by Ruskin Bond
And a year later, when I was editing Imprint, I was able to publish one of the SP’s poems. He has always maintained that if I’d published more of them, the magazine would never have folded.
A note on Miss Bun:
Little Miss Bun is fond of bed,
But she keeps a cash-box in her head.
8 April
Rev. Biggs at the door, book in hand.
‘I won’t take up your time, Mr Bond. But I thought it was time I returned your Butterfly book.’
‘My butterfly book?’
‘Yes, thank you very much. I enjoyed it a great deal.’
Mr Biggs hands me the book on butterflies, a handsomely illustrated volume. It isn’t my book, but if Mr Biggs insists on giving me someone else’s book, who am I to quibble? He’d never find the right owner, anyway.
‘By the way, have you seen Mrs Biggs?’ he asks.
‘No, not this morning, sir.’
‘She went off without telling me. She’s always doing things like that. Very irritating.’
After he has gone, I glance at the fly-leaf of the book. The name-plate says W. Biggs. So it’s one of his own …
A little later Mrs Biggs comes by.
‘Have you seen Will?’ she asks.
‘He was here about fifteen minutes ago. He was looking for you.’
‘Oh, he knew I’d gone to the garden shed. How tiresome! I suppose he’s wandered off somewhere.’
‘Never mind, Mrs Biggs, he’ll make his way home when he gets hungry. A good lunch will always bring a wanderer home. By the way, I’ve got his book on butterflies. Perhaps you’d return it to him for me? And he shouldn’t lend it to just anyone, you know. It’s a valuable book; you don’t want to lose it.’
‘I’m sure it was quite safe with you, Mr Bond.’
Books always are, of course. On principle, I never steal another man’s books. I might take his geraniums or his old school tie, but I wouldn’t deprive him of his books. Or the song or melody or dream he lives by. And I wrote a little lullaby for Raki:
Little one, don’t be afraid of this big river.
Be safe in these warm arms for ever.
Grow tall, my child, be wise and strong.
But do not take from any man his song.
Little one, don’t be afraid of this dark night.
Walk boldly as you see the truth and light.
Love well, my child, laugh all day long,
But do not take from any man his song.
16 April
Is there something about the air at this height that makes people light-headed, absent-minded? Ten years from now I will probably be as forgetful as Mr Biggs. I must climb the next mountain before I forget where it is.
Outline for a story:
Someone lives in a small hut near a spring, within sound of running water. He never leaves the place, except to walk into the town for books, post, and supplies. ‘Don’t you ever get bored here?’ I asked. ‘Do you never wish to leave?’ ‘No,’ he replies, and tells me of his experience in the desert, when for two days and two nights (the limit of human endurance in regard to thirst), he went without water. On the second night, half dead, lying in the open beneath the stars, he dreamt of just such a spring in the mountains, and it was as though it gave him spiritual sustenance. So later, when he was fully recovered, he went in search of the spring (which he was sure existed), and found it while hiking in the Himalayas. He knew that as long as he remained by the spring he would never feel unsafe; it was where his guardian-spirit lived …
And so I feel safe near my own spring, my own mountain, for this is where my guardian-spirit lives too.
16 April
Visited the Tibetan shop and bought a small brass vase encrusted with pretty stones.
I’d no intention of buying anything, but the girl smiled at me as I passed, and then I just had to go in; and once in, I couldn’t just stand there, a fatuous grin on my face.
I had to buy something. And a vase is always a good thing to buy. If you don’t like it, you can give it away.
If she smiles at me every time I pass, I shall probably build up a collection of vases.
She isn’t a girl, really; she’s probably about thirty. I suppose she has a husband who smuggles Chinese goods in from Nepal, while her children—‘charity cases’—go to one of the posh public schools; but she’s fresh and pretty, and then of course I don’t have many young women smiling at me these days. I shall be forty-three next month.
17 April
Miss Bun still smiles at me, even though I frown at her when we pass.
