Rusty and the Leopard Read online

  ‘All right, all right, Rusty,’ interrupted Kishen, who was sprawling on the floor, ‘you can be all those things if you like. But what I say is, the most important thing of a club is its name. Without a good name, what’s the use of a club?’

  ‘The Fools’ Club,’ suggested Meena. Maybe she wanted to let Kapoor know what she thought of him.

  ‘Inappropriate,’ said Kapoor, ‘inappropriate . . .’ Obviously Meena’s hint had gone unnoticed by him.

  ‘Everyone shut up,’ ordered Kishen, prodding at his nose, ‘I’m trying to think.’

  So all of us shut up and tried to think.

  Thinking on this topic seemed to be a very complicated process, and it soon became obvious that none of us were thinking of the club; for I was staring at Meena, and Meena looked as if she was wondering if Kishen knew how to think, and Kishen was probably thinking about the benefits of chewing gum as he now chewed with greater ferocity, and Kapoor was smelling the whisky bottles behind the screen so he was obviously thinking of them.

  At last Kapoor observed: ‘My wife is a devil, a beautiful, beautiful devil!’

  This seemed an interesting line of conversation though what connection it had with the club I couldn’t really fathom. Just when I was about to follow it up with a compliment of my own, Kishen burst out brilliantly: ‘I know! The Devil’s Club? How’s that?’

  ‘Ah, ha!’ exclaimed Kapoor. ‘The Devil’s Club, we’ve got it! I’m a genius.’

  Immediately we got down to the business of planning the club’s activities. Kishen proposed carrom and Meena seconded it, and I felt dismayed. Kapoor proposed literary and political discussions and just to spite the others I seconded the proposal. Then we elected officers of the club. Meena was given the title of Our Lady and Patroness, Kapoor was elected President, Kishen the Chief Whip and I was to be its Secretary. Somi, Ranbir and Suri, though absent, were accepted as Honorary Members.

  ‘Carrom and discussions are not enough,’ complained Kishen, ‘we must have adventures.’

  ‘What kind?’ I asked.

  ‘Climbing mountains or something.’

  ‘A picnic,’ proposed Meena.

  ‘A picnic!’ seconded Kishen, ‘and Somi and the others can come too.’

  ‘Let’s drink to it,’ said Kapoor, rising from his chair in a hurry, ‘let’s celebrate.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Kishen, foiling his father’s plan of action, ‘we’ll go to the chaat shop!’

  Meena obviously considered the chaat shop the lesser of the two evils, so she agreed to Kishen’s idea and Kapoor was bundled into the old car.

  ‘To the chaat shop!’ he cried, falling across the steering wheel. ‘We will bring it home!’ Kishen, Meena and I tumbled into the car and we were off.

  The chaat shop was so tightly crowded that people were breathing each other’s breath.

  The chaat-wallah was very pleased with me for bringing in so many customers—a whole family—and beamed on our party, rubbing his hands and greasing the frying pan with enthusiasm.

  ‘Everything!’ ordered Kapoor. ‘We will have something of everything.’

  So the chaat-wallah patted his cakes into shape and flipped them into the sizzling grease; and fashioned his gol guppas over the fire, filling them with the juice of the devil.

  Meena sat curled up on a chair, facing me. I stared at her: she looked quaint, sitting in this unfamiliar posture. Her eyes encountered my stare, mocking it. In hot confusion, I shifted my gaze upward, up the wall, on to the ceiling, until my eyes could go no further.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ asked Kishen.

  I looked down immediately but pretended not to have heard. The chaat-wallah handed out four big banana leaves.

  But Kapoor wouldn’t eat. Instead, he cried: ‘Take the chaat shop to the house. Put it in the car, we must have it! We must have it, we must have it!’

  The chaat-wallah, who was used to displays of drunkenness in one form or another, humoured Kapoor. ‘It is all yours, lallaji, but take me with you too, or who will run the shop?’

  ‘We will!’ shouted Kishen, infected by his father’s enthusiasm. ‘Buy it, Daddy. Mummy can make the tikkees and I’ll sell them and Rusty can do the accounts!’

