Thick as Thieves Read online

  Ruskin Bond

  THICK AS THIEVES

  Tales of Friendship

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Also in Puffin by Ruskin Bond

  Introduction

  1. The Four Feathers

  2. Best Favourite Friend

  3. Rusty Plays Holi

  4. Reunion at the Regal

  5. The Crooked Tree

  6. My Best Friend

  7. A Little Friend

  8. The Thief

  9. Most Beautiful

  10. The Flute Player

  11. The Hidden Pool

  12. The Leopard

  13. Would Astley Return?

  14. The Story of Madhu

  15. Here Comes Mr Oliver

  16. The Playing Fields of Shimla

  17. The Prospect of Flowers

  18. A Tiger in the House

  19. The Window

  20. A Song for Lost Friends

  21. Where the Guavas Are Ripe

  22. From Small Beginnings

  23. The Canal

  24. The Last Tonga Ride

  25. We Rode All the Way to Delhi

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright Page

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  THICK AS THIEVES

  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 recently awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for his ‘total contribution to children’s literature’. He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his extended family.

  Also in Puffin by Ruskin Bond

  Getting Granny’s Glasses

  Earthquake

  The Cherry Tree

  The Eyes of the Eagle

  Dust on the Mountain

  Cricket for the Crocodile

  Puffin Classics: The Room on the Roof

  Puffin Classics: The Room on the Roof

  The Room of Many Colours: A 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

  Rusty and the Magic Mountain

  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

  Uncles, Aunts and Elephants: Tales from Your Favourite Storyteller

  Ranji’s Wonderful Bat and Other Stories

  Whispers in the Dark: A Book of Spooks

  The Tree Lover

  The Day Grandfather Tickled a Tiger

  ‘Make friends, make friends, however strong

  Or weak they may be:

  Recall the captive elephants

  That the mice set free.’

  —The Panchatantra [Book 2]

  Introduction

  ‘One good father is more than a hundred schoolmasters,’ wrote George Herbert, and I was very fortunate in having a father who had, in fact, been a schoolmaster before joining the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of World War II. When I was a little boy he took me by the hand and led me up the steps of old forts and monuments, and told me their stories. Through books and pictures and postage stamps, he gave me a solid grounding in history and geography. He was the best friend a small boy could have had. I lost him when I was only ten, but in spirit he continued to walk beside me through the passing years. For to live in the hearts of those we leave behind is never to die.

  After his passing I was stranded for a while. It took me a few years to adjust to the very different lifestyles of my mother and stepfather. For some time, books were my best friends. And then, as I settled down in boarding school and showed that I could kick a football as well as write an essay, I found that friends came to me without much effort on my part. The ‘four feathers’ were real enough, and so was Omar (name changed) and others whom I have yet to write about. In the year after I finished school there were Somi and Ranbir and Co. After leaving India I spent two or three lonely years in Jersey and London; the letters from these friends helped to sustain me. Then, in London, I met some Vietnamese students and young West Indians, who brightened my days in that lonely city.

  Returning to India, I found myself part of Kamal’s family in Delhi and then Prem’s family in Mussoorie. From individual friends I had progressed to entire families!

  I think those lonely periods, in my childhood and then abroad, had made me value friendships more than most people do.

  ‘Friendship is a sheltering tree,’ wrote Coleridge. True, a good friend is like a tree—steadfast, sturdy, comforting, ever-present: until we cut it down. So we must preserve our friendships as we preserve our protective trees.

  But—‘Beware of false friends,’ warns the Hitopadesa. So we must choose our friends wisely and in accordance with our own natures. It can take a long time to know anyone really well.

  Ruskin Bond

  The Four Feathers

  Our school dormitory was a very long room with about thirty beds, fifteen on either side of the room. This was good for pillow fights. Class V would take on Class IV (the two senior classes in our prep school) and there would be plenty of space for leaping, struggling small boys, pillows flying, feathers flying, until there was a cry of ‘Here comes Fishy!’ or ‘Here comes Olly!’ and either Mr Fisher, the headmaster, or Mr Oliver, the Senior Master, would come striding in, cane in hand, to put an end to the general mayhem. Pillow fights were allowed, up to a point; nobody got hurt. But parents sometimes complained, if at the end of the term, a boy came home with a pillow devoid of cotton wool or feathers.

  In that last year at prep school in Shimla, there were four of us who were close friends—Bimal, whose home was in Bombay; Riaz, who came from Lahore, Bran, who hailed from Vellore; and your narrator, who lived wherever his father (then in the Air Force) was posted.

  We called ourselves the ‘Four Feathers’, the feathers signifying that we were companions in adventure, comrades-in-arms, and knights of the round table. Bimal adopted a peacock’s feather as his emblem—he was always a bit showy. Riaz chose a falcon’s feather—although we couldn’t find one. Bran and I were at first offered crow or hen feathers, but we protested vigorously and threatened a walkout, finally I settled for a parrot’s feather (taken from Mrs Fisher’s pet parrot), and Bran found a woodpecker’s, which suited him, as he was always knocking things about.

