A Town Called Dehra Read online

  There are new buildings on this road, but the small police station is housed in the same old limewashed bungalow . . . I cannot forget this little police station. Nothing very exciting ever happened in its vicinity until, in 1947, communal riots broke out in Dehra. Then, bodies were regularly fished out of the canal and dumped on a growing pile in the station compound. I was only a boy, but when I looked over the wall at that pile of corpses, there was no one who paid any attention to me. They were too busy to send me away. At the same time they knew that I was perfectly safe; while Hindus and Muslims were at each other’s throats, a white boy could walk the streets in safety. No one was any longer interested in the Europeans.

  The people of Dehra are not violent by nature, and the town has no history of communal discord. But when refugees from the partitioned Punjab poured into Dehra in their thousands, the atmosphere became charged with tension. These refugees, many of them Sikhs, had lost their homes and livelihoods; many had seen their loved ones butchered. They were in a fierce and vengeful frame of mind. The calm, sleepy atmosphere of Dehra was shattered during two months of looting and murder. Those Muslims who could get away, fled. The poorer members of the community remained in a refugee camp until the holocaust was over; then they returned to their former occupations, frightened and deeply mistrustful. The old boxman was one of them.

  I cross the canal and take the road that will lead me to the river bed. This was one of my father’s favourite walks. He, too, was a walking man. Often, when he was home on leave, he would say, ‘Ruskin, let’s go for a walk,’ and we would slip off together and walk down to the river bed or into the sugar cane fields or across the railway lines and into the jungle.

  On one of these walks (this was before Independence), I remember him saying, ‘After the war is over, we’ll be going to England. Would you like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Can’t we stay in India?’

  ‘It won’t be ours any more.’

  ‘Has it always been ours?’ I asked.

  ‘For a long time,’ he said, ‘over two hundred years. But we have to give it back now.’

  ‘Give it back to whom?’ I asked. I was only nine.

  ‘To the Indians,’ said my father.

  The only Indians I had known till then were my ayah and the cook and the gardener and their children, and I could not imagine them wanting to be rid of us. The only other Indian who came to the house was Dr Ghose, and it was frequently said of him that he was more English than the English. I could understand my father better when he said, ‘After the war, there’ll be a job for me in England. There’ll be nothing for me here.’

  The war had at first been a distant event; but somehow it kept coming closer. My aunt, who lived in London with her two children, was killed with them during an air-raid; then my father’s younger brother died of dysentery on the long walk out from Burma. Both these tragic events depressed my father. Never in good health (he had been prone to attacks of malaria), he looked more worn and wasted every time he came home. His personal life was far from being happy, as he and my mother had separated, she to marry again. I think he looked forward a great deal to the days he spent with me; far more than I could have realized at the time. I was someone to come back to; someone for whom things could be planned; someone who could learn from him.

  Dehra suited him. He was always happy when he was among trees, and this happiness communicated itself to me. I felt like drawing close to him. I remember sitting beside him on the veranda steps when I noticed the tendril of a creeping vine that was trailing near my feet. As we sat there, doing nothing in particular—in the best gardens, time has no meaning—I found that the tendril was moving almost imperceptibly away from me and towards my father. Twenty minutes later it had crossed the veranda steps and was touching his feet. This, in India, is the sweetest of salutations.

  There is probably a scientific explanation for the plant’s behaviour—something to do with the light and warmth on the veranda steps—but I like to think that its movements were motivated simply by an affection for my father. Sometimes, when I sat alone beneath a tree, I felt a little lonely or lost. As soon as my father rejoined me, the atmosphere lightened, the tree itself became more friendly.

  Most of the fruit trees round the house were planted by faher; but he was not content with planting trees in the garden. On rainy days we would walk beyond the river bed, formed with cuttings and saplings, and then we would amble through the jungle, planting flowering shrubs between the sal and shisham trees.

  ‘But no one ever comes here,’ I protested the first time. ‘Who is going to see them?’

  ‘Some day,’ he said, ‘someone may come this way . . . If people keep cutting trees, instead of planting them, there’ll soon be no forests left at all, and the world will be just one vast desert.’

  The prospect of a world without trees became a sort of nightmare for me (and one reason why I shall never want to live on a treeless moon), and I assisted my father in his tree-planting with great enthusiasm.

  ‘One day the trees will move again,’ he said. ‘They’ve been standing still for thousands of years. There was a time when they could walk about like people, but someone cast a spell on them and rooted them to one place. But they’re always trying to move—see how they reach out with their arms!’

  We found an island, a small rocky island in the middle of a dry river bed. It was one of those river beds, so common in the foot-hills, which are completely dry in the summer but flooded during the monsoon rains. The rains had just begun, and the stream could still be crossed on foot, when we set out with a number of tamarind, laburnum and coral tree saplings and cuttings. We spent the day planting them on the island, then ate our lunch there, in the shelter of a wild plum.

