A Town Called Dehra

by Ruskin Bond

  A happy time. But it had to end. My father’s periodic bouts of malarial fever resulted in his having to enter hospital for a week. The bhisti’s small son came to stay with me at night, and during the day I took my meals with an Anglo-Indian family across the road.

  I would have been quite happy to continue with this arrangement whenever my father was absent, but someone at Air Headquarters must have advised him to put me in a boarding school.

  Reluctantly he came to the decision that this would be the best thing—‘until the war is over’—and in the June of 1943 he took me to Shimla, where I was incarcerated in a preparatory school for boys.

  This is not the story of my life at boarding school. It might easily have been a public school in England; it did in fact pride itself on being the ‘Eton of the East’. The traditions—such as ragging and flogging, compulsory games and chapel attendance, prefects larger than life, and Honour Boards for everything from school captaincy to choir membership—had all apparently been borrowed from Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

  My father wrote to me regularly, and his letters were the things I looked forward to more than anything else. I went to him for the winter holidays, and the following summer he came to Shimla during my mid-term break and took me out for the duration of the holidays. We stayed in a hotel called Craig-Dhu, on a spur north of Jacko Hill. It was an idyllic week: long walks; stories about phantom rickshaws; ice-creams in the sun; browsings in bookshops; more plans. ‘We will go to England next year.’

  School seemed a stupid and heartless place after my father had gone away. He had been transferred to Calcutta and he wasn’t keeping well there. Malaria again. And then jaundice. But his last letter sounded quite cheerful. He’d been selling part of his valuable stamp collection so as to have enough money for the fares to England.

  One day my class-teacher sent for me.

  ‘I want to talk to you, Bond,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  I knew immediately that something was wrong.

  We took the path that went through the deodar forest, past Council Rock where Scout meetings were held. As soon as my unfortunate teacher (no doubt cursing the Headmaster for having given him this unpleasant task) started on the theme of ‘God wanting your father in a higher and better place’, as though there could be any better place than Jacko Hill in mid-summer, I knew my father was dead, and burst into tears.

  They let me stay in the school hospital for a few days until I felt better. The Headmaster visited me there and took away the pile of my father’s letters that I’d kept beside me.

  ‘Your father’s letters. You might lose them. Why not leave them with me? Then at the end of the year, before you go home, you can come and collect them.’

  Unwillingly I gave him the letters. He told me he’d heard from my mother that I would be going home to her at the end of the year. He seemed surprised that I evinced no interest in this prospect.

  At the end of the year, the day before school closed, I went to the HM’s office and asked for my letters.

  ‘What letters?’ he said. His desk was piled with papers and correspondence, and he was irritated by my interruption.

  ‘My father’s letters,’ I explained. ‘I gave them to you to keep for me, Sir—when he died . . .’

  ‘Letters. Are you sure you gave them to me?’

  He grew more irritated. ‘You must be mistaken, Bond. Why should I want to keep your father’s letters?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. You said I could collect them before going home.’

  ‘Look, I don’t remember any letters and I’m very busy just now, so run along. I’m sure you’re mistaken, but if I find your letters, I’ll send them to you.’

  I don’t suppose he meant to be unkind, but he was the first man who aroused in me feelings of hate ...

  As the train drew into Dehra, I looked out of the window to see if there was anyone on the platform waiting to receive me. The station was crowded enough, as most railway stations are in India, with overloaded travellers, shouting coolies, stray dogs, stray stationmasters . . . Pandemonium broke loose as the train came to a halt and people disembarked from the carriages. I was thrust on the platform with my tin trunk and small attache case. I sat on the trunk and waited for someone to find me.

  Slowly the crowd melted away. I was left with one elderly coolie who was too feeble to carry heavy luggage and had decided that my trunk was just the right size and weight for his head and shoulders. I waited another ten minutes, but no representative of my mother or stepfather appeared. I permitted the coolie to lead me out of the station to the tonga stand.

