The Lamp Is Lit Page 2

  Then there was The Leader, a newspaper published from Allahabad. It did not want fiction or literary pieces, but it was willing to publish articles on the entertainment industry. So I sent them a regular ‘Letter from Hollywood’. This was easy I was still subscribing to my favourite film magazine, Picturegoer, published from London (and now, alas, no more) and all I had to do was cull some of the information about exciting new stars and their films, and string this together into a fresh and readable piece. It was used fortnightly and brought me thirty rupees. This was Grub Street with a vengeance, but I did not remain a Hollywood correspondent for long. My London publisher, Andre Deutsch, informed me that he had sold the German rights in my first novel, The Room on the Roof. It turned out to be a tidy sum, and enabled me to write a short novel and a few spontaneous yet carefully crafted stories. Some of them are still around today.

  All You Need Is Paper

  As I write, a bright yellow butterfly flits in through the open window and settles on my writing pad. I pause for a moment, wait for the butterfly to make its way across the page and on to a slim copy of Tagore’s Crescent Moon, which I was reading again last night. I have entered a period of my life when I enjoy returning to old favourites, old classics. Just as there are exciting new authors being brought to our attention every day, so there are exciting old authors who have yet to be discovered. Life is too short to take in all of them. It’s the beauty of language that draws me back, time and again, to the heart-stopping prose of Conrad in ‘Heart of Darkness’ and ‘Youth’; the lyrical intensity of Emily Brönte in Wuthering Heights; the wonderful abandon of Sterne; the precision of Wilde; the broad humour of Dickens and Wells; the rolling, orchestrated prose of T.E. Lawrence in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

  But to return to the butterfly. It takes me back to the little flat in Dehra Dun, where the adventure of being a writer really got under way.

  I had grown used to living on my own in small rooms furnished with other people’s spare beds, tables and chairs. I had grown used to the print of Constable’s ‘Blue Boy’ on the wall, even though I had never cared for the look of that boy. But those London bedsitters had been different. Whether in Hampstead, Belsize Park, Swiss Cottage or Tooting, they had been uniformly lonely. One seldom encountered any other lodgers, except when they came to complain that my radio was too loud; and the landlady was seen only when the rent fell due. If you wanted company, you went out into the night. If you wanted a meal, you walked down the street to the nearest restaurant or snack bar. If you wanted to kill time, you sat in a cinema. If you wanted a bath, you went round to the nearest public bathing rooms where, for 2s.6d., you were given a small cake of soap, a clean towel, and a tub of piping hot water. The tub took me back to my childhood days in Jamnagar, where I would be soaped and scrubbed by a fond ayah; but there was no fond ayah in London. And rooms with attached baths were rare—and expensive. . .

  In contrast, my room over Rajpur Road was the very opposite of lonely. There was the front balcony, from which I could watch the activity along the main road and the shops immediately below me. I could also look into the heart of a large peepal tree, which provided shelter to various birds, squirrels and other small creatures. There were flats on either side of mine, served by a common stairway—and blocked, at night, by a sleeping cow, over whom one had to climb, for it would move for no one. And there were quarters at the back, occupied by servants’ families or low-income tenants.

  Where should I begin?

  I suppose my most colourful neighbour was Mrs Singh, an attractive woman in her thirties, who smoked a hookah. She came from a village near Mainpuri. Her husband was a sub-inspector in the police. They had one son, Anil, a lollipop-sucking brat without any charm. Mrs Singh often regaled me with tales of the supernatural from her village, and I did not hesitate to work some of them into my own stories.

  At twilight, sitting on her string cot and puffing at the hookah, she would launch into an account of the various types of ghosts that one might encounter: churels, the ghosts of immoral women, who appeared naked with their feet facing backwards; ghosts with long front teeth who sucked human blood; and ghosts who took the form of snakes and animals. I was keen to meet a churel, as I thought she would be rather attractive; but all the girls in Dehra had their feet facing forwards.

