Thick as Thieves Read online

  One day, while we were cycling along the bank of the Rajpur canal, he skidded off the path and fell into the canal with his cycle. The water was only waist-deep; but it was quite swift, and I had to jump in to help him. There was no real danger, but we had some difficulty getting the cycle out of the canal.

  Later, he learnt to swim.

  But that was after I’d gone away …

  Convinced that my prospects would be better in England, my mother packed me off to her relatives in Jersey, and it was to be four long years before I could return to the land I truly cared for. By that time, many of my Dehra friends had left the town; it wasn’t a place where you could do much after finishing school. Kishen wrote to me from Calcutta, where he was at an engineering college. Then he was off to ‘study abroad’. I heard from him from time to time. He seemed happy. He had an equable temperament and got on quite well with most people. He had a girlfriend too, he told me.

  ‘But,’ he wrote, ‘you’re my oldest and best friend. Wherever I go, I’ll always come back to see you.’

  And, of course, he did. We met several times while I was living in Delhi, and once we revisited Dehra together and walked down Rajpur Road and ate tikkis and golguppas behind the Clock Tower. But the old familiar faces were missing. The streets were overbuilt and overcrowded, and the litchi gardens were fast disappearing. After we got back to Delhi, Kishen accepted the offer of a job in Mumbai. We kept in touch in desultory fashion, but our paths and our lives had taken different directions. He was busy nurturing his career with an engineering firm; I had retreated to the hills with radically different goals—to write and be free of the burden of a ten-to-five desk job.

  Time went by, and I lost track of Kishen.

  About a year ago, I was standing in the lobby of the India International Centre, when an attractive young woman in her mid-thirties came up to me and said, ‘Hello, Rusty, don’t you remember me? I’m Manju. I lived next to you and Kishen and Ranbir when we were children.’

  I recognized her then, for she had always been a pretty girl, the belle of Dehra’s Astley Hall.

  We sat down and talked about old times and new times, and I told her that I hadn’t heard from Kishen for a few years.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ she asked. ‘He died about two years ago.’

  ‘What happened?’ I was dismayed, even angry, that I hadn’t heard about it. ‘He couldn’t have been more than thirty-eight.’

  ‘It was an accident on a beach in Goa. A child had got into difficulties and Kishen swam out to save her. He did rescue the little girl, but when he reached the shore he had a heart attack. Kishen died right there on the beach. It seems he had always had a weak heart. The exertion must have been too much for him.’

  I was silent. I knew he’d become a fairly good swimmer, but I did not know about the heart.

  ‘Was he married?’ I asked.

  ‘No, he was always the eligible bachelor boy.’

  It had been good to see Manju again, even though she had given me bad news. She told me she was happily married, with a small son. We promised to keep in touch.

  And that’s the end of this tale, apart from my brief visit to Delhi last November.

  I had taken a taxi to Connaught Place and decided to get down at the Regal. I stood there awhile, undecided about what to do or where to go. It was almost time for a show to start, and there were a lot of people milling around.

  I thought someone called my name. I looked around, and there was Kishen in the crowd.

  ‘Kishen!’ I called, and started after him.

  But a stout lady climbing out of an autorickshaw got in my way, and by the time I had a clear view again, my old friend had disappeared.

  Had I seen his lookalike, a double? Or had he kept his promise to come back to see me once more?

  The Crooked Tree

  My room in Shahganj was very small. I had paced about in it so often that I knew its exact measurements: twelve feet by ten. The string of my cot needed tightening. The dip in the middle was so pronounced that I invariably woke up in the morning with a backache; but I was hopeless at tightening charpoy strings.

  Under the cot was my tin trunk. Its contents ranged from old, rejected manuscripts to clothes, letters and photographs. I had resolved that one day, when I had made some money with a book, I would throw the trunk and everything else out of the window, and leave Shahganj forever. But until then I was a prisoner. The rent was nominal, the window had a view of the bus stop and rickshaw stand, and I had nowhere else to go.