  Those were the days when everyone, including high-ranking officials, went about in tongas. Dehra had just one taxi. I was quite happy sitting beside a rather smelly, paan-spitting tonga-driver, while his weary, underfed pony clip-clopped along the quiet tree-lined roads.

  Dehra was always a good place for trees. The valley soil is very fertile, the rainfall fairly heavy; almost everything grows there, if given the chance. The roads were lined with neem and mango trees, eucalyptus, Persian lilac, jacaranda, amaltas (laburnum) and many others. In the gardens of the bungalows were mangoes, lichi and guavas; sometimes jackfruit and papaya. I did not notice all these trees at once; I came to know them as time passed.

  The tonga first took me to my grandmother’s house. I was under the impression that my mother still lived there.

  A lovely, comfortable bungalow that spread itself about the grounds in an easygoing, old-fashioned way. There was even smoke coming from the chimneys, reminding me of the smoke from my grandfather’s pipe. When I was eight, I had spent several months there with my grandparents. In retrospect it had been an idyllic interlude. But Grandfather was dead. Grandmother lived alone.

  White-haired, but still broad in the face and even broader behind, she was astonished to see me getting down from the tonga.

  ‘Didn’t anyone meet you at the station?’ she asked.

  I shook my head. Grandmother said: ‘Your mother doesn’t live here any more. You can come in and wait, but she may be worried about you, so I’d better take you to her place. Come on, help me up into the tonga. I might have known it would be a white horse. It always makes me nervous sitting in a tonga behind a white horse.’

  ‘Why, Granny?’

  1942: Dehra Granny with my baby brother William.

  ‘I don’t know, I suppose white horses are nervous, too. Anyway, they are always trying to topple me out. Not so fast, driver!’ she called out, as the tonga-man cracked his whip and the pony changed from a slow shuffle to a brisk trot.

  It took us about twenty-five minutes to reach my stepfather’s house which was in the Dalanwala area, not far from the dry bed of the seasonal Rispana river. My grandmother, seeing that I was in need of moral support, got down with me, while the tonga-driver carried my bedding roll and tin trunk on to the veranda. The front door was bolted from inside. We had to knock on it repeatedly and call out, before it was opened by a servant who did not look pleased at being disturbed. When he saw my grandmother he gave her a deferential salaam, then gazed at me with open curiosity.

  ‘Where’s the memsahib?’ asked Grandmother.

  ‘Out,’ said the servant.

  ‘I can see that, but where have they gone?’

  ‘They went yesterday to Motichur, for shikar. They will be back this evening.’

  Grandmother looked upset, but motioned to the servant to bring in my things. ‘Weren’t they expecting the boy?’ she asked. ‘Yes,’ he said looking at me again. ‘But they said he would be arriving tomorrow.’

  ‘They’d forgotten the date,’ said Grandmother in a huff. ‘Anyway, you can unpack and have a wash and change your clothes.’

  Turning to the servant, she asked, ‘Is there any lunch?’

  ‘I will make lunch,’ he said. He was staring at me again, and I felt uneasy with his eyes on me. He was tall and swarthy, with oily, jet-black hair and a thick moustache. A heavy scar ran down his left
cheek, giving him a rather sinister appearance. He wore a torn shirt and dirty pyjamas. His broad, heavy feet were wet. They left marks on the uncarpeted floor.

  A baby was crying in the next room, and presently a woman (who turned out to be the cook’s wife) appeared in the doorway, jogging the child in her arms.

  ‘They’ve left the baby behind, too,’ said Grandmother, becoming more and more irate. ‘He is your young brother. Only six months old.’ I hadn’t been told anything about a younger brother. The discovery that I had one came as something of a shock. I wasn’t prepared for a baby brother, least of all a baby half-brother. I examined the child without much enthusiasm. He looked healthy enough and he cried with gusto.

