Thick as Thieves Read online

  Rusty said, ‘I am afraid for Kishen. I am sure he will give trouble to his relatives, and they are not like his parents. Mr Kapoor will have no say without Meena.’

  Somi was silent. The only sound was the munching of the cucumber and the coconut. He looked at Rusty, an uncertain smile on his lips but none in his eyes, and, in a forced conversational manner, said, ‘I’m going to Amritsar for a few months. But I will be back in the spring. Rusty, you will be all right here …’

  This news was so unexpected that for some time Rusty could not take it in. The thought had never occurred to him that one day Somi too might leave Dehra, just as Ranbir and Suri and Kishen had done. Rusty could not speak. A sickening heaviness clogged his heart and brain.

  ‘Hey, Rusty!’ laughed Somi. ‘Don’t look as though there is poison in the coconut!’

  The poison lay in Somi’s words. And the poison worked, running through Rusty’s veins and beating against his heart and hammering on his brain. The poison worked, wounding him.

  He began, ‘Somi …’ but could go no further.

  ‘Finish the coconut!’

  ‘Somi,’ said Rusty again, ‘if you are leaving Dehra, Somi, then I am leaving too.’

  ‘Eat the coco … what did you say?’

  ‘I am going too.’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Serious now, and troubled, Somi put his hand on his friend’s wrist. He shook his head; he could not understand.

  ‘Why, Rusty? Where?’

  ‘England.’

  ‘But you haven’t any money, you silly fool!’

  ‘I can get an assisted passage. The British government will pay.’

  ‘You are a British subject?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Toba!’ Somi slapped his thighs and looked upwards in despair. ‘You are neither an Indian subject nor a British subject, and you think someone is going to pay for your passage! And how are you to get a passport?’

  ‘How?’ asked Rusty, anxious to find out.

  ‘Toba! Have you a birth certificate?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Then you are not born,’ decreed Somi, with a certain amount of satisfaction. ‘You are not alive! You do not happen to be in this world!’

  He paused for breath, then waved his finger in the air. ‘Rusty, you cannot go!’ he said.

  Rusty lay down despondently.

  ‘I never really thought I would,’ he said. ‘I only said I would because I felt like it. Not because I am unhappy—I have never been happier elsewhere—but because I am restless as I have always been. I don’t suppose I’ll be anywhere for long …’

  He spoke the truth. Rusty always spoke the truth. He defined truth as a feeling, and when he said what he felt, he said the truth. (Only he didn’t always speak his feelings.) He never lied. You don’t have to lie if you know how to withhold the truth.

  ‘You belong here,’ continued Somi, trying to reconcile Rusty with circumstance. ‘You will get lost in big cities. Rusty, you will break your heart. And when you come back—if you come back—I will be grown-up and you will be grown-up—I mean more than we are now—and we will be like strangers to each other … And besides, there are no chaat shops in England!’

  ‘But I don’t belong here, Somi. I don’t belong anywhere. Even if I have papers, I don’t belong. I’m a half-caste, I know it, and that is as good as not belonging anywhere.’

  What am I saying, thought Rusty, why do I make my inheritance a justification for my present bitterness? No one has cast me out … of my own free will I want to run away from India … why do I blame inheritance?

  ‘It can also mean that you belong everywhere,’ said Somi. ‘But you never told me. You are fair like a European.’

  ‘I had not thought much about it.’

  ‘Are you ashamed?’

  ‘No. My guardian was. He kept it to himself, he only told me when I came home after playing Holi. I was happy then. So, when he told me, I was not ashamed, I was proud.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now? Oh, I can’t really believe it. Somehow I do not really feel mixed.’

  ‘Then don’t blame it for nothing.’

  Rusty felt a little ashamed, and they were both silent awhile, then Somi shrugged and said, ‘So you are going. You are running away from India.’

  ‘No, not from India.’

  ‘Then you are running away from your friends, from me!’

  Rusty felt the irony of this remark, and allowed a tone of sarcasm into his voice.

