The Whistling Schoolboy and Other Stories of School Life Read online

  And though we were a troop of brave little scouts, we thought it better to let the bear keep the gown.

  My Desert Island

  lthough I was a good football goalkeeper (not too much running around), I found most games rather boring. Cricket was one of them. Especially, when one had to turn up at the ‘nets’ in order to bowl endless overs at an important player who was there simply to practise his shots. And then to sit around for the better part of the day, waiting for a chance to bat, and then to be given out LBW (Leg before Wicket) by an umpire (i.e., teacher) who hated you anyway and was just waiting for a chance to get even…and so, before we went out to field, or in the process of running after a ball that refused to slow down, I would get a cramp in one of my legs (sometimes genuine) and leave the field, retiring to the dormitory where I would enjoy an hour or two of refreshing sleep while the rest of the team slipped and stumbled about on the stony outfield.

  No grass in our school ‘flats’ or playing fields. As a goalkeeper, I lost a considerable amount of skin from my knees and elbows; even so, it was better than chasing cricket balls.

  Elsewhere, I think I have mentioned my antipathy to running races. Why bother to come first when, with less effort, you can come in last and be none the worse for it? There is no law against coming in last. Those marathon runs took us through the town’s outskirts, and along the way were numerous vendors selling roasted corn, or peanuts, or hot pakoras. Those of us who were not desirous of winning medals (they were made of tin, anyway) would stop for refreshment (making sure the teacher on duty was out of sight) and bring up the rear of the race while the poor winner, looking famished and quite exhausted, would have to wait patiently for the school dinner—usually rubbery chapattis and a curry made of undercooked potatoes and stringy ‘French’ beans: more string than beans.

  Running wasn’t my forte, but I wasn’t too bad at the shot-put, and could throw that iron ball a considerable distance. The teacher who had been our cricket coach and umpire made the mistake of standing too close to me, and I dropped the shot (quite accidentally) on his toes, rendering him unfit for duty for a few days.

  ‘Sorry, sir!’ I said. ‘It slipped.’

  But he wasn’t the forgiving type; when the boxing tournaments came around, he put me in the ring with the school’s ‘most scientific’ boxer. Not being of a scientific bent, I threw science to the winds and used my famous headbutt to good effect. Why box for three rounds when everything can be settled in one?

  Games were, of course, compulsory in most boarding schools. They were supposed to turn you into real men, even if your IQ remained at zero.

  This commitment to the values of the playing fields of Eton and Rugby meant that literature came very low on that list of the school’s priorities. We had a decent enough library, consisting mainly of books that had been gifted to the school; but as reading them wasn’t compulsory (as opposed to boxing and cricket), the library was an island seldom inhabited except by one shipwrecked and literary young man—yours truly.

  My housemaster, Mr Brown, realizing that I was a bookish boy, had the wisdom to put me in charge of the library. This meant that I had access to the keys, and that I could visit that storeroom of books whenever I liked.

  The Great Escape!

  And so, whenever I could dodge cricket nets or PT (physical training), or swimming lessons, or extra classes of any kind, I would ship away to my desert island and there, surrounded by books in lieu of coconut palms, read or write or dawdle or dream, secure in the knowledge that no one was going to disturb me, since no one else was interested in reading books.

  Today, teachers and parents and the world at large complain that the reading habit is dying out, that youngsters don’t read, that no one wants books. Well, all I can say is that they never did! If reading is a minority pastime today it was even more so sixty years ago. And there was no television then, no Internet, no Facebook, no tweeting and twittering, no video games, no DVD players, none of the distractions that we blame today for the decline in the reading habit.

  In truth, it hasn’t declined. I keep meeting young people who read, and many who want to write. This was not the case when I was a boy. If I was asked what I wanted to do after school, and I said, ‘I’m going to be a writer,’ everyone would laugh. Writers were eccentric creatures who lived on the moon or in some never-never land; they weren’t real. So I stopped saying I was going to be a writer and instead said I was going to be a detective. Somehow, that made better sense. After all, Dick Tracy was a comic-book hero. And there was a radio series featuring Bulldog Drummond, a precursor to James Bond.