  One species that I found particularly interesting was the munjia (supposedly the disembodied spirit of a brahmin youth who had died before his marriage) who takes up his abode in the branches of a lonely peepal tree. When the munjia is annoyed, he rushes out of the tree and upsets tongas, bullock-carts and cycles. Mrs Singh said she’d even been in a bus that had been overturned by a munjia. She warned me that anyone passing beneath a peepal tree at night must be careful not to yawn without covering his mouth or snapping his fingers in front of it. If he forgets to take this precaution, the munjia dashes down his throat and presumably ruins his digestion.

  Summer nights I slept on the balcony, in full view of our own peepal tree; but apparently it was not lonely enough for a munjia, and I suffered from no ill effects. Anil, who would sometimes insist on sleeping beside me, slept with his mouth open and frequently swallowed moths, termites and other winged creatures, and as his digestion was immune to this fare, it must also have been immune to the attentions of a munjia.

  Mrs Singh once told me of the night she had seen the ghost of her husband’s first wife. The ghost had lifted Anil, then a few months old, out of his cradle, rocked the baby in her arms for a little while, and announced that she was glad the child was a boy—a sentiment not shared by those who knew the eleven- year-old.

  Mrs Singh taught me the following mantra, which I was to recite whenever I felt threatened by ghosts or malignant spirits:

  Bhut, pret, pisach, dana,

  Chhoo mantar, sab nikal jana,

  Mano, mano, Shiv ka kahna —

  which, roughly translated, goes:

  Ghosts and spirits assembled here,

  Great Shiv is coming—flee in fear!

  If I was working at my desk, and saw Anil approaching, I would recite the mantra under my breath. It may have worked on bhuts and prets, but it had no effect on Anil.

  Where, then, were the noble young friends I had written about in my first, semi-autobiographical novel? Well, Somi’s family had moved to Calcutta, and Kishen’s to Bombay. Dehra, then, was not a place for young men in search of a career. As soon as they finished school or college, they usually took wing. The town was a sleepy hollow, a great place in which to be educated, but a poor place to earn a living.

  But there were others to take their place — teenagers struggling to do their Matric or Intermediate, or young men at college, aspiring for their Arts or Science degrees. College was a bit of a dead end. But those who had their schooling in Dehra, and then moved on, usually did well for themselves.

  Take just two from Dilaram Bazaar. Gurbachan was an average student, but after doing his Intermediate he went to stay with an uncle in Hong Kong. Ten years later, he was a superintendent in the Income Tax Department. And then there was Narinder, always having to take tuitions to scrape through his exams. But he spoke English quite well, and he had a flair for business. Today, he owns the largest wholesale wine business in the UK. And as he doesn’t drink himself, it’s profit all the way.

  These boys, and others like them, came from middle-class families. It was impossible, then, to foresee what life held in store for them. And it wasn’t always happy endings. Sudheer, a charming young scamp, went on to become the assistant manager of a tea estate in Jalpaiguri, and was killed by the tea- garden labourers. Kishen, as a boy, was not the stuff that heroes are made of; but at forty he died while trying to save a child from drowning.

  My own future was a little easier to predict. In a sense, I had already arrived. At twenty I was a published author, although not many people had heard of me! And although I wasn’t making much money then, and probably never would, it was the general consensus among my friends that I was an impracti
cal sort of fellow and that I would be wise to stick to the only thing that I could do fairly well—putting pen to paper.

  I couldn’t drive a car. I fell off bicycles. I couldn’t repair an electrical fault. My efforts to buy vegetables in the mandi were the cause of great merriment. And my attempts at making a curry sent everyone into paroxysms of laughter. It’s true that I added a tablespoon of sugar to the aalu-gobi that I attempted to cook. I thought it improved the flavour. Gujaratis would have approved. But it had no takers in Dehra apart from myself.

