DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES

by Ruskin Bond

  A week later I was on a small train which went chugging up the steep mountain track to Simla. Several Indian, Anglo-Indian and English children tumbled around in the compartment. I felt quite out of place among them, as though I had grown out of their pranks. But I wasn’t unhappy. I knew my father would be coming to see me soon. He’d promised me some books, a pair of roller skates, and a cricket bat, just as soon as he got his first month’s pay.

  Meanwhile, I had the jade sea horse which Sono had given me.

  And I have it with me today.

  The Last Time I Saw Delhi

  I’d had this old and faded negative with me for a number of years and had never bothered to make a print from it. It was a picture of my maternal grandparents. I remembered my grandmother quite well, because a large part of my childhood had been spent in her house in Dehra after she had been widowed; but although everyone said she was fond of me, I remembered her as a stern, somewhat aloof person, of whom I was a little afraid.

  I hadn’t kept many family pictures and this negative was yellow and spotted with damp.

  Then last week, when I was visiting my mother in hospital in Delhi, while she awaited her operation, we got talking about my grandparents, and I remembered the negative and decided I’d make a print for my mother.

  When I got the photograph and saw my grandmother’s face for the first time in twenty-five years, I was immediately struck by my resemblance to her. I have, like her, lived a rather spartan life, happy with my one room, just as she was content to live in a room of her own while the rest of the family took over the house! And like her, I have lived tidily. But I did not know the physical resemblance was so close—the fair hair, the heavy build, the wide forehead. She looks more like me than my mother!

  In the photograph she is seated on her favourite chair, at the top of the veranda steps, and Grandfather stands behind her in the shadows thrown by a large mango tree which is not in the picture. I can tell it was a mango tree because of the pattern the leaves make on the wall. Grandfather was a slim, trim man, with a drooping moustache that was fashionable in the 1920s. By all accounts he had a mischievous sense of humour, although he looks unwell in the picture. He appears to have been quite swarthy. No wonder he was so successful in dressing up ‘native’ style and passing himself off as a street vendor. My mother tells me he even took my grandmother in on one occasion, and sold her a basketful of bad oranges. His character was in strong contrast to my grandmother’s rather forbidding personality and Victorian sense of propriety; but they made a good match.

  So here’s the picture, and I am taking it to show my mother who lies in the Lady Hardinge Hospital, awaiting the removal of her left breast.

  It is early August and the day is hot and sultry. It rained during the night, but now the sun is out and the sweat oozes through my shirt as I sit in the back of a stuffy little taxi taking me through the suburbs of Greater New Delhi.

  On either side of the road are the houses of well-to-do Punjabis who came to Delhi as refugees in 1947 and now make up more than half the capital’s population. Industrious, flashy, go-ahead people. Thirty years ago, fields extended on either side of this road as far as the eye could see. The Ridge, an outcrop of the Aravallis, was scrub jungle, in which the black buck roamed. Feroz Shah’s fourteenth century hunting lodge stood here in splendid isolation. It is still here, hidden by petrol pumps and lost in the sounds of buses, cars, trucks and scooter rickshaws. The peacock has fled the forest, the black buck is extinct. Only the jackal remains. When, a thousand years from now, the last human has left this contaminated planet for some other star, the jackal and the crow will remain, to survive for years on all the refuse we leave behind.

  It is difficult to find the right entrance to the hospital, because for about a mile along the Panchkuian Road the pavement has been obliterated by tea shops, furniture shops, and piles of accumulated junk. A public hydrant stands near the gate, and dirty water runs across the road.

  I find my mother in a small ward. It is a cool, dark room, and a ceiling fan whirrs pleasantly overhead. A nurse, a dark, pretty girl from the South, is attending to my mother. She says, ‘In a minute,’ and proceeds to make an entry on a chart.

  My mother gives me a wan smile and beckons me to come nearer. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, due possibly to fever, otherwise she looks her normal self. I find it hard to believe that the operation she will have tomorrow will only give her, at the most, another year’s lease on life.