  In the library, I soon had many good friends—Dickens and Chekhov and Maupassant and Barrie and Somerset Maugham and Hugh Walpole and P.G. Wodehouse and many others, and even Bulldog Drummond, whose adventures were set forth by ‘Sapper’, whose real name was H.C. McNeile.

  Pseudonyms were popular once. ‘Saki’ was H.H. Munro. ‘O. Henry’ was William Porter. ‘Mark Twain’ was Samuel Clemens. ‘Ellery Queen’ was two people.

  My own favourite was ‘A Modern Sinbad’, who wrote some wonderful sea stories —Spin a Yarn Sailor (1934), a battered copy still treasured by me, full of great storms and colourful ships’ captains, and sailors singing shanties; but I have never been able to discover his real name, and his few books are hard to find. Perhaps one of my young computer-friendly readers can help!

  Apart from Tagore, there were very few Indian authors writing in English in the 1940s. R.K. Narayan’s first book was introduced to the world by Graham Greene, Mulk Raj Anand’s by E.M. Forster; they were followed in the fifties by Raja Rao, Attia Hosain, Khushwant Singh, Sudhin Ghose, G.V. Desani and Kamala Markandaya.

  A few years ago, while I was sitting at my desk in Ivy Cottage (where I am sitting right now), a dapper little gentleman appeared in my doorway and introduced himself. He was none other than Mulk Raj Anand, aged ninety (he lived to be ninety-nine). He spent over an hour with me, talking about books, and I told him I’d read his novel Coolie while I was still at school in Simla—Simla being the setting for the novel. When he left, he thrust a ten-rupee note into little Siddharth’s pocket. Siddharth, my great-grandson, was then only three or four and doesn’t remember the occasion; but it was a nice gesture on the part of that Grand Old Man of Letters.

  But I digress. I grow old and inclined to ramble. I should take T.S. Eliot’s advice and wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled (and yes, they are beginning to look a little frayed and baggy). Is this what they call ‘existential writing’? Or ‘stream of consciousness’?

  Back to my old school library. Yes, my library, since no one else seemed to bother with it. And from reading, it was only a short step to writing. A couple of spare exercise books were soon filled with my observations on school life—friends, foes, teachers, the headmaster’s buxom wife, dormitory fights, the tuck shop and the mysterious disappearance of a senior prefect who was later found ‘living in sin’ with a fading film star (thirty years his senior) in a villa near Sanjauli. Well, that was his great escape from the tedium of boarding-school life.

  It was not long before my magnum opus fell into the hands of my class teacher who passed it on to the headmaster, who sent for me and gave me a flogging. The exercise books were shredded and thrown into his wastepaper basket. End of my first literary venture.

  But the seed had been sown, and I was not too upset. If the world outside could accommodate other writers, it could accommodate me too. My time would come.

  In the meantime, there were books and authors to be discovered. A lifetime of reading lay ahead. Old books, new books, classics, thrillers, stories short and tall, travelogues, histories, biographies, comedies, comic strips, poems, memories, fantasies, fables…The adventure would end only when the lights went out for ever.

  ‘Lights out!’ called the master on duty, making his rounds of the dormitories.

  Out went the lights.

  And out came my little pocket torch, and whatever book I was immers
ed in, and with my head under the blanket I would read on for another twenty or thirty minutes, until sleep overcame me.

  And in that sleep what dreams would come… dreams crowded with a wonderful cast of characters, all jumbled up, but each one distinct and alive, coming up to me and shaking me by the hand; Mr Pickwick, Sam Weller, Aunt Betsey Trotwood, Mr Dick, Tom Sawyer, Long John Silver, Lemuel Gulliver, the Mad Hatter, Alice, Mr Toad of Toad Hall, Hercule Poirot, Jeeves, Lord Emsworth, Kim, the Lama, Mowgli, Dick Tufpin, William Brown, Nero Wolfe, Ariel, Ali Baba, Snow White, Cinderella, Shakuntala, John Gilpin, Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, Peter and Wendy, Captain Hook, Richard Hannay, Allan Quatermain, Sexton Blake, Desperate Dan, old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

  Remember This Day

  f you can get an entire year off from school when you are nine years old, and can have a memorable time with a great father, then that year has to be the best time of your life even if it is followed by sorrow and insecurity.