  On the plus side, I could type, draft job applications for all and sundry, help lovesick students write passionate letters to girls, make my own bed (something I’d learnt at boarding school), walk great distances, and pay for the chaat and tikkias we consumed near the clock tower. I held the tikkia-eating record, having on one occasion put away no less than thirty of these delicious potato patties. Naturally, acute indigestion followed, and it was months before I could face another tikkia.

  * * *

  Here I must record my first and last foray into the world of commerce.

  On Bibiji’s insistence that I could make more money from selling vegetables than from selling stories, I thought—why not do just that, sell vegetables? Bibiji said I could sell the vegetables outside her shop, provided I gave her a ten per cent commission. As this was the same commission that a literary agent took, it seemed fair enough.

  It only remained for me to get up at five in the morning and march off to the sabzi mandi, there to spend a hard-earned two hundred rupees in stocking up with cauliflowers, carrots and other cold-weather vegetables.

  With some help from Mrs Singh’s son, Anil, these were neatly displayed outside Bibiji’s shop, and on that first day we even had a couple of customers. But housewives do not like breaking the habits of a lifetime, and they continued shopping for their vegetables in the mandi and elsewhere. By the third day my vegetables were looking very sorry for themselves. Anil kept splashing water over them, but they could not be revived. That evening they were all given away to my friends from the Dilaram Bazaar, and my brief venture into the grocery business was at an end.

  Was it, I wonder, a throwback to my grandfather’s early days as an apprentice to a London grocer? He found soldiering more to his liking. And as a foot soldier, he tramped all over India. I was another kind of soldier, a freelance with a fountain pen, a champion of Grub Street, a seeker after romance in the most unlikely places. The rewards would be meagre, but the freedoms great.

  Summertime in Old New Delhi

  I left Dehra for Delhi in 1959, and lived in the capital for a few years—freelancing, and for a time working with an international relief agency. I could not fall in love with Delhi, my heart was always in the hills and small towns of north India.

  But there were things I came to like about Delhi, even in summer. The smell of a hot Indian summer is one smell that can never be forgotten. It is not just the thirsty earth with its distinctive odour, but all other ingredients of a hot weather in the plains that go to make this season almost intolerable on the one hand and sweetly memorable on the other. For who can forget that summer brings the jasmine, whose sweet scent drifts past us on the evening breeze along with the stronger odours and scents of mango blossom, raat-ki-rani and cowdung smoke.

  Although I have spent most of my life in the hills, I grew up in some fairly hot places—humid Kathiawar ports, dusty old New Delhi, and the steamy Terai—and I am no stranger to prickly heat, mosquito bites, intermittent fever and dysentery and other hot-weather afflictions. Today’s residents of the capital complain of pollution and overcrowding, and I wouldn’t exchange my mountain perch for the pleasure of being fried crisp, but at least half of them have air-conditioning, coolers, refrigerators and other means to keep the heat at bay. In 1940s’ Delhi you were lucky to have a small table-fan, and that was effective only if the bhisti, or water-carrier, came around with his goat-skin bag, splashing water on to the khas-khas matting draped from your door or window; otherwise the fan simply blew hot air at you. I was in Delhi in the early ’40s, living with my father, and I shall never forget the fragrant, refreshing smell of the wet khas-reed which cooled the rooms and verandas of New Delhi bungalows (the only high-rise building was the Qutab Minar).

  My father and I lived in a small RAF hutment on the fringe of the scrub jungle near Humayun’s tomb. This was then furthest Delhi, where one could expect to find peacocks in the garden and a snake in the bathroom. The bhisti and the khas-khas helped us to survive that summer. As did the box-like wind-up gramophone on which I played endless records which had to be stored flat in order to prevent them from warping and assuming weird shapes in the heat. My father liked opera, and on his day off he would play his Caruso records. It was strange to lie beside him on a perspiration-soaked bed, listening to Caruso sing Che Gelida Manina:

  Your tiny hand is frozen,

  Let me warm it into life!

