The Prospect of Flowers Read online

  ‘Just testing the umbrella,’ said Bijju.

  4

  The rains set in, and the sun only made brief appearances. The hills turned a lush green. Ferns sprang up on walls and tree trunks. Giant lilies reared up like leopards from the tall grass. A white mist coiled and uncoiled as it floated up from the valley. It was a beautiful season, except for the leeches.

  Every day, Binya came home with a couple of leeches fastened to the flesh of her bare legs. They fell off by themselves just as soon as they’d had their thimbleful of blood, but you didn’t know they were on you until they fell off, and then, later, the skin became very sore and itchy. Some of the older people still believed that to be bled by leeches was a remedy for various ailments. Whenever Ram Bharosa had a headache, he applied a leech to his throbbing temple.

  Three days of incessant rain had flooded out a number of small animals who lived in holes in the ground. Binya’s mother suddenly found the roof full of field rats. She had to drive them out; they ate too much of her stored-up wheat flour and rice. Bijju liked lifting up large rocks to disturb the scorpions who were sleeping beneath. And snakes came out to bask in the sun.

  Binya had just crossed the small stream at the bottom of the hill when she saw something gliding out of the bushes and coming towards her. It was a long black snake. A clatter of loose stones frightened it. Seeing the girl in its way, it rose up, hissing, prepared to strike. The forked tongue darted out, the venomous head lunged at Binya.

  Binya’s umbrella was open as usual. She thrust it forward, between herself and the snake, and the snake’s hard snout thudded twice against the strong silk of the umbrella. The reptile then turned and slithered away over the wet rocks, disappearing into a clump of ferns.

  Binya forgot about the cows and ran all the way home to tell her mother how she had been saved by the umbrella. Bijju had to put away his books and go out to fetch the cows. He carried a stout stick, in case he met with any snakes.

  ♦

  First the summer sun, and now the endless rain, meant that the umbrella was beginning to fade a little. From a bright blue it had changed to a light blue. But it was still a pretty thing, and tougher than it looked, and Ram Bharosa still desired it. He did not want to sell it; he wanted to own it. He was probably the richest man in the area—so why shouldn’t he have a blue umbrella? Not a day passed without his getting a glimpse of Binya and the umbrella; and the more he saw the umbrella, the more he wanted it.

  The schools closed during the monsoon, but this didn’t mean that Bijju could sit at home doing nothing. Neelu and Gori were providing more milk than was required at home, so Binya’s mother was able to sell a kilo of milk every day: half a kilo to the schoolmaster, and half a kilo (at reduced rate) to the temple pujari. Bijju had to deliver the milk every morning.

  Ram Bharosa had asked Bijju to work in his shop during the holidays, but Bijju didn’t have time—he had to help his mother with the ploughing and the transplanting of the rice seedlings. So Ram Bharosa employed a boy from the next village, a boy called Rajaram. He did all the washing-up, and ran various errands. He went to the same school as Bijju, but the two boys were not friends.

  One day, as Binya passed the shop, twirling her blue umbrella, Rajaram noticed that his employer gave a deep sigh and began muttering to himself.

  ‘What’s the matter, Babuji?’ asked the boy.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Ram Bharosa. ‘It’s just a sickness that has come upon me. And it’s all due to that girl Binya and her wretched umbrella.’

  ‘Why, what has she done to you?’

  ‘Refused to sell me her umbrella! There’s pride for you. And I offered her ten rupees.’

  ‘Perhaps, if you gave her twelve…’

  ‘But it isn’t new any longer. It isn’t worth eight rupees now. All the same, I’d like to have it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t make a profit on it,’ said Rajaram.

  ‘It’s not the profit I’m after, wretch! It’s the thing itself. It’s the beauty of it!’

  ‘And what would you do with it, Babuji? You don’t visit anyone—you’re seldom out of your shop. Of what use would it be to you?’

  ‘Of what use is a poppy in a cornfield? Of what use is a rainbow? Of what use are you, numbskull? Wretch! I, too, have a soul. I want the umbrella, because—because I want its beauty to be mine!’