  It was the result of my parents’ separation at a time when my father was on active service in the RAF during World War II. He managed to keep me with him for a summer and winter, at various locations in New Delhi—Hailey Road, Atul Grove Lane, Scindia House—in apartments he had rented, as he was not permitted to keep a child in the quarters assigned to service personnel. This arrangement suited me perfectly, and I had a wonderful year in Delhi, going to the cinema, quaffing milkshakes, helping my father with his stamp collection; but this idyllic situation could not continue for ever, and when my father was transferred to Karachi he had no option but to put me in a boarding school.

  This was the Bishop Cotton Preparatory School in Simla—or rather, Chhota Simla—where boys studied up to Class 4, after which they moved on to the senior school.

  Although I was a shy boy, I had settled down quite well in the friendly atmosphere of this little school, but I did miss my fathers’ companionship, and I was overjoyed when he came up to see me during the midsummer break. He had a couple of days’ leave, and he could only take me out for a day, bringing me back to school in the evening.

  I was so proud of him when he turned up in his dark blue R.A.F. uniform, a Flight Lieutenant’s stripes very much in evidence as he had just been promoted. He was already forty, engaged in Codes and Ciphers and not flying much. He was short and stocky, getting bald, but smart in his uniforrn. I gave him a salute—I loved giving salutes—and he returned the salutation and followed it up with a hug and a kiss on my forehead.

  ‘And what would you like to do today, son?’ Let’s go to Davico’s,’ I said. Davico’s was the best restaurant in town, famous for its meringues, marzipans, currypuffs and pastries. So to Davico’s we went, where of course I gorged myself on confectionery as only a small schoolboy can do. ‘Lunch is still a long way off, so let’s take a walk,’ suggested my father.

  And provisioning ourselves with more pastries, we left the Mall and trudged up to the Monkey Temple at the top of Jakko Hill. Here we were relieved of the pastries by the monkeys, who simply snatched them away from my unwilling hands, and we came downhill in a hurry before I could get hungry again. Small boys and monkeys have much in common.

  My father suggested a rickshaw ride around Elysium Hill, and this we did in style, swept along by four sturdy young rickshaw-pullers. My father took the opportunity of relating the story of Kipling’s Phantom Rickshaw (this was before I discovered it in print), and a couple of other ghost stories designed to build up my appetite for lunch.

  We ate at Wenger’s (or was it Clark’s?) and then—‘Enough of ghosts, Ruskin. Let’s go to the pictures.’

  I loved going to the pictures. I know the Delhi cinemas intimately, and it hadn’t taken me long to discover the Simla cinemas. There were three of them—the Regal, the Ritz, and the Rivoli.

  We went to the Rivoli. It was down near the ice-skating ring and the old Blessington Hotel. The film was about an ice-skater and starred Sonja Henie, a pretty young Norwegian Olympic champion who appeared in a number of Hollywood musicals. All she had to do was skate and look pretty, and this she did to perfection. I decided to fall in love with her. But by the time I grew up and finished school she’d stopped skating and making films! Whatever happened to Sonja Heme?

  After the picture it was time to return to school. We walked all the way to Chhota Simla talking about what we’d do during the winter holidays, and where we would go when the War was over.

  ‘I’ll be in Calcutta now,’ said my father. ‘There are good bookshops there. And cinemas. And Chinese restaurants. And we’ll buy more gramophone records, and add to the stamp collection.’

  It was dusk when we walked slowly down the path to the school gate and playing-field. Two of my friends were waiting for me—Bimal and Riaz. My father spoke to them, asked about their homes. A bell started ringing. We said goodbye.

  ‘Remember this day, Ruskin,’ said my father.

  He patted me gently on the head and walked away.

  I never saw him again.

  Three months later I heard that he had passed away in the military hospital in Calcutta.

  I dream of him sometimes, and in my dream he is always the same, caring for me and leading me by the hand along old familiar roads.

  And of course I remember that day. Over sixty-five years have passed, but it’s as fresh as yesterday.

  Letter to My Father

  My Dear Dad,

  Last week I decided to walk from the Dilaram Bazaar to Rajpur, a walk I hadn’t undertaken for many years. It’s only about five miles, along straight tree-lined road, houses most of the way, but here and there are open spaces where there are fields and patches of sal forest. The road hasn’t changed much, but there is far more traffic than there used to be, which makes it noisy and dusty, detracting from the sylvan surroundings. All the same I enjoyed the walk—enjoyed the cool breeze that came down from the hills,—the rich variety of trees, the splashes of colour where bougainvillea trailed over porches and enjoyed the passing cyclists and bullock carts, for they were reminders of the old days when cars, trucks and buses were the exception rather than the rule.

