DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES Read online

  Ruskin Bond wrote his first short story, ‘Untouchable’, at the age of sixteen in 1950. Since then he has written over a hundred stories, including the classics ‘A Face in the Dark’, ‘The Kitemaker’, ‘The Tunnel’, ‘The Room of Many Colours’, ‘Dust on the Mountain’ and ‘Time Stops at Shamli’. This volume brings together the best of all the short fiction Ruskin Bond has ever written.

  ‘[Ruskin Bond’s stories] bring to life the special flavours of life in the hills…strengthen[s] the “Rudyardian thesis” that the smell of the Himalayas, if it once creeps into the blood of a man, he will return to the hills again and again and will love to live and die among them.’–Tribune

  ‘[Ruskin Bond] is a writer who has, with intense depth and sensitivity, absorbed the essence of the culturally syncretic Indian society.’–Telegraph

  A comprehensive

  selection from

  six decades of short

  fiction by

  India’s best-loved

  contemporary author

  Cover photograph by Tommy Oshima

  Cover design by Chandan Crasta

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  DUST ON THE MOUNTAIN:

  COLLECTED STORIES

  Ruskin Bond’s first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written several novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley, A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far), essays, poems and children’s books, many of which have been published by Penguin India. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999.

  Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955 and has never left the country since. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.

  BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

  Fiction

  The Room on the Roof & Vagrants in the Valley

  The Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories

  Time Stops at Shamli and Other Stories

  Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra

  A Season of Ghosts

  When Darkness Falls and Other Stories

  A Flight of Pigeons

  Delhi Is Not Far

  A Face in the Dark and Other Hauntings

  The Sensualist

  A Handful of Nuts

  Non-fiction

  Rain in the Mountains

  Scenes from a Writer’s Life

  The Lamp Is Lit

  The Little Book of Comfort

  Landour Days

  Notes from a Small Room

  Anthologies

  Dust on the Mountain: Collected Stories

  The Best of Ruskin Bond

  Friends in Small Places

  Indian Ghost Stories (ed.)

  Indian Railway Stories (ed.)

  Classical Indian Love Stories and Lyrics (ed.)

  Tales of the Open Road

  Ruskin Bond’s Book of Nature

  Ruskin Bond’s Book of Humour

  A Town Called Dehra

  Poetry

  Ruskin Bond’s Book of Verse

  Dust on the Mountain

  COLLECTED STORIES

  Ruskin Bond

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, 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 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  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), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Group (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Viking as Complete Short Stories and Novels by Penguin Books India 1996

  Published as Collected Fiction in Penguin Books 1999

  This edition published by Penguin Books India 2009

  Copyright © Ruskin Bond 1996, 1999, 2009

  All rights reserved

  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.

  ISBN: 978-0-14306-712-2

  This digital edition published in 2011.

  e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-158-1

  This e-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 e-book.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Untouchable

  The Coral Tree

  Going Home

  The Daffodil Case

  The Eyes Have It

  The Night Train at Deoli

  The Woman on Platform No. 8

  The Thief

  The Photograph

  The Window

  The Boy Who Broke the Bank

  Most Beautiful

  The Haunted Bicycle

  The Fight

  A Rupee Goes a Long Way

  Faraway Places

  How Far Is the River?

  Tribute to a Dead Friend

  The Trouble with Jinns

  Time Stops at Shamli

  The Crooked Tree

  The Flute Player

  Chachi’s Funeral

  The Man Who Was Kipling

  The Girl from Copenhagen

  Hanging at the Mango Tope

  A Tiger in the House

  All Creatures Great and Small

  Calypso Christmas

  Bhabiji’s House

  Masterji

  As Time Goes By

  Death of a Familiar

  Dead Man’s Gift

  The Most Potent Medicine of All

  The Story of Madhu

  My First Love

  The Kitemaker

  The Prospect of Flowers

  Sita and the River

  The Tunnel

  The Leopard

  Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

  Coming Home to Dehra

  My Father’s Trees in Dehra

  The Room of Many Colours

  The Last Tonga Ride

  The Tiger in the Tunnel

  A Face in the Dark

  Binya Passes By

  He Said It with Arsenic

  Whispering in the Dark

  Escape from Java

  The Last Time I Saw Delhi
r />   A Guardian Angel

  Love Is a Sad Song

  Listen to the Wind

  The Garlands on His Brow

  His Neighbour’s Wife

  The Monkeys

  A Case for Inspector Lal

  Panther’s Moon

  The Good Old Days

  Death of the Trees

  Miss Bun and Others

  The Funeral

  The Last Truck Ride

  Dust on the Mountain

  Would Astley Return?

