Escape From Java and Other Tales of Danger Read online

  RUSKIN BOND

  ESCAPE FROM JAVA & OTHER TALES OF DANGER

  Illustrations by Archana Sreenivasan

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Earthquake

  Riding through the Flames

  A Flight of Pigeons

  Escape from Java

  Sita and the River

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  ESCAPE FROM JAVA AND OTHER TALES OF DANGER

  Born in Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar (Gujarat), Dehra Dun, New Delhi and Simla. His 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 over three hundred short stories, essays and novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley, A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far), and more than fifty books for children.

  He has also written numerous 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, and the Delhi government’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for his ‘total contribution to children’s literature’ in 2013 and honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 2014. Several of his stories have been filmed, including The Blue Umbrella, A Flight of Pigeons (filmed as Junoon) and Susanna’s Seven Husbands (filmed as Saat Khoon Maaf).

  He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his extended family.

  Also in Puffin by Ruskin Bond

  Puffin Classics: The Room on the Roof

  The Room of Many Colours: Ruskin Bond’s Treasury of Stories for Children

  Panther’s Moon and Other Stories

  The Hidden Pool

  The Parrot Who Wouldn’t Talk and Other Stories

  Mr Oliver’s Diary

  Escape from Java and Other Tales of Danger

  Crazy Times with Uncle Ken

  Rusty the Boy from the Hills

  Rusty Runs Away

  Rusty and the Leopard

  Rusty Goes to London

  Rusty Comes Home

  The Puffin Book of Classic School Stories

  The Puffin Good Reading Guide for Children

  The Kashmiri Storyteller

  Hip-Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems

  The Adventures of Rusty: Collected Stories

  The Cherry Tree

  Getting Granny’s Glasses

  The Eyes of the Eagle

  Thick as Thieves: Tales of Friendship

  Uncles, Aunts and Elephants: Tales from Your Favourite Storyteller

  Earthquake

  Grandfather’s Bath

  Whenever there was an emergency, Grandfather happened to be in his bath.

  He was in his bath when a wild elephant smashed its way through the garden, trampling Grandmother’s prize roses and sweet peas and bringing down the garden wall. He was in his bath when the roof of the house blew away in a cyclone. And he was in his bath when a visiting aunt went into hysterics because there was a baby python curled up on her dressing table. On all these occasions he expressed surprise that anything could have happened during the twenty minutes he was in his bathtub; by the time he had dressed, everything was over—the wild elephant had gone trumpeting on its way, the cyclonic storm had passed, and the baby python had been removed by young master Rakesh who had put it there in the first place.

  Grandfather’s bath consisted of an old-fashioned tin tub filled with several buckets of hot water to which he added sprigs of mint. A mint bath! No one had ever heard of such a thing, but Grandfather said it was most refreshing.

  Grandfather sang in his bath and splashed around a lot, which is probably why he seldom knew what was going on elsewhere.

  He was in his bath when the first shock of the great earthquake shook north-eastern India, an earthquake that was to reduce most of the town to rubble.

  The family (or most of it) was living in Shillong, a busy little town in the Cherrapunji Hills, where Grandfather Burman had retired after leaving the Forest Service. He’d bought a large old house on the outskirts of the town, a house so large and so old that most of his pension was used up in constantly repairing it. Grandmother Burman just about managed to make both ends meet. There were no servants except for Mumtaz, a cook who’d been with the family since Grandfather’s forest service days; he had four small children of his own.

  The Burmans’ grandchildren lived with them. Rakesh, eleven, rode off to school on his bicycle every morning. Mukesh, six, refused to go to school until he was seven. Dolly, three, followed Grandmother about the house and garden, helping her feed the chickens and the dog (which was half a dachshund and half a spaniel and was called Pickle) and a goat that Grandfather insisted would provide them with milk some day—only so far it hadn’t.