  Bimal was all thin legs and arms, so light and frisky that at times he seemed to be walking on air. We called him ‘Bambi’, after the delicate little deer in the Disney film. Riaz, on the other hand, was a sturdy boy, good at games though not very studious; but always good-natured and smiling.

  Bran was a dark, good-looking boy from the South; he was just a little spoilt—hated being given out in a cricket match and would refuse to leave the crease! But he was affectionate and a loyal friend. I was the ‘scribe’—good at inventing stories in order to get out of scrap
es—but hopeless at sums, my highest marks being 22 out of 100.

  On Sunday afternoons, when there were no classes or organized games, we were allowed to roam about on the hillside below the school. The four feathers would laze about on the short summer grass, sharing the occasional food parcel from home, reading comics (sometimes a book) and making plans for the long winter holidays. My father, who collected everything from stamps to seashells to butterflies, had given me a butterfly net and urged me to try and catch a rare species which, he said, was found only near Chotta Shimla. He described it as a large, purple butterfly with yellow and black borders on its wings. A ‘Purple Emperor’, I think it was called. As I wasn’t very good at identifying butterflies, I would chase anything that happened to flit across the school grounds, usually ending up with common ‘Red Admirals’, ‘Clouded Yellows’, or ‘Cabbage Whites’. But that Purple Emperor—that rare specimen being sought by collectors the world over—proved elusive. I would have to seek my fortune in some other line of endeavour.

  One day, scrambling about among the rocks and thorny bushes below the school, I almost fell over a small bundle lying in the shade of a young spruce tree. On taking a closer look, I discovered that the bundle was really a baby, wrapped up in a tattered, old blanket.

  ‘Feathers, feathers!’ I called, ‘come here and look. A baby’s been left here!’

  The feathers joined me and we all stared down at the infant, who was fast asleep.

  ‘Who would leave a baby on the hillside?’ asked Bimal to no one in particular.

  ‘Someone who doesn’t want it,’ said Bran.

  ‘And hoped some good people would come along and keep it,’ added Riaz.

  ‘A panther might have come along instead,’ I declared. ‘Can’t leave it here.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to adopt it,’ said Bimal.

  ‘We can’t adopt a baby,’ protested Bran.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We have to be married.’

  ‘We don’t.’

  ‘Not us, you dope. The grown-ups who adopt babies.’

  ‘Well, we can’t just leave it here for grown-ups to come along,’ I said.

  ‘We don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl,’ said Riaz.’

  ‘Makes no difference. A baby’s a baby. Let’s take it back to school.’

  ‘And keep it in the dormitory?’

  ‘Of course not. Who’s going to feed it? Babies need milk. We’ll hand it over to Mrs Fisher. She doesn’t have a baby.’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t want one. Look, it’s beginning to cry. Let’s hurry!’

  Riaz picked up the wide awake and crying baby and gave it to Bimal who gave it to Bran who gave it to me. The four feathers marched up the hill to school with a very noisy baby.

  ‘Now it’s done potty in the blanket,’ I complained, ‘and some of it’s on my shirt.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Bimal. ‘It’s for a good cause. You’re a Boy Scout, remember? You’re supposed to help people in distress.’

  The headmaster and his wife were in their drawing room, enjoying their afternoon tea and cakes. We trudged in, and Bimal announced, ‘We’ve got something for Mrs Fisher.’

  Mrs Fisher took one look at the bundle in my arms and let out a shriek. ‘What have you brought here, Bond?’

  ‘A baby, ma’am. I think it’s a girl. Do you want to adopt it?’

  Mrs Fisher threw up her hands in consternation, and turned to her husband. ‘What are we to do, Frank? These boys are impossible. They’ve picked up someone’s child!’

  ‘We’ll have to inform the police,’ declared Mr Fisher, reaching for the telephone. ‘We can’t have lost babies in the school.’

  Just then there was a commotion outside, and a wild-eyed woman, her clothes dishevelled, entered through the front door accompanied by several menfolk from one of the nearby villages. She ran towards us, crying out, ‘My baby, my baby! Mera bachcha! You’ve stolen my baby!’

  ‘We found it on the hillside,’ I stammered.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Bran. ‘Finders keepers!’

  ‘Quiet, Adams,’ scolded Mr Fisher, holding up his hand for order and addressing the villagers in a friendly manner. ‘These boys found the baby alone on the hillside and brought it here before … before …’

  ‘Before the hyenas got it,’ I put in.

  ‘Quite right, Bond. And why did you leave your child alone?’ he asked the woman.

  ‘I put her down for five minutes so that I could climb the plum tree and collect the plums. When I came down, the baby had gone! But I could hear it crying up on the hill. I called the menfolk and we come looking for it.’

  ‘Well, here’s your baby,’ I said, thrusting it into her arms. By then I was glad to rid of it! ‘Look after it properly in the future.’

