The Lamp Is Lit Read online

  Fortunately the bear went past the billiard room, dashing instead into the old ballroom which was sometimes used for conferences and dinner parties. The annual State Bank party was in progress, with the Commissioner as Chief Guest. He was deep in conversation with Hugh and Colleen Gantzer, the travel writers, who had just returned from Alaska—or was it Madagascar? No respecter of persons, the bear charged straight through the gathering of dignitaries, upsetting a drinks cart, two waiters and the Commissioner’s tipsy wife. Then, entangled in a tablecloth (‘Don’t forget to bill them for it,’ cried Nandu), the uninvited guest dashed off into the night, heading in the direction of Convent Hill. But that’s a nun’s story.

  A Handful of Nuts

  On a wet and windy night, I was sitting at the Savoy Bar, warming my feet with the memory of old fires (firewood being scarce and expensive), when in walked the Man-from-Sail, shaking snowflakes and dandruff from his coat.

  He was followed, minutes later, by Heaven-Born the actor and Heaven-Sent the publisher, both well-preserved men in their late fifties. Great buddies, both of them, even though they occasionally came to blows. Their wives had better things to do than prop up the Savoy Bar. Heaven-Sent usually had one or two ex-Cabinet Ministers in tow (he owned a newspaper at the time) but on this occasion he was mercifully free of his entourage. Heaven-Born had left his purple robe at home (you can see it in the famous picture taken by the Man-from-Sail), which meant that he was wearing the off-white summer suit that he had worn to such effect in his last big hit.

  Heaven-Born had this wonderful idea for a period movie set in the Savoy, which of course was the ideal place for a Far Pavilion-typeepic. Heaven-Born was to act and direct, while the Man-from-Sail, who is something of an all-rounder, was to help with the script, the casting, the props, the catering, the still photography and the make-up. Nandu and I were offered bit parts as decadent nawabs. Heaven-Sent was to provide the financial backing. Or at least that was the idea.

  Nandu wasn’t too happy about the whole thing, especially as the climax of the film (as envisaged in the script) showed the hotel going up in flames. The old hotel with its rhododendron beams, pinewood panelling, walnut wood doors and deodar floorboards, was really quite vulnerable, and it wouldn’t have taken much to turn a ‘studio’ fire into the real thing.

  ‘You’re insured, aren’t you?’ said Heaven-Born, determined to override Nandu’s protests. ‘Or we could use a model,’ he added.

  ‘Your house should do,’ said Nandu, ‘it’s small enough for a model.’

  I steered the conversation away from arson and incendiaries to the traditional Savoy Queen dinner-and-dance held every summer. Next year’s winner was to receive a free trip to Uzbekistan, one way only. Nandu asked Heaven-Born if he would like to officiate as a judge for the beauty contests and he graciously consented.

  Heaven-Sent felt that there should be several judges, and more names were proposed—Tom Alter, Prem Chopra, Hugh and Colleen Gantzer, Prince This and Princess That, Khushwant Singh and Sunderlal Bahuguna. Heaven-Born looked a little put out and said he thought he could manage without so much help. Heaven-Sent then proposed the name of one of his ex-Cabinet Ministers. I suggested the local coffin-maker, a good judge of shape and size, but was shouted down.

  The discussion was at this interesting stage when in walked three old Doon School boys, vintage early 1950s, all known to Nandu. They went to a table not far from where I was perched, and the conversation went something like this:

  ‘Remember old Suri?’

  ‘Hyderabad House, wasn’t he?’

  ‘No. Tata.’

  ‘I must be confusing him with Hari.’

  ‘Hari was in Kashmir House. We were in the same dorm.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you were in Jaipur House with Gulab.’

  ‘No, you’re confusing me with Nimbu. Gulab was in Hyderabad. Weren’t you in Kashmir?’

  ‘No, Jaipur.’

  Nandu strolled over to take part in this stimulating conversation. Everyone remembers Nandu. He was in Tata, of course. Or was it Jaipur? Anyway, they chatted amiably about old Housemasters—Holdsworth and Hughes, Hensman and Gurdial—and someone recalled old —— who had a beautiful daughter, the only girl in the school!

