Who Kissed Me in the Dark Read online

  Who Kissed Me in the Dark

  Ruskin Bond has been writing for over sixty years, and now has over 120 titles in print—novels, collections of short stories, poetry, essays, anthologies and books for children. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, received the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957. He has also received the Padma Shri (1999), the Padma Bhushan (2014) and two awards from Sahitya Akademi—one for his short stories and another for his writings for children. In 2012, the Delhi government gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.

  Born in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Shimla, New Delhi and Dehradun. Apart from three years in the UK, he has spent all his life in India, and now lives in Mussoorie with his adopted family.

  Published by

  Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2017

  7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj

  New Delhi 110002

  Copyright © Ruskin Bond 2017

  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.

  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.

  ISBN: 978-81-291-3594-0

  First impression 2017

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  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.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Frogs in the Fountain

  Grandfather’s Many Faces

  On Foot with Faith

  Who Kissed Me in the Dark?

  From Small Beginnings

  The Girl on the Train

  Sounds I Like to Hear

  The Monkeys

  In Grandfather’s Garden

  Ghosts of the Savoy

  In a Crystal Ball: A Mussoorie Mystery

  Up at Sisters Bazaar

  Miss Bun and Others

  Whispering in the Dark

  My Far Pavilions

  A Knock at the Door

  The Year of the Kissing and Other Good Times

  A Hill Station’s Vintage Murders

  The Garlands on His Brow

  Death of the Trees

  Introduction

  The hill stations of India, many of them settled by the British, served a number of purposes once upon a time. Some were summer capitals, others were administrative centres with strategic importance. Many were beautifully scenic spots that held out an inviting hand to those tired from the heat of the plains. Today, the hill stations have grown and changed quite remarkably. Where there were green hills now there are rows of houses and hotels and restaurants. The streets are clogged with cars bringing in holidaymakers from the plains. The noise from the car horns and traffic drown out the softer sounds of nature—the wind rushing through the trees and the bird calls. But for long-time residents, there are some stories and memories that remain thankfully unchanged.

  Mussoorie even now is full of beauty. I have lived in a couple of houses here, before making my home in the higher reaches of Landour. In all these years, I have heard and read a bit of the history and the legends that have grown around this town. Some stories are official accounts of how the hill station came to be. Some others are legends that have grown around long-deceased residents. Yet others are about those who are said to have met their Maker and yet appear in disconcerting fashion now and then, specially to the faint-hearted. And some other stories are those that I have experienced in my life. From my childhood that was more in the Doon valley to days of my youth when I decided to move to Mussoorie and now, there is a lot that has happened.

  Among these people is that unknown girl who once kissed me in the dark. The lights had gone out, there was some amount of chaos all around and someone kissed me and disappeared. It’s a nice mystery to have in one’s life, I feel. I can wonder who it was and there lies a tale in the not knowing. Once upon a time, the year of the kissing was quite famous. But that was well before my time. The accounts of those who met happily or tragically at this time and of those who stayed on and those who came by many years later looking for them are vivid and dramatic.

  I have collected a few stories here that talk about life in this most wonderful hill station. There are also stories of those who may well have lived here, so perfect a spot it is for stories to grow. Despite the bone-chilling cold winter nights or the times storms carry away the roof, there is unlikely to ever be a place that I would rather call home than this queen of the hills.

  Ruskin Bond

  Frogs in the Fountain

  Marigolds grew almost everywhere in our beautiful country, and they are constantly in demand—at festivals, marriages, religious ceremonies, arrivals and departures, functions of all kinds. If you happen to be a guest of honour on a public occasion, be prepared to be smothered in garlands of marigolds. I am a little wary of these welcoming garlands because on one occasion a slumbering bee, nestling between the petals, flew out and stung me under my chin. It made for a very short speech.

  When I told young Gautam about this incident, he asked, ‘Is that how you got your double chin?’

  Actually the double chin came from my grandmother, who was a large, generously proportioned lady with a number of chins. Gautam and his sister Shrishti like to play with my double chin, but I would never have dared touch my old Granny on her chin or anywhere else. She was a stern, reserved woman, with a strict Victorian upbringing, who believed that little boys should speak only when spoken to.

  She fed us reasonably well—she kept a great khansama—but she did not believe in second helpings, with the result that I spent the rest of my life indulging in second helpings.

  Two mutton koftas were all that I was allowed with my plate of rice. I liked koftas—still do—and it was painful for a small boy to have to stop at two. Now that I am a grown man with an independent source of income, I help myself to four! Who can stop me?

  Dr Bhist, who drops in to see me once a year, remarked that I looked overweight and that I should cut down on my food intake.

  ‘What did you have for lunch?’ he asked.

  ‘Kofta curry and rice.’

  ‘How much rice?’

  ‘Just two small helpings.’

  ‘And how many koftas?’

  ‘Only four.’

  ‘Don’t have more than two,’ he advised.

  ‘Yes, Granny,’ I said.

  Dr Bhist gave me a puzzled look.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I thought you were my grandmother.’

