Tales of Fosterganj Read online

  Then one evening, walking up from Rajpur, I was caught in a storm.

  A wind had sprung up, bringing with it dark, over-burdened clouds. Heavy drops of rain were followed by hailstones bouncing off the stony path. Gusts of wind rushed through the oaks, and leaves and small branches were soon swirling through the air. I was still a couple of miles from the Fosterganj bazaar, and I did not fancy sheltering under a tree, as flashes of lightning were beginning to light up the darkening sky. Then I found myself outside the gate of the abandoned palace.

  Outside the gate stood an old sentry box. No one had stood sentry in it for years. It was a good place in which to shelter. But I hesitated because a large bird was perched on the gate, seemingly oblivious to the rain that was still falling.

  It looked like a crow or a raven, but it was much bigger than either—in fact, twice the size of a crow, but having all the features of one—and when a flash of lightning lit up the gate, it gave a squawk, opened its enormous wings and took off, flying in the direction of the oak forest. I hadn’t seen such a bird before; there was something dark and malevolent and almost supernatural about it. But it had gone, and I darted into the sentry box without further delay.

  I had been standing there some ten minutes, wondering when the rain was going to stop, when I heard someone running down the road. As he approached, I could see that he was just a boy, probably eleven or twelve; but in the dark I could not make out his features. He came up to the gate, lifted the latch, and was about to go in when he saw me in the sentry box.

  ‘Kaun? Who are you?’ he asked, first in Hindi then in English. He did not appear to be in any way anxious or alarmed.

  ‘Just sheltering from the rain,’ I said. ‘I live in the bazaar.’

  He took a small torch from his pocket and shone it in my face.

  ‘Yes, I have seen you there. A tourist.’

  ‘A writer. I stay in places, I don’t just pass through.’

  ‘Do you want to come in?’

  I hesitated. It was still raining and the roof of the sentry box was leaking badly.

  ‘Do you live here?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I am the raja’s nephew. I live here with my mother. Come in.’ He took me by the hand and led me through the gate. His hand was quite rough and heavy for an eleven- or twelve-year-old. Instead of walking with me to the front step and entrance of the old palace, he led me around to the rear of the building, where a faint light glowed in a mullioned window, and in its light I saw that he had a very fresh and pleasant face—a face as yet untouched by the trials of life.

  Instead of knocking on the door, he tapped on the window. ‘Only strangers knock on the door,’ he said. ‘When I tap on the window, my mother knows it’s me.’

  ‘That’s clever of you,’ I said.

  He tapped again, and the door was opened by an unusually tall woman wearing a kind of loose, flowing gown that looked strange in that place, and on her. The light was behind her, and I couldn’t see her face until we had entered the room. When she turned to me, I saw that she had a long reddish scar running down one side of her face. Even so, there was a certain, hard beauty in her appearance.

  ‘Make some tea—Mother,’ said the boy rather brusquely. ‘And something to eat. I’m hungry. Sir, will you have something?’ He looked enquiringly at me. The light from a kerosene lamp fell full on his face. He was wide-eyed, full-lipped, smiling; only his voice seemed rather mature for one so young. And he spoke like someone much older, and with an almost unsettling sophistication.

  ‘Sit down, sir.’ He led me to a chair, made me comfortable. ‘You are not too wet, I hope?’

  ‘No, I took shelter before the rain came down too heavily. But you are wet, you’d better change.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me.’ And after a pause, ‘Sorry there is no electricity. Bills haven’t been paid for years.’

  ‘Is this your place?’

  ‘No, we are only caretakers. Poor relations, you might say. The palace has been in dispute for many years. The raja and his brothers keep fighting over it, and meanwhile it is slowly falling down. The lawyers are happy. Perhaps I should study and become a lawyer some day.’

  ‘Do you go to school?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Quite old, I’m not sure. Mother, how old am I?’ he asked, as the tall woman returned with cups of tea and a plate full of biscuits.

  She hesitated, gave him a puzzled look. ‘Don’t you know? It’s on your certificate.’

  ‘I’ve lost the certificate.’

  ‘No, I’ve kept it safely.’ She looked at him intently, placed a hand on his shoulder, then turned to me and said, ‘He is twelve,’ with a certain finality.

  We finished our tea. It was still raining.

  ‘It will rain all night,’ said the boy. ‘You had better stay here.’

  ‘It will inconvenience you.’

  ‘No, it won’t. There are many rooms. If you do not mind the darkness. Come, I will show you everything. And meanwhile my mother will make some dinner. Very simple food, I hope you won’t mind.’

  The boy took me around the old palace, if you could still call it that. He led the way with a candle-holder from which a large candle threw our exaggerated shadows on the walls.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked, as he led me into what must have been a reception room, still crowded with ornate furniture and bric-a-brac.

  ‘Bhim,’ he said. ‘But everyone calls me Lucky.’

  ‘And are you lucky?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know…’ Then he smiled up at me. ‘Maybe you’ll bring me luck.’