  My father went away soon after that tree-planting. Three months later, in Calcutta, he died . . . My grandparents sold the house and left Dehra. After school, I went to England. The years passed, my grandparents died, and when I returned to India I was the only member of the family in the country.

  And now I am in Dehra again, on the road to the river bed.

  The houses with their trim gardens are soon behind me, and I am walking through fields of flowering mustard, which make a carpet of yellow blossoms stretching away towards the jungle and the foothills.

  The river bed is dry at this time of the year. A herd of skinny cattle graze on the short brown grass at the edge of the jungle. The sal trees have been thinned out. Could our trees have survived? Will our island be there, or has some flash flood during a heavy monsoon washed it away completely?

  As I look across the dry water-course, my eye is caught by the spectacular red plumes of the coral blossom. In contrast with the dry, rocky river-bed, the little island is a green oasis. I walk across to the trees and notice that a number of parrots have come to live in them. A koel challenges me with a rising who-are-you, who-are-you ...

  But the trees seem to know me. They whisper among themselves and beckon me nearer. And looking around, I find that other trees and wild plants and grasses have sprung up under the protection of the trees we planted.

  They have multiplied. They are moving. In this small forgotten corner of the world, my father’s dreams are coming true, and the trees are moving again.

  A Song for Lost Friends

  The past is always with us, for it feeds the present . . .

  1

  As a boy I stood on the edge of the railway-cutting,

  Outside the dark tunnel, my hands touching

  The hot rails, waiting for them to tremble

  At the coming of the noonday train.

  The whistle of the engine hung on the forest’s silence.

  Then out of the tunnel, a green-gold dragon

  Came plunging, thundering past—

  Out of the tunnel, out of the grinning dark.

  And the train rolled on, every day

  Hundreds of people coming or going or running away—

  Go
odbye, goodbye!

  I haven’t seen you again, bright boy at the carriage window,

  Waving to me, calling,

  But I’ve loved you all these years and looked for you everywhere,

  In cities and villages, beside the sea,

  In the mountains, in crowds at distant places;

  Returning always to the forest’s silence,

  To watch the windows of some passing train . . .

  2

  My father took me by the hand and led me

  Among the ruins of old forts and palaces.

  We lived in a tent near the tomb of Humayun

  Among old trees. Now multi-storeyed blocks

  Rise from the plain—tomorrow’s ruins . . .

  You can explore them, my son, when the trees

  Take over again and the thorn-apple grows

  In empty windows. There were seven cities before . . .

  Nothing my father said could bring my mother home;

  She had gone with another. He took me to the hills

  In a small train, the engine having palpitations

  As it toiled up the steep slopes peopled

  With pines and rhododendrons. Through tunnels

  To Simla. Boarding school. He came to see me

  In the holidays. We caught butterflies together.

  ‘Next year,’ he said, ‘when the War is over,

  We’ll go to England.’ But wars are never over

  And I have yet to go to England with my father.

  He died that year

  And I was dispatched to my mother and stepfather—

  A long journey through a dark tunnel.

  No one met me at the station. So I wandered

  Round Dehra in a tonga, looking for a house

  With lichi trees. She’d written to say there were lichis

  In the garden.

  But in Dehra all the houses had lichi trees,

  The tonga-driver charged five rupees

  for taking me back to the station.

  They were looking for me on the platform:

  ‘We thought the train would be late as usual.’

  It had arrived on time, upsetting everyone’s schedule.

  In my new home I found a new baby in a new pram.

  Your little brother, they said; which made me a hundred.

  But he too was left behind with the servants

  When my mother and Mr H went hunting

  Or danced late at the casino, our only wartime night-club.

  Tommies and Yanks scuffled drunk and disorderly

  In a private war for the favours of stale women.

  Lonely in the house with the servants and the child

  And books I’d read twice and my father’s letters

  Treasured secretly in the small trunk beneath my bed:

  I wrote to him once but did not post the letter

  For fear it might come back ‘Return to sender . . .’’

  One day I slipped into the guava orchard next door—

  It really belonged to Seth Hari Kishore

  Who’d gone to the Ganga on a pilgrimage—

  The guavas were ripe and ready for boys to steal

  (Always sweeter when stolen)

  And a bare leg thrust at me as I climbed:

  ‘There’s only room for one,’ came a voice.

  I looked up at a boy who had blackberry eyes

  And guava juice on his chin, grabbed at him

  And we both tumbled out of the tree

  On to the ragged December grass. We rolled and fought

  But not for long. A gardener came shouting,

  And we broke and ran—over the gate and down the road

  And across the fields and a dry river bed,

  Into the shades of afternoon . . .

  ‘Why didn’t you run home?’ he said.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘There’s no one there, my mother’s out.’

  ‘And mine’s at home.’

  3

  His mother was Burmese; his father

  An English soldier killed in the War.