  I sit at the foot of her bed. This is my third visit since I flew back from Jersey, using up all my savings in the process; and I will leave after the operation, not to fly away again, but to return to the hills which have always called me back.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I ask.

  ‘All right. They say they will operate in the morning. They’ve stopped my smoking.’

  ‘Can you drink? Your rum, I mean?’

  ‘No. Not until a few days after the operation.’

  She has a fair amount of grey in her hair, natural enough at fifty-four. Otherwise she hasn’t changed much; the same small chin and mouth, lively brown eyes. Her father’s face, not her mother’s.

  The nurse has left us. I produce the photograph and hand it to my mother.

  ‘The negative was lying with me all these years. I had it printed yesterday.’

  ‘I can’t see without my glasses.’

  The glasses are lying on the locker near her bed. I hand them to her. She puts them on and studies the photograph.

  ‘Your grandmother was always very fond of you.’

  ‘It was hard to tell. She wasn’t a soft woman.’

  ‘It was her money that got you to Jersey, when you finished school. It wasn’t much, just enough for the ticket.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘The only person who ever left you anything. I’m afraid I’ve nothing to leave you, either.’

  ‘You know very well that I’ve never cared a damn about money. My father taught me to write. That was inheritance enough.’

  ‘And what did I teach you?’

  ‘I’m not sure … Perhaps you taught me how to enjoy myself now and then.’

  She looked pleased at this. ‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed myself between troubles. But your father didn’t know how to enjoy himself. That’s why we quarrelled so much. And finally separated.’

  ‘He was much older than you.’

  ‘You’ve always blamed me for leaving him, haven’t you?’

  ‘I was very small at the time. You left us suddenly. My father had to look after me, and it wasn’t easy for him. He was very sick. Naturally I blamed you.’

  ‘He wouldn’t let me take you away.’

  ‘Because you were going to marry someone else.’

  I break off; we have been over this before. I am not here as my father’s advocate, and the time for recrimination has passed.

  And now it is raining outside, and the scent of wet earth comes through the open doors, overpowering the odour of medicines and disinfectants. The dark-eyed nurse comes in again and informs me that the doctor will soon be on his rounds. I can come again in the evening, or early morning before the operation.

  ‘Come in the evening,’ says my mother. ‘The others will be here then.’

  ‘I haven’t come to see the others.’

  ‘They are looking forward to seeing you.’ ‘They’ being my stepfather and half-brothers.

  ‘I’ll be seeing them in the morning.’

  ‘As you like …’

  And then I am on the road again, standing on the pavement, on the fringe of a chaotic rush of traffic, in which it appears that every vehicle is doing its best to overtake its neighbour. The blare of horns can be heard in the corridors of the hospital, but everyone is conditioned to the noise and pays no attention to it. Rather, the sick and the dying are heartened by the thought that people are still well enough to feel reckless, indifferent to each other’s safety! In Delhi there is a feverish desire to be first in line, the
first to get anything … This is probably because no one ever gets round to dealing with second-comers.

  When I hail a scooter rickshaw and it stops a short distance away, someone elbows his way past me and gets in first. This epitomizes the philosophy and outlook of the Delhiwallah.

  So I stand on the pavement waiting for another scooter, which doesn’t come. In Delhi, to be second in the race is to be last.

  I walk all the way back to my small hotel, with a foreboding of having seen my mother for the last time.

  A Guardian Angel

  I can still picture the little Dilaram Bazaar as I first saw it twenty years ago. Hanging on the hem of Aunt Mariam’s sari, I had followed her along the sunlit length of the dusty road and up the wooden staircase to her rooms above the barber’s shop.

  There were a number of children playing on the road and they all stared at me. They must have wondered what my dark, black-haired aunt was doing with a strange child who was fairer than most. She did not bother to explain my presence and it was several weeks before the bazaar people learned something of my origins.