  We walked further into the room. Large oil paintings hung from the walls, gathering mould. Some were portraits of royalty, kings and queens of another era, wearing decorative headgear, strange uniforms, the women wrapped in jewellery—more jewels than garments, it seemed—and sometimes accompanied by children who were also weighed down by excessive clothing. A young man sat on a throne, his lips curled in a sardonic smile.

  ‘My grandfather,’ said Bhim.

  He led me into a large bedroom taken up by a four-poster bed which had probably seen several royal couples copulating upon it. It looked cold and uninviting, but Bhim produced a voluminous razai from a cupboard and assured me that it would be warm and quite luxurious, as it had been his grandfather’s.

  ‘And when did your grandfather die?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, fifty-sixty years ago, it must have been.’

  ‘In this bed, I suppose.’

  ‘No, he was shot accidentally while out hunting. They said it was an accident. But he had enemies.’

  ‘Kings have enemies… And this was the royal bed?’

  He gave me a sly smile; not so innocent after all. ‘Many women slept in it. He had many queens.’

  ‘And concubines.’

  ‘What are concubines?’

  ‘Unofficial queens.’

  ‘Yes, those too.’

  A worldly-wise boy of twelve.

  A Big Black Bird

  I did not feel like sleeping in that room, with its musty old draperies and paint peeling off the walls. A trickle of water from the ceiling fell down the back of my shirt and made me shiver.

  ‘The roof is leaking,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’d better go home.’

  ‘You can’t go now, it’s very late. And that leopard has been seen again.’

  He fetched a china bowl from the dressing-table and placed it on the floor to catch the trickle from the ceiling. In another corner of the room a plastic bucket was receiving a steady patter from another leak.

  ‘The palace is leaking everywhere,’ said Bhim cheerfully. ‘This is the only dry room.’

  He took me by the hand and led me back to his own quarters. I was surprised, again, by how heavy and rough his hand was for a boy, and presumed that he did a certain amount of manual work such as chopping wood for a daily fire. In winter the building would be unbearably cold.

  His mother
gave us a satisfying meal, considering the ingredients at her disposal were somewhat limited. Once again, I tried to get away. But only half-heartedly. The boy intrigued me; so did his mother; so did the rambling old palace; and the rain persisted.

  Bhim the Lucky took me to my room; waited with the guttering candle till I had removed my shoes; handed me a pair of very large pyjamas.

  ‘Royal pyjamas,’ he said with a smile.

  I got into them and floated around.

  ‘Before you go—’ I said. ‘I might want to visit the bathroom in the night.’

  ‘Of course, sir. It’s close by.’ He opened a door, and beyond it I saw a dark passage. ‘Go a little way, and there’s a door on the left. I’m leaving an extra candle and matches on the dressing-table.’

  He put the lighted candle he was carrying on the table, and left the room without a light. Obviously he knew his way about in the dark. His footsteps receded, and I was left alone with the sound of raindrops pattering on the roof and a loose sheet of corrugated tin roofing flapping away in a wind that had now sprung up.

  It was a summer’s night, and I had no need of blankets; so I removed my shoes and jacket and lay down on the capacious bed, wondering if I should blow the candle out or allow it to burn as long as it lasted.

  Had I been in my own room, I would have been reading—a Conrad or a Chekhov or some other classic—because at night I turn to the classics—but here there was no light and nothing to read.

  I got up and blew the candle out. I might need it later on.

  Restless, I prowled around the room in the dark, banging into chairs and footstools. I made my way to the window and drew the curtains aside. Some light filtered into the room because behind the clouds there was a moon, and it had been a full moon the night before.

  I lay back on the bed. It wasn’t very comfortable. It was a box-bed, of the sort that had only just begun to become popular in households with small bedrooms. This one had been around for some time—no doubt a very early version of its type—and although it was covered with a couple of thick mattresses, the woodwork appeared to have warped because it creaked loudly whenever I shifted my position. The boards no longer fitted properly. Either that, or the box-bed had been overstuffed with all sorts of things.

  After some time I settled into one position and dozed off for a while, only to be awakened by the sound of someone screaming somewhere in the building. My hair stood on end. The screaming continued, and I wondered if I should get up to investigate. Then suddenly it stopped—broke off in the middle as though it had been muffled by a hand or piece of cloth.

  There was a tapping at the pane of the big French window in front of the bed. Probably the branch of a tree, swaying in the wind. But then there was a screech, and I sat up in bed. Another screech, and I was out of it.

  I went to the window and pressed my face to the glass. The big black bird—the bird I had seen when taking shelter in the sentry box—was sitting, or rather squatting, on the boundary wall, facing me. The moon, now visible through the clouds, fell full upon it. I had never seen a bird like it before. Crow-like, but heavily built, like a turkey, its beak that of a bird of prey, its talons those of a vulture. I stepped back, and closed the heavy curtains, shutting out the light but also shutting out the image of that menacing bird.

  Returning to the bed, I just sat there for a while, wondering if I should get up and leave. The rain had lessened. But the luminous dial of my watch showed it was two in the morning. No time for a stroll in the dark—not with a man-eating leopard in the vicinity.

