by Ruskin Bond
"We are quite safe in the boat," said Krishan. "The animals are interested only in reaching dry land. They will not even hunt each other. Tonight, the deer are safe from the panther and the tiger. So lie down and sleep, and I will keep watch."
Sita stretched herself out in the boat and closed her eyes, and the sound of the water lapping against the sides of the boat soon lulled her to sleep. She woke once, when a strange bird called overhead. She raised herself on one elbow; but Krishan was awake, sitting in the prow, and he smiled reassuringly at her. He looked blue in the moon-light, the colour of the young god Krishna, and for a few moments Sita was confused and wondered if the boy was indeed Krishna; but when she thought about it, she decided that it wasn't possible, he was just a village boy and she had seen hundreds like him — well, not exactly like him; he was different, in a way she couldn't explain to herself....
And when she slept again, she dreamt that the boy and Krishna were one, and she was sitting beside him on a great white bird, which flew over mountains, over the snow peaks of the Himalayas, into the cloud-land of the gods. And there was a great rumbling sound, as though the gods were angry about the whole thing, and she woke up to this terrible sound and looked about her, and there in the moonlit glade, up to his belly in water, stood a young elephant, his trunk raised as he trumpeted his predicament to the forest — for he was a young elephant, and he was lost, and he was looking for his mother.
He trumpeted again, and then lowered his head and listened. And presently, from far away, came the shrill trumpeting of another elephant. It must have been the young one's mother, because he gave several excited trumpet calls, and then went stamping and churning through the flood-water towards a gap in the trees. The boat rocked in the waves made by his passing.
"It's all right now," said Krishan. 'You can go to sleep again."
"I don't think I will sleep now," said Sita.
"Then I will play my flute for you," said the boy, "and time will pass more quickly."
From the bottom of the boat he took a flute, and putting it to his lips he began to play. And the sweetest music that Sita had ever heard came pouring from the little flute, and it seemed to fill the forest with its beautiful sound. And the music carried her away again, into the land of dreams, and they were riding on the bird once more, Sita and the blue god, and they were passing through clouds and mist, until suddenly the sun shot out through the clouds. And at the same moment Sita opened her eyes and saw the sun streaming through the branches of the Toon tree, its bright green leaves making a dark pattern against the blinding blue of the sky.
Sita sat up with a start, rocking the boat. There were hardly any clouds left. The trees were drenched with sunshine.
The boy Krishan was fast asleep at the bottom of the boat. His flute lay in the palm of his half-open hand. The sun came slanting across his bare brown legs. A leaf had fallen on his upturned face, but it had not woken him, it lay on his cheek as though it had grown there.
Sita did not move again. She did not want to wake the boy. It didn't look as though the water had gone down; but it hadn't risen, and that meant the flood had spent itself.
The warmth of the sun, as it crept up Krishan's body, woke him at last. He yawned, stretched his limbs, and sat up beside Sita.
"I'm hungry," he said with a smile.
"So am I," said Sita.
"The last mangoes," he said, and emptied the basket of its last two mangoes.
After they had finished the fruit, they sucked the big seeds until these were quite dry. The discarded seeds floated well on the water. Sita had always preferred them to paper-boats.
"We had better move on," said Krishan.
He rowed the boat through the trees, and then for about an hour they were passing through the flooded forest, under the dripping branches of rain-washed trees. Sometimes they had to use the oars to push away vines and creepers. Sometimes drowned bushes hampered them. But they were out of the forest before noon.
Now the water was not very deep, and they were gliding over flooded fields. In the distance they saw a village. It was on high ground. In the old days, people had built their villages on hill-tops, which gave them a better defence against bandits and invading armies. This was an old village, and though its inhabitants had long ago exchanged their swords for pruning-forks, the hill on which it stood now protected it from the flood.
The people of the village — long-limbed, sturdy Jats— were generous, and gave the stranded children food and shelter. Sita was anxious to find her grandparents, and an old farmer, who had business in Shahganj, offered to take her there. She was hoping that Krishan would accompany her, but he said he would wait in the village, where he knew others would soon be arriving, his own people among them.
'You will be all right now," said Krishan. 'Your grandfather will be anxious for you, so it is best that you go to him as soon as you can. And in two or three days the water will go down, and you will be able to return to the island."
"Perhaps the island has gone for ever," said Sita.
As she climbed into the farmer's bullock-cart, Krishan handed her his flute.
"Please keep it for me," he said. "I will come for it one day." And, when he saw her hesitate, he added, his eyes twinkling, "It is a good flute!"
It was slow-going in the bullock-cart. The road was awash, and the wheels got stuck in the mud, and the farmer and his grown son and Sita had to keep getting down to heave and push in order to free the big wooden wheels. They were still in a foot or two of water. The bullocks were bespattered with mud, and Sita's legs were caked with it.
They were a day and a night in the bullock-cart before they reached Shahganj; and by that time, Sita, walking down the narrow bazaar of the busy market-town, was hardly recognisable.
Grandfather did not recognise her. He was walking stiffly down the road, looking straight ahead of him, and would have walked right past the dusty, dishevelled girl, if she had not charged straight at his thin, shaky legs and clasped him around the waist.