  Rajaram put the kettle on to boil, began dusting the counter, all the time muttering: ‘I’m as useful as an umbrella,’ and then, after a short period of intense thought, said: ‘What will you give me, Babuji, if I get the umbrella for you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked the old man.

  ‘You know what I mean. What will you give me?’

  ‘You mean to steal it, don’t you, you wretch? What a delightful child you are! I’m glad you’re not my son or my enemy. But look, everyone will know it has been stolen, and then how will I be able to show off with it?’

  ‘You will have to gaze upon it in secret,’ said Rajaram with a chuckle. ‘Or take it into Tehri, and have it coloured red! That’s your problem. But tell me, Babuji, do you want it badly enough to pay me three rupees for stealing it without being seen?’

  Ram Bharosa gave the boy a long, sad look. ‘You’re a sharp boy,’ he said. ‘You’ll come to a bad end. I’ll give you two rupees.’

  ‘Three,’ said the boy.

  ‘Two,’ said the old man.

  ‘You don’t really want it, I can see that,’ said the boy.

  ‘Wretch!’ said the old man. ‘Evil one! Darkener of my doorstep! Fetch me the umbrella, and I’ll give you three rupees.’

  5

  Binya was in the forest glade where she had first seen the umbrella. No one came there for picnics during the monsoon. The grass was always wet and the pine needles were slippery underfoot. The tall trees shut out the light, and poisonous-looking mushrooms, orange and purple, sprang up everywhere. But it was a good place for porcupines, who seemed to like the mushrooms, and Binya was searching for porcupine quills.

  The hill people didn’t think much of porcupine quills, but far away in southern India, the quills were valued as charms and sold at a rupee each. So Ram Bharosa paid a tenth of a rupee for each quill brought to him, and he in turn sold the quills at a profit to a trader from the plains.

  Binya had already found five quills, and she knew there’d be more in the long grass. For once, she’d put her umbrella down. She had to put it aside if she was to search the ground thoroughly.

  It was Rajaram’s chance.

  He’d been following Binya for some time, concealing himself behind trees and rocks, creeping closer whenever she became absorbed in her search. He was anxious that she should not see him and be able to recognize him later.

  He waited until Binya had wandered some distance from the umbrella. Then, running forward at a crouch, he seized the open umbrella and dashed off with it.

  But Rajaram had very big feet. Binya heard his heavy footsteps and turned just in tune to see him as he disappeared between the trees. She cried out, dropped the porcupine quills, and gave chase.

  Binya was swift and sure-footed, but Rajaram had a long stride. All the same, he made the mistake of running downhill. A long-legged person is much faster going up hill than down. Binya reached the edge of the forest glade in time to see the thief scrambling down the path to the stream. He had closed the umbrella so that it would not hinder his flight.

  Binya was beginning to gain on the boy. He kept to the path, while she simply slid and leapt down the steep hillside. Near the bottom of the hill the path began to straighten out, and it was here that the long-legged boy began to forge ahead again.

  Bijju was coming home from another direction. He had a bundle of sticks which he’d collected for the kitchen fire. As he reached the path, he saw Binya rushing down the hill as though all the mountain spirits in Garhwal were after her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he called. ‘Why are you running?’

  Binya paused only to point
at the fleeing Rajaram.

  ‘My umbrella!’ she cried. ‘He has stolen it!’

  Bijju dropped his bundle of sticks, and ran after his sister. When he reached her side, he said, ‘I’ll soon catch him!’ and went sprinting away over the lush green grass. He was fresh, and he was soon well ahead of Binya and gaining on the thief.

  Rajaram was crossing the shallow stream when Bijju caught up with him. Rajaram was the taller boy, but Bijju was much stronger. He flung himself at the thief, caught him by the legs, and brought him down in the water. Rajaram got to his feet and tried to drag himself away, but Bijju still had him by a leg. Rajaram overbalanced and came down with a great splash. He had let the umbrella fall. It began to float away on the current. Just then Binya arrived, flushed and breathless, and went dashing into the stream after the umbrella.

  Meanwhile, a tremendous fight was taking place. Locked in fierce combat, the two boys swayed together on a rock, tumbled on to the sand, rolled over and over the pebbled bank until they were again thrashing about in the shallows of the stream. The magpies, bulbuls and other birds were disturbed, and flew away with cries of alarm.

