by Ruskin Bond
‘I’ll remember,’ said Nathu.
Dust on the Mountain
I
Winter 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 campers had been carried up the mountain with the help of the dry grass and strong breeze. There was no one to put it out. It would take days to die down by itself.
‘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. And although Bisnu wasn’t quite so patient, he too had learnt how to wait—for late buses and late monsoons.
II
Along the valley and over the mountains went the little bus with its load of frail humans. A little misjudgement on the part of the driver, and they would all be dashed to pieces on the rocks far below.
‘How tiny we are,’ thought Bisnu, looking up at the towering peaks and the immensity of the 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 remote 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.
‘I have a cough that won’t go away. Perhaps they can do something for it at the hospital in Mussoorie. Doctors don’t like coming to villages, you know—there’s no money to be made in villages. So we must go to the doctors in the towns. I had a brother who could not be cured in Mussoorie. They told him to go to Delhi. He sold his buffaloes and went to Delhi, but there they told him it was too late to do anything. He died on the way back. I won’t go to Delhi. I don’t wish to die amongst strangers.’
‘You’ll get well, Uncle,’ said Bisnu.
‘Bless you for saying so. And you—what takes you to the big town?’
‘Looking for work—we need money at home.’
‘It is always the same. There are many like you who must go out in search of work. But don’t be led astray. Don’t let your friends persuade you to go to Bombay to become a film star! It is better to be hungry in your village than to be hungry on the streets of Bombay. I had a nephew who went to Bombay. The smugglers put him to work selling afeem (opium) and now he is in jail. Keep away from the b
ig cities, boy. Earn your money and go home.’
‘I’ll do that, Uncle. My mother and sister will expect me to return before the summer season is over.’
The old man nodded vigorously and began coughing again. Presently he dozed off. The interior of the bus smelt of tobacco smoke and petrol fumes and as a result Bisnu had a headache. He kept his face near the open window to get as much fresh air as possible, but the dust kept getting into his mouth and eyes.
Several dusty hours later the bus got into Mussoorie, honking its horn furiously at everything in sight. The passengers, looking dazed, got down and went their different ways. The old man trudged off to the hospital.
Bisnu had to start looking for a job straightaway. He needed a lodging for the night and he could not afford even the cheapest of hotels. So he went from one shop to another, and to all the little restaurants and eating places, asking for work—anything in exchange for a bed, a meal, and a minimum wage. A boy at one of the sweet shops told him there was a job at the Picture Palace, one of the town’s three cinemas. The hill station’s main road was crowded with people, for the season was just starting. Most of them were tourists who had come up from Delhi and other large towns.
The street lights had come on, and the shops were lighting up, when Bisnu presented himself at the Picture Palace.
III
The man who ran the cinema’s tea stall had just sacked the previous helper for his general clumsiness. Whenever he engaged a new boy (which was fairly often) he started him off with the warning: ‘I will be keeping a record of all the cups and plates you break, and their cost will be deducted from your salary at the end of the month.’
As Bisnu’s salary had been fixed at fifty rupees a month, he would have to be very careful if he was going to receive any of it.
‘In my first month,’ said Chittru, one of the three tea stall boys, ‘I broke six cups and five saucers, and my pay came to three rupees! Better be careful!’
Bisnu’s job was to help prepare the tea and samosas, serve these refreshments to the public during intervals in the film, and later wash up the dishes. In addition to his salary, he was allowed to drink as much tea as he wanted or could hold in his stomach. But the sugar supply was kept to a minimum.
Bisnu went to work immediately and it was not long before he was as well-versed in his duties as the other two tea boys, Chittru and Bali. Chittru was an easy-going, lazy boy who always tried to place the brunt of his work on someone else’s shoulders. But he was generous and lent Bisnu five rupees during the first week. Bali, besides being a tea boy, had the enviable job of being the poster boy. As the cinema was closed during the mornings, Bali would be busy either pushing the big poster board around Mussoorie, or sticking posters on convenient walls.
‘Posters are very useful,’ he claimed. ‘They prevent old walls from falling down.’
Chittru had relatives in Mussoorie and slept at their house. But both Bisnu and Bali were on their own and had to sleep at the cinema. After the last show the hall was locked up, so they could not settle down in the expensive seats as they would have liked! They had to sleep on a dirty mattress in the foyer, near the ticket office, where they were often at the mercy of icy Himalayan winds.
Bali made things more comfortable by setting his posterboard at an angle to the wall, which gave them a little alcove where they could sleep protected from the wind. As they had only one blanket each, they placed their blankets together and rolled themselves into a tight warm ball.
During shows, when Bisnu took the tea around, there was nearly always someone who would be rude and offensive. Once when he spilt some tea on a college student’s shoes, he received a hard kick on the shin. He complained to the tea stall owner, but his employer said, ‘The customer is always right. You should have got out of the way in time!’
As he began to get used to this life, Bisnu found himself taking an interest in some of the regular customers.