  ‘He’s a beautiful baby,’ said Grandmother. ‘Well, I’ve got work to do. The servants will look after you. You can come and see me in a day or two. You’ve grown since I last saw you. And you’re getting pimples.’

  This reference to my appearance did not displease me as Grandmother never indulged in praise. For her to have observed my pimples indicated that she was fond of me.

  1944: With Ellen, William and my half-brothers, Harold and Hansal.

  The tonga-driver was waiting for her. ‘I suppose I’ll have to use the same tonga,’ she said. ‘Whenever I need a tonga, they disappear, except for the ones with white ponies . . . When your mother gets back, tell her I want to see her. Shikar, indeed. An infant to look after, and they’ve gone shooting.’

  Grandmother settled herself in the tonga, nodded in response to the cook’s salaam, and took a tight grip of the armrests of her seat. The driver flourished his whip and the pony set off at the same listless, unhurried trot, while my grandmother, feeling quite certain that she was going to be hurtled to her doom by a wild white pony, set her teeth and clung tenaciously to the tonga seat. I was sorry to see her go.

  My mother and stepfather returned in the evening from their hunting trip with a pheasant which was duly handed over to the cook, whose name was Mangal Singh. My mother gave me a perfunctory kiss. I think she was pleased to see me, but I was accustomed to a more intimate caress from my father, and the strange reception I had received made me realize the extent of my loss. Boarding school life had been routine. Going home was something that I had always looked forward to. But going home had meant my father, and now he had vanished and I was left quite desolate.

  I suppose if one is present when a loved one dies, or sees him dead and laid out and later buried, one is convinced of the finality of the thing and finds it easier to adapt to the changed circumstances. But when you hear of a death, a father’s death, and have only the faintest idea of the manner of his dying, it is rather a lot for the imagination to cope with—especially when the imagination is a small boy’s. There being no tangible evidence of my father’s death, it was, for me, not a death but a vanishing. And although this enabled me to remember him as a living, smiling, breathing person, it meant that I was not wholly reconciled to his death, and subconsciously expected him to turn up (as he often did, when I most needed him) and deliver me from an unpleasant situation.

  My mother, in her teens, outside her home on the Old Survey Road (circa 1928).

  My stepfather barely noticed me. The first thing he did on coming into the house was to pour himself a whisky and soda. My mother, after inspecting the baby, did likewise. I was left to unpack and settle in my room.

  I was fortunate in having my own room. I was as desirous of my own privacy as much as my mother and stepfather were desirous of theirs. My stepfather, a local businessman, was ready to put up with me provided I did not get in the way. And, in a different way, I was ready to put up with him, provided he left me alone. I was even willing that my mother should leave me alone.

  There was a big window to my room, and I opened it to the evening breeze, and gazed out on to the garden, a rather unkempt place where marigolds and a sort of wild blue everlasting grew rampant among the lichi trees.

  Dehradun—Winter of ’45

  It snowed in Dehra that winter—on the evening of the 2nd of January, the day after another baby half-brother was born.

  Normally it did not snow in Dehra. You had to look up to the Mussoorie range, to see the white-crested peaks after the first snowfall. For it to snow in the valley was quite freakish.

  It came down quite suddenly, while I was returning from one of my walks. Soon the lichi and guava trees were covered with a soft mantle of snow. Dehra had never looked prettier—I ran indoors to tell my mother. She was in bed with the baby.

  ‘It’s snowing outside, Mum!’ I cried excitedly.

  ‘I don’t feel like joking just now, Ruskin,’ she said. ‘I’m very tired.’

  So I ran outside, plucked a snow-covered twig off one of the lichi trees and took it inside to show my mother. She looked pleased and brightened up considerably.

  Next morning there was lots of snow lying around, and I played snowballs with my stepfather’s mechanic and some of the neighbourhood boys. Then the sun came out, and by noon the snow had vanished.

