White Clouds, Green Mountains Page 3

  ‘We should have turned back from Suakholi,’ he said accusingly, as though it was all my fault.

  ‘Well, you might get some in Suakholi,’ I said. ‘Ask a passing truck-driver. I’ll stay here with the car.’

  So Ohri trudged up to Suakholi, while I settled down in the shade of a whispering pine and enjoyed my afternoon siesta. When I woke up, it was evening and I was feeling hungry. I went to the car and through the window-glass saw that there were still some biscuits on the front seat. But Ohri had locked all the doors! I returned to the rest house and explored the ruins. There was nothing there that I could eat, except for some wild sorrel growing in the cracks of the building.

  Ohri came back just as it was getting dark. He’d brought the petrol but had neglected to bring any food.

  On our way back we ate the dog biscuits.

  Try them sometime. They are really quite nourishing. And they don’t taste too bad if you’re really hungry.

  When Ohri’s wife scolded him for not bringing the dog biscuits, all he could say was, ‘Ruskin ate them.’

  3

  Banks are not normally exciting places, except when there’s a bank robbery. But with Ohri around there was never a dull moment.

  Our small branch is now computerised, but a few years ago it did not even have a typewriter. They used to borrow mine. Not everyday, but once a year, for a week or two, when their auditors came around.

  I had three typewriters—a heavy Godrej, an old Olympic (which I still use occasionally) and an ancient German machine gifted to me by Goel, who is Swiss. The bank’s chaprassi would walk down to my place, collect the Godrej, and struggle back up the hill with it. I did not share my Olympic with the bank. But on one occasion, while I was out, the chaprassi took the German machine by mistake and this led to some confusion.

  On German typewriters the letter ‘Z’ occurs where there is normally a ‘Y’ on an English machine, and if you are not used to it, and are typing fast, you are apt to produce a certain amount of gibberish. If you want to say ‘You might pick up yellow fever in Zanzibar’, it could come out ‘Zou might pick up yellow fever in Yanyibar’! The auditors and my friends at the bank got into many a tangle: zeros became yeros and even euros, Japanese yens became zens. Chinese yuans became zuans. The foreign exchange section was in a fine mess.

  It was after this that the bank was hurriedly computerised.

  Ohri had left by then. As a last treat he took me along on a nocturnal excursion to see a black panther which, he said, was on the prowl in the vicinity of Barlowganj.

  ‘Black panthers are very rare now,’ he told me. ‘No one has seen one here in over fifty years!’

  ‘Not since General Barlow shot the last one,’ I added rather mischievously.

  ‘We’ll go down to Barlowganj tonight,’ he said, as enthusiastic as ever. ‘We’ll sit up for it until dawn.’

  ‘Don’t forget the dog biscuits,’ I said, ‘I get hungry around midnight.’

  Biscuits were not required. Mrs Ohri gave us a substantial dinner, guaranteed to put me to sleep while Ohri sat up looking for his black panther.

  ‘It’s just a big black dog,’ she told me. ‘The chowkidar at St George’s school has a Bhotia mastiff. At night it gets mistaken for a panther.’

  This wasn’t going to deter Ohri from driving us down to the valley and back again, with numerous stops for panther-watching and swigs of rum. The stars looked down from a clear night sky. Ohri waxed poetic, ‘The night has a thousand eyes—’

  ‘Under a Scotsman’s kilt,’ I put in.

  ‘Shh … we mustn’t talk too much. We’ll frighten it away.’ ‘If you see a panther, don’t anther,’ I quoted Ogden Nash. Ohri complained that I wasn’t taking the expedition seriously, so I closed my eyes and fell asleep. Presently I was awake again. He was shaking me, whispering urgently, ‘Look, there’s something in those bushes, you can see them moving!’

  They were indeed moving, and soon parted to reveal an elderly villager who had got up early in order to relieve himself in the great outdoors. He was not pleased at having his privacy disturbed.

  ‘Have you seen a panther?’ asked Ohri. ‘Kala baghera?’

