Rusty Goes to London
Page 16
‘What made you leave so suddenly? You were ready to follow those circus girls wherever they went.’
‘They are all in Ambala. There’s a big parade-ground there. But it was too hot. Much hotter than Dehra.’
‘Is that why you left—because of the heat?’
‘Well, there was also this tiger that escaped.’
‘But it escaped in Dehra! Don’t tell me it returned to the circus?’
‘No, no! This was the other tiger. It got out of its cage, somehow.’
‘Not again! Did you have anything to do with it?’
‘Of course not. I hadn’t been near it since early that morning.’
‘Someone must have left the cage open. Or failed to close it properly.’
‘Must have been Mr Victor, the ringmaster. Anyway, when he tried to drive it back into the cage, it sprang on him and took his arm off. He’s in hospital.’
‘And the tiger?’
‘It ran into the sugar cane fields. No one saw it again.’
‘So the circus has lost both its tigers and the ringmaster his arm. Has the lion escaped too, since you’ve been there?’
‘No, the lion’s too old. Besides, it’s deeply in love with the lady wrestler.’
‘I thought that was the dwarf.’
‘They both love her.’
I gave up. I had a sneaking suspicion that he’d had something to do with the escape of the tiger, but he managed to convince me that he’d come back (a) because of the heat and (b) because he missed me. In that order. Had it been the other way round, I wouldn’t have believed him.
I collected my keys from the landlady (Sitaram had gone into the flat through the skylight), and she gave me a couple of letters. One of them contained a cheque from the Weekly, with a note from its editor, saying he would be happy to serialize my next novel. The cheque was for seven hundred rupees.
‘We’re rich!’ I shouted, showing Sitaram the cheque ‘Well, for two or three months, at least … See, I told you I’d be a successful writer some day!’
‘Will there be more cheques?’
‘As long as I keep writing.’
‘Then sit down and write.’ He pulled a chair up for me and forced me to sit in front of my desk.
‘Not now, you ass. I’ll start tomorrow.’
‘No, today!’
And so, to make him happy, I wrote a new limerick:
There was a young fellow called Ram
Who set up a frantic alarm,
For he’d let loose a tiger,
Two bears and a liger,
Who bit off the ringmaster’s arm.
‘What’s a liger?’
‘A cross between a lion and a lady wrestler.’
‘Write more about me.’
‘Tomorrow. Now let’s go out and celebrate.’
We went to one of the sweetshops near the bazaar and ate jalebis. Anand found us there and we ate more jalebis.
Then, walking down Rajpur Road, we met Peter, who said he was badly in need of a drink. So we took him to the Royal Cafe, where we found Mohan funding on the fourth dimension. There were several drinks, and everyone got drunk. Mohan so forgot himself that he signed the chit for the drinks.
It was late evening when we rolled into the Indiana for dinner. Larry Gomes played Roll out the Barrel and joined us for a beer.
I couldn’t write the next day because I had a terrible hangover. But I started again the following day, and I have been writing ever since.
Author’s Note
AFTER RETURNING FROM England when I was twenty-one, I have not left the shores of India. I suppose this says something for my attachment to this country, as well as for a secret fear that if I were to go abroad again I would never return. During that lonely year in Jersey, I felt as though I had been banished from India for ever. So I am not taking any chances. Rusty’s adventures, as man and writer, will have to continue in India and for his Indian readers. The heart has reasons which reason cannot fathom, and Rusty has always followed the dictates of his heart.
This is the fourth book in the Rusty series, and here we find him in his early twenties, doing his best to become a writer and making a living of it. The early chapters describe his sojourn in Jersey and London, and then we find him back in Dehra Dun, surrounded by ‘a handful of nuts’, a number of crazy characters who make for some hilarious episodes in the life of the aspiring writer. In ‘Shamli’ (no resemblance to present-day Shamli), the story is more poignant, its characters trapped in the backwaters of small-town India.
