The Hidden Pool Read online

  RUSKIN BOND

  THE HIDDEN POOL

  Illustrations by Ranjit Balmuchu

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also in Puffin by Ruskin Bond

  Dedication

  Preface

  Spring Festival

  The Coming of Kamal

  The Pool

  Ghosts on the Veranda

  The Big Race

  To the Hills

  To the River

  The Glacier

  Going Away

  A Letter from Kamal

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright Page

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  THE HIDDEN POOL

  Born in Kasauli in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. His 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 over five hundred short stories, essays and novellas (some included in the collections Dust on the Mountains and Classic Ruskin Bond) and more than forty books for children.

  He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India in 1993, 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 was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 2014. 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 Parrot Who Wouldn’t Talk and Other Stories

  Ranji’s Wonderful Bat 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

  Dedicated to Argha Mukherjee

  who has collected all my stories,

  even some that I can’t find!

  Preface

  The Hidden Pool was my first book for children. Ten years earlier, in 1956, my first novel, The Room on the Roof, had been published in England; but that work, written by an adolescent, was not intended for children. Its earnest young author took himself and his subject very seriously.

  In the 1950s and early ’60s, children’s literature in India hardly existed. There were imported books, and some writings in the regional languages, but our mainstream publishers would not take on children’s books until Shankar and the Children’s Book Trust came on the scene and created a ‘first’ in publishing for children.

  The Hidden Pool was one of the first titles published by the Children’s Book Trust. It appeared in 1966 in English, and in Hindi and Bengali translations. Ten years later, it was out of print except for an edition for schools.

  It doesn’t have much of a plot. It is simply the story of three boys who meet regularly at a secret pool outside their small town, decide on having an adventure, and set out to reach a famous glacier in Kumaon. It was based on my own trek to the Pindari Glacier when I was a boy. In those days, it was unusual for youngsters to go on long hikes or treks into the mountains, and I am glad to say that it did motivate a number of boys and girls into doing just that.

  Nowadays, I find groups of school children from all over the country coming to the hills of Uttaranchal and Himachal and undertaking ambitious hikes and expeditions into the mountains. Getting away from their cities, and exploring and discovering all that the Himalayas have to offer, is a healthy and encouraging trend. Rivers and forests, remote villages, ancient temples, exotic birds, animals and flowers are still there, waiting to be discovered by my young readers in the same way that they brought pleasure and excitement to Laurie and his friends.

  After The Hidden Pool, I was to write many books and stories for my younger readers. But this is the one that started me off.

  Landour, Mussoorie

  July 2004

  Ruskin Bond

  Spring Festival

  Anil said, ‘You are a snob, mister.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because you won’t play Holi. You want to shut yourself up in your house when everyone else is celebrating the coming of spring. I know, you are afraid to spoil your clothes.’

  I shrugged my shoulders to let him know that he could think what he liked.

  ‘You’re afraid of your parents, that’s why it is,’ continued Anil. ‘You are afraid of being punished for running around with bazaar people!’

  ‘You are welcome to think so,’ I said coldly.

  Anil had often told me about Holi. It was not merely a Hindu festival of playing with colours, when men and women and children threw coloured dust and water on each other, when there were singing and shouting and the beating of drums; it also heralded the Hindu New Year, when Nature is born again, blossoming out in colour and music.

  New colour, new music, new life. Seasons die, and seasons are born again. The colours that are thrown are an expression of joy in the new springtime of life and young love.

  The Holi festival held a fascination for me. But until I was fifteen, my parents, who had brought me to India two years earlier (when my father had taken a job with a new hydroelectric project), had not allowed me to take part in the celebration. They were afraid I might get hurt in the rough play, or be lost in the bazaars. I had stayed at home, listening to the drums, the songs, and the inviting shouts of some of my school friends.

  Anil’s father kept a cloth shop in the bazaar, and it was in the bazaar that I had met Anil, for he went to a different school. I was walking home from the post office and did not pay much attention to the large cow that was moving leisurely through the crowd, nosing around the vegetable stalls.

  A cyclist came down the road, pedalling furiously. Pedestrians scattered. I found myself beside the cow, in the middle of the road. The cyclist was faced with the choice of colliding either with me or with the cow. He chose me.

  ‘You clumsy fellow!’ I cried, picking myself up from the ground, while the cow stared sorrowfully at me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the cyclist, a boy of about my age. ‘I couldn’t help it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not? Because if I had not bumped into you, I would have bumped into the cow!’ Then, as he saw me growing indignant, he hurried on. ‘Please don’t misunderstand. It is not that I prefer the cow to you, but I might have broken my head if I had banged into her! She is an immovable object, and you are not!’