  Now he thinks I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

  ‘Talking of marigolds, Granny surrounded her house with them, as she believed they kept snakes away. Apparently, snakes do not like their pungent aroma. I, too, believed in this folklore until I was told (by an expert on reptiles) that snakes do not have a strong sense of smell and would be impervious to the scent of flowers or other odours. Maybe so, but I don’t recall ever seeing a snake in Granny’s garden, although I did see them elsewhere. However, we did have plenty of frogs, thanks to the disused fountain installed by my grandfather but neglected after his death.

  The fountain hadn’t functioned for a couple of years, but the little reservoir in which it stood had filled up with rain water and was now covered with water lilies.

  One day, after an expedition to the Canal Head Works, I br
ought home some small fish in a bucket and introduced them to the lily pond. I hadn’t paid much attention to the tadpoles swimming around in the bucket.

  Well, the fish died as they were used to fresh running water and not stagnant water; but the tadpoles did very well, and before long we had frogs leaping all over the place. Very soon the frogs multiplied. They would come into the verandah at night and keep us awake with their incessant singing and warbling.

  ‘I can’t sleep a wink,’ complained Aunt Mabel, who was very sensitive to noise and allergic to choirs made up entirely of bass singers.

  ‘They’re serenading you,’ I said. It was a long time since anyone had serenaded Aunt Mabel, a confirmed spinster in her early forties.

  ‘They’ll go away once the rains finish,’ said Granny hopefully. But they did not go away. One day, screams came from the bathroom—Aunt Mabel screaming for help! Granny, the khansama and I ran to her aid, and discovered that the cause of her distress was a large frog swimming around in the potty.

  I pulled the flush chain. There was a loud gurgling sound, a combination of frog and flush, and out jumped the frog straight into Aunt Mabel’s arms. She left for Lucknow that day, saying she would be safer in a zoo, where her cousin was the superintendent.

  Well, Granny hired some labourers to empty the lily pond and round up as many frogs as they could. They were put into baskets and taken to some mysterious destination.

  ‘Perhaps they’ve been exported to China,’ I mused, ‘or even to France. They eat frogs there, don’t they?’

  ‘Only the legs,’ said Granny.

  But they hadn’t been exported. The khansama told me later that the baskets had been opened and dumped near a pond behind the railway station and before long they were all over the station waiting rooms and platforms, until the stationmaster had a brilliant idea. He had the frogs rounded up by a number of street urchins who wanted to make a little pocket money; he then had them packed firmly into several well-ventilated boxes.

  The crates were labelled ‘To Lucknow Zoo—Attn: Superintendent sahib’, and dispatched as a free gift.

  ‘A zoo is the best place for creatures great and small,’ opined our philosophical stationmaster, who had previously sent them a consignment of stray station dogs.

  Strangely enough, Aunt Mabel would have preferred a crate of frogs to a bouquet of flowers. She was allergic to flowers. Apparently the pollen brought on sneezing fits.

  A fear of flowers is called anthophobia, and Aunt Mabel suffered from it. She lived in constant terror of flowers. An innocent pansy made her think of the devil; a snapdragon reminded her of real dragons; the spear-like leaves of the iris were as real spears to her; and the golden rod sent shivers down her spine. The ones that made her sneeze the most were hollyhock, cosmos, calendula, daisies of all kinds and chrysanthemums.

  It was more than an allergy, it was an irrational but very real fear of flowers. Their very names terrified her. If I shouted ‘thunder lily!’ she would turn pale and tremble like a leaf. If I whispered ‘gladioli’, she would let out a shriek. If I said ‘dandelion!’ she would get a rash. And if I exclaimed ‘convolvulus!’ she’d go into convulsions.

  Small boys can be cruel, especially to aunts, and I was no exception. But teasing Aunt Mabel with flowers had a limited appeal for me. Instead, I used them for blackmail. If I needed money for the cinema, I would take Aunt Mabel a bunch of larkspur or candytuft. She would turn pale at my approach, push me out of her room, and hurriedly give me the price of a cinema ticket.

  In Lucknow, she lived in a flat and was able to keep flowers at bay. But in Dehra she had to put up with Granny’s garden, and Granny had no intention of doing away with her flower garden. After all, she was acknowledged to have the most luxuriant display of sweet peas in town. Also Aunt Mabel stayed indoors most of the time, venturing out only in a tonga. She felt quite safe in Paltan Bazaar where there were no flowers apart from the cauliflowers on sale in the sabzi mandi, and even these she avoided.

  So engraved was my aunt’s phobia that she made everyone in the family promise that when she died there would be no flowers at her funeral. However, she did not really trust us to carry out her wishes, and this may have been the reason why she left India and chose to settle in Arizona, in an area where even the cacti had a hard time surviving. She’d found happiness at last.

  I, on the other hand, cannot live without flowers. A little vase of bright yellow and orange nasturtiums rests on the corner of my desk, and every now and then I look up to refresh my eyes and mind by gazing at them. I have never been able to afford a large house with a garden (like Granny’s, which was sold when she died) but I grow geraniums in my window and nasturtiums on the roof, and in the spring I throw cosmos seed on the hillside and some of them come up and reward me and others with autumn flowers.

