Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories Read online

  Ruskin Bond

  THE NIGHT TRAIN AT DEOLI AND OTHER STORIES

  Contents

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Introduction

  The Woman on Platform 8

  The Coral Tree

  The Photograph

  The Window

  Chachi’s Funeral

  The Man Who Was Kipling

  The Eyes Have It

  The Thief

  The Boy who Broke The Bank

  His Neighbour’s Wife

  The Night Train at Deoli

  Bus Stop, Pipalnagar

  The Garlands on His Brow

  A Guardian Angel

  Death of a Familiar

  The Kitemaker

  The Monkeys

  The Prospect of Flowers

  A Case for Inspector Lal

  A Face in the Night

  A Job Well Done

  The Story of Madhu

  The Cherry Tree

  My Father’s Trees in Dehra

  Panther’s Moon

  The Leopard

  Sita and the River

  Love is a Sad Song

  When You Can’t Climb Trees Any More

  A Love of Long Ago

  Footnote

  Introduction

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE NIGHT TRAIN AT DEOLI AND OTHER STORIES

  Ruskin Bond’s first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written a number of novellas, essays, poems and children’s books, many of which have been published by Penguin. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

  Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.

  For D —

  thanks for the memory

  Introduction

  Gentle Reader,

  I use the old-fashioned term to address you, because I like it and because I know that only the more gentle kind of person is likely to care much for my stories.

  I have never been any good at the more lurid sort of writing. Psychopathic killers, impotent war-heroes, self-tortured film stars, and seedy espionage agents must exist in this world, but strangely enough, I do not come across them, and I prefer to write about the people and places I have known and the lives of those whose paths I have crossed. This crossing of paths makes for stories rather than novels, and although I have worked in both mediums, I am happier being a short-story writer than a novelist.

  Perhaps there is too much of me in my stories, and at times this book may read like an autobiography. It is a weakness, I know. It can’t be helped; I am that kind of a writer, that kind of a person.

  Looking back over the thirty years that I have been writing, I find to my surprise that I have written a number of love stories; or perhaps they are all love stories, of one kind or another. In fact, I can’t really write unless I am in love with my subject. Another weakness, according to those who make up the rules for literature. But I have never gone by the rules.

  ‘Romance brought up the nine-fifteen,’ wrote Kipling, and I find that in the stories I wrote in the 1950’s (when I was in my teens and in my twenties) there is a good deal of romance, often associated with trains. People are always travelling in them and going all over the place, but just occasionally two people meet, their paths cross,

  and though they may part again quite soon (as in ‘The Woman on Platform 8’ and ‘The Eyes Have It’), their lives have been changed in some indefinable way.

  Sometimes the hero (if I may use such a term) tries to prevent that moment from passing (as in ‘The Night Train at Deoli’), but it is only the very strong among us who can alter events, change trains so to speak, and very often cause a derailment. ‘The Night Train at Deoli’ is a favourite with many of my younger readers; that longing for something, someone, just out of reach, is familiar to them.

  This is a representative collection of my stories selected by David Davidar from what I have written over the years. The early ones were written in Dehra Dun, when I was a young man struggling to make a living as a freelance writer. In the 1960’s, after a spell of office work in Delhi, I moved to the hill-station of Mussoorie, and many of the stories written in this period were, in fact, character studies of people I had known, although occasionally, as in ‘Bus Stop, Pipalnagar,’ I went back to the years of struggle and youthful hopes.

  As we grow older, despair and disillusion assail many of us. Our early hopes and dreams have been trodden in the dust. But I have always sought to buoy myself up by the sentiments embodied in an old-fashioned verse passed on me by my father*:

  The pure, the bright, the beautiful,

  That stirred our hearts in youth,

  The impulse to a wordless prayer,

  The dreams of love and truth;

  The longings after something lost,

  The spirit’s yearning cry,

  The striving after better hopes . . .

  These things can never die.

  The longings after something lost. Perhaps that is the dominant theme in my stories. It is a longing that has been experienced by all of us at various times in our lives unless one has become desensit- ized by power and money.

  The longing, the yearning, is there in the early stories and it is there in the later stories. In the 1970’s, when I found myself being

  weighed down by both personal and professional problems, I turned to writing for children, and this helped me to find a way out of my difficulties. ‘Sita and the River’ became Angry River and also ended up in several European languages; so did ‘Panther’s Moon’ and a number of stories that are not included here because this is not a children’s collection. In writing for children one has to adopt a less subjective approach; things must happen, for boys and girls have no time for mood pieces. So this kind of writing does help me to get away from myself. At the same time, because I have so strong an empathy with children, I can enter into their minds when I am writing about them. As children we are all individualists; it is only as we grow older that we acquire a certain grey similarity to each other.