  I could think of no retort.

  A few weeks later I saw the boy again, but we were on a lonely road this time, with plenty of space in which to avoid bumping into each other; but, seeing a familiar face, the boy swerved his bicycle dangerously to the edge of the road and almost swept me off my feet.

  ‘Oh, hello there!’ he said, making sure his cycle had not been damaged. ‘And how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, preparing to continue my walk.
/>   The boy got into step with me and pursued the topic of my well-being. ‘I hope I did not hurt you that day in the bazaar.’

  ‘You were going the other way just now, weren’t you?’ I said, very rudely.

  He looked disappointed but then he smiled, and there was something about his smile that made me smile too. And he said, ‘Don’t be so angry …’

  ‘I’m not angry,’ I said.

  ‘Please don’t be hurt.’

  ‘I’m not hurt.’

  ‘Please don’t be a snob!’

  This had more effect. The boy watched me with astonishment as my cheeks grew red.

  ‘I’m not a snob! I said.

  The boy grinned at me. ‘Now you are angry and hurt! So you are not a snob … Good! … Come and have some chaat with me.’

  Standing off the road was a small wooden shop, draped with sacking. I hesitated in the entrance, suspicious of the wild sweet smells, of the murmur of unfamiliar voices, of the fact that I knew nothing about the stranger who had invited me in. But to have refused would have been to invite further derision. I followed the boy into the shop.

  I discovered that chaat was a spiced and sweetened mixture of different fruits and vegetables—potatoes, guavas, bananas and oranges, all sliced up—served on broad green leaves and eaten with the help of a little stick like a toothpick. It had an unusual and exciting flavour.

  ‘You like it?’ asked the boy.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Just like it.’

  ‘Is it—is it bad for the stomach?’

  ‘For unfamiliar stomachs. So the best way to make your stomach familiar is to keep eating.’

  He ordered more, in spite of my protests. Then he said, ‘May I know your name?’

  ‘Laurie,’ I said, and asked him his.

  ‘Anil, Anil Kumar! Kumar means prince, but of course I am not a prince.’

  His black hair was thick and strong. His eyes were a deep brown. He wore a thin, almost transparent cotton shirt, broad white pyjamas, and open slippers with leather straps.

  We ate chaat and talked, and that is how Anil and I became friends.

  We would often meet in the evenings and eat at different places; and, it was as Anil said, my stomach soon became accustomed to unfamiliar cooking. We took walks across the Maidan, a spacious, grassy ground always crowded with children and dogs and cows and people making speeches. And on holidays we would cycle out of town, into the fields, down to the river.

  As Holi neared, Anil began to make his preparations. He fashioned a sort of bicycle pump from a piece of bamboo, and tried it out with water. It worked!

  ‘You’d better get out your worst clothes,’ he said. ‘The colour won’t come off easily.’

  ‘You don’t expect me to play?’ I said.

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Well, first there are my parents …’

  ‘And second there is yourself. You are ashamed to play.’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ I said.

  Anil put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a stern look. ‘Have you forgotten that a few days after we met I sent you a Christmas card?’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But you sent it in February.’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t met you in December. Do you know that I pinched my father’s best greeting card, and cut out the page that had been written on, in order to send it to you?’

  ‘Yes, I noticed that. Did you want me to think you’d bought it yourself?’

  ‘Well, they are not available in February! Anyway, the point is, I share your festivals but you do not share mine!’

  And having banished all argument, he returned to fashioning his bamboo pump.

  I heard the shouting and clapping, the singing and beating of drums. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window.

  A procession of boys and girls were moving down the road. They were laughing and throwing colour about, and their clothes were rich shades of orange and mauve and red and green. Down the road came the procession, and down the road came Anil with his bicycle pump.

  The procession passed on, but Anil lingered near our gate. It was difficult to recognize him, he wore only a loincloth and looked like an effigy of a green god.

  My room had its own entrance, and I slipped out through the garden, climbed the wall, and joined Anil on the road.

  Anil smiled, a white smile in a green face, and covered my face with purple powder. Then he squirted me with his bicycle pump. He had brought a pump for me, too.

  We joined the procession and went all over the town, shouting and singing and throwing colour, through the bazaar and across the Maidan, painting the town with the colours of spring.