"Sita!" he cried, when he had recovered his wind and his balance. "But how are you here? How did you get off the island? I was so worried — it has been very bad these last two days...."
"Is Grandmother all right?" asked Sita.
But even as she spoke, she knew that Grandmother was no longer with them. The dazed look in the old man's eyes told her as much. She wanted to cry — not for Grandmother, who could suffer no more, but for Grandfather, who looked so helpless and bewildered; she did not want him to be unhappy. She forced back her tears, and took his gnarled and trembling hand, and led him down the crowded street. And she knew, then, that it would be on her shoulder that Grandfather would have to lean in the years to come.
They returned to the island after a few days, when the river was no longer in spate. There was more rain, but the worst was over. Grandfather still had two of the goats; it had not been necessary to sell more than one.
He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw that the tree had disappeared from the island — the tree that had seemed as permanent as the island, as much a part of his life as the river itself. He marvelled at Sita's escape.
"It was the tree that saved you," he said.
"And the boy," said Sita.
Yes, and the boy.
She thought about the boy, and wondered if she would ever see him again. But she did not think too much, because there was so much to do.
For three nights they slept under a crude shelter made out of jute bags. During the day she helped Grandfather rebuild the mud hut. Once again, they used the big rock as a support.
The trunk which Sita had packed so carefully had not been swept off the island, but the water had got into it, and the food and clothing had been spoilt. But Grandfather's hookah had been saved, and, in the evenings, after their work was done and they had eaten the light meal which Sita prepared, he would smoke with a little of his old contentment, and tell Sita about other floods and storms which he had experienced as a boy.
<
br /> Sita planted a mango-seed in the same spot where the peepul tree had stood. It would be many years before it grew into a big tree, but Sita liked to imagine sitting in its branches one day, picking the mangoes straight from the tree, and feasting on them all day. Grandfather was more particular about making a vegetable garden and putting down peas, carrots, gram and mustard.
One day, when most of the hard work had been done, and the new hut was almost ready, Sita took the flute which had been given to her by the boy, and walked down to the water's edge and tried to play it. But all she could produce were a few broken notes, and even the goats paid no attention to her music.
Sometimes Sita thought she saw a boat coming down the river, and she would run to meet it; but usually there was no boat, or if there was, it belonged to a stranger or to another fisherman. And so she stopped looking out for boats. Sometimes she thought she heard the music of a flute, but it seemed very distant and she could never tell where the music came from.
Slowly, the rains came to an end. The flood-waters had receded, and in the villages people were beginning to till the land again and sow crops for the winter months. There were cattle fairs and wrestling matches. The days were warm and sultry. The water in the river was no longer muddy, and one evening Grandfather brought home a huge Mahseer fish and Sita made it into a delicious curry.
Grandfather sat outside the hut, smoking his hookah. Sita was at the far end of the island, spreading clothes on the rocks to dry. One of the goats had followed her. It was the friendlier of the two, and often followed Sita about the island. She had made it a necklace of coloured beads.
She sat down on a smooth rock, and, as she did so, she noticed a small bright object in the sand near her feet. She stooped and picked it up. It was a little wooden toy — a coloured peacock — it must have come down on the river and been swept ashore on the island. Some of the paint had rubbed off; but for Sita, who had no toys, it was a great find. Perhaps it would speak to her, as Mumta had spoken to her.
As she held the toy peacock in the palm of her hand, she thought she heard the flute-music again; but she did not look up, she had heard it before, and she was sure that it was all in her mind.
But this time the music sounded nearer, much nearer. There was a soft footfall in the sand. And, looking up, she saw the boy, Krishan, standing over her.
"I thought you would never come," said Sita.
"I had to wait until the rains were over. Now that I am free, I will come more often. Did you keep my flute?"
'Yes, but I cannot play it properly. Sometimes it plays by itself, I think, but it will not play for me!"
"I will teach you to play it," said Krishan.
He sat down beside her, and they cooled their feet in the water, which was clear now, reflecting the blue of the sky. You could see the sand and the pebbles of the riverbed.
"Sometimes the river is angry, and sometimes it is kind," said Sita.
"We are part of the river," said the boy. "We cannot live without it."
It was a good river, deep and strong, beginning in the mountains and ending in the sea.
Along its banks, for hundreds of miles, lived millions of people, and Sita was only one small girl among them, and no one had ever heard of her, no one knew her — except for the old man, and the boy, and the river.
Dust on the Mountain
inter came and went, without so much as a drizzle. The hillside was brown all summer and the fields were bare. The old plough that was dragged over the hard ground by Bisnu's lean oxen made hardly any impression. Still, Bisnu kept his seeds ready for sowing. A good monsoon, and there would be plenty of maize and rice to see the family through the next winter.
Summer went its scorching way, and a few clouds gathered on the south-western horizon.
"The monsoon is coming," announced Bisnu.
His sister Puja was at the small stream, washing clothes. "If it doesn't come soon, the stream will dry up," she said. "See, it's only a trickle this year. Remember when there were so many different flowers growing here on the banks of the stream? This year there isn't one."