  Covered with mud, gasping and spluttering, the boys groped for each other in the water. After five minutes of frenzied struggle, Bijju emerged victorious. Rajaram lay flat on his back on the sand, exhausted, while Bijju sat astride him, pinning him down with his arms and legs.

  ‘Let me get up!’ gasped Rajaram. ‘Let me go—I don’t want your useless umbrella!’

  ‘Then why did you take it?’ demanded Bijju. ‘Come on—tell me why!’

  ‘It was that skinflint Ram Bharosa,’ said Rajaram. ‘He told me to get it for him. He said if I didn’t fetch it, I’d lose my job.’

  6

  By early October, the rains were coming to an end. The leeches disappeared. The ferns turned yellow, and the sunlight on the green hills was mellow and golden, like the limes on the small tree in front of Binya’s home. Bijju’s days were happy ones as he came home from school, munching on roasted corn. Binya’s umbrella had turned a pale milky blue, and was patched in several places, but it was still the prettiest umbrella in the village, and she still carried it with her wherever she went.

  The cold, cruel winter wasn’t far off, but somehow October seems longer than other months, because it is a kind month: the grass is good to be upon, the breeze is warm and gentle and pine-scented. That October, everyone seemed contented—everyone, that is, except Ram Bharosa.

  The old man had by now given up all hope of ever possessing Binya’s umbrella. He wished he had never set eyes on it. Because of the umbrella, he had suffered the tortures of greed, the despair of loneliness. Because of the umbrella, people had stopped coming to his shop!

  Ever since it had become known that Ram Bharosa had tried to have the umbrella stolen, the village people had turned against him. They stopped trusting the old man; instead of buying their soap and tea and matches from his shop, they preferred to walk an extra mile to the shops near the Tehri bus stand. Who would have dealings with a man who had sold his soul for an umbrella? The children taunted him, twisted his name around. From ‘Ram the Trustworthy’ he became ‘Trusty Umbrella Thief ’.

  The old man sat alone in his empty shop, listening to the eternal hissing of his kettle and wondering if anyone would ever again step in for a glass of tea. Ram Bharosa had lost his own appetite, and ate and drank very little. There was no money coming in. He had his savings in a bank in Tehri, but it was a terrible thing to have to dip into them! To save money, he had dismissed the blundering Rajaram. So he was left without any company. The roof leaked and the wind got in through the corrugated tin sheets, but Ram Bharosa didn’t care.

  Bijju and Binya passed his shop almost every day. Bijju went by with a loud but tuneless whistle. He was one of the world’s whistlers; cares rested lightly on his shoulders. But, strangely enough, Binya crept quietly past the shop, looking the other way, almost as though she was in some way responsible for the misery of Ram Bharosa.

  She kept reasoning with herself, telling herself that the umbrella was her very own, and that she couldn’t help it if others were jealous of it. But had she loved the umbrella too much? Had it mattered more to her than people mattered? She couldn’t help feeling that, in a small way, she was the cause of the sad look on Ram Bharosa’s face (‘His face is a yard long,’ said Bijju) and the ruinous condition of his shop. It was all due to his own greed, no doubt, but she didn’t want him to feel too bad about what he’d done, because it made her feel bad about herself; and so she closed the umbrella whenever she came near the shop, opening it again only when she was out of sight.

  One day towards the end of October, when she had ten paise in her pocket, she entered the shop and asked the old man for a toffee.

  She was Ram Bharosa’s first customer in almost two weeks. He looked suspiciously at the girl. Had she come to taunt him, to flaunt the umbrella in his face? She had placed her coin on the counter. Perhaps it was a bad coin. Ram Bharosa picked it up and bit it; he held it up to the light; he rang it on the ground. It was a good coin. He gave Binya the toffee.

  Binya had already left the shop when Ram Bharosa saw the closed umbrella lying on his counter. There it was, the blue umbrella he had always wanted, within his grasp at last! He had only to hide it at the back of his shop, and no one would know that he had it, no one could prove that Binya had left it behind.