  Aunt Mariam, my mother’s younger sister, was at that time about thirty. She came from a family of Christian converts, originally Muslims of Rampur. My mother had married an Englishman who died while I was still a baby. She herself was not a strong woman and fought a losing battle with tuberculosis while bringing me up.

  My sixth birthday was approaching when she died, in the middle of the night, without my being aware of it. And I woke up to experience, for a day, all the terrors of abandonment.

  But that same evening Aunt Mariam arrived. Her warmth, worldliness and carefree chatter gave me the reassurance I needed so badly. She slept beside me that night and the next morning, after the funeral, took me with her to her rooms in the bazaar. This small flat was to be my home for the next year and a half.

  Before my mother’s death I had seen very little of my aunt. From the remarks I occasionally overheard, it appeared that Aunt Mariam had, in some indefinable way, disgraced the family. My mother was cold towards her and I could not help wondering why, because a more friendly and cheerful extrovert than Aunt Mariam could hardly be encountered.

  There were other relatives, but they did not come to my rescue with the same readiness. It was only later, when the financial issues became clearer, that innumerable uncles and aunts appeared on the scene.

  The age of six is the beginning of an interesting period in the life of a boy, and the months I spent with Aunt Mariam are not difficult to recall. She was a joyous, bubbling creature—a force of nature rather than a woman—and every time I think of her, I am tempted to put down on paper some aspect of her conversation, or her gestures, or her magnificent physique.

  She was a strong woman, taller than most men in the bazaar, but this did not detract from her charms. Her voice was warm and deep, her face was a happy one, broad and unlined, and her teeth gleamed white in the dark brilliance of her complexion.

  She had large, soft breasts, long arms and broad thighs. She was majestic and at the same time graceful. Above all, she was warm and full of understanding, and it was this tenderness of hers that overcame resentment and jealousy in other women.

  She called me ladla, her darling, and told me she had always wanted to look after me. She had never married. I did not, at that age, ponder on the reasons for her single state. At six I took all things for granted, and accepted Mariam for what she was—my benefactress and guardian angel.

  Her rooms were untidy compared with the neatness of my mother’s house. Mariam revelled in untidiness. I soon grew accustomed to the topsy-turviness of her rooms and found them comfortable. Beds (hers a very large and soft one) were usually left unmade, while clothes lay draped over chairs and tables.

  A large watercolour hung on a wall, but Mariam’s bodice and knickers were usually suspended from it, and I cannot recall the subject of the painting. The dressing table was a fascinating place, crowded with all kinds of lotions, mascaras, paints, oils and ointments.

  Mariam would spend much time sitting in front of the mirror running a comb through her long black hair or preferably having young Mulia, a servant girl, comb it for her. Though a Christian, my aunt retained several Muslim superstitions, and never went into the open with her hair falling loose.

  Once, Mulia came into the rooms with her own hair open. ‘You ought not to leave your hair open. Better knot it,’ said Aunt Mariam.

  ‘But I have not yet oiled it, Aunty,’ replied Mulia. ‘How can I put it up?’

  ‘You are too young to understand. There are Jinns—aerial spirits—who are easily attracted by long hair and pretty, black eyes like yours.’

  ‘Do Jinns visit human beings, Aunty?’

  ‘Learned people say so. Though I have never seen a Jinn myself, I have seen the effect they can have on one.’

  ‘Oh, do tell me about them,’ said Mulia.

  ‘Well, there was once a lovely girl like you who had a wealth of black hair,’ said Mariam. ‘Quite unaccountably she fell ill, and in spite of every attention and the best medicines she kept getting worse. She grew as thin as a whipping post, her beauty decayed, and all that remained of it till her dying day was her wonderful head of hair.’

  It did not take me long to make friends in Dilaram Bazaar. At first I was an object of curiosity, and when I came down to play in the street, both women and children would examine me as though I was a strange marine creature.

  ‘How fair he is,’ observed Mulia.