  The children’s mother had died when Dolly was born; and their father, Mr Burman, worked on a tea estate a few hundred miles away, where there were no schools. So the children stayed with Mr Burman’s parents, who wouldn’t have parted with them for anything in the world.

  Every year there were earth tremors in this part of India, but there hadn’t been a really big earthquake for thirty years.

  ‘What do you do when there’s an earthquake?’ asked Rakesh, who had heard all about the last one.

  ‘There isn’t time to do much,’ said Grandfather. ‘Everyone just rushes out of doors.’

  ‘I’ll stay in my bed until it’s over,’ said Rakesh.

  ‘I’ll get under my bed,’ said Mukesh. ‘It can’t find me there!’

  ‘It’s best to stand in a doorway,’ said Grandmother. ‘If you look at earthquake pictures, you’ll notice that the door frames are always left standing!’

  Although Shillong was in a region where earthquakes sometimes happened, the family liked living there. There was a lake and a colourful bazaar, and Grandmother’s garden was full of butterflies, birds and exotic orchids, as well as fruit trees and trees that were fun to climb. Rakesh liked roaming around the town on his bicycle. Mukesh enjoyed the sweet shops in the bazaar—when he wasn’t wrestling in the dust with Mumtaz’s two boys. Dolly kept herself busy building her own doll’s house under the suitcase.

  Life moved at a gentle pace in Shillong. Apart from the elephant in the garden, nothing very exciting had happened recently to the family. The highlight of the year had been Rakesh’s winning the high jump in his school sports, for which he had won a small cup—so small, that he had given it to Dolly to add to her doll’s house.

  Then one morning, while Grandfather was having his bath, the town seemed suddenly very still and very quiet . . .

  The First Tremors

  Grandfather didn’t notice anything because he was splashing about and singing; but Grandmother, who was in the garden trimming her rose bushes, paused in her work and looked up. Why were the birds silent all of a sudden? Not only the birds in the trees, but the birds in the henhouse too. And the goat had stopped nibbling at the geraniums. And the dog, who had been yapping at a squirrel on the wall, sat down quietly, ears back, head between his paws.

  ‘Now isn’t that funny,’ said Grandmother aloud. ‘I wonder what . . .’

  And then the opposite happened. The hens began cackling, the dogs barking, and the birds shrieking and flapping their wings. The crows in the neighbourhood all took wing, wheeling wildly overhead and cawing loudly. The chickens flapped around in circles, as if they were being chased. Two cats sitting on the wall suddenly jumped up and disappeared in opposite directions.

  Grandmother had read somewhere that animals sense the approach of an earthquake much quicker than humans. And true enoug
h, within half a minute of her noticing the noise made by the animals, she heard a rattling, rumbling sound, like the approach of an express train.

  The noise increased for about a minute and then there was the first trembling of the ground. The animals by this time all seemed to have gone mad and were making a hideous noise. Treetops lashed backwards and forwards, doors banged and windows shook, and Grandmother said later that the house actually swayed in front of her. She had difficulty in standing straight, although she admitted that this may have been due more to the trembling of her knees than to the trembling of the ground.

  This first shock lasted only about half a minute, but it seemed much longer. Grandmother realized that Grandfather was in his bath, that Rakesh was on his way to school, that Mukesh was playing marbles with Mumtaz’s son, and that Dolly was under the staircase busy with her doll’s house; Mumtaz would be in the kitchen washing vegetables. Grandmother rushed indoors to fetch Dolly.

  As she did so, the rumble grew louder. Grandfather did not hear it because he was still singing, but Grandmother heard it, and so did Dolly, who also noticed that her doll’s house was beginning to totter. Along with the rumble, Mumtaz heard the rattle of crockery. A teapot slithered off the sideboard and fell to the floor in pieces. In the sitting room, an antique vase (three hundred years old, according to Grandfather) leapt off the mantelpiece and crashed to the ground.