  A little way above the Dilaram Bazaar, just where the canal goes under the road, stands the old house we used to know as Melville Hall, where three generations of Melvilles had lived. It is now a government office and looks dirty and neglected. Beside it still stands the little cottage, or guest house, where you stayed for a few weeks while the separation from my mother was being made legal. Then I went to live with you in Delhi.

  At the time you were a guest of the Melvilles, I was in boarding school, so I did not share the cottage with you, although I was to share a number of rooms, tents and RAf hutments with you during the next two or three years. But of course I knew the Melvilles; I would visit them during school holidays in the years after you died, and they always spoke affectionately of you. One of the sisters was particularly kind to me; I think it was she who gave you the use of the cottage. This was Mrs Chill—she’d lost her husband to cholera during their honeymoon, and never married again. But I always found her cheerful and good-natured, loading me with presents on birthdays and at Christmas. The kindest people are often those who have come through testing personal tragedies.

  A young man on a bicycle stops beside me and asks if I remember him. ‘Not with that terrible moustache,’ I confess. ‘Romi from Sisters Bazaar.’ Yes, of course. And I do remember him, although it must be about ten years since we last met; he was just a schoolboy then. Now, he tells me, he’s a teacher. Not very well paid, as he works in a small private school. But better than being unemployed, he says. I have to agree.

  ‘You’re a good teacher, I’m sure, Romi. And it’s still a noble profession…’

  He looks pleased as he cycles away. When I see boys on bicycles I am always taken back to my boyhood days in Debra. The roads in those uncrowded days were ideal for cyclists. Semi on his bicycle, riding down this very road in the light spring rain, provided me with the opening scene for my very first novel, Ro
om on the Roof, written a couple of years after I’d said goodbye to Semi and Debra and even, for a time, India.

  That’s how I remember him best—on his bicycle, wearing shorts, turban slightly askew, always a song on his lips. He was just fifteen. I was a couple of years older, but wasn’t much of a bicycle rider, always falling off the machine when I was supposed to dismount gracefully. On one occasion I went sailing into a buffalo cart and fractured my forearm. Last year when Dr Murti, a senior citizen of the Doon, met me at a local function, he recalled how he had set my arm forty years ago. He was so nice to me that I forbore from telling him that my arm was still crooked.

  Strictly an earth man, I have never really felt at ease with my feet off the ground. That’s why I’ve been a walking person for most of my life. In planes, on ships, even in lifts, panic sets in.

  As it did on that occasion when I was four or five, and you, Dad, decided to give me a treat by taking me on an Arab dhow across the Gulf of Kutch. Five minutes on that swinging, swaying sailing ship, was enough for me; I became so hysterical that I had to be taken off and rowed back to port. Not that the rowing boat was much better.

  And then my mother thought I should go up with her in one those four-winged aeroplanes, a Tiger Moth I think—there’s a photograph of it somewhere among my mementos—one of those contraptions that fell out of the sky without much assistance during the first World War. I think you could make them at home. Anyway, in this too I kicked and screamed with such abandon that the poor pilot had to be content with taxiing around the airfield and dropping me off at the first opportunity That same plane with the same pilot crashed a couple of months later, only reinforcing my fears about machines that could not stay anchored to the ground.

  To return to Somi, he was one of those friends I never saw again as an adult, so he remains transfixed in my memory as eternal youth, bright and forever loving… Meeting boyhood friends again after long intervals can often be disappointing, even disconcerting. Mere survival leaves its mark. Success is even more disfiguring. Those who climb to the top of a profession, or who seek the pinnacles of power, usually have to pay a heavy price for it, both physically and spiritually. It sounds like a cliche but it’s true that money can’t buy good health or a serene state of mind—especially the latter. You can fly to the ends of the earth in search of the best climate or the best medical treatment and the chances are that you will have to keep flying! Poverty is not ennobling—far from it—but it does at least teach you to make the most out of every rule.