  He stretched out his trembling, bony hand, and took the umbrella by the handle. He pressed it open. He stood beneath it, in the dark shadows of his shop, where no sun or rain could ever touch it.

  ‘But I’m never in the sun or in the rain,’ he said aloud. ‘Of what use is an umbrella to me?’

  And he hurried outside and ran after Binya.

  ‘Binya, Binya!’ he shouted. ‘Binya, you’ve left your umbrella behind!’

  He wasn’t used to running, but he caught up with her, held out the umbrella, saying, ‘You forgot it—the umbrella!’

  In that moment it belonged to both of them.

  But Binya didn’t take the umbrella. She shook her head and said, ‘You keep it. I don’t need it any more.’

  ‘But it’s such a pretty umbrella!’ protested Ram Bharosa. ‘It’s the best umbrella in the village.’

  ‘I know,’ said Binya. ‘But an umbrella isn’t everything.’

  And she left the old man holding the umbrella, and went tripping down the road, and there was nothing between her and the bright blue sky.

  7

  Well, now that Ram Bharosa has the blue umbrella—a gift from Binya, as he tells everyone—he is sometimes persuaded to go out into the sun or the rain, and as a result he looks much healthier. Sometimes he uses the umbrella to chase away pigs or goats. It is always left open outside the shop, and anyone who wants to borrow it may do so; and so in a way it has become everyone’s umbrella. It is faded and patchy, but it is still the best umbrella in the village.

  People are visiting Ram Bharosa’s shop again. Whenever Bijju or Binya stop for a cup of tea, he gives them a little extra milk or sugar. They like their tea sweet and milky.

  A few nights ago, a bear visited Ram Bharosa’s shop. There had been snow on the higher ranges of the Himalayas, and the bear had been finding it difficult to obtain food; so it had come lower down, to see what it could pick up near the village. That night it scrambled on to the tin roof of Ram Bharosa’s shop, and made off with a huge pumpkin which had been ripening on the roof. But in climbing off the roof, the bear had lost a claw.

  Next morning Ram Bharosa found the claw just outside the door of his shop. He picked it up and put it in his pocket. A bear’s claw was a lucky find.

  A day later, when he went into the market town, he took the claw with him, and left it with a silversmith, giving the craftsman certain instructions.

  The silversmith made a locket for the claw, then he gave it a thin silver chain. When Ram Bharosa came again, he paid the silversmith ten rupees for his work.

 
The days were growing shorter, and Binya had to be home a little earlier every evening. There was a hungry leopard at large, and she couldn’t leave the cows out after dark.

  She was hurrying past Ram Bharosa’s shop when the old man called out to her.

  ‘Binya, spare a minute! I want to show you something.’

  Binya stepped into the shop.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ asked Ram Bharosa, showing her the silver pendant with the claw.

  ‘It’s so beautiful,’ said Binya, just touching the claw and the silver chain.

  ‘It’s a bear’s claw,’ said Ram Bharosa. ‘That’s even luckier than a leopard’s claw. Would you like to have it?’

  ‘I have no money,’ said Binya.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. You gave me the umbrella, I give you the claw! Come, let’s see what it looks like on you.’

  He placed the pendant on Binya, and indeed it looked very beautiful on her.

  Ram Bharosa says he will never forget the smile she gave him when she left the shop.

  She was halfway home when she realized she had left the cows behind.

  ‘Neelu, Neelu!’ she called. ‘Oh, Gori!’

  There was a faint tinkle of bells as the cows came slowly down the mountain path.

  In the distance she could hear her mother and Bijju calling for her.

  She began to sing. They heard her singing, and knew she was safe and near.

  She walked home through the darkening glade, singing of the stars, and the trees stood still and listened to her, and the mountains were glad.

  The Eyes of the Eagle

  IT WAS A high, piercing sound, almost like the yelping of a dog. Jai stopped picking the wild strawberries that grew in the grass around him, and looked up at the sky. He had a dog—a shaggy guard-dog called Motu—but Motu did not yet yelp, he growled and barked. The strange sound came from the sky, and Jai had heard it before. Now, realising what it was, he jumped to his feet, calling to his dog, calling his sheep to start for home. Motu came bounding towards him, ready for a game.