  ‘And how black his aunt,’ commented the washerman’s wife, whose face was riddled with the marks of smallpox.

  ‘His skin is very smooth,’ pointed out Mulia, who took considerable pride in having been the first to see me at close quarters. She pinched my cheeks with obvious pleasure.

  ‘His hair and eyes are black,’ remarked Mulia’s ageing mother.

  ‘Is it true that his father was an Englishman?’

  ‘Mariam-bi says so,’ said Mulia. ‘She never lies.’

  ‘True,’ said the washerman’s wife. ‘Whatever her faults—and there are many—she has never been known to lie.’

  My aunt’s other ‘faults’ were a deep mystery to me. Nor did anyone try to enlighten me about them.

  Some nights she had me sleep with her, other nights (I often wondered why) she gave me a bed in an adjoining room, although I much preferred remaining with her—especially since, on cold January nights, she provided me with considerable warmth.

  I would curl up into a ball just below her soft tummy. On the other side, behind her knees, slept Leila, an enchanting Siamese cat given to her by an American businessman, whose house she would sometimes visit. Every night, before I fell asleep, Mariam would kiss me, very softly, on my closed eyelids. I never fell asleep until I had received this phantom kiss.

  At first, I resented the nocturnal visitors that Aunt Mariam frequently received. Their arrival meant that I had to sleep in the spare room with Leila. But when I found that these people were impermanent creatures, mere ships that passed in the night, I learned to put up with them.

  I seldom saw those men, though occasionally I caught a glimpse of a beard or an expensive waistcoat or white pyjamas. They did not interest me very much, though I did have a vague idea that they provided Aunt Mariam with some sort of income, thus enabling her to look after me.

  Once, when one particular visitor was very drunk, Mariam had to force him out of the flat. I glimpsed this episode through a crack in the door. The man was big but no match for Aunt Mariam.

  She thrust him out on to the landing, and then he lost his footing and went tumbling downstairs. No damage was done and the man called on Mariam again a few days later, very sober and contrite, and was readmitted to my aunt’s favours.

  Aunt Mariam must have begun to worry about the effect these comings and goings might have on me, because after a few months, she began to make arrangements for sending me to a boarding school in the hills.

  I had not the slightest d
esire to go to school, and raised many objections. We had long arguments in which she tried vainly to impress upon me the desirability of receiving an education.

  ‘To make a living, my Ladla,’ she said, ‘you must have an education.’

  ‘But you have no education,’ I said, ‘and you have no difficulty in making a living!’

  Mariam threw up her arms in mock despair. ‘Ten years from now, I will not be able to make such a living. Then who will support and help me? An illiterate young fellow or an educated gentleman? When I am old, my son, when I am old …’

  Finally, I succumbed to her arguments and agreed to go to a boarding school. And when the time came for me to leave, both Aunt Mariam and I broke down and wept at the railway station.

  I hung out of the window as the train moved away from the platform, and saw Mariam, her bosom heaving, being helped from the platform by Mulia and some of our neighbours.

  My incarceration in a boarding school was made more unbearable by the absence of any letters from Aunt Mariam. She could write little more than her name.

  I was looking forward to my winter holidays and my return to Aunt Mariam and Dilaram Bazaar, but this was not to be. During my absence, there had been some litigation over my custody, and my father’s relatives claimed that Aunt Mariam was not a fit person to be a child’s guardian.

  And so when I left school, it was not to Aunt Mariam’s place that I was sent, but to a strange family living in a railway colony near Moradabad. I remained with these relatives until I finished school. But that is a different story.

  I did not see Aunt Mariam again. Dilaram Bazaar and my beautiful aunt and the Siamese cat all became part of the receding world of my childhood.

  I would often think of Mariam, but as time passed, she became more remote and inaccessible in my memory. It was not until many years later, when I was a young man, that I visited Dilaram Bazaar again. I knew from my foster parents that Aunt Mariam was dead. Her heart, it seemed, had always been weak.