Ruskin Bond's Book of Verse Page 4

  Gone to seed

  And giving way

  To concrete slabs.

  A garden town’s become a city

  And the people faceless

  As they pass or rather rush

  Hell-bent

  From place of work

  To crowded tenement.

  So change must come,

  Fields make way for factories,

  The trees succumb

  To real-estate,

  The rivers plunge

  Silt-laden

  To our doom…

  Too late to do a thing

  About it now,

  For we have grown

  Too many,

  And the world’s no bigger

  Than before.

  Do-gooders, don’t despair!

  Nature will repair

  Her own, long after

  We are dust.

  Hill-Station

  There is nothing to keep me here,

  Only these mountains of silence

  And the gentle reserve of shepherds and woodmen

  Who know me as one who

  Walks among trees.

  Madman, misanthropist? They make

  Their guesses, smile and pass slowly

  Down the steep path near the cottage. There is nothing

  To keep me here, walking

  Among old trees.

  A Song for Lost Friends

  The past is always with us, for it feeds the present…

  1

  As a boy I stood on the edge of the railway-cutting,

  Outside the dark tunnel, my hands touching

  The hot rails, waiting for them to tremble

  At the coming of the noonday train.

  The whistle of the engine hung on the forest’s silence.

  Then out of the tunnel, a green-gold dragon

  Came plunging, thundering past—

  Out of the tunnel, out of the grinning dark.

  And the train rolled on, every day

  Hundreds of people coming or going or running away—

  Goodbye, goodbye!

  I haven’t seen you again, bright boy at the carriage window,

  Waving to me, calling,

  But I’ve loved you all these years and looked for you everywhere,

  In cities and villages, beside the sea,

  In the mountains, in crowds at distant places;

  Returning always to the forest’s silence,

  To watch the windows of some passing train…

  2

  My father took me by the hand and led me

  Among the ruins of old forts and palaces.

  We lived in a tent near the tomb of Humayun

  Among old trees. Now multi-storeyed blocks

  Rise from the plain—tomorrow’s ruins…

  You can explore them, my son, when the trees

  Take over again and the thorn-apple grows

  In empty windows. There were seven cities before…

  Nothing my father said could bring my mother home;

  She had gone with another. He took me to the hills

  In a small train, the engine having palpitations

  As it toiled up the steep slopes peopled

  With pines and rhododendrons. Through tunnels

  To Simla. Boarding-school. He came to see me

  In the holidays. We caught butterflies together.

  ‘Next year,’ he said, ‘when the War is over,

  We’ll go to England.’ But wars are never over

  And I have yet to go to England with my father.

  He died that year

  And I was dispatched to my mother and stepfather—

  A long journey through a dark tunnel.

  No one met me at the station. So I wandered

  Round Dehra in a tonga, looking for a house

  With lichi trees. She’d written to say there were lichis

  In the garden.

  But in Dehra all the houses had lichi trees,

  The tonga-driver charged five rupees

  for taking me back to the station.

  They were looking for me on the platform:

  ‘We thought the train would be late as usual.’

  It had arrived on time, upsetting everyone’s schedule.

  In my new home I found a new baby in a new pram.

  Your little brother, they said; which made me a hundred.

  But he too was left behind with the servants

  When my mother and Mr H went hunting

  Or danced late at the casino, our only wartime night-club.

  Tommies and Yanks scuffled drunk and disorderly

  In a private war for the favours of stale women.

  Lonely in the house with the servants and the child

  And books I’d read twice and my father’s letters

  Treasured secretly in the small trunk beneath my bed:

  I wrote to him once but did not post the letter

  For fear it might come back ‘Return to sender…’

  One day I slipped into the guava orchard next door—

  It really belonged to Seth Hari Kishore

  Who’d gone to the Ganga on a pilgrimage—

  The guavas were ripe and ready for boys to steal

  (Always sweeter when stolen)

  And a bare leg thrust at me as I climbed:

  ‘There’s only room for one,’ came a voice.

  I looked up at a boy who had blackberry eyes

  And guava juice on his chin, grabbed at him

  And we both tumbled out of the tree

  On to the ragged December grass. We rolled and fought

  But not for long. A gardener came shouting,

  And we broke and ran—over the gate and down the road

  And across the fields and a dry river bed,

  Into the shades of afternoon…

  ‘Why didn’t you run home?’ he said.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘There’s no one there, my mother’s out.’

  ‘And mine’s at home.’

  3

  His mother was Burmese; his father

  An English soldier killed in the War.

  They were waiting for it to be over.

  Every day, beyond the gardens, we loafed:

  Time was suspended for a time.

  On heavy wings, ringed pheasants rose

  At our approach.

  The fields were yellow with mustard,

  Parrots wheeled in the sunshine, dipped and disappeared

  Into the morning mist on the foothills.

  We found a pool, fed by a freshet

  Of cold spring water. ‘One day when we are men,’

  He said, ‘We’ll meet here at the pool again.

  Promise?’ ‘Promise,’ I said. And we took a pledge.

  In blood, nicking our fingers on a penknife

  And pressing them to each other’s lips. Sweet salty kiss.

  Late evening, past cowdust time, we trudged home:

  He to his mother, I to my dinner.

  One wining–dancing night I thought I’d stay out too.

  We went to the pictures—Gone with the Wind—

  A crashing bore for boys, and it finished late.

  So I had dinner with them, and his mother said:

  ‘It’s past ten. You’d better stay the night.

  But will they miss you?’