  Of course it was drinks on the house for the old boys, and as a result I went one drink short as Nandu was running out of whisky and gin and wasn’t about to serve his V.S.O.P. cognac. Heaven-Born had been eyeing the cognac bottle for some time. It was his favourite, indeed his only drink, except when times were bad. But the glint in his eye had been detected by the Man-from-Sail, who whisked the bottle away in the interests of justice and fair play.

  Heaven-Sent had been a silent but appreciative spectator and now, always a man who struck while the iron was hot (even if his hand got singed in the process), announced his intention of publishing a book on the public schools of India.

  ‘A sure-fire bestseller,’ I said. ‘Take just fifty schools, and you’ll have tens of thousands of old boys and girls queuing up for copies!’

  The old boys in our midst met this proposal with a frosty silence. Were there really other public schools in the land, they wondered. Well, possibly the Mayo. Jack Gibson had gone there after leaving the Doon, hadn’t he? But they weren’t aware of any others.

  Nandu looked across at me and asked: ‘And where did you do your schooling, Ruskin?’

  ‘Greyfriars,’ I said without any hesitation.

  They took it quietly. There was a familiar ring about Greyfriars. A place of strong traditions, no doubt. Tucked away in the heart of old England, it had of course been the spiritual and physical home of the immortal Billy Bunter, Fat Boy of the Remove, but I did not tell them that. Why spoil the good impression I had made!

  By the Fireside

  Last winter, I was sitting with Nandu and the Man-from-Sail, sipping cherry brandy in front of a crackling wood fire at Nandu’s private sitting room at the Savoy. It was an idyllic scene, straight out of Dickens. You could say that I was Pickwick, the Man-from-Sail was Sam Weller, and Nandu was Mr Micawber; each of us had something in common with these characters.

  Nandu hadn’t used the cottage fireplace for some years, but since it was Christmas and bitterly cold outside, he thought it would be a good time for the supreme indulgence—a blazing wood fire in an old-fashioned fireplace.

  And blaze it did! I hadn’t enjoyed a really roaring fire in years. And the brandy was good too. So good that it took us some time to realize that those lovely crackling sounds were emanating from the roof as well as from the fireplace. The Man-from-Sail, always good for an emergency, dashed outside and came back shouting, ‘The chimney’s on fire!’

  And so it was. We ran outside to find flames leaping into the night sky. The chimney, unused and uncleaned for fifty years, was ablaze and sparks were flying in all directions. It was all hands on deck, or rather on the roof, and it was a sight to watch dear Nandu cavorting around with a bucket of water. I went inside to make sure the brandy hadn’t caught fire, poured myself a stiff one, and returned to join the firefighters, consisting of the late-night kitchen staff, most of whom had been celebrating Christmas in their own way.

  The fire was brought under control before it could do any major damage, but Nandu no longer uses his fireplace. Instead, we find him huddled before an ineffectual electric heater, quite forgetting that it was electrical short-circuits that caused most of the major fires in Mussoorie and Simla over the past few years.

  * * *

  Building a fire is an art and only a few people are really good at it. For if the wood is damp, or the chimney dirty, or the sticks carelessly placed, you could have a room full of smoke and a very frustrating evening.

  Above all, make sure your chimney is in good condition. Keep it clean (Nandu should have done that) and you will have nothing to fear.

  Our love of a wood fire is partly inherited. Our ancestors, near or remote, had nothing but wood to warm them; and the sight and scent of a wood fire may
well stir in us long-buried racial memories.

  No other fire lends such a variety of colour to its flames, casts such dancing shadows, breathes such fragrant scents or dies into so clean an ash as a log fire. It leads the imagination back in time. A wood fire entices into the mountains and great forests, beautiful in all seasons.

  And it is romantic, too. I can remember sitting by the fire with a lovely girl beside me—oh, long years ago—holding her hands, looking into her eyes, and murmuring sweet words of love . . . Until a cold draught up my trousers told me that the fire had gone out. And by the time I had rekindled it, there was a knock at the door. Christmas revellers poured in and romance had to wait for another fire-lit evening.

  V

  LEAVES FROM A JOURNAL

  Leaves from a Journal

  9th May, 1997

  New moon in a deep purple sky.

  10th May

  Sal trees near Rajpur. A lovely sight—varying shades of green; new leaf freshened by recent rain.