  Kapoor threw his banana leaf on the floor and wrapped his arms round Kishen. ‘Yes, we will run it! Take it to the house!’ And, making a lunge at a bowl of chaat, he fell to his knees.

  I helped Kapoor get up, then looked to Meena for guidance. She said nothing, but gave me a nod, and I felt as if I understood that nod.

  I said, ‘It’s a wonderful idea Mr Kapoor, just put me in charge of everything. You and Mrs Kapoor go home and get a spare room ready for the supplies, meanwhile Kishen and I will make all the arrangements with the chaat-wallah.’

  Kapoor clung to me, the spittle dribbling down his chin. ‘Good boy, good boy . . . we will make lots of money together, you and I . . .’ He then turned to his wife and waved his arm grandiloquently: ‘We will be rich again, Meena, what do you say?’

  Meena, as usual, said nothing; but took Kapoor by the arm and bundled him out of the shop and into the car.

  ‘Be quick with the chaat shop!’ cried Kapoor.

  ‘I will have it in the house in five minutes,’ I called. ‘Get everything ready!’

  Kishen was stuffing himself with chaat; his father’s behaviour did not appear to have affected him, he was unconscious of its ridiculous aspect and felt no shame; he was unconscious too of the considerate manner of the chaat-wallah, who felt sorry for the neglected child. What the chaat-wallah did not know was that Kishen enjoyed being neglected.

  ‘Come Kishen, let’s go . . .’ I said.

  ‘What’s the hurry, Rusty? Sit down and eat, there’s plenty of dough tonight. At least give Mummy time to put the sleeping tablets in the whisky.’

  So I sat down next to him and we ate our fill, and listened to other people’s gossip; then Kishen suggested that we explore the bazaar.

  The oil lamps were lit, and the main road was bright and crowded; but we went down an alleyway, where the smells were more complicated and the noise intermittent; two women spoke to each other from their windows on either side of the road, a baby cried monotonously, a cheap gramophone blared. Our appetites appeased and our minds vacant, Kishen and I walked aimlessly through the maze of alleyways.

  ‘Why are you white like Suri?’ asked Kishen suddenly.

  ‘Why is Suri white?’

  ‘He is Kashmiri. Kashmiris are fair.’

  ‘Well, I am English . . .’

  ‘English?’ said Kishen disbelievingly. ‘You? But you do not look like a foreigner. I thought that you were an Anglo-Indian.’

  I hesitated as I did not feel there was any point in raking up a past that was painful and lonely. But Kishen was my friend now, so there seemed to be no reason to keep my past from him.

  ‘Well whether you believe it or not, I am hundred per cent British. At least, my parentage is British. My parents separated when I was just four and my mother remarried. I stayed mostly with my father (wherever his job took us) or with my paternal grandparents right here in Dehra sometimes. But my father passed away suddenly—malaria, and I was just eleven then. I stayed with my grandmother, then she, too, died. After that, my mother and stepfather took me to their house, but none of us were happy with that arrangement. I also have a half-brother who is much younger than me. Because it was difficult for my mother and stepfather to keep me with them, I was put under the care of my father’s cousin, Mr John Harrison—he became my legal guardian. He wasn’t very easy to get along with and when he found out that I had been mixing with the locals here, we had a terrible argument and I ran away from his house. That’s how I came to be in the situation you now find me in.

  ‘Now are you satisfied, or do you have more questions?’

  Kishen grinned. ‘Thanks for confiding in me, Rusty. I didn’t expect you to be so open with me. Anyway, no need to feel that you are on your own anymore. You have all of us
—Somi, Ranbir, Mummy, Daddy, and most importantly, you have me!’

  We had reached the railway station, which was the end of the bazaar; the gates were closed, but we peered through the railings at the goods wagons. A pleasure house did business near the station.

  ‘If you want to have fun,’ said Kishen slyly, ‘let’s climb that roof. From the skylight you can see everything.’

  ‘No fun in just watching,’ I replied.

  ‘Have you ever watched?’

  ‘Of course,’ I lied, turning homewards; I walked with a distracted air.

  ‘What are you thinking of?’ asked Kishen.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You must be in love.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who is it, eh?’

  ‘If I told you,’ said Rusty, ‘you’d be jealous.’