Oddly enough, ‘Time Stops at Shamli’ was written when I was twenty-one, with the future looking very uncertain. ‘A Handful of Nuts’ was written when I was sixty-one and not quite the romantic young man of my earlier fiction. But I was beginning to discover that life was really rather funny, provided you did not take yourself too seriously. Although written at an interval of forty years, both stories describe a period in my life that remains fresh and vibrant in my memory.
The concept for the series of Rusty books was Udayan Mitra’s. And the credit for bringing continuity and cohesion to the stories goes to Anjana Ramakrishnan, who lives in the little town of Tuticorin in south India—a far cry from London, Shamli and Dehra! She tells me that she is now getting nightmares about Rusty. I don’t blame her; I do, too.
But I hope the reader will continue to bear with Rusty. He’s no Rambo or James Bond or Harry Potter; just a normal, sensitive youth who is trying to find something bright and meaningful in his life. And along the way he comes across others who are trying to do the same thing.
Landour,
Mussoorie
Ruskin Bond
January 2004
Read More in Puffin
Thick as Thieves: Tales of Friendship
Ruskin Bond
Somewhere in life
There must be someone
To take your hand
And share the torrid day.
Without the touch of friendship
There is no life and we must fade away.
Discover a hidden pool with three young boys, laugh out loud as a little mouse makes demands on a lonely writer, follow the mischievous ‘four feathers’ as they discover a baby lost in the hills and witness the bond between a tiger and his master. Some stories will make you smile, some will bring tears to your eyes, some may make your heart skip a beat but all of them will renew your faith in the power of friendship.
Read More in Puffin
Uncles, Aunts and Elephants:
Tales from your Favourite Storyteller
Ruskin Bond
I know the world’s a crowded place,
And elephants do take up space,
But if it makes a difference, Lord,
I’d gladly share my room and board.
A baby elephant would do…
But, if he brings his mother too,
There’s Dad’s garage. He wouldn’t mind.
To elephants, he’s more than kind.
But I wonder what my Mum would say
If their aunts and uncles came to stay!
Ruskin Bond has entertained generations of readers for many decades. This delightful collection of poetry, prose and non-fiction brings together some of his best work in a single volume. Sumptuously illustrated, Uncles, Aunts and Elephants is a book to treasure for all times.
Read More in Puffin
Hip-Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems
Ruskin Bond
If a tortoise could run
And losses be won,
And bullies be buttered on toast;
If a song brought a shower
And a gun grew a flower,
This world would be nicer than most!
Beautiful, poignant and funny, Ruskin Bond’s verses for children are a joy to read to yourself on a lazy summer afternoon or to recite in school among friends. For the first time, his poems for children, old and new, come together in this illustrated volume. Nature, love, friends, school, books—all find a place i
n the poetry of India’s favourite children’s writer.
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin…
Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@PenguinIndia
Keep up-to-date with all our stories Youtube.com/PenguinIndia
Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/PenguinIndia
Find out more about the author and
discover more stories like this at Penguinbooksindia.com
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 7th Floor, Infinity Tower C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon - 122 002, Haryana, India
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Johannesburg 2193, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Puffin by Penguin Books India 2004
This illustrated edition published 2014
www.penguinbooksindia.com
Copyright © Ruskin Bond 2004
Cover illustrations by Archana Sreenivasan
Cover design by Aparajita Ninan
Versions of ‘A Far Cry From India’, ‘Six Pounds of Savings’, ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ and ‘Return to Dehra’ appeared in Ruskin Bond’s autobiography Scenes from a Writer’s Life, as ‘A Far Cry from India’, ‘Three Jobs in Jersey’, ‘And Another in London’ and ‘Return from Dehra’ respectively. Pages 15–17 and 20–21 appeared previously as the short story ‘The Typewriter’. A version of ‘My Most Important Day’ appeared in Landour Days: A Writer’s Journal. Pages 234–37 appeared previously as the short story ‘What’s Your Dream?’
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-143-33342-5
This digital edition published in 2014.
e-ISBN: 978-8-184-75328-8
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
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 written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this book.