  I did not live entirely alone. Sometimes a beggar spent the night on the balcony; and, during cold or wet weather, the boys from the tea shop, who normally slept on the pavement, crowded into the room.

  Usually I woke early in the mornings, as sleep was fitful, uneasy, often crowded with dreams. I knew it was five o’clock when I heard the first upcountry bus leaving its shed. I would then get up and take a walk in the fields beyond the railroad tracks.

  One morning, while I was walking in the fields, I noticed someone lying across the pathway, his head and shoulders hidden by the stalks of young sugar cane. When I came near, I saw he was a boy of about sixteen. His body was twitching convulsively, his face was very white, except where a little blood had trickled down his chin. His legs kept moving and his hands fluttered restlessly, helplessly.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I asked, kneeling down beside him.

  But he was unconscious and could not answer me.

  I ran down the footpath to a well and, dipping the end of my shirt in a shallow trough of water, ran back and sponged the boy’s face. The twitching ceased and, though he still breathed heavily, his hands became still and his face calm. He opened his eyes and stared at me without any immediate comprehension.

  ‘You have bitten your tongue,’ I said, wiping the blood from his mouth. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you until you feel better.’

  He sat up now and spoke, ‘I’m all right, thank you.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, sitting down beside him.

  ‘Oh, nothing much. It often happens, I don’t know why. But I cannot control it.’

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘I went to the hospital in the beginning. They gave me some pills, which I had to take every day. But the pills made me so tired and sleepy that I couldn’t work properly. So I stopped taking them. Now this happens once or twice a month. But what does it matter? I’m all right when it’s over, and I don’t feel anything while it is happening.’

  He got to his feet, dusting his clothes and smiling at me. He was slim, long-limbed and bony. There was a little fluff on his cheeks and the promise of a moustache.

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked. ‘I’ll walk back with you.’

  ‘I don’t live anywhere,’ he replied. ‘Sometimes I sleep in the temple, sometimes in the gurdwara. In summer months I sleep in the municipal gardens.’

  ‘Well, then let me come with you as far as the gardens.’

  He told me that his name was Kamal, that he studied at the Shahganj High School, and that he hoped to pass his examinations in a few months’ time. He was studying hard and, if he passed with a good division, he hoped to attend a college. If he failed, there was only the prospect of continuing to live in the municipal gardens …

  Kamal carried with him a small tray of merchandise, supported by straps that went round his shoulders. In it were combs and buttons and cheap toys and little vials of perfume. All day he walked about Shahganj, selling odds and ends to people in the bazaar or at their houses. He made, on an average, two rupees a day, which was enough for his food and his school fees.

  He told me all this while we walked back to the bus stand. I returned to my room to try and write something, while Kamal went on to the bazaar to try and sell his wares.

  There was nothing very unusual about Kamal’s being an orphan and a refugee. During the communal holocaust of 1947, thousands of homes had been broken up, and women and children had been kil
led. What was unusual in Kamal was his sensitivity, a quality I thought rare in a Punjabi youth who had grown up in the Frontier provinces during a period of hate and violence. And it was not so much his positive attitude to life that appealed to me (most people in Shahganj were completely resigned to their lot) as his gentleness, his quiet voice and the smile that flickered across his face regardless of whether he was sad or happy. In the morning, when I opened my door, I found Kamal asleep at the top of the steps. His tray lay a few feet away. I shook him gently, and he woke at once.

  ‘Have you been sleeping here all night?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t you come inside?’

  ‘It was very late,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’ ‘Someone could have stolen your things while you slept.’

  ‘Oh, I sleep quite lightly. Besides, I have nothing of special value. But I came to ask you something.’

  ‘Do you need any money?’

  ‘No. I want you to take your meal with me tonight.’

  ‘But where? You don’t have a place of your own. It will be too expensive in a restaurant.’

  ‘In your room,’ said Kamal. ‘I will bring the food and cook it here. You have a stove?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I will have to look for it.’

  ‘I will come at seven,’ said Kamal, strapping on his tray. ‘Don’t worry. I know how to cook!’