  ‘But I’m not in love with anybody. Come on, tell me, I’m your friend.’

  ‘Would you be angry if I said I loved your mother?’

  ‘Mummy!’ exclaimed Kishen. ‘But she’s old! She’s married. Hell, who would think of falling in love with Mummy? Don’t joke, mister.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  We walked on in silence and crossed the maidan, leaving the bazaar behind. It was dark on the maidan, we could hardly see each other’s faces; Kishen put his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘If you love her,’ he said, ‘I’m not jealous. But it sounds funny . . .’

  Of course it might have seemed funny to Kishen, but what was funnier still was that I had the nerve to tell Kishen that I loved Meena.

  III

  It was going to rain. I could see the rain moving across the foothills, and I could smell it on the breeze. But instead of turning homewards I pushed my way through the leaves and brambles that grew across the forest path. I had heard the sound of running water at the bottom of the hill, and I was determined to find this hidden stream.

  I had to slide down a rock face into a small ravine and there I found the stream running over a bed of shingles. I removed my shoes and started walking upstream. A large glossy black bird with a carved red beak hooted at me as I passed; and a paradise flycatcher—this one I couldn’t fail to recognize, with its long fan-tail beating the air—swooped across the stream. Water trickled down from the hillside, from amongst ferns and grasses and wild flowers; and the hills, rising steeply on either side, kept the ravine in shadow. The rocks were smooth, almost soft, and some of them were grey and some yellow. A small waterfall came down the rocks and formed a deep round pool of apple-green water.

  When I saw the pool, I turned and ran home. I wanted to tell Somi and Kishen about it. It began to rain, but I didn’t stop to take shelter, I ran all the way home—through the sal forest, across the dry riverbed through the outskirts of the town.

  Though Kishen (as Chief Whip of the Devil’s Club) usually chose the adventures we were to have, the pool was my own discovery, and I was proud of it. ‘We’ll call it Rusty’s Pool,’ he said when I told Somi and him about it. ‘And remember, it’s a secret pool. No one else must know of it.’

  The next day Somi, Kishen and I went to the pool—for our first splash in our very own pool. Somi had sent word to Ranbir’s house as he’d heard that Ranbir was back from Mussoorie for two weeks.

  Ranbir joined us at the pool a few minutes after we reached. ‘Hey Rusty, this pool is just like the one Somi and I had met at a few years ago!’ he said.

  Ranbir was the best swimmer I knew. He dived off rocks and went gliding about under the water like a long golden fish. Somi had strong legs and arms, and he threshed about with much vigour but little skill. I could dive off a rock too, but I usually landed on my stomach.

  There were slim silver fish in the stream. At first we tried catching them with a line, but they soon learnt the art of taking the bait without being caught on the hook. Next we tried a bedsheet (Somi had removed it from his mother’s laundry) which we stretched across one end of the stream; but the fish wouldn’t come anywhere near it. The next day eventually Ranbir procured a stick of gunpowder without telling us. And Kishen, Somi and I were startled out of an afternoon siesta by a flash across the water and a deafening explosion. Half the hillside tumbled into the pool, and Ranbir along with it. We got him out, along with a large supply of stunned fish which were too small for eating. Ranbir, however, didn’t want all his work to go to waste; so he roasted the fish over a fire and ate them himself.

  The effects of the explosion gave Somi an idea: which was to enlarge our pool by building a dam across one end. This he accomplished with our combined labour. But he had chosen a week when there had been heavy rains in the hills, and we had barely finished the dam when a torrent of water came rushing down the bed of the stream, bursting our earthworks and flooding the ravine. Our clothes (which we had removed while building the dam) were carried away by the current, and we had to wait until it was night before creeping into town through the darkest alleyways. Somi was spotted at a street corner, but he posed as a naked sadhu and began calling for alms, and we finally slipped in through the back door of Kapoor’s house to my room without being recognized. I had to lend Ranbir some of my clothes, and these, being on the small side, made him look odd and gangly. Other than fishing in vain for fish that were too clever for us, we had two more activities at the pool—wrestling and buffalo riding.