  ‘Baghera yourself,’ snapped the villager, who seemed equally at home in Hindi and English. ‘Can’t have a decent—in peace. Tourists all over the place,’ and he stomped off into the darkness.

  We were home before dawn. Mrs Ohri gave us a splendid breakfast.

  ‘Did you see anything?’ she asked.

  ‘Too many people about,’ I said. ‘No room left for leopards, black or spotted.’

  ‘We heard it,’ insisted Ohri. ‘I heard it growling in the bushes.’

  ‘How do you know it was a black panther?’ asked Mrs Ohri. ‘It may have been spotted.’

  ‘Not only that,’ I added, ‘it was carrying an empty mineral water bottle in lieu of a lota!’

  A Long Story

  I live right on top of a hill and Gautam’s school is right at the bottom; so I thought it would be a good idea if I walked the two miles to school with him every morning. I would be company for the boy, and the walk, I felt, would do wonders for my sagging waistline.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ he said the first time we set off together. And so I told him one. And the next day I told him another. A story a day, told on the long walk through the deodars became routine until I discovered that in this way I was writing myself out—that, story invented and told, I would come home to the realisation that the day’s creative work was done and that I couldn’t face my desk or typewriter.

  So I decided it had to be a serial story. And I found that the best way to keep it going was to invent a man-eating leopard who carried off a different victim every day. An expanding population, I felt, could sustain his depredations over the months and even the years.

  Small boys love blood-thirsty man-eaters, and Gautam was no exception. Every day, in the story, one of the townsfolk disappeared, a victim to the leopard’s craving for human flesh. He started with the town gossip and worked his way through the clerk who’d lost my file, the barber who’d cut my hair too short, and the shopkeeper who’d sold me the previous year’s fireworks, and well, there’s no end to the people who can be visualised as suitable victims.

  I must confess that I was getting as much pleasure out of the tale as Gautam. I think Freud might have had a theory or two about my attitude.

  ‘When is it going to be shot?’ asked Gautam one morning.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, ‘not yet.’

  But towards the end of the year I was beginning to have qualms of conscience. Who was I, a mere mortal, to decide on who should be eaten and who should survive? Although the population had been reduced, the accommodation problem remained the same.

  Well things came to a head when a real leopard appeared on the hillside and made off with my neighbour’s pet pekinese.

  Had I, with my fevered imaginings, brought into being an actual leopard? Only a dog-eater, true: but one never knew when it might start on people. And I was still well-fleshed, in spite of the long walks.

  So the story had to end.

  ‘The man-eater is dead,’ I announced last week.

  ‘Who shot it?’

  ‘It wasn’t shot. It just died.’

  ‘Of old age?’

  ‘No. Of ulcerative colitis.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Gautam.

  ‘Acute indigestion,’ I said. ‘It ate too many people.’

  Binya Passes By

  The author looks back on a love of long ago. ‘It isn’t time that’s passing by; it is you and I …’

  While I was walking home one day, along the path through the pines, I heard a girl singing.

  It was summer in the hills, and the trees were in new leaf. The walnuts and cherries were just beginning to form between the leaves.

  The wind was still and the trees were hushed, and the song came to me clearly; but it was not the words—which I could not follow—or the rise and fall of the m
elody which held me in thrall, but the voice itself, which was a young and tender voice.

  I left the path and scrambled down the slope, slipping on fallen pine needles. But when I came to the bottom of the slope, the singing had stopped and no one was there. ‘I’m sure I heard someone singing,’ I said to myself; but I may have been wrong. In the hills it is always possible to be wrong.

  So I walked on home, and presently I heard another song, but this time it was the whistling thrush rendering a broken melody, singing of dark, sweet secrets in the depths of the forest.

  I had little to sing about myself, as the electricity bill hadn’t been paid, and there was nothing in the bank, and my second novel had just been turned down by another publisher. Still, it was summer, and men and animals were drowsy, and so too were my creditors. The distant mountains loomed purple in the shimmering dust-haze.