  ‘You, Master Somi, you are the one who is going away. I am still here. You are going to Amritsar. I only want to go. And I’m here alone; everyone has gone. So if I do eventually leave, the only person I’ll be running away from will be myself.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Somi, nodding his head wisely. ‘And by running away from yourself, you will be running away from me and India! Now come on, let’s go and have chaat.’

  He pulled Rusty off the bed, and pushed him out of the room. Then, at the top of the steps, he leapt lightly on Rusty’s back, kicked him with his heels, and shouted: ‘Down the steps, my tuttoo, my pony! Fast down the steps!’

  So Rusty carried him downstairs and dropped him on the grass. They laughed: but there was no great joy in their laughter, they laughed for the sake of friendship.

  ‘Best favourite friend,’ said Somi, throwing a handful of mud in Rusty’s face.

  Author’s Note: From The Room on the Roof, my first novel. The character of Somi was taken straight from the journal I kept when I was sixteen. Over sixty years later, we are still in touch. Somi lives in America with his sons and their families, and I am back in India.

  Rusty Plays Holi

  [From The Room on the Roof]

  In the early morning, when it was still dark, Ranbir stopped in the jungle behind Mr Harrison’s house, and slapped his drum. His thick mass of hair was covered with red dust and his body, naked but for a cloth round his waist, was smeared with green; he looked like a painted god, a green god. After a minute he slapped the drum again, then sat down on his heels and waited.

  Rusty woke to the sound of the second drumbeat, and lay in bed and listened; it was repeated, travelling over the still air and in through the bedroom window. Dhum! … A double beat now, one deep, one high, insistent, questioning … Rusty remembered his promise, that he would play Holi with Ranbir, meet him in the jungle when he beat the drum. But he had made the promise on the condition that his guardian did not return; he could not possibly keep it now, not after the thrashing he had received.

  Dhum-dhum, spoke the drum in the forest; dhum-dhum, impatient and getting annoyed …

  ‘Why can’t he shut up,’ muttered Rusty, ‘does he want to wake Mr Harrison …’

  Holi, the festival of colours, the arrival of spring, the rebirth of the new year, the awakening of love, what were these things to him. They did not concern his life, he could not start a new life, not for one day … and besides, it all sounded very primitive, this splashing of colour and beating of drums …

  Dhum-dhum!

  The boy sat up in bed.

  The sky had grown lighter.

  From the distant bazaar came a new music, many drums and voices, faint but steady, growing in rhythm and excitement. The sound conveyed something to Rusty, something wild and emotional, something that belonged to his dreamworld, and on a sudden impulse he sprang out of bed.

  He went to the door and listened, the house was quiet, he bolted the door. The colours of Holi, he knew, would stain his clothes, so he did not remove his pyjamas. In an old pair of flattened rubber-soled tennis shoes, he climbed out of the window and ran over the dew-wet grass, down the path behind the house, over the hill and into the jungle.

  When Ranbir saw the boy approach, he rose from the ground. The long hand drum, the dholak, hung at his waist. As he rose, the sun rose. But the sun did not look as fiery as Ranbir who, in Rusty’s eyes, appeared as a painted demon, rather than
a god.

  ‘You are late, mister,’ said Ranbir. ‘I thought you were not coming.’

  He had both fists closed, but when he walked towards Rusty he opened them, smiling widely, a white smile on a green face. In his right hand was the red dust and in his left hand the green dust. And with his right hand he rubbed the red dust on Rusty’s left cheek, and then with the other hand he put the green dust on the boy’s right cheek; then he stood back and looked at Rusty and laughed. Then, according to the custom, he embraced the bewildered boy. It was a wrestler’s hug, and Rusty winced breathlessly.

  ‘Come,’ said Ranbir, ‘let us go and make the town a rainbow.’

  And truly, that day there was an outbreak of spring.