  I was nine, a child of warm climates, and I had no idea what it was like to have one’s hand frozen. Dipping my hands in ice-cream was the nearest I’d come to it.

  In 1959 I was living on the outskirts of a greater, further New Delhi. The influx of refugees from the Punjab after Partition had led to many new colonies springing up on the outskirts of the capital, and at the time the furthest of these was Rajouri Garden. Needless to say, there were no gardens. The treeless colony was buffeted by hot, dusty winds from Haryana and Rajasthan. The houses were built on one side of the Najafgarh Road. On the other side, as yet uncolonized, were extensive fields of wheat and other crops still belonging to the original inhabitants. In an attempt to escape the city life that constantly oppressed me, I would walk across the main road and into the fields, finding old wells, irrigation channels, camels and buffaloes, and sighting birds and small creatures that no longer dwelt in the city. In an odd way, it was my reaction to city life that led to my taking a greater interest in the natural world. Up to that time, I had taken it all for granted.

  The notebook I kept at the time is before me now, and my first entry describes the bluejays or rollers that were so much a feature of those remaining open spaces. At rest, the bird is fairly nondescript, but when it takes flight it reveals the glorious bright blue wings and the tail, banded with a lighter blue. It sits motionless. . . But the large dark eyes are constantly watching the ground in every direction. A grasshopper or cricket has only to make a brief appearance, and the bluejay will launch itself straight at its prey. In the spring and early summer the ‘roller’ lives up to its other name. It indulges in love flights in which it rises and falls in the air with harsh grating screams—a real rock-’n’-roller!

  Some way down the Najafgarh Road was a large village pond and beside it a magnificent banyan tree. We have no place for banyan trees today, they need so much space in which to spread their limbs and live comfortably. Cut away its aerial roots and the great tree topples over—usually to make way for a spacious apartment building. That was the first banyan tree I got to know really well. It had about a hundred pillars supporting the boughs, and above them there was this great leafy crown like a pillared hall. It has been said that whole armies could shelter in the shade of an old banyan. And probably at one time they did. I saw another sort of army visit the banyan by the village pond when it was in fruit. Parakeets, mynas, rosy pastors, crested bulbuls without crests, barbets and many other birds crowded the tree in order to feast noisily on big, scarlet figs. Season’s eatings!

  Even further down the Najafgarh Road was a large jheel, famous for its fishing. I wonder if any part of the jheel still exists, or if it got filled in and became a part of greater Delhi. One could rest in the shade of a small babul or keekar tree and watch the kingfisher skim over the water, making just a slight splash as it dived and came up with small glistening fish. Our common Indian kingfisher is a beautiful little bird with a brilliant blue back, a white throat and orange underparts. I would spot one perched on an overhanging bush or rock, and wait to see it plunge l
ike an arrow into the water and return to its perch to devour the catch. It came over the water in a flash of gleaming blue, shrilling its loud ‘tit-tit-tit’.

  The kingfisher is the subject of a number of legends, and the one I remember best, recounted by Romain Rolland, tells us that it was originally a plain grey bird that acquired its resplendent colours by flying straight towards the sun when Noah let it out of the Ark. Its upper plumage took the colour of the sky above, while the lower was scorched a deep russet by the rays of the setting sun.

  Summer and winter, I scorned the dust and the traffic, and walked all over Delhi—from Rajouri Garden to Connaught Place, which must have been five or six miles, and on other occasions, from Daryaganj to Chandni Chowk, and from Ajmeri Gate to India Gate! That is the best way to get to know a city. I had walked all over London. Now I did the same thing in Delhi, investigating old tombs and monuments, historic streets and buildings, or simply sitting on the grass near India Gate and eating jamuns. I liked the sour tang of the jamun fruit which was best eaten with a little salt. And I liked the deep purple colour of the fruit. Jamuns were one of the nicer things about Delhi.

  Walking the Streets of Delhi

  I made my home in Mussoorie in 1963, but of course I was to revisit Delhi may times, even spending a couple of winters there.