When Darkness Falls and Other Stories Read online

  Another so-called weed that I liked was a little purple flower that grew in clusters all over Dehra, on any bit of wasteland, in ditches, on canal banks. It flowered from late winter into early summer, and it will be growing in the valley and beyond long after gardens have become obsolete, as indeed they must, considering the rapid spread of urban clutter. It brightens up fields and roads where you least expect a little colour. I have since learnt that it is called Ageratum, and that it is actually prized as a garden flower in Europe, where it is described as ‘Blue Mink’ in the seed catalogues. Here it isn’t blue but purple and it grows all the way from Rajpur (just above Dehra) to the outskirts of Meerut; then it disappears.

  Other garden outcasts include the lantana bush, an attractive wayside shrub; the thorn apple, various thistles, daisies and dandelions. But both Granny and Dhuki had declared a war on weeds, and many of these commoners had to exist outside the confines of the garden. Like slum children, they survived rather well in ditches and on the roadside, while their more pampered fellow citizens were prone to leaf diseases and parasitic infections of various kinds.

  The veranda was a place where Granny herself could potter about, attending to various ferns, potted palms and colourful geraniums. She averred that geraniums kept snakes away, although she never said why. As far as I know, snakes don’t have a great sense of smell.

  One day I saw a snake curled up at the bottom of the veranda steps. When it saw me, or became aware of my footsteps, it uncoiled itself and slithered away. I told Granny about it, and observed that it did not seem to be bothered by the geraniums.

  ‘Ah,’ said Granny. ‘But for those geraniums, the snake would have entered the house!’ There was no arguing with Granny.

  Or with Uncle Ken, when he was at his most pontifical.

  One day, while walking near the canal bank, we came upon a green grass snake holding a frog in its mouth. The frog was half in, half out, and with the help of my hockey stick, I made the snake disgorge the unfortunate creature. It hopped away, none the worse for its adventure.

  I felt quite pleased with myself. ‘Is this what it feels like to be God?’ I mused aloud.

  ‘No,’ said Uncle Ken. ‘God would have let the snake finish its lunch.’

  Uncle Ken was one of those people who went through life without having to do much, although a great deal seemed to happen around him. He acted as a sort of catalyst for events that involved the family, friends, neighbours, the town itself. He believed in the fruits of hard work: other people’s hard work.

  Ken was good-looking as a boy, and his sisters doted on him. He took full advantage of their devotion, and, as the girls grew up and married, Ken took it for granted that they and their husbands would continue to look after his welfare. You could say he was the originator of the welfare state; his own.

  I’ll say this for Uncle Ken, he had a large fund of curiosity in his nature, and he loved to explore the town we lived in, and any other town or city where he might happen to find himself. With one sister settled in Lucknow, another in Ranchi, a third in Bhopal, a fourth in Pondicherry, and a fifth in Barrackpore, Uncle Ken managed to see a cross-section of India by dividing his time between all his sisters and their long-suffering husbands.

  Uncle Ken liked to walk. Occasionally he borrowed my bicycle, but he had a tendency to veer off the main road and into ditches and other obstacles after a collision with a bullock cart, in which he tore his trousers and damaged the handlebar of my bicycle, Uncle Ken concluded that walking was the best way of getting around Dehra.

  Uncle Ken dressed quite smartly for a man of no particular occupation. He had a blue-striped blazer and a red-striped blazer; he usually wore white or off-white trousers, immaculately pressed (by Granny). He was the delight of shoeshine boys, for he was always having his shoes polished. Summers he wore a straw hat, telling everyone he had worn it for the Varsity Boat Race, while rowing for Oxford (he hadn’t been to England, let alone Oxford); winters, he wore one of Grandfather’s old felt hats. He seldom went bareheaded. At thirty he was almost completely bald, prompting Aunt Mabel to remark: ‘Well, Ken, you must be grateful for small mercies. At least you’ll never have bats getting entangled in your hair.’

