrow and dusty … Near the masjid, I saw a gang of boys chase a terrified bow-legged dwarf. Two emaciated cows, that probably could no longer provide milk, roamed about in a state of semi-starvation. A group of eunuchs dressed in cheap silk ghagras strolled barefoot down the road, their long, gaunt faces made up with rouge and kajal. The jeering boys forgot about the dwarf and turned on them.

  ‘Through my long walk I was followed by a small, distracted goat. She stayed with me till I found a tonga, drawn by a lean, listless mare and driven by an ancient Muslim with a yellowing beard …

  ‘At the bus stop there was confusion. Newly arrived passengers, looking sleepy and dishevelled, were surrounded on all sides by a sea of mud and rain wa
ter, while scores of tongas and cycle rickshaws jostled each other in trying to cater to them. As a result, only half the passengers found conveyances, while the other half found themselves ankle-deep in mud and garbage.’

  And yet, during the time I stayed in a few such towns in my youth, barely making a living by my writing, I formed enduring bonds of friendship. Sometimes I found love. I met men and women of generous spirit, eccentric manner and great fortitude, all of whom have found their way into my stories.

  Uninviting and unromantic on first acquaintance, these towns surprised me with small miracles: moonlight on quiet alleys past midnight, for instance. Or the scent of quenched earth and fallen neem leaves after the first rains. Or the happy riot of the weekly bazaar or a mela.

  Romance lurks in the most unlikely places.

  Shahjahanpur

  It is forty-five years since I last saw Shahjahanpur, a sleepy little town halfway between Delhi and Lucknow. I doubt if it has changed much. It wasn’t the sort of place that changes. Even in 1960, when I stopped there for a few hours, it looked as though time had been standing still since the dramatic events of the 1857 uprising, which I described in my novella A Flight of Pigeons.

  Forty years after those events, in 1896 to be exact, my father had been born in Shahjahanpur’s ‘military camp’, according to Grandfather’s army service records. Grandfather’s regiment, the Scottish Rifles, must have been quartered there for a few months before moving on to Bareilly, Aligarh, Gorakhpur, Lucknow, and other cantonment towns across the hot and dusty Gangetic plains.

  This was one reason for me to stop there, but I was also keen to visit the cantonment church, where he had probably been baptized, and where, during the outbreak of 1857, the European residents had been slaughtered. Among the few survivors were Ruth Labadoor and her mother. Their story came down to me from my father and other sources, and I was keen to follow it up.

  The church was still there, of course, but locked up; a memorial to those who had been killed on that fatal day at the end of May stood in the parade ground (I believe it has since been removed); the mango groves and some old bungalows going back to Mutiny days were still evident; and crossing the little Khannant river was the bridge of boats which had played so important a part for those who were escaping from the town—first, the fleeing Europeans; later, the mutineers or their families when the British had retaken the district.

  Founded in the seventeenth century, the town had a large Pathan population, and still does. The crowded city area and mohallas are still home to the descendants of Javed Khan, his friends and relatives, and those who had set fire to the cantonment bungalows. In his film of the story, Junoon, Shyam Benegal provided a rather opulent-looking Nawabi setting, but in reality Shahjahanpur’s streets were occupied by working or lower-middle-class families, and only the Nawab (who lived elsewhere) would have enjoyed much affluence.

  The dramatic events of 1857 led to the loss of many innocent lives on both sides of the conflict, Indian and British. In retelling Ruth’s story I tried to show how the common humanity of ordinary folk—Hindu, Muslim, or Christian—could sometimes overcome the forces of hate, revenge and retribution.

  On a lighter note: The Rose Rum factory stands a little way outside Shahjahanpur. It dates back to pre-Mutiny times. During the uprising it was sacked by rioters. Some quenched their thirst, while others poured barrels of good rum into the Khannant. Grandfather would have been appalled. I don’t know if he was much of a drinker, but we did find these verses among his papers. He was, of course, referring to the Solan Brewery near Shimla. Like the Rosa distilleries, it is over 150 years old.

  ‘Where’s Solan?’ the private was asking;

  ‘Somewhere near Tibet, I should think.’

  ‘There’s a brewery there,

  And it’s brimming with beer,

  But we can’t get a mouthful to drink!’

  So we route-march from Delhi to Solan

  In the dust and the maddening sun,

  And we’re cursing away like Hades

  Well knowing there ain’t any ladies

  To hear every son-of-a-gun!

  And when we have climbed up to Solan

  Our language continues profane,

  For right well we know

  We shall soon have to go

  Down from Solan to Delhi again!

  I’m not sure if Grandfather wrote the poem, but we’ll credit it to him anyway—Henry William Bond, with a few profanities edited out by his grandson.