  Jacaranda time.

  Returning to Mussoorie around midnight, saw a leopard leap over the parapet wall, then her three cubs scurrying into the bushes. I thought I’d seen my last leopard some years ago, but in the hills this is obviously an animal that knows how to survive.

  11th May

  Small boy in a bookshop thrust an Enid Blyton book at me, and asked me to sign it. So I signed ‘Enid Blyton’. He seemed satisfied. I wouldn’t mind changing sex if I could have her sales.

  Dinner at Brahm Dev’s. Amiable, elderly Colonel took my empty glass, poured me a whisky and soda, and then absent-mindedly drank it himself.

  It was that kind of day. First I’m mistaken for Enid Blyton, and then someone pinches my badly-needed drink.

  16th May

  The sun warm on our backs. The sort of summer’s day that H.E. Bates described so well—summer being brief in both England and the western Himalaya.

  Siddharth (soon to be four) and I (soon to be sixty-four), scrambled up the hillside collecting daisies. I was so careful not to fall that I grasped a nettle and got badly stung. This is called growing old disgracefully.

  19th May

  Began my birthday with a hangover, which grew worse as the day progressed, due partly to some rather noisy people dropping in just to ‘meet the author’.

  A PR man for some industrial group, whose reading (he boasted) was limited to India Today, proceeded to drop names—everyone from Khushwant Singh to Prime Minister Gujral, whom he referred to as ‘Inder’. I knew what to expect, because Prem had seen them approach, and from my open window I’d heard the wife exclaim, ‘He can’t be living in this tumbledown building!’ Nevertheless, they proceeded to drink my tea and consume my patties (I couldn’t get at one) and then of course he had to ask the usual question, ‘Why don’t you use a computer?’ And to forestall a pointless argument I said, ‘Can’t afford one,’ which is quite true.

  Just then my friend Bill walked in and I let him take some of the flak. The visitors hadn’t read anything of mine, and hadn’t heard of Bill, so I wasn’t quite sure what they were doing in my flat—perhaps they’d mistaken it for a wayside café, in which case I should have presented them with a bill.

  Bill told them about ‘Dick’, an eccentric Englishman (Scotsman?) who lived in a shack below the dhobi-ghat and made a living by begging in the bazaar. Apparently he had a brilliant mind (so Bill says) and was one of the early computer scientists before he went off his rocker. Can’t say I’m surprised.

  After they left, the Sharma family from Dehra arrived with rasgullas and improved my mood.

  23rd May

  No doubt it was a great moment when Stanley met Livingstone, but could it have been as momentous as when Laurel first met Hardy? I am sure the latter have given humankind more pleasure than the explorer-missionary and the journalist. We still love Stan and Olly forty years after they passed on. How beautifully they worked together, and what joy they gave to cinema audiences all over the world. Chaplin was clever (too clever sometimes?), Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon could be quite brilliant, and some of the early British comedians (Will Hay, Sidney Howard) deserved to be better known; but Stan and Olly were lovable, and that’s what made them unique.

  And that reminds me—I must get rid of that sofa in the sitting room, the one that tilts slightly to one side and overbalances when someone of a heavy build sits in it. Last month, Mrs Joy, the wife of an under secretary, went over sideways and ended up on the floor—the first time in her life anything like that had happened to her, she said. I made the mistake of saying, ‘Well, there’s a first time for everything,’ and she left in a bit of a huff.

  I try to warn people about the sofa, saying, ‘Careful—that chair’s a bit wobbly,’ but when unexpected visitors come crashing in, I get a little confused and forgetful.

  25th May

  Elderly gentleman from Saharanpur, ‘in search of conversation’, got me off my bed (where I had been recovering from a two-day viral fever), and told me that he had always followed my career with interest and that his favourite story was my ‘The Lamp Is Lit Again’.

  I have never written a story with that title, but I forbore from saying so, not wishing to prolong the conversation. It is, in fact, a nice title, and I shall certainly use it some day!

  He then told me that he was aware that my father had been in the ICS, something of which I was unaware. Poor Dad! He had been teacher, tea planter, English tutor and Air Force Officer (in that order), but he had never aspired to the Civil Service. I think what he wanted most was to have the world’s best stamp collection, and I recall that he had a very fine collection of stamps. He had sold some before he died, and I don’t know what happened to the rest.