  They were waiting for it to be over.

  Every day, beyond the gardens, we loafed:

  Time was suspended for a time.

  On heavy wings, ringed pheasants rose

  At our approach.

  The fields were yellow with mustard,

  Parrots wheeled in the sunshine, dipped and disappeared

  Into the morning mist on the foothills.

  We found a pool, fed by a freshet

  Of cold spring water. ‘One day when we are men,’

  He said, ‘We’ll meet here at the pool again.

  Promise?’ ‘Promise,’ I said. And we took a pledge.

  In blood, nicking our fingers on a penknife

  And pressing them to each other’s lips. Sweet salty kiss.

  Late evening, past cowdust time, we trudged home:

  He to his mother, I to my dinner.

  One wining–dancing night I thought I’d stay out too.

  We went to the pictures—Gone with the Wind—

  A crashing bore for boys, and it finished late.

  So I had dinner with them, and his mother said:

  ‘It’s past ten. You’d better stay the night.

  But will they miss you?’

  I did not answer but climbed into my friend’s bed—

  I’d never slept with anyone before, except my father—

  And when it grew cold, after midnight,

  He put his arms around me and looped a leg

  Over mine and it was nice that way

  But I stayed awake with the niceness of it

  My sleep stolen by his own deep slumber . . .

  What dreams were lost, I’ll never know!

  But next morning, just as we’d started breakfast,

  A car drew up, and my parents, outraged,

  Chastised me for staying out and hustled me home.

  Breakfast unfinished. My friend unhappy. My

  pride wounded.

  We met sometimes, but a constraint had grown upon us,

  And the following month I heard he’d gone

  To an orphanage in Kalimpong.

  4

  I remember you well, old banyan tree,

  As you stood there spreading quietly

  Over the broken wall.

  While adults slept, I crept away

  Down the broad veranda steps, around

  The outhouse and the melon-ground . . .

  In that winter of long ago, I roamed

  The faded garden of my mother’s home.

  I must have known that giants have few friends

  (The great lurk shyly in their private dens),

  And found you hidden by a thick green wall

  Of aerial roots.

  Intruder in your pillared den, I stood

  And shyly touched your old and wizened wood,

  And as my heart explored you, giant tree,

  I heard you singing!

  The spirit of the tree became my friend,

  Took me to his silent throbbing heart

  And taught me the value of stillness.

  My first tutor; friend of the lonely.

  And the second was the tonga-man

  Whose pony-cart came rattling along the road

  Under the furthest arch of the banyan tree.

  Looking up, he waved his whip at me

  And laughing, called, ‘Who lives up there?’

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  And the next time he came along, he stopped the tonga

  And asked me if I felt lonely in the tree.

  ‘Only sometimes,’ I said. ‘When the tree is thinking.’

  ‘I never think,’ he said. ‘You won’t feel lonely with me.’

  And with a flick of the reins he rattled away,

  With a promise he’d give me a ride someday.

  And from him I learnt the va
lue of promises kept.

  5

  From the tree to the tonga was an easy drop.

  I fell into life. Bansi, tonga-driver,

  Wore a yellow waistcoat and spat red

  Betel-juice the entire width of the road.

  ‘I can spit further than any man,’ he claimed.

  It is natural for a man to strive to excel

  At something; he spat with authority.

  When he took me for rides, he lost a fare.

  That was his way. He once said, ‘If a girl

  Wants five rupees for a fix, bargain like hell

  And then give six.’

  It was the secret of his failure, he claimed,

  To give away more than he owned.

  And to prove it, he borrowed my pocket-money

  In order to buy a present for his mistress.

  A man who fails well is better than one who

  succeeds badly.

  The rattletrap tonga and the winding road

  Through the valley, to the river bed,

  With the wind in my hair and the dust

  Rising, and the dogs running and barking

  And Bansi singing and shouting in my ear,

  And the pony farting as it cantered along,

  Wheels creaking, seat shifting,

  Hood slipping off, the entire contraption

  Always about to disintegrate, collapse,

  But never quite doing so—like the man himself . . .

  All this was music,

  And the ragtime-raga lingers in my mind.

  Nostalgia comes swiftly when one is forty,

  Looking back at boyhood years.

  Even unhappiness acquires a certain glow.

  It was shady in the cemetery, and the mango trees

  Did well there, nourished by the bones

  Of long-dead Colonels, Collectors, Magistrates and Memsahibs.

  For here, in dusty splendour, lay the graves

  Of those who’d brought their English dust

  To lie with Ganges soil: some tombs were temples,

  Some were cenotaphs; and one, a tiny Taj.

  Here lay sundry relatives, including Uncle Henry,

  Who’d been for many years a missionary.

  ‘Sacred to the Memory

  Of Henry C. Wagstaff’,

  Who translated the Gospels into Pashtu,

  And was murdered by his own Chowkidar.