  Thanks to all his walking Uncle Ken had a good digestion, which kept pace with a hearty appetite. Our walks would be punctuated by short stops at chaat shops, sweet shops, fruit stalls, confectioners, small bakeries and other eateries.

  ‘Have you brought any pocket money along?’ he would ask, for he was usually broke.

  ‘Granny gave me five rupees.’

  ‘We’ll try some rasgullas, then.’

  And the rasgullas would be followed by gulab jamuns until my five rupees was finished. Uncle Ken received a small allowance from Granny, but he ferreted it away to spend on clothes, preferring to spend my pocket money on perishables such as ice creams, kulfis and Indian sweets.

  On one occasion, when neither of us had any money, Uncle Ken decided to venture into a sugarcane field on the outskirts of the town. He had broken off a stick of cane, and was busy chewing on it, when the owner of the field spotted us and let out a volley of imprecations. We fled from the field with the irate farmer giving chase. I could run faster than Uncle Ken, and did so. The farmer would have caught up with Uncle Ken if the latter’s hat hadn’t blown off, causing a diversion. The farmer picked up the hat, examined it, seemed to fancy it, and put it on. Several small boys clapped and cheered. The farmer marched off, wearing the hat, and Uncle Ken wisely decided against making any attempt to retrieve it.

  ‘I’ll get another one,’ he said philosophically.

  He wore a pith helmet, or sola topee, for the next few days, as he thought it would protect him from sticks and stones. For a while he harboured a paranoia that all the sugarcane farmers in the valley were looking for him, to avenge his foray into their fields. But after some time he discarded the topee because, according to him, it interfered with his good looks.

  Granny grew the best sweet peas in Dehra. But she never entered them at the Annual Flower Show, held every year in the second week of March. She did not grow flowers to win prizes, she said; she grew them to please the spirit of Grandfather, who still hovered about the house and grounds he’d built thirty years earlier.

  Miss Kellner, Granny’s crippled but valued tenant, said the flowers were grown to attract beautiful butterflies, and she was right. In early summer, swarms of butterflies flitted about the garden.

  Uncle Ken had no compunction about winning prizes, even though he did nothing to deserve them. Without telling anyone, he submitted a large display of Granny’s sweet peas for the flower show, and when the prizes were announced, lo and behold! Kenneth Clerke had been awarded first prize for his magnificent display of sweet peas.

  Granny refused to speak to him for several days.

  Uncle Ken had been hoping for a cash prize, but they gave him a flower vase. He told me it was a Ming vase. But it looked more like Meerut to me. He offered it to Granny, hoping to propitiate her; but, still displeased with him, she gave it to Mr Khastgir, the artist next door, who kept his paintbrushes in it.

  Although I was sometimes a stubborn and unruly boy (my hero was Richmal Crompton’s ‘William’), I got on well with old ladies, especially those who, like Miss Kellner, were fond of offering me chocolates, marzipans, soft nankattai biscuits (made at Yusuf’s bakery in the Dilaram Bazaar), and pieces of crystallized ginger. Miss Kellner couldn’t walk—had never walked—and so she could only admire the garden from a distance, but it was from her that I learnt the names of many flowers, trees, birds and even butterflies.

  Uncle Ken wasn’t any good at names, but he wanted to catch a rare butterfly. He said he could make a fortune if he caught a leaf butterfly called the Purple Emperor. He equipped himself with a butterfly net, a bottle of ether, and a cabinet for mounting his trophies; he then prowled all over the grounds, making frequent forays at anything that flew. He caught several common species—Red Admirals, a Tortoisesh
ell, a Painted Lady, even the occasional dragonfly—but the high-flying Purple Emperor and other exotics eluded him, as did the fortune he was always aspiring to make.

  Eventually he caught an angry wasp, which stung him through the netting. Chased by its fellow wasps, he took refuge in the lily pond and emerged sometime later draped in lilies and water weeds.

  After this, Uncle Ken retired from the butterfly business, insisting that tiger-hunting was safer.