This afternoon she brought me samosas and a rose.
‘Where’s your brother?’ I asked gruffly. ‘He has more to talk about.’
‘He’s busy in the bakery. See, I’ve brought you a rose.’
‘How much did it cost?’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s a present.’
‘Thanks. I didn’t know you grew roses.’
‘I don’t. It’s from the school garden.’
‘Well, thank you anyway. You actually stole something on my behalf!’
‘Where shall I put it?’
I found my new vase, filled it with fresh water, placed the rose in it, and set it down on my dressing-table.
‘It leaks,’ remarked Miss Bun.
‘My vase?’ I was incredulous.
‘See, the water’s spreading all over your nice table.’
She was right, of course. Water from the bottom of the vase was running across the varnished wood of my great-grandmother’s old rosewood dressing-table. The stain, I felt sure, would be permanent.
‘But it’s a new vase!’ I protested.
‘Someone must have cheated you. Why did you buy it without looking properly?’
‘Well, you see, I didn’t buy it actually. Someone gave it to me as a present.’
I fumed inwardly, vowing never again to visit the brassware shop. Never trust a smiling woman! I prefer Miss Bun’s scowl.
‘Do you want the vase?’ she asks.
‘No. Take it away.’
She places the rose on my pillow, throws the water out of the window, and drops the vase into her cloth shopping-bag.
‘What will you do with it?’ I ask.
‘I’ll seal the leak with flour,’ she says.
21 April
A clear fresh morning after a week of intermittent rain. And what a morning for birds! Three doves acourting, a cuckoo calling, a bunch of mynas squabbling, and a pair of king-crows doing Swedish exercises.
I find myself doing exercises of an original nature, devised by Master Bun; these consist of various contortions of the limbs which, he says, are good for my sex drive.
‘But I don’t want a sex drive,’ I tell him. ‘I want something that will take my mind off sex.’
So he gives me another set of exercises, which consist mostly of deep breathing.
‘Try holding your breath for five minutes,’ he suggests.
‘I know of someone who committed suicide by doing just that.’
‘Then hold it for two minutes.’
I take a deep breath and last only a minute.
‘No good,’ he says. ‘You have to relax more.’
‘Well, I am tired of trying to relax. It doesn’t work this way. What I need is a good meal.’
And Prem obliges by serving up my favourite kofta curry and rice. Satiated, I have no problem in relaxing for the rest of the afternoon.
28 April
Master Bun wears a troubled expression.
‘It’s about my sister,’ he says.
‘What about her?’ I ask, fearing the worst.
‘She has run away.’
‘That’s bad. On her own?’
‘No … With a professor.’
‘That should be all right. Professors are usually respectable people. Maths or English?’
‘I don’t know. He has a wife and children.’
‘Then obviously he hasn’t taken them along.’
‘He has taken her to Roorkee. My sister is an innocent girl.’
‘Well, there is a certain innocence about her,’ I say, recalling Nabokov’s Lolita. ‘Maybe the professor wants to adopt her.’
‘But she’s a virgin.’
‘Then she must be rescued! Why are you here, talking to me about it, when you should be rushing down to Roorkee?’
‘That’s why I’ve come. Can you lend me the bus fare?’
‘Better still, I’ll come with you. We must rescue the professor—sorry, I mean your sister!’
1 May
To Roorkee, to Roorkee, to find a sweet girl,
Home again, home again, oh what a whirl!
We did everything except find Miss Bun. Our first evening in Roorkee we roamed the bazaar and the canal banks; the second day we did the rounds of the University, the regimental barracks, and the headquarters of the Boys’ Brigade. We made enquiries from all the bakers in Roorkee (many of them known to Master Bun), but none of them had seen his sister. On the college campus we asked for the professor, but no one had heard of him either.