  A Job Well Done

  A Crow for All Seasons

  The Playing Fields of Simla

  The Wind on Haunted Hill

  From Small Beginnings

  When Darkness Falls

  Whistling in the Dark

  Something in the Water

  Wilson’s Bridge

  On Fairy Hill

  Reunion at the Regal

  Grandfather Fights an Ostrich

  Grandfather’s Many Faces

  Here Comes Mr Oliver

  Susanna’s Seven Husbands

  What’s Your Dream?

  Eyes of the Cat

  The Cherry Tree

  When You Can’t Climb Trees Any More

  A Love of Long Ago

  Untouchable

  The sweeper boy splashed water over the khus matting that hung in the doorway and for a while the air was cooled.

  I sat on the edge of my bed, staring out of the open window, brooding upon the dusty road shimmering in the noon-day heat. A car passed and the dust rose in billowing clouds.

  Across the road lived the people who were supposed to look after me while my father lay in hospital with malaria. I was supposed to stay with them, sleep with them. But except for meals, I kept away. I did not like them and they did not like me.

  For a week, longer probably, I was going to live alone in the red-brick bungalow on the outskirts of the town, on the fringe of the jungle. At night the sweeper boy would keep guard, sleeping in the kitchen. Apart from him, I had no company; only the neighbours’ children, and I did not like them and they did not like me.

  Their mother said, ‘Don’t play with the sweeper boy, he is unclean. Don’t touch him. Remember, he is a servant. You must come and play with my boys.’

  Well, I did not intend playing with the sweeper boy … but neither did I intend playing with her children. I was going to sit on my bed all week and wait for my father to come home.

  Sweeper boy … all day he pattered up and down between the house and the water-tank, with the bucket clanging against his knees.

  Back and forth, with a wide, friendly smile.

  I frowned at him.

  He was about my age, ten. He had short-cropped hair, very white teeth, and muddy feet, hands, and face. All he wore was an old pair of khaki shorts; the rest of his body was bare, burnt a deep brown.

  At every trip to the water tank he bathed, and returned dripping and glistening from head to toe.

  I dripped with sweat.

  It was supposedly below my station to bathe at the tank, where the gardener, water carrier, cooks, ayahs, sweepers, and their children all collected. I was the son of a ‘sahib’ and convention ruled that I did not play with servant children.

  But I was just as determined not to play with the other sahibs’ children, for I did not like them and they did not like me.

  I watched the flies buzzing against the windowpane, the lizards scuttling across the rafters, the wind scattering petals of scorched, long-dead flowers.

  The sweeper boy smiled and saluted in play. I avoided his eyes and said, ‘Go away.’

  He went into the kitchen.

  I rose and crossed the room, and lifted my sun helmet off the hatstand.

  A centipede ran down the wall, across the floor.

  I screamed and jumped on the bed, shouting for help.

  The sweeper boy darted in. He saw me on the bed, the centipede on the floor; and picking a large book off the shelf, slammed it down on the repulsive insect.

  I remained standing on my bed, trembling with fear and revulsion.

  He laughed at me, showing his teeth, and I blushed and said, ‘Get out!’

  I would not, could not, touch or approach the hat or hatstand. I sat on the bed and longed for my father to come home.

  A mosquito passed close by me and sang in my ear. Half-heartedly, I clutched at it and missed; and it disappeared behind the dressing-table.

  That mosquito, I reasoned, gave the malaria to my father. And now it was trying to give it to me!

  The next-door lady walked through the compound and smiled thinly from outside the window. I glared back at her.

  The sweeper boy passed with the bucket, and grinned. I turned away.

  In bed at night, with the lights on, I tried reading. But even books could not quell my anxiety.

  The sweeper boy moved about the house, bolting doors, fastening windows. He asked me if I had any orders.

  I shook my head.

