Tales of Fosterganj Read online

  It took me some time to get to know all the inhabitants. But one of the first was Professor Lulla, recently retired, who came hurrying down the road like the White Rabbit in Alice, glancing at his watch and muttering to himself. If, like the White Rabbit, he was saying ‘I’m late, I’m late!’ I wouldn’t have been at all surprised. I was standing outside the bakery, chatting to one of the children, when he came up to me, adjusted his spectacles, peered at me through murky lenses, and said, ‘Welcome to Fosterganj, sir. I believe you’ve come to stay for the season.’

  ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll stay,’ I said. ‘But thank you for your welcome.’

  ‘We must get together and have a cultural and cultured exchange,’ he said, rather pompously. ‘Not many intellectuals in Fosterganj, you know.’

  ‘I was hoping there wouldn’t be.’

  ‘But we’ll talk, we’ll talk. Only can’t stop now. I have a funeral to attend. Eleven o’clock at the Camel’s Back cemetery. Poor woman. Dead. Quite dead. Would you care to join me?’

  ‘Er—I’m not in the party mood,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think I knew the deceased.’

  ‘Old Miss Gamleh. Your landlord thought she was a flowerpot—would have been ninety next month. Wonderful woman. Hated chokra-boys.’ He looked distastefully at the boy grinning up at him. ‘Stole all her plums, if the monkeys didn’t get them first. Spent all her life in the hill station. Never married. Jilted by a weedy British colonel, awful fellow, even made off with her savings. But she managed on her own. Kept poultry, sold eggs to the hotels.’

  ‘What happens to the poultry?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, hens can look after themselves,’ he said airily. ‘But I can’t linger or I’ll be late. It’s a long walk to the cemetery.’ And he set off in determined fashion, like Scott of the Antarctic about to brave a blizzard.

  ‘Must have been a close friend, the old lady who passed away,’ I remarked.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Hassan, who had been standing in his doorway listening to the conversation. ‘I doubt if she ever spoke to him. But Professor Lulla never misses a funeral. He goes to all of them—cremations, burials—funerals of any well-known person, even strangers. It’s a hobby with him.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ I said. ‘I thought collecting match-box labels was sad enough as a hobby. Doesn’t it depress him?’

  ‘It seems to cheer him up, actually. But I must go too, sir. If you don’t mind keeping an eye on the bakery for an hour or two, I’ll hurry along to the funeral and see if I can get her poultry cheap. Miss Gamla’s hens give good eggs, I’m told. Little Ali will look after the customers, sir. All you have to do is see that they don’t make off with the buns and creamrolls.’

  I don’t know if Hassan attended the funeral, but he came back with two baskets filled with cackling hens, and a rooster to keep them company.

  Enter a Man-Eater

  Did I say nothing ever happens in Fosterganj?

  That is true in many ways. If you don’t count the outbreak of rabies, that is, or the annual depredations of a man-eating leopard, or the drownings in the pool.

  I suppose I should start with the leopard, since its activities commenced not long after I came live in Fosterganj.

  Its first victim was Professor Lulla, who was on his way to attend another funeral.

  I don’t remember who had died. But I remember the cremation was to take place in Rajpur, at the bottom of the hill, an hour’s walk from Fosterganj. The professor was anxious not to miss it, although he had met the recipient of the honour only once. Before the sun was up, he was on his way down the mountain trail. At that early hour, the mist from the valley rises, and it obscured the view, so that he probably did not see the leopard as it followed silently behind him, waiting its opportunity, stalking its victim with pleasurable anticipation. The importunate professor might have heard the rattle of stones as the leopard charged; might have had a glimpse of it as it sprang at his throat; might even have uttered a cry, or screamed for help. But there was no one to hear, no witness of the attack.

  The leopard dragged the dying man into the kingora bushes and begun to gnaw at his flesh. He was still at his meal when, half an hour later, a group of Nepali labourers came down the path, singing and making merry, and frightened the beast away. They found the mangled remains of the professor; two of the party ran back to Fosterganj for help, while the rest stood guard over the half-eaten torso.

  Help came in the form of half the population of Fosterganj. There was nothing they could do, as the leopard did not return. But next day they gave the professor a good funeral.