Finally we bought platform tickets and sat down on a bench at the end of the railway platform and watched the arrivals and departures of trains, and the people who got on and off; we saw no one who looked in the least like Miss Bun. Master Bun bought an astrological guide from the station bookstall, and studied his sister’s horoscope to see if that might help, but it didn’t. At the same bookstall, hidden under a pile of pirated Harold Robbins novels, I found a book of mine that had been published ten years earlier. No one had bought it in all that time. I replaced it at the top of the pile. Never lose hope!
On the third day we returned to Barlowganj and found Miss Bun at home.
She had gone no further than Dehra’s Paltan Bazaar, it seemed, and had ditched the professor there, having first made him buy her three dress pieces, two pairs of sandals, a sandalwood hair brush, a bottle of scent, and a satchel for her schoolbooks.
5 May
And now it’s Mr Biggs’s turn to disappear.
‘Have you seen our Will?’ asks Mrs Biggs at my gate.
‘Not this morning, Mrs Biggs.’
‘I can’t find him anywhere. At breakfast he said he was going out for a walk, but nobody knows where he went, and he isn’t in the school compound, I’ve just enquired. He’s been gone over three hours!’
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Biggs. He’ll turn up. Someone on the hillside must have asked him in for a cup of tea, and he’s sitting there talking about the crocodile he shot in Orissa.’
But at lunchtime Mr Biggs hadn’t returned; and that was alarming, because Mr Biggs had never been known to miss his favourite egg curry and pillau rice.
We organized a search. Prem and I walked the length of the Barlowganj bazaar, and even lodged an unofficial report with Constable Ghanshyam. No one had seen him in the bazaar. Several members of the school staff combed the hillside without picking up the scent.
Mid-afternoon, while giving my negative report to Mrs Biggs, I heard a loud thumping coming from the direction of her storeroom.
‘What’s all that noise downstairs?’ I asked.
‘Probably rats. I don’t hear anything.’
I ran downstairs and opened the storeroom door, there was Mr Biggs looking very dusty and very disgruntled; he wanted to know why the devil (the first time he’d taken the devil’s name in vain) Mrs Biggs had shut him up for hours. He’d gone into the storeroom in search of an old walking-stick, and Mrs Biggs, seeing the door open, had promptly bolted it, failing to hear her husband’s cries for immediate release. But for Mr Bond’s presence of mind, he averred, he might have been discovered years later, a mere skeleton!
The cook was still out hunting for him, so Mr Biggs had his egg curry cold. Still in a foul mood, he sat down and wrote a letter to his sister in Tunbridge Wells, asking her to send out a hearing-aid for Mrs Biggs.
Constable Ghanshyam turned up in the evening, to inform me that Mr Biggs had last been seen at Rajpur, in the foothills, in the company of several gypsies!
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘These old men get that way. One last fling, one last romantic escapade, one last tilt at the windmill. If you have a dream, Ghanshyam, don’t let them take it away from you.’
He looked puzzled, but went on to tell me that he was being transferred to Bareilly jail, where they keep those who have been found guilty but of unsound mind. It’s a reward, no doubt, for his services in getting the SP’s poems published.
These journal entries date back some thirty-two years. What happened to Miss Bun? Well, she finally opened a beauty parlour in New Delhi, but I still can’t tell you where it is, or give you her name.
Two or three years later, Mrs Biggs was laid to rest near her old friends in the Mussoorie cemetery. Rev. Biggs was flown home to Turnbridge Wells; his sister gave him a solid tombstone, so that he wasn’t tempted to get up and wander off somewhere, in search of crocodiles.
A lot can happen in thirty-two years, and unfortunately not all of it gets recorded. ‘Little Raki’ is today a married man!
Miss Ramola and Others
Though their numbers have diminished over the years, there are still a few compulsive daily walkers around: the odd ones, the strange ones, who will walk all day, here, there and everywhere, not in order to get somewhere, but to escape from their homes, their lonely rooms, their mirrors, themselves …
Those of us who must work for a living and would love to be able to walk a little more don’t often get the chance. There are offices to attend, deadlines to be met, trains or planes to be caught, deals to be struck, people to deal with. It’s the rat race for most people, whether they like it or not. So who are these lucky ones, a small minority it has to be said, who find time to walk all over this hill station from morn to night?