  When Dolly felt the first tremor, she instinctively crawled under the well of the staircase, dragging her favourite doll with her. All the doll’s hair had long since come out, and she only had one eye, but Dolly had had the doll a long time and felt she needed special care and attention. She couldn’t understand why the house was shaking, but she wasn’t afraid. Houses just shook sometimes, she supposed.

  Grandmother did not see her under the staircase and dashed into the drawing room, calling, ‘Dolly, Dolly! Where are you?’ The clocks on the wall went crazy and began striking all hours.

  In the kitchen, Mumtaz was trying to catch plates, glasses and dishes as they sprang madly from the shelves. Mukesh had lost all his marbles, and not in a game with his friends. They had rolled out of the gate and down the road and then disappeared into the ground, where a number of fissures had appeared.

  Grandfather stopped singing when he found he couldn’t manage the high notes. He noticed that his bathtub was almost empty. Surely he hadn’t splashed so much! He reached for the mug, but couldn’t find it. He started getting out of the tub, but the tub itself rose up and pitched him out on the flooded bathroom floor.

  ‘A ghost!’ exclaimed Grandfather. ‘There’s a mischievous ghost in here, playing tricks with the tub!’

  He grabbed his towel and wrapped it round his waist, then flung open the bathroom door and dashed on to the landing.

  By that time the first earthquake tremor was over.

  * * *

  Rakesh was halfway to school when he found his cycle swerving about on the road, out of his control. He almost collided with a bullock cart.

  He dismounted to see if the cycle-chain had jammed. He found the road as unsteady as the bicycle! But this sensation lasted for just a few seconds. Everything was steady again.

  Strangely, though, the bullocks were refusing to move on.

  ‘Did you feel that?’ asked the cart driver.

  ‘Yes, everything was shaking,’ said Rakesh. ‘Was it an earthquake?’

  ‘A small one,’ said the driver. ‘Or the start of a big one!’

  Rakesh rode on to school. The bell had yet to ring for classes, and the field was a ferment of excitement, as the assembled boys and girls stood around in groups talking about the shock that had just been felt. The headmaster had decided that, just in case there was another tremor, the children would be safer out in the open than in the rather ancient school building; and so he delayed the ringing of the assembly bell. Naturally the children were delighted at the delay. But when nothing further happened after fifteen minutes, the headmaster decided it was time for school. There were groans of protest, followed by calls for a holiday. Rakesh was the spokesman for his class.

  ‘Sir, you gave us a holiday last year when the roof blew off!’

  ‘But the roof has not blown off,’ observed the headmaster.

  ‘What if the walls fall down, sir?’

  ‘When the walls fall, we will think about a holiday,’ snapped the headmaster. ‘Now into class all of you!’

  Earthquake Gossip

  ‘Couldn’t have a proper bath,’ grumbled Grandfather. ‘There wasn’t enough water in the tub!’

  ‘Didn’t you feel it?’ asked Grandmother.

  ‘Feel what?’

  ‘The earthquake.’

  ‘Didn’t feel a thing. You must have imagined it.’

  ‘Well, most of the crockery is broken, as well as that vase you brought back from Burma. You can eat your lunch out of a banana leaf, or use Dolly’s toy tea set.’

  ‘Where are Mukesh and Dolly?’

  ‘Dolly’s under the staircase again. It’s her favourite place. Mukesh is playing outside with Mumtaz’s biggest boy. That tremor didn’t seem to bother them. But I hope that shock didn’t cause any damage at Rakesh’s school.’

  ‘Couldn’t have . . . we hardly felt it.’

  ‘You never notice anything when you’re in the bath. Everyone else felt it—including the hens! They’ve suffered nervous breakdowns and won’t lay eggs for days.’

  Going round the house, Grandmother noticed several cracks in the walls and pointed them out to Grandfather.

  ‘They were there before,’ said Grandfather.

  ‘They’ve been there for years.’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t noticed them before. Anyway, it’s time we left this house. It’s much too big and costs too much to look after.’