  However, a couple of public-spirited citizens were determined to hunt down the leopard before it took a further toll of human life. One of them was our local bank manager, Vishaal, a friendly and amiable sort, who was also a self-confessed disciple of Jim Corbett, the great shikari who had disposed of dozens of man-eaters. Vishaal did not possess a gun, but the bank’s chowkidar, a retired Gurkha soldier, did. He had an ancient 12-bore shotgun which he carried about with him wherever he was on duty. The gun hadn’t been fired for years—not since it had gone off accidentally when being handled by an inquisitive customer.

  Vishaal found a box of cartridges in the bank’s safe. They had been there for several years and looked a little mouldy, as did almost everything in Fosterganj, including some of the older residents. ‘Stay here more than three years,’ philosophized Hassan, ‘and unless you have God on your side, your hair goes white and your teeth get yellow. Everyone ends up looking like old Foster—descendent of the kings of Scotland!’

  ‘It must be the water,’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s the mist,’ said Hassan. ‘It hangs around Fosterganj even in good weather. It keeps the sun out. Look at my bread. Can’t keep a loaf fresh for more than a day, the mould gets to it in no time. And the monsoon hasn’t even begun!’

  In spite of his bad teeth and ragged appearance, however, Foster—or Bonnie Prince Charlie, as the older residents called him—was fairly active, and it was he who set up a rough machaan in an old oak tree overlooking the stream at the bottom of the hill. He even sold Vishaal an old goat, to be used as bait for the leopard.

  Vishaal persuaded me to keep him company on the machaan, and produced a bottle of brandy that he said would see us through the night.

  Our vigil began at eight, and by midnight the brandy bottle was empty. No leopard, although the goat made its presence apparent by bleating without a break.

  ‘If the leopard has developed a taste for humans,’ I said, ‘why should it come for a silly old goat?’

  I dozed off for some time, only to be awakened by a nudge from Vishaal, who whispered, ‘Something’s out there. I think it’s the leopard! Shine the torch on it!’

  I shone the torch on the terrified goat, and at the same moment a leopard sprang out of the bushes and seized its victim. There was a click from Vishaal’s gun. The cartridge had failed to go off.

  ‘Fire the other barrel!’ I urged.

  The second cartridge went off. There was a tremendous bang. But by then both leopard and goat had vanished into the night.

  ‘I thought you said it only liked humans,’ said Vishaal.

  ‘Must be another leopard,’ I said.

  We trudged back to his rooms above the bank, and opened another bottle of brandy.

  In the morning a villager came to the bank and demanded a hundred rupees for his goat.

  ‘But it was Foster’s goat,’ protested Vishaal. ‘I’ve already paid him for it.’

  ‘Not Foster Sahib’s goat,’ said the villager. ‘He only borrowed it for the night.’

  A Magic Oil

  A day or two later I was in the bank, run by Vishaal (manager), Negi (cashier), and Suresh (peon). I was sitting opposite Vishaal, who was at his desk, taken up by two handsome paperweights but no papers. Suresh had brought me a cup of tea from the tea-shop across the road. There was just one customer in the bank, Hassan, who was making a deposit. A cosy summer morning in Fo
sterganj: not much happening, but life going on just the same.

  In walked Foster. He’d made an attempt at shaving, but appeared to have given up at a crucial stage, because now he looked like a wasted cricketer finally on his way out. The effect was enhanced by the fact that he was wearing flannel trousers that had once been white but were now greenish yellow; the previous monsoon was to blame. He had found an old tie, and this was strung round his neck, or rather his unbuttoned shirt collar. The said shirt had seen many summers and winters in Fosterganj, and was frayed at the cuffs. Even so, Foster looked quite spry, as compared to when I had last seen him.

  ‘Come in, come in!’ said Vishaal, always polite to his customers, even those who had no savings. ‘How is your gladiola farm?’

  ‘Coming up nicely,’ said Foster. ‘I’m growing potatoes too.’

  ‘Very nice. But watch out for the porcupines, they love potatoes.’

  ‘Shot one last night. Cut my hands getting the quills out. But porcupine meat is great. I’ll send you some the next time I shoot one.’

