Funny Side Up Read online

  FUNNY SIDE UP

  By the same author:

  Angry River

  A Little Night Music

  A Long Walk for Bina

  Hanuman to the Rescue

  Ghost Stories from the Raj

  Strange Men, Strange Places

  The India I Love

  Tales and Legends from India

  The Blue Umbrella

  Ruskin Bond's Children's Omnibus

  The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-I

  The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-II

  The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-III

  Rupa Book of Great Animal Stories

  The Rupa Book of True Tales of Mystery and Adventure

  The Rupa Book of Ruskin Bond's Himalayan Tales

  The Rupa Book of Great Suspense Stories

  The Rupa Laughter Omnibus

  The Rupa Book of Scary Stories

  The Rupa Book of Haunted Houses

  The Rupa Book of Travellers' Tales

  The Rupa Book of Great Crime Stories

  The Rupa Book of Nightmare Tales

  The Rupa Book of Shikar Stories

  The Rupa Book of Love Stories

  The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories

  The Rupa Book of Heartwarming Stories

  The Rupa Book of Thrills and Spills

  To

  The memory of a former Headmaster,

  who told me I was a misfit and fit only to become a mali, a

  gardener. He was right, I became a writer,

  which is the same thing.

  First published in 2006 by

  Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.

  7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj

  New Delhi 110002

  Sales centres:

  Allahabad Bengaluru Chennai

  Hyderabad Jaipur Kathmandu

  Kolkata Mumbai

  Copyright © Ruskin Bond 2006

  Fifth impression 2012

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  10 9 8 7 6 5

  Ruskin Bond asserts the moral right to be identified

  as the author of this work.

  Typeset in 13 pts. Garamond by

  Mindways Design

  1410 chiranjiv Tower

  43 Nehru Place

  New Delhi 110019

  Printed in India by

  Gopsons Papers Ltd.

  A-2&3, Sector 64

  Noida 201301

  This 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 consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

  A little nonsense now and then

  Is relished by the wisest men

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Belting around Mumbai

  Monkey on the Roof

  And in the Loo

  And at the Bank

  If Mice Could Row

  In Search of Sweet-peas

  The Regimental Myna

  Monkey Trouble

  Frogs in the Fountain

  On Foot with Faith

  The Zigzag Walk

  A Bicycle Ride with Uncle Ken

  At Sea with Uncle Ken

  Travels with my Bank Manager

  Granny's Tree-Climbing

  My Failed Omelettes—and other Disasters

  A Long Story

  George and Ranji

  Cricket—Field Placings

  Whatever Happened to Romance?

  In Praise of Older Women

  Who Kissed me in the Dark?

  A Frog Screams

  All you Need Is Paper

  Song for a Beetle in a Goldfish Bowl

  Odds and Ends

  INTRODUCTION

  The monkey population is definitely on the increase, and I wouldn't be surprised if one day it exceeds the human population. Of course, the way things are going, a time may come when we won't be able to distinguish between monkeys and humans. Monkeys are becoming more human, while humans are becoming more like monkeys.

  Summer nights I leave my window open, and early this morning a member of the Rhesus tribe entered stealthily, picked up my notebook, and made a quick exit. I was in time to see him on a neighbouring roof, trying to chew up the notebook. Finding it unappetising, he proceeded to tear it to shreds and scatter the pieces over the hillside.

  In this way I lost one chapter of my book, and the reader will have to put up with twenty-six chapters instead of twenty-seven.

  Not that the missing chapter was a great loss to literature. It dealt chiefly with my neighbour's pigeons, who are apt to fly in at my window from time to time, and leave their droppings on my desk. I have nothing against pigeons—they gave me the title for a story once—but Professor Saili informs me that Bird Flu is spread through the droppings of various domesticated birds such as ducks, geese, pigeons and poultry. A fowl subject, but one to be heeded. So now I shoo the pigeons away, where once I welcomed them. They must take their droppings to the nearest statue, clocktower, or old police station.

  Talking of birds, I must mention the hill myna who occasionally perches on the ledge below my window. Hill mynas are great mimics, and my visitor often imitates the calls of other birds and various human sounds. An elderly gentleman who lives next door had been away for a fortnight. He was given to much early morning coughing, throat clearing, and hawking. I thought he had returned when I woke up to the sound of his usual coughing and spluttering. Getting up and looking out, I saw that his door was still locked. But perched on the railing was the myna, giving a perfect imitation of the old gentleman's early morning throat-clearing exercise. When he does return he will find he has a competitor.

  Birds can do some funny things. My toothbrushes kept disappearing, and I had no idea why, until one day I saw a smart black jungle crow strutting along the parapet wall with my toothbrush held in his beak. Later we found he had made quite a collection of them in a space between the ceiling and the roof. No wonder toothbrush sales have been going up.

  Of course people are funnier than animals, and most of the funny stories in this book are about people: Uncle Ken, Aunt Mabel, my nature-loving bank manager, girls I can't forget, old flames, young flames, and most of all your befuddled author, to whom funny things keep happening all the time. And there's seven-year-old Gautam, who brings a little sanity to the proceedings.