  The following day I went to see Miss Kellner. She told me that it had snowed in Dehra forty years earlier, when she had first arrived in the town. Now perhaps it was a sign that she should go away.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘Wait for the next snowfall.’

  So we played ‘Snap’ and I finished all her ginger biscuits.

  Then she was carried indoors for her bath. As she couldn’t stand up, or even straighten up, she had to be bathed by her ayah. But she never missed her daily bath; it had become a sort of ritual with her.

  She had her own personal rickshaw and four liveried men to pull it. As she couldn’t climb into tongas or cars, she had to use the rickshaw. She was only a featherweight and the rickshawmen flew down the road with her; I couldn’t keep up with them. She enjoyed these rides and took one every evening. The rickshaw was painted sky blue.

  Her parents had left her a fair amount of money; otherwise she could not have afforded these luxuries. And she could not have survived without them. But her mind was far from being crippled. She possessed all her faculties—which was more than could be said for many who had the use of all their limbs.

  During the War years Dehra was a lively little town. It had been made a recreational centre for war-weary Allied troops, and there were large contingents of British and American soldiers stationed on the outskirts. As a result, cafés, dance-halls, bars and even a couple of ‘nightclubs’ sprang up all over the place, and the subsequent revelry continued until the early hours of each morning.

  1946: With my sister Ellen. Part of my stepfather’s workshop is in the background.

  My mother and Mr Hari went out almost every night. The old Ford convertible would bring them back at two or three in the morning. My insecurity was such that I would often wonder how I would cope if they had a fatal accident coming home, or if some avenging tigress got her own back in the jungle. Would I have to look after my sister, baby brother and two half-brothers? And where would the money come from?

  Money did not seem to be a concern with my mother and stepfather. There seemed to be plenty of it around and I presumed Mr Hari’s motor workshop was flourishing.

  But my instincts were sound and my fears not without foundation; for I returned from one of my afternoon walks to find all our boxes, bedding, furniture, pots and pans, out on the driveway. Apparently there were several months’ arrears of rent due to the landlord, and he had secured an eviction order.

  We ended up in Granny’s house—poor soul, she was much put out, her cherished privacy shattered by her youngest daughter’s unconventional lifestyle—and stayed there for the remainder of my winter holidays.

  Spring came to the foothills in February, and Dehra’s gardens were at their best then. Masses of sweet peas filled the air with their delicious scent; bright yellow California poppies formed a carpet of their own; scarlet poinsettias greeted each other over hedges and garden walls; snapdragons of many hues gave off their own elus
ive scent; bright red poppies danced in the slightest breeze. Those were the days when houses and bungalows had spacious compounds, with space for flower and vegetable gardens and even orchards. Over the years the pressures of population and the demand for more living space has meant the disappearance of large gardens. Some of the old bungalows survive in the middle of cramped housing estates, and there is little room left for flowers and fruit trees except up at Rajpur or parts of Dalanwala.

  Miss Kellner told me that Granny’s sweet peas used to win prizes at the annual flower show (held every year in the first week of March), but after Grandfather’s death, she seldom exhibited her flowers. Dhuki, who had been with her many years, continued to look after the garden.

  Miss Kellner did not take much interest in the garden but her little sitting room was crowded with bric-a-brac: ornate vases, decorative wall-plates, china figurines, little wooden toys . . . It was impossible to move around without knocking something over, so her visitors wisely stuck to her dining room or veranda or, better still, sat out beside her under the pomalo tree, while she shuffled her cards or did her hisaab (the day’s accounts) or scribbled notes to her friends.

  All this was a far cry from the feverish nightlife of the Casino or the White House or Green’s, where roistering soldiers on leave gathered late in the evenings to dance with the few Anglo-Indian girls who still lived in Dehra and were looking for a little fun and maybe even romance. These dances often ended in drunken brawls, sometimes between British and American servicemen. The latter were better paid and free with their money, and this led to some resentment.