  I should add that young Mr Carew, the proprietor of the Rosa distillery, went into hiding and survived the mutiny. If he had not done so, I would not be enjoying Carew’s Gin today.

  The Break of Monsoon in Meerut

  Crossing the Jamuna, still beautiful, before stretches of it came to resemble a huge nullah, the bus took us past a fast-expanding industrial area where a tractor factory was coming up next to a brewery. It was 1962, and I was travelling with my friend Kamal, the two of us having decided to see a bit of Uttar Pradesh. The bus took us across country where General Lake opposed the Maratha forces in 1803 and took Delhi for the British, and over the Hindon river and into UP.

  Then north to Meerut, with green fields stretching out on either side: fields of maize, wheat and sugarcane, interspersed with mango orchards and plantations of floating lotus flowers, until we reached the outskirts of the ancient city, got down from the bus, stretched our limbs and climbed onto a cycle rickshaw with our cases and bedding-roll.

  The rickshaw boy rode swiftly to the hotel, the only ‘English hotel’ in Meerut, a building which was probably a barracks at one time, and was owned and managed by a middle-aged Englishman whom we saw, once, when we blundered into the empty building. Apparently, it wasn’t a hotel anymore, but Mr P had never bothered to take the signboard down, and if somebody did turn up, as we had done (this only happened about once a year), then they were welcome to a room and the services of his bearer and of course morning tea and breakfast.

  Mr P, who lived alone with his wireless, opened a musty room for us and told us to call for the bearer if we needed anything, or wished to pay our bill. During our two-day stay we never saw him again; he did not emerge from his room, just next to ours; but we heard his radio whenever we cared to listen, mostly relaying BBC cricket commentaries.

  Some eighteen miles from Meerut were the remarkable ‘Christian’ warrior princess Begum Samru’s palace and cathedral (she had built both in the very early nineteenth century). We decided to visit them the next day. We took the same rickshaw—the boy attached himself to us for the remainder of our stay—into town on a day so hot and humid that the palace made little impression on me. What does stay in my memory is the restaurant that the rickshaw boy took us to that evening, in the Muslim quarter. It served excellent partridge curry (partridges were plentiful around Meerut) and kebabs. We bought two bottles of beer, which we drank on the veranda back in the hotel, to the crackle and hiss and vaguely military music issuing from Mr P’s radio.

  Monsoon broke the next day, and my memories of Meerut, ever since, have always been associated with the first rains.

  There had been no rain at all for over a month, so the rickshaw boy had told us. Now there were dark clouds overhead, burgeoning with moisture. Thunder blossomed in the air. The dry spell was over. I knew it; the birds knew it; the grass knew it. There was the smell of rain in the air. And the grass, the birds and I responded to this odour with the same sensuous longing. I went out to the balcony, and waited.

  A large drop of water hit the railing, darkening the thick dust on the woodwork. A faint breeze had sprung up, and again I felt the moisture, closer and warmer.

  Then the rain approached like a dark curtain.

  I could see it marching down the street, heavy and remorseless. It drummed on the corrugated tin roof and swept across the road and over the balcony. It swirled with the wind over the trees and roofs of Meerut.

  Outside, the street emptied, The crowd dissolved in the rain. Th
en buses, cars and bullock carts ploughed through the suddenly rushing water. A garland of marigolds, swept off the steps of a temple, came floating down the middle of the road.

  The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The day was dying, and the breeze remained cool and moist. In the brief twilight that followed, I was witness to the great yearly flight of insects into the cool brief freedom of the night.

  Termites and white ants, which had been sleeping through the hot season, emerged from their lairs. Out of every hole and crack, and from under the roots of trees, huge winged ants emerged, fluttering about heavily on this, the first and last flight of their lives. There was only one direction in which they could fly—towards the light, towards the street lights and the bright neon tubelight above the balcony.

  This was the hour of the geckos, the wall lizards. They had their reward for weeks of patient waiting. Plying their sticky tongues, they crammed their stomachs, knowing that such a feast would not come their way again for a long time. Throughout the long hot season the insect world had prepared for this flight out of darkness into light, and the phenomenon would not happen again for another year.

  Somewhere, an entire orchestra of frogs began their solemn music. The frogs woke great moths out of a slumber and they flew heavily into the balcony. I went in, shut the windows and got into bed thinking of fireflies flashing messages to each other in the mango groves outside Dehra.

  A Vagabond in Delhi

  I left Dehra for Delhi in 1959, and lived in the capital for a few years—freelancing, and for a time working with an international relief agency. I could not fall in love with Delhi, my heart was always in the hills and small towns of north India.