  I walked through the pines again, but I did not hear the singing. And then for a week I did not leave the cottage, as the novel had to be rewritten, and I worked hard at it, pausing only to eat and sleep and take note of the leaves turning a darker green.

  The window opened on to the forest. Trees reached up to the window. Oak, maple, walnut. Higher up the hill, the pines started, and further on, armies of deodars marched over the mountains. And the mountains rose higher, and the trees grew stunted until they finally disappeared and only the black spirit-haunted rocks rose up to meet the everlasting snows. Those peaks cradled the sky. I could not see them from my windows. But on clear mornings they could be seen from the pass on the Tehri road.

  There was a stream at the bottom of the hill. One morning, quite early, I went down to the stream, and using the boulders as stepping-stones, moved downstream for about half a mile. Then I lay down to rest on a flat rock, in the shade of a wild cherry tree, and watched the sun shifting through the branches as it rose over the hill called Pari Tibba (Fairy Hill) and slid down the steep slope into the valley. The air was very still and already the birds were silent. The only sound came from the water running over the stony bed of the stream. I had lain there ten, perhaps fifteen, minutes when I began to feel that someone was watching me.

  Someone in the trees, in the shadows, still and watchful. Nothing moved; not a stone shifted, not a twig broke; but someone was watching me. I felt terribly exposed; not to danger, but to the scrutiny of unknown eyes. So I left the rock and, finding a path through the trees, began climbing the hill again.

  It was warm work. The sun was up, and there was no breeze. I was perspiring profusely by the time I got to the top of the hill. There was no sign of my unseen watcher. Two lean cows grazed on the short grass; the tinkling of their bells was the only sound in the sultry summer air.

  That song again! The same song, the same singer. I heard her from my window. And putting aside the book I was reading, I leant out of the window and started down through the trees. But the foliage was too heavy, and the singer too far away for me to be able to make her out. ‘Should I go and look for her?’ I wondered. Or is it better this way—heard but not seen? For having fallen in love with a song, must it follow that I will fall in love with the singer? No. But surely it is the voice, and not the song that has touched me … Presently the singing ended, and I turned away from the window.

  A girl was gathering bilberries on the hillside. She was fresh-faced, honey-coloured; her lips were stained with purple juice. She smiled at me. ‘Are they good to eat?’ I asked.

  She opened her fist and thrust out her hand, which was full of berries, bruised and crushed. I took one and put it in my mouth. It had a sharp, sour taste. ‘It is good,’ I said. Finding that I could speak haltingly in her language, she came nearer, said, ‘Take more then,’ and filled my hand with bilberries. Her fingers touched mine. The sensation was almost unique; for it was nine or ten years since my hand had touched a girl’s.

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked. She pointed across the valley to where a small village straddled the slopes of a terraced hill.

  ‘It’s quite far,’ I said. ‘Do you always come so far from home?’

  ‘I go further than this,’ she said. ‘The cows must find fresh grass. And there is wood to gather and grass to cut.’ She showed me the sickle held by the cloth tied firmly about her waist. ‘Sometimes I go to the top of Pari Tibba, sometimes to the valley beyond. Have you been there?’

  ‘No. But I will go some day.’

  ‘It is always windy on Pari Tibba.’

  ‘Is it true that there are fairies there?’

  She laughed. ‘That is what people say. But those are people who have never been there. I do not see fairies on Pari Tibba. It is said that there are ghosts in the ruins on the hill. But I do not see any ghosts.’

  ‘I have heard of the ghosts,’ I said. ‘Two lovers who ran away and took shelter in a ruined cottage. At night there was a storm, and they were killed by lightning. Is it true, this story?’

  ‘It happened many years ago, before I was born. I have heard the story. But there are no ghosts on Pari Tibba.’

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Fifteen, sixteen, I do not know for sure.’

  ‘Doesn’t your mother know?’

  ‘She is dead. And my grandmother has forgotten. And my brother, he is younger than me and he’s forgotten his own age. Is it important to remember?’

  ‘No, it is not important. Not here, anyway. Not in the hills. To a mountain, a hundred years are but as a day.’