  But I still return to the old themes from time to time. ‘A Love of Long Ago’ was written even as this book was being prepared for the press. Some of the old longing had returned. When I had finished the story, I thought, ‘Well that’s it. I am fifty-four now. No more love stories, and no more falling in love . . .’ But then, on my way home in the twilight, walking through the streets I had known as a boy I met this girl with the most beautiful smile in the world. She was trying to find a bus to Yamunanagar. But I’ll tell you about it another time.

  Mussoorie

  24 March 1988

  Ruskin Bond

  The Woman on Platform 8

  It was my second year at boarding-school, and I was sitting on platform no. 8 at Ambala station, waiting for the northern bound train. I think I was about twelve at the time. My parents considered me old enough to travel alone, and I had arrived by bus at Ambala early in the evening: now there was a wait till midnight before my train arrived. Most of the time I had been pacing up and down the platform, browsing at the book-stall, or feeding broken biscuits to stray dogs; trains came and went, and the platform would be quiet for a while and then, when a train arrived, it would be an inferno of heaving
, shouting, agitated human bodies. As the carriage doors opened, a tide of people would sweep down upon the nervous little ticket-collector at the gate; and every time this happened I would be caught in the rush and swept outside the station. Now tired of this game and of ambling about the platform, I sat down on my suitcase and gazed dismally across the railway-tracks.

  Trolleys rolled past me, and I was conscious of the cries of the various vendors — the men who sold curds and lemon, the sweet- meat-seller, the newspaper boy — but I had lost interest in all that went on along the busy platform, and continued to stare across the railway-tracks, feeling bored and a little lonely.

  ‘Are you all alone, my son?’ asked a soft voice close behind me. I looked up and saw a woman standing near me. She was leaning over, and I saw a pale face, and dark kind eyes. She wore no jewels, and was dressed very simply in a white sari.

  ‘Yes, I am going to school,’ I said, and stood up respectfully; she seemed poor, but there was a dignity about her that commanded respect.

  ‘I have been watching you for some time,’ she said. ‘Didn’t your parents come to see you off?’

  ‘I don’t live here,’ I said. ‘I had to change trains. Anyway, I can travel alone.’

  ‘I am sure you can,’ she said, and I liked her for saying that, and I also liked her for the simplicity of her dress, and for her deep, soft voice and the serenity of her face.

  ‘Tell me, what is your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Arun,’ I said.

  ‘And how long do you have to wait for your train?’

  ‘About an hour, I think. It comes at twelve o’clock.’

  ‘Then come with me and have something to eat.’

  I was going to refuse, out of shyness and suspicion, but she took me by the hand, and then I felt it would be silly to pull my hand away. She told a coolie to look after my suitcase, and then she led me away down the platform. Her hand was gentle, and she held mine neither too firmly nor too lightly. I looked up at her again. She was not young. And she was not old. She must have been over thirty but, had she been fifty, I think she would have looked much the same.

  She took me into the station dining-room, ordered tea and samosas and jalebies, and at once I began to thaw and take a new interest in this kind woman. The strange encounter had little effect on my appetite. I was a hungry school boy, and I ate as much as I could in as polite a manner as possible. She took obvious pleasure in watch- ing me eat, and I think it was the food that strengthened the bond between us and cemented our friendship, for under the influence of the tea and sweets I began to talk quite freely, and told her about my school, my friends, my likes and dislikes. She questioned me quietly from time to time, but preferred listening; she drew me out very well, and I had soon forgotten that we were strangers. But she did not ask me about my family or where I lived, and I did not ask her where she lived. I accepted her for what she had been to me — a quiet, kind and gentle woman who gave sweets to a lonely boy on a railway platform . . .

  After about half-an-hour we left the dining-room and began walk- ing back along the platform. An engine was shunting up and down beside platform No. 8, and as it approached, a boy leapt off the platform and ran across the rails, taking a short cut to the next platform. He was at a safe distance from the engine, and there was no danger unless he had fallen; but as he leapt across the rails, the woman clutched my arm. Her fingers dug into my flesh, and I winced with pain. I caught her fingers and looked up at her, and I saw a spasm of pain and fear and sadness pass across her face. She watched the boy as he climbed other platform, and it was not until he had disappeared in the crowd that she relaxed her hold on my arm. She smiled at me reassuringly, and took my hand again: but her fingers trembled against mine.