  Then I heard the shriek again. It seemed to echo through the building. It may have been the bird, but to me it sounded all too human. There was silence for a long while after that. I lay back on the bed and tried to sleep. But it was even more uncomfortable than before. Perhaps the wood had warped too much during the monsoon, I thought, and the lid of the old box-bed did not fit properly. Maybe I could push it back into its correct position; then perhaps I could get some sleep.

  So I got up again, and after fumbling around in the dark for a few minutes, found the matches and lit the candle. Then I removed the sheets from the bed and pulled away the two mattresses. The cover of the box-bed lay exposed. And a hand protruded from beneath the lid.

  It was not a living hand. It was a skeletal hand, fleshless, brittle. But there was a ring on one finger, an opal still clinging to the bone of a small index finger. It glowed faintly in the candlelight.

  Shaking a little (for I am really something of a coward, though an inquisitive one), I lifted the lid of the box-bed. Laid out on a pretty counterpane was a skeleton. A bundle of bones, but still clothed in expensive-looking garments. One hand gripped the side of the box-bed; the hand that had kept it from shutting properly.

  I dropped the lid of the box-bed and ran from the room—only to blunder into a locked door. Someone, presumably the boy, had locked me into the bedroom.

  I banged on the door and shouted, but no one heard me. No one came running. I went to the large French window, but it was firmly fastened, it probably hadn’t been opened for many years.

  Then I remembered the passageway leading to the bathroom. The boy had pointed it out to me. Possibly there was a way out from there.

  It opened easily, and I stepped out into the darkness, finding myself entangled in a creeper that grew against the wall. From its cloying fragrance I recognized it as wisteria.

  A narrow path led to a wicket-gate at the end of the building. I found my way out of the grounds and back on the familiar public road. The old palace loomed out of the darkness. I turned my back on it and set off for home, my little room above Hassan’s bakery.

  Nothing happens in Fosterganj, I told myself. But something had happened in that old palace.

  The Street of Lost Homes

  ‘What did you want to go there for?’ asked Hassan, when I knocked on his door at the crack of dawn.

  ‘It was raining heavily, and I stopped near the gate to take shelter. A boy invited me in, his mother gave me something to eat, and I ended up spending the night in the raja’s bedroom.’ I said nothing about screams in the night or the skeleton in the bed.

  Hassan presented me with a bun and a glass of hot sweet tea.

  ‘Nobody goes there,’ he said. ‘The place has a bad name.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘The old raja was a bad man. Tortured his wives, or so it was said.’

  ‘And what happened to him?’

  ‘Got killed in a hunting accident, in the jungles next to Bijnor. He went after a tiger, but the tiger got to him first. Bit his head off! Everyone was pleased. His younger brother inherited the palace, but he never comes here. I think he still lives somewhere near the Nepal border.’

  ‘And the people who still live in the palace?’

  ‘Poor relations, I think. Offspring from one of the raja’s wives or concubines—no one quite knows, or even cares. We don’t see much of them, and they keep to themselves. But people avoid the place, they say it is still full of evil, haunted by the old scoundrel whose cruelty has left its mark on the walls… It should be pulled down!’

  ‘It’s falling down of its own accord,’ I said. ‘Most of it is already a ruin.’

  ~

  Later that morning I found Hassan closing the doors of the bakery.

  ‘Are you off somewhere?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘Down to Rajpur. My boys are at school and my daughter is too small to look after the place.’

  ‘It’s urgent, then?’

  ‘That fool of a youth, Sunil, has got into trouble. Picking someone’s pocket, no doubt. They are holding him at the Rajpurthana.

  ‘But why do you have to go? Doesn’t he have any relatives?’

  ‘None of any use. His father died some time back. He did me a favour once. More than a favour—he saved my life. So I must help the boy, even if he is a badmash.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I said on an impulse. ‘Is it very far?’

 
; ‘Rajpur is at the bottom of the hill. About an hours’ walk down the footpath. Quicker than walking up to Mussorrie and waiting for a bus.’

  I joined him on the road, and together we set off down the old path.

  We passed Fairy Glen—the ruin where I had passed the night. It looked quite peaceful in the April sunshine. The gate was closed. There was no sign of the boy or his mother, my hosts of the previous night. It would have been embarrassing to meet them, for I had left in an almighty hurry. There was no sign of the big black bird, either. Only a couple of mynas squabbling on the wall, and a black-faced langur swinging from the branch of an oak.

  I had some difficulty in keeping up with Hassan. Although he was over forty and had the beginnings of a paunch, he was a sturdy fellow, and he had the confident, even stride of someone who had spent most of his life in the hills.

  The path was a steep one, and it began to level out only when it entered the foothills hamlet of Rajpur. At that time Rajpur was something of a ghost town. Some sixteen years earlier, most of its inhabitants, Muslims like Hassan, had fled or been killed by mobs during the communal strife that followed the partition of the country.

  Rajpur had yet to recover. We passed empty, gutted buildings, some roofless, some without doors and windows. Weeds and small bushes grew out of the floors of abandoned houses. Successive monsoons had removed the mud or cement plaster from the walls, leaving behind bare brickwork which was beginning to crumble. The entire length of the street, where once there had been a hundred homes pulsating with life and human endeavour, now stood empty, homes only to jackals, snakes, and huge rock lizards.