  We wrestled on a strip of sand that ran beside the stream. Ranbir had often attended wrestling akharas and was quite an expert wrestler. Somi and I usually combined against him, and it was only after five or ten minutes of furious unscientific struggle that we could manage to flatten Ranbir into the sand. Somi would sit on Ranbir’s head, and I would sit on his legs until he admitted defeat. There was no fun in taking him on individually, because he knew too many tricks for us. Kishen, in the meanwhile, would simply wade in the shallows of the pool—too lazy and lethargic to engage in any show of physical strength.

  We rode on a couple of buffaloes that sometimes came to drink and wallow in the muddier parts of the stream. Buffaloes are fine, sluggish creatures, always in search of a soft, slushy resting place. We would climb on their backs, and kick and yell and urge them forward; but on no occasion did we succeed in getting them to carry us anywhere. If they tired of our antics, they would merely roll over on their backs, taking us with them into a bed of muddy water.

  Not that it mattered how muddy we got, because we had only to dive into the pool to get rid of it all. The buffaloes couldn’t get to the pool because of its narrow outlet and the slippery rocks.

  If it was possible for Kishen and me to leave home at night, we would come to the pool for a swim by moonlight. We would often find Somi and Ranbir there before us. They weren’t afraid of the dark or the surrounding forest in which panthers and jungle cats were said to be roaming about. We bathed silently at night, because the stillness of the surrounding jungle seemed to discourage high spirits; but sometimes Somi would sing in his clear, ringing voice and we would float the red, long-fingered poinsettias downstream.

  The pool was to be our principal meeting place during the coming months. It was not that we couldn’t meet in town. But the pool was our secret, known only to us, and it gave us a feeling of conspiracy and adventure to meet there. It was at the pool that we made our plans; it was at the pool that we first spoke of the glacier; but several weeks and a few other events were to pass before that particular dream materialized.

  Somi’s mother’s memory was stored with an incredible amount of folklore, and she would sometimes astonish us with her stories of spirits and mischievous ghosts.

  One evening, when Ranbir and I had been invited to stay the night at Somi’s house, his mother began to tell us about the various types of ghosts she had heard of or known. Mulia, a visiting cousin, having just taken a bath, came out on the veranda, with her hair loose.

  ‘My girl, you ought not to leave your hair loose like that,’ admonished Somi’s mother. ‘It is better to tie a knot in it.’

  ‘B
ut I have not oiled it yet,’ said Mulia.

  ‘Never mind, but you should not leave your hair untied towards sunset. There are spirits called jinns which are attracted by long hair and pretty black eyes like yours. They may be tempted to carry you away!’

  ‘How dreadful!’ exclaimed Mulia, hurriedly tying a knot in her hair, and going indoors to be on the safe side.

  Ranbir, Somi and I sat on a string cot, facing Somi’s mother, who sat on another cot.

  ‘Can jinns be seen, Auntyji?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘There was an Urdu teacher in Lahore, whose pupils were about the same age as you. One of the boys was very good at his lessons. One day, while he sat at his desk in a corner of the classroom, the teacher asked him to fetch a book from the cupboard which stood at the far end of the room. The boy, who felt lazy that morning, didn’t move from his seat. He merely stretched his hand out, took the book from the cupboard, and handed it to the teacher. Everyone was astonished, because the boy’s arm had stretched about four yards to get hold of the book! Obviously, he was a jinn. It was then understood to be the reason why this boy was so good at games and exercises which required great agility.’

  ‘Well, I wish I was a jinn,’ said Ranbir. ‘Especially for volleyball matches.’

  Somi’s mother then told us about munjia, a mischievous ghost said to reside in lonely peepul trees. When a munjia is annoyed, elaborated Auntyji, he rushes out from his tree and upsets tongas, bullockcarts and cycles. Even a bus is known to have been overturned by a munjia.

  ‘If you are passing beneath a peepul tree at night,’ warned Somi’s mother, ‘be careful not to yawn without covering your mouth or snapping your fingers in front of it. If you don’t remember to do that, the munjia will jump down your throat and completely ruin your digestion!’

  In an attempt to change the subject Ranbir mentioned that a friend of his had found a snake in his bed one morning.

  ‘Did he kill it?’ asked Somi’s mother anxiously. ‘No, it slipped away,’ said Ranbir.