  ‘He was all right,’ I said, feeling that it was she who needed reassurance.

  She smiled gratefully at me and pressed my hand. We walked together in silence until we reached the place where I had left my suitcase, one of my schoolfellows, Satish, a boy of about my age, had turned up with his mother.

  ‘Hello, Arun!’ he called. ‘The train’s coming in late, as usual. Did you know we have a new Headmaster this year?’

  We shook hands, and then he turned to his mother and said: ‘This is Arun, mother. He is one of my friends, and the best bowler in the class.’

  ‘I am glad to know that,’ said his mother, a large imposing woman who wore spectacles. She looked at the woman who led my hand and said: ‘And I suppose you’re Arun’s mother?’

  I opened my mouth to make some explanation, but before I could say anything the woman replied: ‘Yes, I am Arun’s mother.’

  I was unable to speak a word. I looked quickly up at the woman, but she did not appear to be at all embarrassed, and was smiling at Satish’s mother.

  Satish’s mother said: ‘It’s such a nuisance having to wait for the train right in the middle of the night. But one can’t let the child wait here alone. Anything can happen to a boy at a big station like this, there are so many suspicious characters hanging about. These days one has to be very careful of strangers.’

  ‘Arun can travel alone though,’ said the woman beside me, and somehow I felt grateful to her for saying that. I had already forgiven her for lying: and besides, I had taken an instinctive dislike to Satish’s mother.

  ‘Well, be very careful Arun,’ said Satish’s mother looking sternly at me through her spectacles. ‘Be very careful when your mother is not with you. And never talk to strangers!’

  I looked from Satish’s mother to the woman who had given me tea and sweets, and then back at Satish’s mother.

  ‘I like strangers,’ I said.

  Satish’s mother definitely staggered a little, as obviously she was not used to being contradicted by small boys. ‘There you are, you see! If you don’t watch over them all the time, they’ll walk straight into trouble. Always listen to what your mother tells you,’ she said, wagging a fat little finger at me. ‘And never, never talk to strangers.’

  I glared resentfully at her, and moved closer to the woman who had befriended me. Satish was standing behind his mother, grin- ning at me, and delighting in my clash with his mother. Apparently he was on my side.

  The station bell clanged, and the people who had till now been squatting resignedly on the platform began bustling about.

  ‘Here it comes,’ shouted Satish, as the engine whistle shrieked and the front lights played over the rails.

  The train moved slowly into the station, the engine hissing and sending out waves of steam. As it came to a stop, Satish jumped on the footboard of a lighted compartment and shouted, ‘Come on, Arun, this one’s empty!’ and I picked up my suitcase and made a dash for the open door.

  We placed ourselves at the open windows, and the two women stood outside on the platform, talking up to us. Satish’s mother did most of the talking.

  ‘Now don’t jump on and off moving trains, as you did just now,’ she said. ‘And don’t stick your heads out of the windows, and don’t eat any rubbish on the way.’ She allowed me to share the benefit of her advice, as she probably didn’t think my ‘mother’ a very capable person. She handed Satish a bag of fruit, a cricket bat and a big box of chocolates, and told him to share the food with me. Then she stood back from the window to watch how my ‘mother’ behaved.

  I was smarting under the patronising tone of Satish’s mother, who obviously thought mine a very poor family: and I did not intend giving the other woman away. I let her take my hand in hers, but I could think of nothing to say. I was conscious of Satish’s mother staring at us with hard, beady eyes, and I found myself hating her with a firm, unreasoning hate. The guard walked up the platform, blowing his whistle for the train to leave. I looked straight into the eyes of the woman who held my hand, and she smiled in a gentle, understanding way. I leaned out of the window then, and put my lips to her cheek, and kissed her.

  The carriage jolted forward, and she drew her hand away. ‘Good-bye, mother!’ said Satish, as the tra
in began to move slowly out of the station. Satish and his mother waved to each other.

  ‘Good-bye,’ I said to the other woman, ‘good-bye — mother . . .’ I didn’t wave or shout, but sat still in front of the window, gazing at the woman on the platform. Satish’s mother was talking to her, but she didn’t appear to be listening; she was looking at me, as the train took me away. She stood there on the busy platform, a pale sweet woman in white, and I watched her until she was lost in the milling crowd.

  The Coral Tree

  The night had been hot, the rain frequent, and I slept on the veran- dah 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 verandah I saw a grey morning, smelt the rain on the red earth, and remembered that I had to go away. A girl was standing in the verandah 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.

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

  But the girl was business-like. 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 on my own. I’m going away today.’