  'Why do you write books?' he asked me the other day. 'Doesn't your hand get tired?'

  'After some time,' I said. 'But I write books in order to make a living'

  'Isn't there anything else you can do?'

  I thought hard for a minute. There didn't seem to be much else I could do. Then I brightened up.

  'I can boil an egg,' I said.

  Gautam clapped his hands. 'Oh, good! We can sell boiled eggs on the Mall, opposite Cambridge Bookshop. You won't have to write books anymore.'

  'But I like writing,' I protested. And besides, we won't make much money selling eggs. There's too much competition.'

  'And what about writers? Aren't there too many?'

  'Yes, but they are all serious writers. I'm just a funny writer. They make omelettes. I make scrambled eggs.'

  'What's a scrambled egg?'

  'What you eat every morning—anda-ka-bhuji?'

  'Oh, I like it that way. Don't make serious omelettes, Dada. Be a scrambled writer.' He gave me a big hug and ran off, shouting, 'Dada-ka-bhuji!'

  1

  BELTING AROUND MUMBAI

  have lived to see Bombay become Mumbai, Calcutta
become Kolkata, and Madras become Chennai. Times change, names change, and if Bond becomes Bonda I won't object. Place-names may alter but people don't, and in Mumbai I found that people were as friendly and good-natured as ever; perhaps even more than when I was last there twenty-five years ago.

  On that occasion I had travelled the Doon Express, a slow passenger train that stopped at every small station in at least five states, taking two days and two nights from Dehradun to Bombay. It had been a fairly uneventful journey, except for an incident in the small hours when we stopped at Baroda and a hand slipped through my open window, crept under my pillow, found nothing of value except my spectacles, and decided to take them anyway, leaving me to grope half-blind around Bombay until another pair could be made.

  Now I carry three pairs of spectacles: one for reading, one for looking at people, and one for looking far out to sea.

  On the Kingfisher flight to Mumbai, I used the second pair, as I like looking at people, especially attractive air hostesses. I found they were looking at me too, but that was because I'd caught my belt (my trouser belt, not my seat-belt) in a fellow-passenger's luggage strap and was proceeding to drag both him and his travel-bag down the aisle. We were diplomatically separated by the aforesaid air hostesses who then guided me to my seat without further mishap.

  This reminded me of the occasion many years ago when I auditioned for a role in a Tarzan film.

  Who do you wish to play?' asked the casting director.

  'Tarzan, of course,' I said.

  He gave me a long hard look. 'Can you swing from one tree to another?' he asked.

  'Easily,' I said. 'I can even swing from a chandelier.' And I proceeded to do so, wrecking the hall they sat in, in the process. They begged me to stop.

  'Thank you, Mr Bond, you have made your point. But we don't think you have the figure for the part of Tarzan. Would you like to take the part of the missionary who is being cooked to a crisp by a bunch of cannibals? Tarzan will come to your rescue.'

  I declined the role with dignity.

  And now I was in Mumbai, not to audition for a film, but to inaugurate the Rupa Book Festival. For old time's sake, I arrived at the venue in a horse-drawn carriage. Alighting, my recalcitrant belt-buckle got entangled with the horse's harness and I almost dragged the entire contraption into the Bajaj exhibition hall.

  However, the evening's entertainment went off without a hitch. Gulzar read from Ghalib, Tom Alter read from Gulzar, Mandira Bedi read from Nandita Puri, and everyone read madly from each other, and I sat quietly in a corner to keep my belt out of further entanglements.

  The next day I was taken on a tour of the city by a Hindustan Times journalist and a photographer. They asked me to pose on the steps of the Asiatic Society's Library, an imposing colonial edifice. While I stood there being photographed, a group of teenagers walked past and I overheard one of them remark: 'Yeh naya model hain.'

  I took it as a compliment. At least they didn't call me a purana model. Perhaps there's still a chance to get that Tarzan role. If not Tarzan, then his grandfather.

  The same journalist and photographer took me to a market where you could buy anything from books to bras. They thrust a thousand-rupee note into my willing hands and told me I could buy anything I liked, while they took pictures.

  'Can I keep the money?' I asked.

  'No, you have to spend it.'

  So I bought two ladies handbags and two pairs of ladies slippers.

  'For your girlfriends?' asked the journalist.

  'No,' I said, 'for their mothers.'

  Back at the festival hall, I was presented with a beautiful sky-blue T-shirt by a charming lady who wishes to remain anonymous. I wore it the next morning when I was leaving Mumbai.

  At the airport, one of the Kingfisher staff complimented me on my dress sense; the first time anyone has done so.

  'Your blue shirt matches your eyes,' she said.

  After that, I shall definitely fly Kingfisher again.