  He ran down the steps and made for the bazaar. I began to look for the oil stove, found it at the bottom of my tin trunk, and then discovered I hadn’t any pots or pans or dishes. Finally, I borrowed these from Deep Chand, the barber.

  Kamal brought a chicken for our dinner. This was a luxury in Shahganj, to be eaten only two or three times a year. He had bought the bird for three rupees, which was cheap, considering it was not too skinny. While Kamal set about roasting it, I went down to the bazaar and procured a bottle of beer on credit, and this served as an appetizer.

  ‘We are having an expensive meal,’ I observed. ‘Three rupees for the chicken and three rupees for the beer. But I wish we could do it more often.’

  ‘We should do it at least once a month,’ said Kamal. ‘It should be possible if we work hard.’

  ‘You know how to work. You work from morning to night.’

  ‘But you are a writer, Rusty. That is different. You have to wait for a mood.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not a genius that I can afford the luxury of moods. No, I’m just lazy, that’s all.’

  ‘Perhaps you are writing the wrong things.’

  ‘I know I am. But I don’t know how I can write anything else.’

  ‘Have you tried?’

  ‘Yes, but there is no money in it. I wish I could make a living in some other way. Even if I repaired cycles, I would make more money.’

  ‘Then why not repair cycles?’

  ‘No, I will not repair cycles. I would rather be a bad writer than a good repairer of cycles. But let us not think of work. There is time enough for work. I want to know more about you.’

  Kamal did not know if his parents were alive or dead. He had lost them, literally, when he was six. It happened at the Amritsar station, where trains coming across the border disgorged thousands of refugees, or pulled into the station half-empty, drenched with blood and littered with corpses.

  Kamal and his parents were lucky to escape the massacre. Had they travelled on an earlier train (they had tried desperately to get into one), they might well have been killed; but circumstances favoured them then, only to trick them later.

  Kamal was clinging to his mother’s sari, while she remained close to her husband, who was elbowing his way through the frightened, bewildered throng of refugees. Glancing over his shoulder at a woman who lay on the ground, wailing and beating her breasts, Kamal collided with a burly Sikh and lost his grip on his mother’s sari.

  The Sikh had a long, curved sword at his waist; and Kamal stared up at him in awe and fascination—at his long hair, which had fallen loose, and his wild, black beard, and the bloodstains on his white shirt. The Sikh pushed him out of the way and when Kamal looked around for his mother, she was not to be seen. She was hidden from him by a mass of restless bodies, pushed in different directions. He could hear her calling, ‘Kamal, where are you, Kamal?’ He tried to force his way through the crowd, in the direction of the voice, but he was carried the other way …

  At night, when the platform was empty, he was still searching for his mother. Eventually, some soldiers took him away. They looked for his parents, but without success, and finally, they sent Kamal to a refugee camp. From there he went to an orphanage. But when he was eight, and felt himself a man, he ran away.

  He worked for some time as a helper in a tea shop; but when he started getting epileptic fits, the shopkeeper asked him to leave, and Kamal found himself on the streets, begging for a living. He begged for a year, moving from one town to another, and finally ended up at Shahganj. By then he was twelve and too old to beg; but he had saved some money, and with it he bought a small stock of combs, buttons, cheap perfumes and bangles and, converting himself into a mobile shop, went from door to door, selling his wares.

  Shahganj was a small town, and there was no house which Kamal hadn’t visited. Everyone recognized him, and there were some who offered him food and drink; the children knew him well, because he played on a small flute whenever he made his rounds, and they followed him to listen to the flute.

  I began to look forward to Kamal’s presence. He dispelled some of my own loneliness. I found I could work better, knowing that I did not have to work alone. And Kamal came to me, perhaps because I was the first person to have taken a personal interest in his life, and because I saw nothing frightening in his illness. Most people in Shahganj thought epilepsy was infectious; some considered it a form of divine punishment for sins committed in a former life. Except for children, those who knew of his condition generally gave him a wide berth.