  And when I returned home in the afternoon, drenched with colour from head to foot, I found my parents waiting for me in the veranda. They didn’t recognize me at first, but when they did, my father burst into laughter, while my mother told me to get under the shower immediately.

  ‘Well, I suppose he can look after himself now,’ I heard my father saying. ‘We’ll be here till the end of the year, and it’s time he found friends of his own age.’

  The Coming of Kamal

  My parents had given me a small room perched on top of the bungalow, and I was sitting on my bed one morning, watching a cheeky myna hopping about on the window sill, when somebody shouted up to me from below.

  ‘Does anyone live up there?’

  ‘No,’ I shouted back, ‘nobody lives up here!’

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Then can I come up?’ asked the person below.

  ‘What do you want to come up for?’ I said.

  ‘To see the voice that belongs to nobody!’

  ‘All right, come on,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing what you are, either.’

  ‘Do I just walk up the steps?’

  ‘That’s right. There are twenty-one steps. After that, turn right and you will be facing the door of my room. Twenty-one steps, remember. If you take twenty-two, you will fall off the roof.’

  I heard him coming up. The myna flew off the window sill and settled in the mango tree. A warm wind came through the garden, and the leaves moved restlessly.

  A boy stood in the doorway, smiling at me. He was a little taller than Anil, but thinner. He wore a red sports shirt, khaki shorts, and strong Peshawari sandals. A tray hung from his shoulders, filled with an assortment of goods.

  ‘Here I am,’ he said. ‘Anil sent me.’

  ‘Anil is out of town for a week,’ I said.

  ‘I know. He told me before he left.’

  He looked about the room, at my cricket bat and books; then he looked through the opposite door, which opened out on the roof.

  ‘Is it your roof?’ he asked.

  ‘The house is my father’s,’ I said. ‘But the roof is mine.’

  He stood at the door of the roof and looked out over the trees and the tops of houses, at the circle of blue mountains rising from the edge of the forest.

  ‘If the roof is yours, the world is yours,’ he said. ‘Nobody can prove it isn’t.’

  He turned to me and came back to business.

  ‘Would you like to buy something?’

  In his tray were combs, buttons, reels of thread, shoelaces and cheap perfumes. I felt I had to buy something, now that he’d come all the way up my twenty-one steps. I didn’t really need a comb, but I bought one for ten paisa.

  ‘You need buttons,’ he said.

  ‘No. I don’t,’ I replied.

  ‘The top button of your shirt is missing,’ he observed.

  ‘I never button my shirt at the neck, so it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘That’s different,’ he said, and looked me over for further signs of wear and tear. ‘You’d better buy a pair of shoelaces.’

  ‘I’ve got laces,’ I said, making sure they were in my shoes.

  He bent down to look at the laces, took one between his fingers, and snapped it in two.

&nbs
p; ‘Very poor quality,’ he said. ‘See how easily it breaks!’

  ‘Well, just for that I’m not going to buy any,’ I said.

  He sighed, shrugged, and moved towards the door. ‘You buy a comb, which you do not need. But you will not buy buttons and laces, which you do need.’

  He walked slowly downstairs, and I stood in the doorway, watching him go. I was a little sorry that he was leaving; with Anil away, I did not have much company.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I called out after him.

  ‘Kamal,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, come again,’ I said.

  He smiled and nodded and disappeared round the side of the house.

  In the evening I could see the bazaar lights from the roof and hear the jingle of tonga bells. It was becoming hotter day by day, and in the evenings everyone in town went for a walk to enjoy the breeze.

  I found it difficult to walk fast on the bazaar road; besides the large number of pedestrians, there were cyclists and handcarts making movement difficult. At a little tea shop, film music was being played over a loudspeaker, adding to the noise and confusion. The balloon man was having a trying time. He was surrounded by a swarm of children who were more anxious to burst his balloons than to buy any. One or two broke away from the bunch, and went sailing over the heads of the crowd to burst over a fire in the chaat shop.

  Near the clock tower the road widened and became less congested. There was a street lamp at the corner. A boy was sitting on the pavement beneath the lamp, bent over a book, absorbed in study. The noise from the road did not appear to disturb him. When I came nearer, I noticed that the boy was Kamal. The book he was reading was David Copperfield abridged, it was probably part of his English course.

  I couldn’t make up my mind whether or not to stop and talk with Kamal or carry on without disturbing him. I felt I should have spoken to him, and yet, I didn’t …

  When I had gone some way down the road I felt ashamed at not having at least greeted him, and turned around and walked back. But when I reached the lamp post, Kamal had gone.