  He skipped across to the electric switch, turned off the light, and slipped into his quarters. Outside, inside, all was dark; only one shaft of light squeezed in through a crack in the sweeper boy’s door, and then that too went out.

  I began to wish I had stayed with the neighbours. The darkness worried me—silent and close—silent, as if in suspense.

  Once a bat flew flat against the window, falling to the ground outside; once an owl hooted. Sometimes a dog barked. And I tautened as a jackal howled hideously in the jungle behind the bungalow. But nothing could break the overall stillness, the night’s silence …

  Only a dry puff of wind …

  It rustled in the trees, and put me in mind of a snake slithering over dry leaves and twigs. I remembered a tale I had been told not long ago, of a sleeping boy who had been bitten by a cobra.

  I would not, could not, sleep. I longed for my father …

  The shutters rattled, the doors creaked. It was a night for ghosts.

  Ghosts!

  God, why did I have to think of them?

  My God! There, standing by the bathroom door …

  My father! My father dead from the malaria, and come to see me!

  I threw myself at the switch. The room lit up. I sank down on the bed in complete exhaustion, the sweat soaking my nightclothes.

  It was not my father I had seen. It was his dressing gown hanging on the bathroom door. It had not been taken with him to the hospital.

  I turned off the light.

  The hush outside seemed deeper, nearer. I remembered the centipede, the bat, thought of the cobra and the sleeping boy; pulled the sheet tight over my head. If I could see nothing, well then, nothing could see me.

  A thunderclap shattered the brooding stillness.

  A streak of lightning forked across the sky, so close that even through the sheet I saw a tree and the opposite house silhouetted against the flashing canvas of gold.

  I dived deeper beneath the bedclothes, gathered the pillow about my ears.

  But at the next thunderclap, louder this time, louder than I had ever heard, I leapt from my bed. I could not stand it. I fled, blundering into the sweeper boy’s room.

  The boy sat on the bare floor.

  ‘What is happening?’ he asked.

  The lightning flashed, and his teeth and eyes flashed with it. Then he was a blur in the darkness.

  ‘I am afraid,’ I said.

  I moved towards him and my hand touched a cold shoulder.

  ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I too am afraid.’

  I sat down, my back against the wall; beside the untouchable, the outcaste … and the thunder and lightning ceased, and the rain came down, swishing and drumming on the corrugated roof.

  ‘The rainy season has started,’ observed the sweeper boy, turning to me. His smile played with the darkness, and then he laughed. And I laughed too, but feebly.

  But I was happy and safe. The scent of the wet earth blew in through the skylight and the rain fell harder.

  *
* *

  This was my first short story, written when I was sixteen.

  The Coral Tree

  The night had been hot, the rain frequent, and I slept on the veranda instead of in the house. I was in my twenties and I had begun to earn a living and felt I had certain responsibilities. In a short while a tonga would take me to a railway station, and from there a train would take me to Bombay, and then a ship would take me to England. There would be work, interviews, a job, a different kind of life; so many things that this small bungalow of my grandfather’s would be remembered fitfully, in rare moments of reflection.

  When I awoke on the veranda I saw a grey morning, smelt the rain on the red earth, and remembered that I had to go away. A girl was standing on the veranda porch, looking at me very seriously. When I saw her, I sat up in bed with a start.

  She was a small, dark girl, her eyes big and black, her pigtails tied up in a bright red ribbon; and she was fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth.

  She stood looking at me, and she was very serious.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, smiling, trying to put her at ease.

  But the girl was businesslike. She acknowledged my greeting with a brief nod.

  ‘Can I do anything for you?’ I asked, stretching my limbs. ‘Do you stay near here?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘With your parents?

  With great assurance she said, ‘Yes. But I can stay on my own.’

  ‘You’re like me,’ I said, and for a while I forgot about being an old man of twenty. ‘I like to do things on my own. I’m going away today.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, a little breathlessly.

  ‘Would you care to go to England?’

  ‘I want to go everywhere,’ she said, ‘to America and Africa and Japan and Honolulu.’

  ‘Maybe you will,’ I said. ‘I’m going everywhere, and no one can stop me … But what is it you want? What did you come for?’

  ‘I want some flowers but I can’t reach them.’ She waved her hand towards the garden. ‘That tree, see?’