  The Ghost in the Garden

  Behind the house there was an orchard where guava, lichee and papaya trees mingled with two or three tall mango trees. The guava trees were easy to climb. The lichee trees gave a lot of shade—as well as bunches of delicious lichees in the summer. The mango trees were at their most attractive in the spring, when their blossoms gave out a heady fragrance.

  But there was one old mango tree, near the boundary wall, where no one, not even Dhuki the gardener, ever went.

  ‘It doesn’t give any fruit,’ said Dhuki, when I questioned him. ‘It’s an old tree.’

  ‘Then why don’t we cut it down?’

  ‘We will, one day, when your grandmother wishes …’

  The weeds grew thick in that corner of the garden. They were safe there from Dhuki’s relentless weeding.

  ‘Why doesn’t anyone go to that corner of the orchard?’ I asked Miss Kellner, our crippled tenant, who had been in Dehra since she was a girl.

  But she didn’t want to talk about it. Uncle Ken, too, changed the subject whenever I brought it up.

  So I wandered about the orchard on my own, cautiously making my way towards that neglected and forbidden corner of the garden until Dhuki called me back.

  ‘Don’t go there, baba,’ he cautioned. ‘It’s unlucky.’

  ‘Why doesn’t anyone go near the old mango tree?’ I asked Granny.

  She just shook her head and turned away. There was obviously something that no one wanted me to know. So I disobeyed and ignored everyone, and in the still of the afternoon, when most of the household was taking a siesta, I walked over to the old mango tree at the end of the garden.

  It was a cool, shady place, and seemed friendly enough. But there were no birds in the tree; no squirrels, either. And this was unusual. I sat down on the grass, with my back against the trunk of the tree, and peered out at the sunlit house and garden. In the shimmering heat haze I thought I saw someone walking through the trees, but it wasn’t Dhuki or anyone I knew.

  It had been a hot day, but presently I began to feel cold; and then I found myself shivering, as though a fever had suddenly come on. I looked up into the tree, and the branch above me was moving, swaying slightly, although there was no breeze and all the other leaves and branches were still.

  I felt I had to get out of the cold, but I found it difficult to get up. So I crawled across the grass on my hands and knees, until I was in the bright sunlight. The shivering passed and I ran across to the house and did not look back at the mango tree until I had reached the verandah.

  I told Miss Kellner about my experience.

  ‘Were you frightened?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes—a little,’ I confessed.

  ‘And did you see anything?’

  ‘Some of the branches moved—I felt very cold—but there was no wind.’

  ‘Did you hear anything?’

  ‘Just a soft moaning sound.’

  ‘It’s an old tree. It groans when it feels its age—just as I do!’

  I did not go near the mango tree for some time, and I did not mention the incident to Granny or Uncle Ken. I had by now realized that the subject was taboo with them.

  As a boy I was always exploring lonely places—neglected gardens and orchards, unoccupied houses, patches of scrub or wasteland, the fields outside the town, the fringes of the forest. On one of my rambles behind the bungalow, I pushed my way through a thicket of lantana bushes and stumbled over a thick stone slab, twisting my ankle slightly as I fell. For some time I sat on the grass massaging my foot. When the pain eased, I looked more closely at the stone slab and was surprised to find that it was a gravestone. It was almost entirely covered by ivy; obviously no one had been near it for years. I tugged at the ivy and some of it came away in my hands. There was some indistinct lettering on the grave, half-obscured by grass and moss. I could make out a name—Rose—but little more.

  I sat there for some time, pondering over my discovery, and wondering why ‘Rose’ should have been buried at so lonely a spot when there was a cemetery not far away. Why hadn’t she been interred beside her kith and kind? Had she wished it so? And why?

  Only Miss Kellner seemed willing to answer my questions, and it was to her I went, where she sat in her armchair under the pomalo tree—the armchair from which she never moved except when she was carried bodily to her bed or bathroom by the ayah or a couple of her rickshaw boys. I can never forget crippled Miss Kellner in her armchair in the garden, playing patience with a well-worn pack of cards—and always patient with me whenever I interrupted her game with endless questions about neighbours or relatives or her own history. Even as a boy, the past fascinated me. I don’t mean the history of nations; I mean individual histories, the way people lived, and why they were happy or unhappy, and why they sometimes did terrible things for no apparent rhyme or reason.