  2

  MONKEY ON THE ROOF

  1

  uite often, I'm up with the lark—more often, with the sound of monkeys jumping on my tin roof. I've often wondered why hill-station houses must have these rusty red tin roofs, apart from an understandable human desire to make them look like battered old biscuit tins. Well, now I know. They are there for the benefit of monkeys, langurs, field-rats, cats, crows, mynas, spiders and scorpions.

  I don't mind the spiders—they seem harmless enough. The scorpions are evil-looking but sluggish—unlike the dashing red scorpions of the Rajasthan desert. The other day I found a scorpion enjoying a nap on my pillow. I like to have my pillow to myself, so I tipped the slumbering creature out of the window and returned to my afternoon siesta. I do not take the lives of fellow creatures if I can help it. Cats are not so squeamish. At night they get between the tin roof and the wooden ceiling and create havoc among the rats and mice who dwell there. And early morning, if I leave a window open, the monkeys will finish anything they find on the breakfast table.

  In spite of occasional rude awakenings, I enjoy sleeping late, especially on winter mornings when the sun struggles to penetrate banks of cloud or mist or drizzle. The bed is one of my favourite places. And even if I am wide awake, I can lie there under the blanket and razai and enjoy the view without rising. The window in front of me looks out on the clouds or the clear sky; the window beside it gives me a view of upper Landour and the houses on the slopes; and the far window looks out on a thicket of oak trees. And if I sit up in bed, I can see the road and some of the people on it.

  But to start with my bed, for that's where the day begins and ends. There's something to be said for beds. After all, we spend roughly half our lives stretched out upon them. The amount of time spent in sleep varies from one individual to another.

  'Five hours sleepeth a traveller, seven a scholar, eight a merchant, and eleven every knave.'

  So goes an old proverb, and there is much truth in proverbs. I must fall somewhere between merchant and knave. There are times when I like to rise early and times when I enjoy sleeping late. If I fall asleep before midnight, I will rise early. One hour's sleep before midnight is worth two after. When the moon is up, the night has its magic; but at two or three in the morning there is very little to offer, because by ten even cats, bats and field-rats are asleep. In summer, bird-song starts at dawn, somewhere between four and five o'clock and that's a good time to be up and about, exercising mind or body.

  The other morning I was up at five; wrote a couple of pages, opened my window and swallowed a portion of cloud; closed it, conscience clear, and returned to bed where presently a cup of tea materialised, prepared by Beena or Dolly or some other member of the family. But for that morning cup of tea, would I have survived all these years? Without it, the mornings would be one long, endless wasteland. Without it, I would not get up. I would refuse breakfast, lunch and dinner, and waste away. Looking back upon my life from the vantage point of seventy years, I cannot remember a time when I was deprived of that morning cup of tea. Except for when I was in boarding school. Now you know why I ran away.

  Getting up and making my own tea is no fun either. It has to be brought to me by some gentle soul—man, woman or child—who has got up before everyone else in order to ensure that I get up too.

  The best tea I've ever drunk was made by an ex-convict who worked for my landlady in Dehradun, many years ago. He told me that while he was in jail he was assigned to the task of making the warden's tea. It was appreciated so much that they wouldn't let him go even after he'd served his sentence. How, then, did he gain his freedom? Well, my landlady was the wife of the jail superintendent. So you see how well the system worked!

  For a while in London, I had a Jewish landlady who brought me my breakfast on a tray. I don't know if such civilised courtesies still exist. Back in the 1950s, English food was not very exciting; it had yet to be enriched by Indian curries and Chinese noodles. But breakfasts were always good—far superior to
the skimpy fare served out by the French. Bacon and eggs, marmalade on toast, occasionally a kipper, a sausage, a slice of ham, grapefruit...what more could anyone ask for at the start of a busy day? And even now, when the days aren't quite so busy, I might skip lunch or dinner but I'll breakfast well.

  So finally I'm out of bed and enjoying my breakfast. The children have gone to school and silence has descended on the house. A day in the life of Ruskin Bond is about to commence. I am at liberty to write a poem or a story or fill these pages with inconsequential thoughts. But first I must get dressed.

  I am not fond of clothes, but I wouldn't care to start the day's work without at least wearing a clean shirt. When I was a struggling young writer, I did not possess more than two shirts at one time, but I would wash one every night in the hope that it would be dry by morning. Even today, I don't have a large wardrobe. It isn't possible, not with all these monkeys around. If you see a large red monkey wearing a blue and yellow check bush-shirt, please try and retrieve it for me; it's my favourite shirt. Putting clothes out on the roof to dry is fairly common practice in hill-stations, but not to be recommended. Only the other day, when a strong wind came up from the east, I saw my pyjamas floating away downhill to end up entangled in the branches of an oak tree. Fortunately the milkman's son, who is good at climbing oak trees, rescued them for me. The milkman's son does not pass his exams, but as long as he can climb trees, he'll be a success in life. All of us need just one good accomplishment in order to get by. Obviously he can't spend the rest of his life climbing trees, but it's the agility and enterprise involved in the act that will make him a survivor.