  ‘Well, keep some ammunition for the leopard. We’ve got to get it before it kills someone else.’

  ‘It won’t be around for two or three weeks. They keep moving, do leopards. He’ll circle the mountain, then be back in these parts. But that’s not what I came to see you about, Mr Vishaal. I was hoping for a small loan.’

  ‘Small loan, big loan, that’s what we are here for. In what way can we help you, sir?’

  ‘I want to start a chicken farm.’

  ‘Most original.’

  ‘There’s a great shortage of eggs in Mussoorie. The hotels want eggs, the schools want eggs, the restaurants want eggs. And they have to get them from Rajpur or Dehradun.

  ‘Hassan has a few hens,’ I put in.

  ‘Only enough for home consumption. I’m thinking in terms of hundreds of eggs—and broiler chickens for the table. I want to make Fosterganj the chicken capital of India. It will be like old times, when my ancestor planted the first potatoes here, brought all the way from Scotland!’

  ‘I thought they came from Ireland,’ I said. ‘Captain Young, up at Landour.’

  ‘Oh well, we brought other things. Like Scotch whisky.’

  ‘Actually, Irish whisky got here first. Captain Kennedy, up in Simla.’ I wasn’t Irish, but I was in a combative frame of mind, which is the same as being Irish.

  To mollify Foster, I said, ‘You did bring the bagpipe.’ And when he perked up, I added: ‘But the Gurkha is better at playing it.’

  This contretemps over, Vishaal got Foster to sign a couple of forms and told him that the loan would be processed in due course and that we’d all celebrate over a bottle of Scotch whisky. Foster left the room with something of a swagger. The prospect of some money coming in—even if it is someone else’s—will put any man in an optimistic frame of mind. And for Foster the prospect of losing it was as yet far distant.

  I wanted to make a phone call to my bank in Delhi, so that I could have some of my savings sent to me, and Vishaal kindly allowed me to use his phone.

  There were only four phones in all of Fosterganj, and there didn’t seem to be any necessity for more. The bank had one. So did Dr Bisht. So did Brigadier Bakshi, retired. And there was one in the police station, but it was usually out of order.

  The police station, a one-room affair, was manned by a Daroga and a constable. If the Daroga felt like a nap, the constable took charge. And if the constable took the afternoon off, the Daroga would run the place. This worked quite well, as there wasn’t much crime in Fosterganj—if you didn’t count Foster’s illicit still at the bottom of the hill (Scottish hooch, he called the stuff he distilled); or a charming young delinquent called Sunil, who picked pockets for a living (though not in Fosterganj); or the barber who supplemented his income by supplying charas to his agents at some of the boarding schools; or the man who sold the secretions of certain lizards, said to increase sexual potency—except that it was only linseed oil, used for oiling cricket bats.

  I found the last named, a man called Rattan Lal, sitting on a stool outside my door when I returned from the bank.

  ‘Saande-ka-tel,’ he declared abruptly, holding up a small bottle containing a vitreous yellow fluid. ‘Just one application, sahib, and the size and strength of your valuable member will increase dramatically. It will break down doors, should doors be shut against you. No chains will hold it down. You will be as a stallion, rampant in a field full of fillies. Sahib, you will rule the roost! Memsahibs and beautiful women will fall at your feet.’

  ‘It will get me into trouble, for certain,’ I demurred. ‘It’s great stuff, I’m sure. But wasted here in Fosterganj.’

  Rattan Lal would not be deterred. ‘Sahib, every time you try it, you will notice an increase in dimensions, guaranteed!’

  ‘Like Pinochio’s nose,’ I said in English. He looked puzzled. He understood the word ‘nose’, but had no idea what I meant.

  ‘Naak?’ he said. ‘No, sahib, you don’t rub it on your nose. Here, down between the legs,’ and he made as if to give a demonstration. I held a hand up to restrain him.

  ‘There was a boy named Pinochio in a far-off country,’ I explained, switching back to Hindi. ‘His nose grew longer every time he told a lie.’

  ‘I tell no lies, sahib. Look, my nose is normal. Rest is very big. You want to see?’

  ‘Another day,’ I said.

  ‘Only ten rupees.’

  ‘The bottle or the rest of you?’