  The sun came up, and the bazaar woke up. The walls of the houses were suddenly patched with splashes of colour, and just as suddenly the trees seemed to have burst into flower, for in the forest there were armies of rhododendrons, and by the river the poinsettias danced; the cherry and the plum were in blossom; the snow in the mountains had melted, and the streams were rushing torrents; the new leaves on the trees were full of sweetness, the young grass held both dew and sun, and made an emerald of every dewdrop.

  The infection of spring spread simultaneously through the world of man and the world of nature, and made them one.

  Ranbir and Rusty moved round the hill, keeping near the fringes of the jungle until they had skirted not only the European community but also the smart shopping centre. They came down dirty little side streets where the walls of houses, stained with the wear and tear of many years of meagre habitation, were now stained again with the vivid colours of Holi. They came to the Clock Tower.

  At the Tower, spring had already been declared open. Clouds of coloured dust rose in the air and spread, and jets of water—green and orange and purple, all rich, emotional colours—burst out everywhere.

  Children formed groups. They were armed mainly with bicycle pumps, or pumps fashioned from bamboo stems, from which squirted liquid colour. The children paraded the main road, chanting shrilly and clapping their hands. The men and women preferred the dust to the water. They too sang, but their chanting held a significance, their hands and fingers drummed the rhythms of spring, the same rhythms, the same songs that belonged to this day every year of their lives.

  Ranbir was met by some friends and greeted with great hilarity. A bicycle pump was directed at Rusty and a jet of sooty black water squirted into his face.

  Blinded for a moment, Rusty blundered about in great confusion. A horde of children bore down on him, and he was subjected to a pumping from all sides. His shirt and pyjamas, drenched through, stuck to his skin; then someone gripped the end of his shirt and tugged at it until it tore and came away. Dust was thrown on the boy, on his face and body, roughly and with full force, and his tender, underexposed skin smarted beneath the onslaught.

  Then his eyes cleared. He blinked and looked wildly around at the group of boys and girls who cheered and danced in front of him. His body was running mostly with sooty black, streaked with red, and his mouth seemed full of it too, and he began to spit.

  Then, one by one, Ranbir’s friends approached Rusty.

  Gently, they rubbed dust on the boy’s cheeks, and embraced him; they were like so many flaming demons that Rusty could not distinguish one from the other. But this gentle greeting, coming so soon after the stormy bicycle pump attack, bewildered Rusty even more.

  Ranbir said, ‘Now you are one of us, come.’ And Rusty went with him and the others.

  ‘Suri is hiding,’ cried someone. ‘He has locked himself in his house and won’t play Holi!’

  ‘Well, he will have to play,’ said Ranbir, ‘even if we break the house down.’

  Suri, who dreaded Holi, had decided to spend the day in a state of siege; he had set up camp in his mother’s kitchen, where there were provisions enough for the whole day. He listened to his playmates calling to him from the courtyard, and ignored their invitations, jeers, and threats; the door was strong and well barricaded.

  But the youths outside, intoxicated by the drumming and shouting and high spirits, were not going to be done out of the pleasure of discomfiting Suri. So they acquired a ladder and made their entry into the kitchen by the skylight.

  Suri squealed with fright. The door was opened and he was bundled out, and his spectacles were trampled.

  ‘My glasses!’ he screamed. ‘You’ve broken them!’

  ‘You can afford a dozen pairs!’ jeered one of his antagonists.

  ‘But I can’t see, you fools, I can’t see!’

  ‘He can’t see!’ cried someone in scorn. ‘For once in his life, Suri can’t see what’s going on! Now, whenever he spies, we’ll smash his glasses!’

  Not knowing Suri very well, Rusty could not help pitying the frantic boy.

  ‘Why don’t you let him go,’ he asked Ranbir. ‘Don’t force him if he doesn’t want to play.’

  ‘But this is the only chance we have of repaying him for all his dirty tricks. It is the only day on which no one is afraid of him!’

  Rusty could not imagine how anyone could possibly be afraid of the pale, struggling, spindly-legged boy who was almost being torn apart, and was glad when the others had finished their sport with him.