  At sixteen, a boy grows like young wheat, springing up so fast that he is unaware of what is taking place within him. His mind quickens, his gestures become more confident. Hair sprouts like young grass on his face and chest, and his muscles begin to mature. Never again will he experience so much change and growth in so short a time. He is full of currents and countercurrents.

  Kamal combined the bloom of youth with the beauty of the short-lived. It made me sad even to look at his pale, slim body. It hurt me to look into his eyes. Life and death were always struggling in their depths.

  ‘Should I go to Delhi and take up a job?’ I asked.

  ‘Why not? You are always talking about it.’

  ‘Why don’t you come, too? Perhaps the doctors there can stop your fits.’

  ‘We will need money for that. When I have passed my examinations, I will come.’

  ‘Then I will wait,’ I said. I was twenty-two, and there was world enough and time for everything.

  We decided to save a little money from his small earnings and my occasional payments. We would need money to go to Delhi, money to live there until we could earn a living. We put away twenty rupees one week, but lost it the next when we lent it to a friend who owned a cycle rickshaw. But this gave us the occasional use of his cycle, and early one morning, with Kamal sitting on the crossbar, I rode out of Shahganj.

  After cycling for about two miles, we got down and pushed the cycle off the road, taking a path through a paddy field and then through a field of young maize, until in the distance we saw a tree, a crooked tree, growing beside an old well.

  I do not know the name of that tree. I had never seen one like it before. It had a crooked trunk and crooked branches, and was clothed in thick, broad, crooked leaves, like the leaves on which food is served in the bazaar.

  In the trunk of the tree there was a hole, and when we set the bicycle down with a crash, a pair of green parrots flew out, and went dipping and swerving across the fields. There was grass around the well, cropped short by grazing cattle.

  We sat in the shade of the crooked tree, and Kamal unt
ied the red cloth in which he had brought our food. When we had eaten, we stretched ourselves out on the grass. I closed my eyes and became aware of a score of different sensations. I heard a cricket singing in the tree, the cooing of pigeons from the walls of the old well, the quiet breathing of Kamal, the parrots returning to the tree, the distant hum of an airplane. I smelled the grass and the old bricks round the well and the promise of rain. I felt Kamal’s fingers against my arm, and the sun creeping over my cheek. And when I opened my eyes, there were clouds on the horizon, and Kamal was asleep, his arm thrown across his face to keep out the glare.

  I went to the well, and putting my shoulders to the ancient handle, turned the wheel, moving around while cool, clean water gushed out over the stones and along the channel to the fields. The discovery that I could water a field, that I had the power to make things grow, gave me a thrill of satisfaction; it was like writing a story that had a ring of truth. I drank from one of the trays; the water was sweet with age.

  Kamal was sitting up, looking at the sky. ‘It’s going to rain,’ he said.

  We began cycling homeward; but we were still some way out of Shahganj when it began to rain. A lashing wind swept the rain across our faces, but we exulted in it, and sang at the top of our voices until we reached the Shahganj bus stop.

  Across the railroad tracks and the dry riverbed, fields of maize stretched away, until there came a dry region of thorn bushes and lantana scrub, where the earth was cut into jagged cracks, like a jigsaw puzzle. Dotting the landscape were old, abandoned brick kilns. When it rained heavily, the hollows filled up with water.

  Kamal and I came to one of these hollows to bathe and swim. There was an island in the middle of it, and on this small mound lay the ruins of a hut where a nightwatchman, who looked after the brick kilns, had once lived. We would swim out to the island, which was only a few yards from the banks of the hollow. There was a grassy patch in front of the hut, and early in the mornings, before it got too hot, we would wrestle on the grass.

  Though I was heavier than Kamal, my chest as sound as a new drum, he had strong, wiry arms and legs, and would often pinion me around the waist with his bony knees. Now, while we wrestled on the new monsoon grass, I felt his body go tense. He stiffened, his legs jerked against my body, and a shudder passed through him. I knew that he had a fit coming on, but I was unable to extricate myself from his arms.