Some are fitness freaks, I suppose; but several are just unhappy souls who find some release, some meaning, in covering miles and miles of highway without so much as a nod in the direction of others on the road. They are not looking at anything as they walk, not even at a violet in a mossy stone.
Here comes Miss Romola. She’s been at it for years. A retired schoolmistress who never married. No friends. Lonely as hell. Not even a visit from a former pupil. She could not have been very popular.
She has money in the bank. She owns her own flat. But she doesn’t spend much time in it. I see her from my window, tramping up the road to Lal Tibba. She strides around the mountain like the character in the old song ‘She’ll be coming round the mountain’, only she doesn’t wear pink pyjamas; she dresses in slacks and a shirt. She doesn’t stop to talk to anyone. It’s quick march to the top of the mountain, and then down again, home again, jiggety-jig. When she has to go down to Dehradun (too long a walk even for her), she stops a car and cadges a lift. No taxis for her; not even the bus.
Miss Romola’s chief pleasure in life comes from conserving her money. There are people like that. They view the rest of the world with suspicion. An overture of friendship will be construed as taking an undue interest in her assets. We are all part of an international conspiracy to relieve her of her material possessions! She has no servants, no friends; even her relatives are kept at a safe distance.
A similar sort of character but even more eccentric is Mr Sen, who used to live in the USA and walks from the Happy Valley to Landour (five miles) and back every day, in all seasons, year in and year out. Once or twice every week he will stop at the Community Hospital to have his blood pressure checked or undergo a blood or urine test. With all that walking he should have no health problems, but he is a hypochondriac and is convinced that he is dying of something or the other.
He came to see me once. Unlike Miss Romola, he seemed to want a friend, but his neurotic nature turned people away. He was convinced that he was surrounded by individual and collective hostility. People were always staring at him, he told me. I couldn’t help wondering why, because he looked fairly nondescript. He wore conv
entional western clothes, perfectly acceptable in urban India, and looked respectable enough except for a constant nervous turning of the head, looking to the left, right, or behind, as though to check on anyone who might be following him. He was convinced that he was being followed at all times.
‘By whom?’ I asked.
‘Agents of the government,’ he said.
‘But why should they follow you?’
‘I look different,’ he said. ‘They see me as an outsider. They think I work for the CIA.’
‘And do you?’
‘No, no!’ He shied nervously away from me. ‘Why did you say that?’
‘Only because you brought the subject up. I haven’t noticed anyone following you.’
‘They’re very clever about it. Perhaps you’re following me too.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t walk as fast or as far as you,’ I said with a laugh; but he wasn’t amused. He never smiled, never laughed. He did not feel safe in India, he confided. The saffron brigade was after him!
‘But why?’ I asked. ‘They’re not after me. And you’re a Hindu with a Hindu name.’
‘Ah yes, but I don’t look like one!’
‘Well, I don’t look like a Taoist monk, but that’s what I am,’ I said, adding, in a more jocular manner: ‘I know how to become invisible, and you wouldn’t know I’m around. That’s why no one follows me! I have this wonderful cloak, you see, and when I wear it I become invisible!’
‘Can you lend it to me?’ he asked eagerly.
‘I’d love to,’ I said, ‘but it’s at the cleaners right now. Maybe next week.’
‘Crazy,’ he muttered. ‘Quite mad.’ And he hurried on.
A few weeks later he returned to New York and safety. Then I heard he’d been mugged in Central Park. He’s recovering, but doesn’t do much walking now.
Neurotics do not walk for pleasure, they walk out of compulsion. They are not looking at the trees or the flowers or the mountains; they are not looking at other people (except in apprehension); they are usually walking away from something—unhappiness or disarray in their lives. They tire themselves out, physically and mentally, and that brings them some relief.