  My visitor having gone (with promises to return), I watered my plants—drooping after a spell of hot dry weather—and returned to my bed. Then Siddharth returned from school, jumped on my stomach, and demanded a story. I tried to oblige, but he complained that the story was too short. My publishers usually say the same thing.

  29th May

  The warm winds of summer are pleasant and relaxing but they also bring fevers and illness. An intermittent fever laid me low again, and I spent a few restless nights. Found some relief from sleeplessness by changing ends, placing my pillow at the foot of the bed and lying south to north instead of the usual north to south. Not only did I sleep better this way, I also had some vivid dreams. Insomniacs might try this method when all else fails.

  2nd June

  Dear HH (‘Her Highness’ of yore) is great fun over a few drinks, especially when she gets going on all the disasters that have overtaken her friends and acquaintances: P was knocked down by a truck; Y was sucked into the fuselage of an aeroplane; T has succumbed to an overdose of drugs and alcohol . . . She gives an excellent description of old S, a retired mountaineer, suffering from Alzheimer’s and searching for Annapurna base camp on the Delhi Ridge. All with great sympathy and yet a certain relish. Anyone who is someone in Delhi now goes to a psychiatrist, she tells me, including one of her golfing friends, Mrs B, who is convinced that in her former life she was a golf ball.

  As far as I can recall, Delhi did not have a single psychiatrist thirty years ago. No one was rich enough to afford such a luxury. Or perhaps no one was nutty enough. Now there are hundreds of psychiatrists, and thousands of affluent patients who imagine they were once Mughal emperors, famous courtesans, Ming vases, or golf balls.

  6th June

  Ennui . . . Tried hard, but couldn’t shake it off. Then the smell of frying onions comes from the kitchen, where Beena is preparing lunch. This perks me up. There’s nothing like frying onions to bring me to life again.

  Often, the anticipation of a good meal is better than the meal itself.

  8th June

  A TV team arrived last evening while I was out, and left a message that they’d come over at ten this morning to interview me. Beena and Dolly tidied up the rooms, and at ten I was ready, shaved, and wearing a clean shirt
. At 11 a.m. I received a phone call, saying could they come at 1 p.m., after lunch. I agreed; had my lunch, waited. At 3 p.m. a van rolled up with eight or nine camera crew and technicians, but no producer or interviewer. The lady hasn’t arrived as yet,’ they told me, meaning the producer. I blew my top and sent them all packing.

  No sooner had they gone than I received a phone call from the producer to say she had just arrived. I told her about the fracas and she apologized. We agreed to do the interview tomorrow, at 10 a.m.

  This is the last time I give a TV interview. Better to die in obscurity than become a raving lunatic in a celebrity-mad world.

  9th June

  The interview went off all right, except that after three hours of talking (to Sunit Tandon, a gentle soul) I felt quite exhausted. Siddharth came home from school and did his best to wreck their equipment. They left me with a cheque—quite a decent sum—the first time I’ve been paid for giving an interview. I almost said, ‘Come again!’ But let it be the last.

  14th June

  My forty-five-year-old Olympia typewriter is finally showing signs of ageing. Mrs Goel, who is Swiss, kindly lent me her old Travel Writer, a sturdy machine, but forgot to tell me it was a German-language typewriter. The letters y and z were interchanged (probably because z is used more frequently in German) with the result that I went quite mad, turning out sentences like this one:

  ‘A zoung man sipped his brandz on the vozage to Yanyibar.’

  Couldn’t get the hang of it, so gave up. I suppose I ought to get a computer like everzone who is anzone (sorry, everyone who is anyone), but instead I bought myself two nice fountain pens with a resolve to improve my handwriting.

  15th June

  All of middle-class northern India appears to be trying to get into Mussoorie at once, to play video game, consume mountains of ice cream, and drop plastic bags into the Kempty waterfall. There are about 200 hotels and all of them filled to capacity. Those who live and work here have to put up with an influx of friends and relatives, who conveniently forget them when winter comes round. The traffic jams are horrendous. It’s quicker to walk. But most people have forgotten how to walk. At this rate our legs will atrophy, and a few generations from now the human race will have to manage without legs or, at the very best, extremely short ones.