  ‘Miss Kellner,’ I asked, ‘whose grave is that in the jungle behind the house?’

  She looked at me over the rim of her pince-nez. ‘How would you expect me to know, child? Do I look as though I could climb walls, looking for old graves? Have you asked your grandmother?’

  ‘Granny won’t tell me anything. And Uncle Ken pretends to know everything when he knows nothing.’

  ‘So how should I know?’

  ‘You’ve been here a long time.’

  ‘Only twenty years. That happened before I came to this house.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, you are a trying boy. Why must you know everything?’

  ‘It’s better than not knowing.’

  ‘Are you sure? Sometimes it’s better not to know.’

  ‘Sometimes, maybe … But I like to know. Who was Rose?’

  ‘Your grandfather’s first wife.’

  ‘Oh.’ This came as a surprise. I hadn’t heard about grandfather’s first marriage. ‘But why is she buried in such a lonely place? Why not in the cemetery?’

  ‘Because she took her own life. And in those days a suicide couldn’t be given Christian burial in a cemetery. Now is your curiosity satisfied?’

  But my appetite had only been whetted for more information. ‘And why did she commit suicide?’

  ‘I really don’t know, child. Why would anyone? Because they are unhappy, tired of living, in distress over something or the other.’

  ‘You’re not tired of living, are you? Even though you can’t walk and your fingers are all crooked …’

  ‘Don’t be rude, or you won’t find any meringues in my pantry! My fingers are good enough for writing, and for poking small boys in the ribs.’ And she gave me a sharp poke which made me yelp. ‘No, I’m not tired of life—not yet—but people are made differently, you know. And your grandfather isn’t around to tell us what happened. And of course he married again—your grandmother …’

  ‘Would she have known the first one?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She met your grandfather much later. But she doesn’t like to talk about these things.’

  ‘And how did Rose commit suicide?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Of course you know, Miss Kellner. You can’t bluff me. You know everything!’

  ‘I wasn’t here, I tell you.’

  ‘But you heard all about it. And I know how she did it. She must have hanged herself from that mango tree—the tree at the end of the garden, which everyone avoids. I told you I went there one day, and it was very cold and lonely in its shade. I was frightened, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Kellner pensively. ‘She must have been lonely, po
or thing. She wasn’t very stable, I’m told. Used to wander about on her own, picking wildflowers, singing to herself, sometimes getting lost and coming home at odd hours. How does the old song go? ‘Lonely as the desert breeze …’ In her croaky voice, Miss Kellner sang a refrain from an old ballad, before continuing, ‘Your grandfather was very fond of her. He wasn’t a cruel man. He put up with her strange ways. But sometimes he lost patience and scolded her and once or twice had even to lock her up. That was frightening, because then she would start screaming. It was a mistake locking her up. Never lock anyone up, child … Something seemed to snap inside her. She became violent at times.’

  ‘How do you know all this, Miss Kellner?’

  ‘Your grandfather would sometimes come over and tell me his troubles. I was living in another house then, a little way down the road. Poor man, he had a trying time with Rose. He was thinking of sending her to Ranchi, to the mental hospital. Then, early one morning, he found her hanging from the mango tree. Her spirit had flown away, like the bluebird she always wanted to be.’

  After that, I did not go near the old mango tree; I found it rather menacing, as though it had actually participated in that dark deed … Poor innocent tree, being saddled with the emotions of unbalanced humans! But I did visit the neglected grave and cleaned the weeds away, so that the inscription came out more clearly: ‘Rose, dearly beloved wife of Henry—(my maternal grandfather’s surname followed). And when Dhuki wasn’t looking, I plucked a red rose from the garden and placed it on the grave.