  ‘I suppose we can settle in Calcutta. But you won’t enjoy living in a small flat. And you’re not used to the crowds.’

  ‘I was thinking of another hill station—where they don’t have earthquakes. We could sell this place and buy or rent a cottage in Darjeeling or Kalimpong.’

  ‘Then pray we don’t have another earthquake,’ said Grandfather. ‘No one’s going to buy a ruin.’

  They heard Mukesh shouting in the garden.

  ‘He’s up to some mischief as usual,’ grumbled Grandmother, going out to see what all the noise was about.

  Mukesh had found a nest and several broken eggs on the lawn, and was shouting because he was being attacked by a pair of angry thrushes.

  ‘What did you do to that nest?’ demanded Grandmother.

  ‘Nothing!’ said Mukesh. ‘It fell out of the tree when everything began to shake!’

  ‘That must have been what happened. But keep away from the nest, or those birds will really go for you!’

  The dog Pickle had been running about looking for whoever had caused all the commotion. He and the neighbour’s dog began barking at each other, as though laying the blame at each other’s doorsteps. ‘How dare you rock my house!’ they seemed to be saying. Eventually tiring of the argument, Pickle went into the storeroom looking for rats. He was good at catching rats.

  * * *

  In the town everyone was talking about the tremor that had just been felt. As there hadn’t been any serious damage and nothing big had fallen down, it was all thought to have been great fun. But there were older people who remembered the earthquake of thirty years ago, and who had lost friends, relatives and homes when hundreds of houses had fallen down. They knew that a mild earthquake tremor was often followed by a second, more severe shock—and they dreaded this possibility. There was talk of the jail collapsing and the prisoners escaping; of the mighty Brahmaputra river changing its course and flooding the whole of Assam, while crocodiles invaded the towns and villages; of glaciers sliding down from the Himalayas; and of the earth opening up and swallowing the whole of Shillong!

  ‘The end of the world is near!’ proclaimed a holy man in the bazaar.

  ‘Tell us, holy one,
what should we do about it?’ asked a shopkeeper.

  ‘Purify yourself,’ said the holy man. ‘Take care of your soul!’

  ‘In other words,’ said a passing wit, ‘don’t cheat your customers.’

  ‘And when did you ever work for a living?’ shouted the shopkeeper. ‘You still owe me twenty rupees!’

  Back at the Burman house, the family sat down to a quiet lunch. It wasn’t quiet for long, because Dolly wanted what was on Mukesh’s plate (even though it was no different from hers), and when she was told to eat her own food, she threw a tantrum.

  ‘These children,’ sighed Rakesh, bolting down his rice and bean curry. ‘It’s time they went to school.’

  ‘It’s time you got back to school,’ said Grandmother. ‘It’s half past one.’

  ‘We’re not having school this afternoon. Although we couldn’t get an earthquake-holiday, we’re going to watch the cricket match. There’s a team from Calcutta playing against the Lake Club.’

  ‘Take me with you,’ said Mukesh.

  ‘No, you’re always falling off the back of the cycle.’

  ‘I’ll sit in front, then.’

  ‘You’ll stay at home,’ said Grandmother. ‘The last time you went to a football match, you got lost.’

  ‘But this is a cricket match,’ argued Mukesh. ‘No one gets lost at cricket matches.’

  ‘Would you like to come with me to the Bengali sweet shop?’ asked Grandfather.

  ‘Oh, please,’ said Mukesh. ‘It’s better than cricket. Better than that rotten bicycle.’

  ‘Why do we have earthquakes?’ asked Rakesh.

  ‘Well,’ said Grandfather, ‘the earth has been around a long time—millions of years—and sometimes it feels the stress and strain of being so old . . .’

  ‘Are you a million?’ interrupted Mukesh.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Grandfather, ‘not yet. But, just like me, the earth wants to stretch a little and yawn, and when it does, the earth’s crust has these convulsions—we call them earthquakes.’