There was, for instance, the large gentleman with the soup-strainer moustache, who drank his tea from the saucer. As he drank, his lips worked like a suction pump, and the tea, after a brief agitation in the saucer, would disappear in a matter of seconds. Bisnu often wondered if there was something lurking in the forests of that gentleman’s upper lip, something that would suddenly spring out and fall upon him! The boys took great pleasure in exchanging anecdotes about the peculiarities of some of the customers.
Bisnu had never seen such bright, painted women before. The girls in his village, including his sister Puja, were good-looking and often sturdy; but they did not use perfumes or make-up like these more prosperous women from the towns of the plains. Wearing expensive clothes and jewellery, they never gave Bisnu more than a brief, bored glance. Other women were more inclined to notice him, favouring him with kind words and a small tip when he took away the cups and plates. He found he could make a few rupees a month in tips; and when he received his first month’s pay, he was able to send some of it home.
Chittru accompanied him to the post office and helped him to fill in the money order form. Bisnu had been to the village school, but be wasn’t used to forms and official paperwork. Chittru, a town boy, knew all about them, even though he could just about read and write.
Walking back to the cinema, Chittru said, ‘We can make more money at the limestone quarries.’
‘All right, let’s try them,’ said Bisnu.
‘Not now,’ said Chittru, who enjoyed the busy season in the hill station. ‘After the season—after the monsoon.’
But there was still no monsoon to speak of, just an occasional drizzle which did little to clear the air of the dust that blew up from the plains. Bisnu wondered how his mother and sister were faring at home. A wave of homesickness swept over him. The hill station, with all its glitter, was just a pretty gift box with nothing inside.
One day in the cinema Bisnu saw the old man who had been with him on the bus. He greeted him like a long lost friend. At first the old man did not recognize the boy, but when Bisnu asked him if he had recovered from his illness, the old man remembered and said, ‘So you are still in Mussoorie, boy. That is good. I thought you might have gone down to Delhi to make more money.’ He added that he was a little better and that he was undergoing a course of treatment at the hospital. Bisnu brought him a cup of tea and refused to take any money for it; it could be included in his own quota of free tea. When the show was over, the old man went his way and Bisnu did not see him again.
In September the town began to empty. The taps were running dry or giving out just a trickle of muddy water. A thick mist lay over the mountain for days on end, but there was no rain. When the mists cleared, an autumn wind came whispering through the deodars.
At the end of the month the manager of the Picture Palace gave everyone a week’s notice, a week’s pay, and announced that the cinema would be closing for the winter.
IV
Bali said, ‘I’m going to Delhi to find work. I’ll come back next summer. What about you, Bisnu, why don’t you come with me? It’s easier to find work in Delhi.’
‘I’m staying with Chittru,’ said Bisnu. ‘We may work at the quarries.’
‘I like the big towns,’ said Bali. ‘I like shops and people and lots of noise. I will never go back to my village. There is no money there, no fun.’
Bali made a bundle of his things and set out for the bus stand. Bisnu bought himself a pair of cheap shoes, for his old ones had fallen to pieces. With what was left of his money, he sent another money order home. Then he and Chittru set out for the limestone quarries, an eight-mile walk from Mussoorie.
They knew they were nearing the quarries when they saw clouds of limestone dust hanging in the air. The dust hid the next mountain from view. When they did see the mountain, they found that the top of it was missing—blasted away by dynamite to enable the quarries to get at the rich strata of limestone rock below the surface.
The skeletons of a few trees remained on the lower slopes. Almost everything else
had gone—grass, flowers, shrubs, birds, butterflies, grasshoppers, ladybirds … A rock lizard popped its head out of a crevice to look at the intruders. Then, like some prehistoric survivor, it scuttled back into its underground shelter.
‘I used to come here when I was small,’ announced Chittru cheerfully.
‘Were the quarries here then?’
‘Oh, no. My friends and I—we used to come for the strawberries. They grew all over this mountain. Wild strawberries, but very tasty.’
‘Where are they now?’ asked Bisnu, looking around at the devastated hillside.
‘All gone,’ said Chittru. ‘Maybe there are some on the next mountain.’
Even as they approached the quarries, a blast shook the hillside. Chittru pulled Bisnu under an overhanging rock to avoid the shower of stones that pelted down on the road. As the dust enveloped them, Bisnu had a fit of coughing. When the air cleared a little, they saw the limestone dump ahead of them.
Chittru, who was older and bigger than Bisnu, was immediately taken on as a labourer; but the quarry foreman took one look at Bisnu and said, ‘You’re too small. You won’t be able to break stones or lift those heavy rocks and load them into the trucks. Be off, boy. Find something else to do.’
He was offered a job in the labourers’ canteen, but he’d had enough of making tea and washing dishes. He was about to turn round and walk back to Mussoorie when he felt a heavy hand descend on his shoulder. He looked up to find a grey-bearded, turbanned Sikh looking down at him in some amusement.
‘I need a cleaner for my truck,’ he said. ‘The work is easy, but the hours are long!’
Bisnu responded immediately to the man’s gruff but jovial manner.
‘What will you pay?’ he asked.
‘Fifteen rupees a day, and you’ll get food and a bed at the depot.’