  ‘Kidnapper!’ she screamed at me.

  Mr Fisher succeeded in mollifying the villagers. ‘These boys are good Scouts,’ he told them. ‘It’s their business to help people.’

  ‘Scout Law Number Three, sir,’ I added. ‘To be useful and helpful.’

  And then the headmaster turned the tables on the villagers. ‘By the way, those plum trees belong to the school. So do the peaches and apricots. Now I know why they’ve been disappearing so fast!’

  The villagers, a little chastened, went their way. Mr Fisher reached for his cane. From the way he fondled it I knew he was itching to use it on our bottoms.

  ‘No, Frank,’ said Mrs Fisher, intervening on our behalf, ‘It was really very sweet of them to look after that baby. And look at Bond—he’s got baby-poo all over his clothes.’

  ‘So he has. Go and take a bath, all of you. And what are you grinning about, Bond?’

  ‘Scout Law Number Eight, sir. A Scout smiles and whistles under all difficulties.’

  And so ended the first adventure of the four feathers.

  Best Favourite Friend

  [Somi was Rusty’s first Indian friend when he ran away from his guardian’s home and struck out on his own. The Kapoor family, who took him in, have broken up after the death of their friend Kishen’s mother. In this chapter from The Room on the Roof, Somi and Rusty ponder upon an uncertain future …]

  It was a sticky, restless afternoon. The water-carrier passed below the room with his skin bag, spraying water on the dusty path. The toy seller entered the compound, calling his wares in a high-pitched sing-song voice, and presently there was the chatter of children.

  The toy seller had a long bamboo pole, crossed by two or three shorter bamboos, from which hung all manner of toys—little celluloid drums, tin watches, tiny flutes and whistles, and multicoloured rag dolls—and when these ran out, they were replaced by others from a large bag, a most mysterious and fascinating bag, one into which no one but the toy seller was allowed to look. He was a popular person with the rich and poor alike, for his toys never cost more than four annas and never lasted longer than a day.

  Rusty liked the cheap toys, and was fond of decorating his room with them. He bought a two-anna flute and walked upstairs, blowing on it.

  He removed his shirt and sandals and lay flat on the bed staring up at the ceiling. The lizards scuttled along the rafters, the bald mynah hopped along the window ledge. He was about to fall asleep when Somi came into the room.

  Somi looked listless.

  ‘I feel sticky,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to wear any clothes.’

  Somi pulled off his shirt and deposited it on the table, then stood before the mirror, studying his physique. Then he turned to Rusty.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ he said, ‘there are cobwebs in your hair.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘You must have been very fond of Mrs Kapoor. She was very kind.’

  ‘I loved her, didn’t you know?’

  ‘No. My own love is the only thing I know. Rusty, best favourite friend, you cannot stay here in this room, you must come back to my house. Besides, this building will soon have new tenants.’

 
‘I’ll get out when they come, or when the landlord discovers I’m still living here.’

  Somi’s usually bright face was somewhat morose, and there was a faint agitation showing in his eyes.

  ‘I will go and get a cucumber to eat,’ he said. ‘Then there is something to tell you.’

  ‘I don’t want a cucumber,’ protested Rusty, ‘I want a coconut.’

  ‘I want a cucumber.’

  Rusty felt irritable. The room was hot, the bed was hot, his blood was hot. Impatiently, he said, ‘Go and eat your cucumber, I don’t want any …’

  Somi looked at him with pained surprise; then, without a word, picked up his shirt and marched out of the room. Rusty could hear the slap of his slippers on the stairs, and then the bicycle tyres on the gravel path.

  ‘Hey, Somi!’ shouted Rusty, leaping off the bed and running out on to the roof. ‘Come back!’

  But the bicycle jumped over the ditch, and Somi’s shirt flapped, and there was nothing Rusty could do but return to bed. He was alarmed at his liverish ill temper. He lay down again and stared at the ceiling, at the lizards chasing each other across the rafters. On the roof two crows were fighting, knocking each other’s feathers out. Everyone was in a temper.

  What’s wrong? wondered Rusty. I spoke to Somi in fever, not in anger, but my words were angry. Now I am miserable, fed up. Oh, hell …

  He closed his eyes and shut out everything.

  He opened his eyes to laughter. Somi’s face was close, laughing into Rusty’s.

  ‘Of what were you dreaming, Rusty, I have never seen you smile so sweetly!’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t dreaming,’ answered Rusty, sitting up and feeling better now that Somi had returned. ‘I am sorry for being so grumpy, but I’m not feeling …’

  ‘Quiet!’ admonished Somi, putting a finger to the other’s lips. ‘See, I have settled the matter. Here is a coconut for you, and here is a cucumber for me!’

  They sat cross-legged on the bed, facing each other, Somi with his cucumber, and Rusty with his coconut. The coconut milk trickled down Rusty’s chin and on to his chest, giving him a cool, pleasant sensation.