"The winter was dry. It did not even snow," said Bisnu.
"I cannot remember another winter when there was no snow," said his mother. "The year your father died, there was so much snow the villagers could not light his funeral-pyre for hours.... And now there are fires everywhere." She pointed to the next mountain, half-hidden by the smoke from a forest fire.
At night they sat outside their small house, watching the fire spread. A red line stretched right across the mountain. Thousands of Himalayan trees were perishing in the flames. Oaks, deodars, maples, pines; trees that had taken hundreds of years to grow. And now a fire started carelessly by some woodcutters had been carried up the mountain with the help of the dry grass and a strong breeze. There was no one to put it out. It would take days to die down.
"If the monsoon arrives tomorrow, the fire will go out," said Bisnu, ever the optimist. He was only twelve, but he was the man in the house; he had to see that there was enough food for the family and for the oxen, for the big black dog and the hens.
There were clouds the next day but they brought only a drizzle.
"It's just the beginning," said Bisnu as he placed a bucket of muddy water on the steps.
"It usually starts with a heavy downpour," said his mother.
But there were to be no downpours that year. Clouds gathered on the horizon but they were white and puffy and soon disappeared. True monsoon clouds would have been dark and heavy with moisture. There were other signs — or lack of them — that warned of a long dry summer. The birds were silent, or simply absent. The Himalayan barbet, who usually heralded the approach of the monsoon with strident calls from the top of a spruce tree, hadn't been seen or heard. And the cicadas, who played a deafening overture in the oaks at the first hint of rain, seemed to be missing altogether.
Puja's apricot tree usually gave them a basket full of fruit every summer. This year it produced barely a handful of apricots, lacking juice and flavour. The tree looked ready to die, its leaves curled up in despair. Fortunately there was a store of walnuts, and a binful of wheat-grain and another of rice stored from the previous year, so they would not be entirely without food; but it looked as though there would be no fresh fruit or vegetables. And there would be nothing to store away for the following winter. Money would be needed to buy supplies in Tehri, some thirty miles distant. And there was no money to be earned in the village.
"I will go to Mussoorie and find work," announced Bisnu. "But Mussoorie is a two-day journey by bus," said his mother.
"There is no one there who can help you. And you may not get any work."
"In Mussoorie there is plenty of work during the summer. Rich people come up from the plains for their holidays. It is full of hotels and shops and places where they can spend their money."
"But they won't spend any money on you."
"There is money to be made there. And if not, I will come home. I can walk back over the Nag Tibba mountain. It will take only two and a half days and I will save the bus fare!"
"Don't go, bhai," pleaded Puja. "There will be no one to prepare your food — you will only get sick."
But Bisnu had made up his mind so he put a few belongings in a cloth shoulder-bag, while his mother prised several rupee-coins out of a cache in the wall of their living room. Puja prepared a special breakfast of parathas and an egg scrambled with onions, the hen having laid just one for the occasion. Bisnu put some of the parathas in his bag. Then, waving goodbye to his mother and sister, he set off down the road from the village.
After walking for a mile, he reached the highway where there was a hamlet with a bus stop. A number of villagers were waiting patiently for a bus. It was an hour late but they were used to that. As long as it arrived safely and got them to their destination, they would be content. They were patient people. Although Bisnu wasn't quite so patient, he too had learnt how to wait — for late buses and late mons
oons.
Along the valley and over the mountains went the little bus with its load of frail humans.
"How tiny we are," thought Bisnu, looking up at the towering peaks and the immensity of sky. "Each of us no more than a raindrop ... And I wish we had a few raindrops!"
There were still fires burning to the north but the road went south, where there were no forests anyway, just bare brown hillsides. Down near the river there were small paddy fields but unfortunately rivers ran downhill and not uphill, and there was no inexpensive way in which the water could be brought up the steep slopes to the fields that depended on rainfall.
Bisnu stared out of the bus window at the river running far below. On either bank huge boulders lay exposed, for the level of the water had fallen considerably during the past few months.
"Why are there no trees here?" he asked aloud, and received the attention of a fellow passenger, an old man in the next seat who had been keeping up a relentless dry coughing. Even though it was a warm day, he wore a woollen cap and had an old muffler wrapped about his neck.
"There were trees here once," he said, "but the contractors took the deodars for furniture and houses. And the pines were tapped to death for resin. And the oaks were stripped of their leaves to feed the cattle — you can still see a few tree-skeletons if you look hard — and the bushes that remained were finished off by the goats!"
"When did all this happen?" asked Bisnu.
"A few years ago. And it's still happening in other areas, although it's forbidden now to cut trees. The only forests that remain are in out-of-the-way places where there are no roads." A fit of coughing came over him, but he had found a good listener and was eager to continue. "The road helps you and me to get about but it also makes it easier for others to do mischief. Rich men from the cities come here and buy up what they want — land, trees, people!"
"What takes you to Mussoorie, uncle?" asked Bisnu politely. He always addressed elderly people as uncle or aunt.