  Of course we all have our phobias, and some of the most interesting include bacteriophobia, a fear of germs; mysophobia, a fear of dirt (I knew someone who would wash her hands thirty to forty times a day, even when she was at home and unoccupied); xenophobia, a fear of strangers; nyctophobia, a fear of darkness; agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces. The trouble is, most of us—men especially—hate to admit being afraid of anything. This fear of showing fear is a phobia in itself. The word for it is phobophobia.

  My own particular phobia is a fear of lifts. As far as possible I will avoid entering a building where it is necessary to use a lift. If I do go in, I take the stairs. On one occasion I was incarcerated in a five-star hotel where there was no staircase. My room was on the seventeenth floor. I was forced to use the fire escape! Now you know why I prefer to stay at the India International Centre whenever I’m in New Delhi: not because I have any intellectual pretensions, but because the building (god bless the architect) has only two floors.

  Perhaps the best way of dealing with a phobia is to give in to it, admit it, tell everyone about your weakness, and enlist their support. I can tell people that I’m afraid of lifts. As most fellow humans are sympathetic by nature, they crowd into the lift to keep me company, and press all the right buttons something I have never been able to do successfully in lifts, on cell phones or with ladies’ corsets.

  Company in a lift always makes me feel much better. I know I won’t be alone when it crashes.

  Grandfather’s Many Faces

  Grandfathers had many gifts, but perhaps the most unusual—and at times startling—was his ability to disguise himself and take on the persona of another person, often a street vendor or carpenter or washerman; someone he had seen around for some time, and whose habits and characteristics he had studied.

  His normal attire was that of the average Anglo-Indian or Englishman—bush shirt, khaki shorts, occasionally a solo topee or sun helmet—but if you rummaged through his cupboards you would find a strange assortment of garments: dhotis, lungis, pyjamas, embroidered shirts, colourful turbans… He could be a Maharaja one day, a beggar the next. Yes, he even had a brass begging bowl, but he used it only once, just to see if he could pass himself off as a bent-double beggar hobbling through the bazaar. He wasn’t recognized but he had to admit that begging was a most difficult art.

  ‘You have to be on the street all day and in all weather,’ he told me that day. ‘You have to be polite to everyone—no beggar succeeds by being rude! You have to be alert at all times. It’s a hard work, believe me. I wouldn’t advise anyone to take up begging as a profession.’

  Grandfather really liked to get the ‘feel’ of someone else’s occupation or lifestyle. And he enjoyed playing tricks on his friends and relatives.

  Grandmother loved bargaining with shopkeepers and vendors of all kinds. She would boast that she could get the better of most men when it came to haggling over the price of onions or cloth or baskets or buttons… Until one day the sabziwala, a wandering vegetable seller who carried a basket of fruit and vegetables on his head, spent an hour on the verandah arguing with Granny over the price of various items before finally selling her what she
wanted.

  Later that day, Grandfather confronted Granny and insisted on knowing why she had paid extra for tomatoes and green chillies. ‘Far more than you’d have paid in the bazaar,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know what I paid him?’ asked Granny.

  ‘Because here’s the ten-rupee note you gave me,’ said Grandfather, handing hack her money. ‘I changed into something suitable and borrowed the sabziwala’s basket for an hour!’

  Grandfather never used make-up. He had a healthy tan, and with the help of a false moustache or beard, and a change of hairstyle, could become anyone he wanted to be.

  For my amusement, he became a tonga-wala; that is, the driver of a pony-drawn buggy, a common form of conveyance in the days of my boyhood.

  Grandfather borrowed a tonga from one of his cronies, and took me for a brisk and eventful ride around the town. On our way we picked up the odd customer and earned a few rupees which were dutifully handed over to the tonga owner at the end of the day. We picked up Dr Bisht, our local doctor, who failed to recognize him. But of course I was the giveaway. ‘And what are you doing here?’ asked the good doctor. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

  ‘I’m just helping Grandfather,’ I replied. ‘It’s part of my science project.’ Dr Bisht then took a second look at Grandfather and burst out laughing; he also insisted on a free ride.

  On one occasion Grandfather drove Granny to the bank without her recognizing him. And that too in a tonga with a white pony. Granny was superstitious about white ponies and avoided them as far as possible. But Grandfather, in his tonga driver’s disguise, persuaded her that his white pony was the best-behaved little pony in the world; and so it was, under his artful guidance. As a result, Granny lost her fear of white ponies.

  One winter the Gemini Circus cane to our small north Indian town, and set up its tents on the old parade ground. Grandfather, who liked circuses and circus people, soon made friends with all the show folk—the owner, the ring-master, the lion-tamer, the pony riders, clowns, trapeze artistes and acrobats. He told me that as a boy he’d always wanted to join a circus, preferably as an animal trainer or ringmaster, but his parents had persuaded him to become an engine-driver instead.