  ‘Are you very old?’ she asked.

  ‘I hope not. Do I look very old?’

  ‘Only a hundred,’ she said, and laughed, and the silver bangles on her wrists tinkled as she put her hand up to her laughing face.

  ‘Why do you laugh?’ I asked.

  ‘Because you looked as though you believed me. How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-five, thirty-six, I do not remember.’

  ‘Ah, it is better to forget!’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said, ‘but sometimes one has to fill in forms and things like that, and then one has to state one’s age.’

  ‘I have never filled a form. I have never seen one.’

  ‘And I hope you never will. It is a piece of paper covered with useless information. It is all a part of human progress.’

  ‘Progress?’

  ‘Yes. Are you unhappy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you go hungry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you don’t need progress. Wild bilberries are better.’

  She went away without saying goodbye. The cows had strayed and she ran after them, calling them by name: ‘Neelu, Neelu!’ (Blue) and ‘Bhuri!’ (Old One). Her bare feet moved swiftly over the rocks and dry grass.

  Early May. The cicadas were singing in the forests; or rather, orchestrating, since they make the sound with their legs. The whistling thrushes pursued each other over the tree-tops, in acrobatic love-flights. Sometimes the langurs visited the oak trees, to feed on the leaves. As I moved down the path to the stream, I heard the same singing; and coming suddenly upon the clearing near the water’s edge, I saw the girl sitting on a rock, her feet in the rushing water—the same girl who had given me bilberries. Strangely enough, I had not guessed that she was the singer. Unseen voices conjure up fanciful images. I had imagined a woodland nymph, a graceful, delicate, beautiful, goddess-like creature; not a mischievous-eyed, round-faced, juice-stained, slightly ragged pixie. Her dhoti—a rough, homespun sari—faded and torn; an impractical garment, I thought, for running about on the hillside, but the village folk put their girls into dhotis before they are twelve. She’d compromised by hitching it up, and by strengthening the waist with a length of cloth bound tightly about her, but she’d have been more at ease in the long, flounced skirt worn in the further hills.

  But I was not disillusioned. I had clearly taken a fancy to her cherubic, open countenance; and the sweetness of her voice added to her charms.

  I watched her from the banks of the stream, and presently she looked
up, grinned, and stuck her tongue out at me.

  ‘That’s a nice way to greet me,’ I said. ‘Have I offended you?’

  ‘You surprised me. Why did you not call out?’

  ‘Because I was listening to your singing. I did not wish to speak until you had finished.’

  ‘It was only a song.’

  ‘But you sang it sweetly.’

  She smiled. ‘Have you brought anything to eat?’

  ‘No. Are you hungry?’

  ‘At this time I get hungry. When you come to meet me you must always bring something to eat.’

  ‘But I didn’t come to meet you. I didn’t know you would be here.’

  ‘You do not wish to meet me?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. It is nice to meet you.’

  ‘You will meet me if you keep coming into the forest. So always bring something to eat.’

  ‘I will do so next time. Shall I pick you some berries?’

  ‘You will have to go to the top of the hill again to find the kingora bushes.’

  ‘I don’t mind. If you are hungry, I will bring some.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, and looked down at her feet, which were still in the water.

  Like some knight-errant of old, I toiled up the hill again until I found the bilberry bushes; and stuffing my pockets with berries, I returned to the stream. But when I got there I found she’d slipped away. The cowbells tinkled on the far hill.

  Glow-worms shone fitfully in the dark. The night was full of sounds—the tonk-tonk of a nightjar, the cry of a barking deer, the shuffling of porcupines, the soft flip-flop of moths beating against the windowpanes. On the hill across the valley, lights flickered in the small village—the dim lights of kerosene lamps swinging in the dark.

  ‘What is your name?’ I asked, when we met again on the path through the pine forest.

  ‘Binya,’ she said. ‘What is yours?’

  ‘I’ve no name.’

  ‘All right, Mr No-name.’

  ‘I mean, I haven’t made a name for myself. We must make our own names, don’t you think?’