  ‘You joke, sahib,’ and he thrust a bottle into my unwilling hands and removed a ten-rupee note from my shirt pocket; all done very simply.

  ‘I will come after a month and check up,’ he said. ‘Next time I will bring the saanda itself! You are in the prime of your life, it will make you a bull among men.’ And away he went.

  ~

  The little bottle of oil stood unopened on the bathroom shelf for weeks. I was too scared to use it. It was like the bottle in Alice in Wonderland with the label DRINK ME. Alice drank it, and shot up to the ceiling. I wasn’t sure I wanted to grow that high.

  I did wonder what would happen if I applied some of it to my scalp. Would it stimulate hair growth? Would it stimulate my thought processes? Put an end to writer’s block?

  Well, I never did find out. One afternoon I heard a clatter in the bathroom and looked in to see a large and sheepish-looking monkey jump out of the window with the bottle.

  But to return to Rattan Lal—some hours after I had been sold the aphrodisiac, I was walking up to town to get a newspaper when I met him on his way down.

  ‘Any luck with the magic oil?’ I asked.

  ‘All sold out!’ he said, beaming with pleasure. ‘Ten bottles sold at the Savoy, and six at Hakman’s. What a night it’s going to be for them.’ And he rubbed his hands at the prospect.

  ‘A very busy night,’ I said. ‘Either that, or they’ll be looking for you to get their money back.’

  ‘I come next month. If you are still here, I’ll keep another bottle for you. Look there!’ He took me by the arm and pointed at a large rock lizard that was sunning itself on the parapet. ‘You catch me some of those, and I’ll pay you for them. Be my partner. Bring me lizards—not small ones, only big fellows—and I will buy!’

  ‘How do you extract the tel?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, that’s a trade secret. But I will show you when you bring me some saandas. Now I must go. My good wife waits for me with impatience.’

  And off he went, down the bridle path to Rajpur.

  The rock lizard was still on the wall, enjoying its afternoon siesta.

  It did occur to me that I might make a living from breeding rock lizards. Perhaps Vishaal would give me a loan. I wasn’t making much as a writer.

  Fairy Glen Palace

  The old bridle path from Rajpur to Mussoorie passed through Fosterganj at a height of about five thousand feet. In the old days, before the motor road was built, this was the only road to the hill station.
You could ride up on a pony, or walk, or be carried in a basket (if you were a child) or in a doolie (if you were a lady or an invalid). The doolie was a cross between a hammock, a stretcher, and a sedan chair, if you can imagine such a contraption. It was borne aloft by two perspiring partners. Sometimes they sat down to rest, and dropped you unceremoniously. I have a picture of my grandmother being borne uphill in a doolie, and she looks petrified. There was an incident in which a doolie, its occupant and two bearers, all went over a cliff just before Fosterganj, and perished in the fall. Sometimes you can see the ghost of this poor lady being borne uphill by two phantom bearers.

  Fosterganj has its ghosts, of course. And they are something of a distraction.

  Writing is my vocation, and I have always tried to follow the apostolic maxim: ‘Study to be quiet and to mind your own business’. But in small-town India one is constantly drawn into other people’s business, just as they are drawn towards yours. In Fosterganj it was quiet enough, there were few people; there was no excuse for shirking work. But tales of haunted houses and fairy-infested forests have always intrigued me, and when I heard that the ruined palace half way down to Rajpur was a place to be avoided after dark, it was natural for me to start taking my evening walks in its direction.

  Fairy Glen was its name. It had been built on the lines of a Swiss or French chalet, with numerous turrets decorating its many wings—a huge, rambling building, two-storeyed, with numerous balconies and cornices and windows; a hodge-podge of architectural styles, a wedding-cake of a palace, built to satisfy the whims and fancies of its late owner, the Raja of Ranipur, a small state near the Nepal border. Maintaining this ornate edifice must have been something of a nightmare; and the present heirs had quite given up on it, for bits of the roof were missing, some windows were without panes, doors had developed cracks, and what had once been a garden was now a small jungle. Apparently there was no one living there anymore; no sign of a caretaker. I had walked past the wrought-iron gate several times without seeing any signs of life, apart from a large grey cat sunning itself outside a broken window.