  All day Rusty roamed the town and countryside with Ranbir and his friends, and Suri was soon forgotten. For one day, Ranbir and his friends forgot their homes and their work and the problem of the next meal, and danced down the roads, out of town and into the forest. And, for one day, Rusty forgot his guardian and the missionary’s wife and the supple Malacca cane, and ran with the others through the town and into the forest.

  The crisp, sunny morning ripened into afternoon.

  In the forest, in the cool dark silence of the jungle, they stopped singing and shouting, suddenly exhausted. They lay down in the shade of many trees, and the grass was soft and comfortable, and very soon everyone except Rusty was fast asleep.

  Rusty was tired. He was hungry. He had lost his shirt and shoes, his feet were bruised, his body sore. It was only now, resting, that he noticed these things, for he had been caught up in the excitement of the colour game, overcome by an exhilaration he had never known. His fair hair was tousled and streaked with colour, and his eyes were wide with wonder.

  He was exhausted now, but he was happy.

  He wanted this to go on forever, this day of feverish emotion, this life in another world. He did not want to leave the forest; it was safe; its earth soothed him, gathered him in so that the pain of his body became a pleasure …

  He did not want to go home.

  Reunion at the Regal

  If you want to see a ghost, just stand outside New Delhi’s Regal Cinema for twenty minutes or so. The approach to the grand old cinema hall is a great place for them. Sooner or later you’ll see a familiar face in the crowd. Before you have time to recall who it was or who it may be, the face will have disappeared and you will be left wondering if it really was so-and-so … because surely so-and-so died several years ago …

  The Regal was very posh in the early 1940s when, in the company of my father, I watched my first film there. The Connaught Place cinemas still had a new look about them, and they played the latest offerings from Hollywood and Britain. To see a Hindi film, you had to travel all the way to Kashmere Gate or Chandni Chowk.

  Over the years, I was in and out of the Regal quite a few times, and so I became used to meeting old acquaintances or glimpsing familiar faces in the foyer or on the steps outside.

  On one occasion I was mistaken for a ghost.

  I was about thirty at the time. I was standing on the steps of the arcade, waiting for someone, when a young Indian man came up to me and said something in German or what sounded like German.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand. You may speak to me in English or Hindi.’

  ‘Aren’t you Hans? We met in Frankfurt last year.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never been to Frankfur
t.’

  ‘You look exactly like Hans.’

  ‘Maybe I’m his double. Or maybe I’m his ghost!’

  My facetious remark did not amuse the young man. He looked confused and stepped back, a look of horror spreading over his face. ‘No, no,’ he stammered. ‘Hans is alive, you can’t be his ghost!’

  ‘I was only joking.’

  But he had turned away, hurrying off through the crowd. He seemed agitated. I shrugged philosophically. So I had a double called Hans, I reflected; perhaps I too would run into him some day.

  I mention this incident only to show that most of us have lookalikes, and that sometimes we see what we want to see, or are looking for, even if on looking closer, the resemblance isn’t all that striking.

  But there was no mistaking Kishen when he approached me. I hadn’t seen him for five or six years, but he looked much the same. Bushy eyebrows, offset by gentle eyes; a determined chin, offset by a charming smile. The girls had always liked him, and he knew it; and he was content to let them do the pursuing.

  We watched a film—I think it was The Wind Cannot Read—and then we strolled across to the old Standard Restaurant, ordered dinner and talked about old times, while the small band played sentimental tunes from the 1950s.

  Yes, we talked about old times—growing up in Dehra, where we lived next door to each other, exploring our neighbours’ litchi orchards, cycling about the town in the days before the scooter had been invented, kicking a football around on the maidan, or just sitting on the compound wall doing nothing. I had just finished school, and an entire year stretched before me until it was time to go abroad. Kishen’s father, a civil engineer, was under transfer orders, so Kishen, too, temporarily did not have to go to school.

  He was an easy-going boy, quite content to be at a loose end in my company—I was to describe a couple of our escapades in my first novel, The Room on the Roof. I had literary pretensions; he was apparently without ambition although, as he grew older, he was to surprise me by his wide reading and erudition.