  I did not answer but climbed into my friend’s bed—

  I’d never slept with anyone before, except my father—

  And when it grew cold, after midnight,

  He put his arms around me and looped a leg

  Over mine and it was nice that way

  But I stayed awake with the niceness of it

  My sleep stolen by his own deep slumber…

  What dreams were lost, I’ll never know!

  But next morning, just as we’d started breakfast,

  A car drew up, and my parents, outraged,

  Chastised me for staying out and hustled
me home.

  Breakfast unfinished. My friend unhappy. My pride wounded.

  We met sometimes, but a constraint had grown upon us,

  And the following month I heard he’d gone

  To an orphanage in Kalimpong.

  4

  I remember you well, old banyan tree,

  As you stood there spreading quietly

  Over the broken wall.

  While adults slept, I crept away

  Down the broad veranda steps, around

  The outhouse and the melon-ground…

  In that winter of long ago, I roamed

  The faded garden of my mother’s home.

  I must have known that giants have few friends

  (The great lurk shyly in their private dens),

  And found you hidden by a thick green wall

  Of aerial roots.

  Intruder in your pillared den, I stood

  And shyly touched your old and wizened wood,

  And as my heart explored you, giant tree,

  I heard you singing!

  The spirit of the tree became my friend,

  Took me to his silent throbbing heart

  And taught me the value of stillness.

  My first tutor; friend of the lonely.

  And the second was the tonga-man

  Whose pony-cart came rattling along the road

  Under the furthest arch of the banyan tree.

  Looking up, he waved his whip at me

  And laughing, called, ‘Who lives up there?’

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  And the next time he came along, he stopped the tonga

  And asked me if I felt lonely in the tree.

  ‘Only sometimes,’ I said. ‘When the tree is thinking.’

  ‘I never think,’ he said. ‘You won’t feel lonely with me.’

  And with a flick of the reins he rattled away,

  With a promise he’d give me a ride someday.

  And from him I learnt the value of promises kept.

  5

  From the tree to the tonga was an easy drop.

  I fell into life. Bansi, tonga-driver,

  Wore a yellow waistcoat and spat red

  Betel-juice the entire width of the road.

  ‘I can spit further than any man,’ he claimed.

  It is natural for a man to strive to excel

  At something; he spat with authority.

  When he took me for rides, he lost a fare.

  That was his way. He once said, ‘If a girl

  Wants five rupees for a fix, bargain like hell

  And then give six.’

  It was the secret of his failure, he claimed,

  To give away more than he owned.

  And to prove it, he borrowed my pocket-money

  In order to buy a present for his mistress.

  A man who fails well is better than one who succeeds badly.

  The rattletrap tonga and the winding road

  Through the valley, to the river-bed,

  With the wind in my hair and the dust

  Rising, and the dogs running and barking

  And Bansi singing and shouting in my ear,

  And the pony farting as it cantered along,

  Wheels creaking, seat shifting,

  Hood slipping off, the entire contraption

  Always about to disintegrate, collapse,

  But never quite doing so—like the man himself…

  All this was music,

  And the ragtime-raga lingers in my mind.

  Nostalgia comes swiftly when one is forty,

  Looking back at boyhood years.

  Even unhappiness acquires a certain glow.

  It was shady in the cemetery, and the mango trees

  Did well there, nourished by the bones

  Of long-dead Colonels, Collectors, Magistrates and Memsahibs.

  For here, in dusty splendour, lay the graves

  Of those who’d brought their English dust

  To lie with Ganges soil: some tombs were temples,

  Some were cenotaphs; and one, a tiny Taj.

  Here lay sundry relatives, including Uncle Henry,

  Who’d been for many years a missionary.

  ‘Sacred to the Memory

  Of Henry C. Wagstaff’,

  Who translated the Gospels into Pashtu,

  And was murdered by his own Chowkidar.

  ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’—

  So ran his epitaph.

  The gardener, who looked after the trees,

  Also dug graves. One day

  I found him working at the bottom of a new cavity,

  ‘They never let me know in time,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Last week I dug two graves, and now, without warning,

  Here’s another. It isn’t even the season for dying.

  There’s enough work all summer, when cholera’s about—

  Why can’t they keep alive through the winter?’

  Near the railway-lines, watching the trains

  (There were six every day, coming or going),

  And across the line, the leper colony…

  I did not know they were lepers till later

  But I knew they were different: some

  Were without fingers or toes

  And one had no nose

  And a few had holes in their faces

  And yet some were beautiful

  They had their children with them

  And the children were no different

  From other children.

  I made friends with some

  And won most of their marbles

  And carried them home in my pockets.

  One day my parents found me

  Playing near the leper colony.

  There was a big scene.

  My mother shouted at the lepers

  And they hung their heads as though it was all their fault,

  And the children had nothing to say.

  I was taken home in disgrace

  And told all about leprosy and given a bath.

  My clothes were thrown away

  And the servants wouldn’t touch me for days.

  So I took the marbles I’d won

  And put them in my stepfather’s cupboard,

  Hoping he’d catch leprosy from them.

  6

  A slim dark youth with quiet

  Eyes and a gentle quizzical smile,

  Manohar. Fifteen, working in a small hotel.

  He’d come from the hills and wanted to return,

  I forget how we met

  But I remember walking the dusty roads

  With this gentle boy, who held my hand

  And told me about his home, his mother,

  His village, and the little river

  At the bottom of the hill where the water

  Ran blue and white and wonderful,

  ‘When I go home, I’ll take you with me.’

  But we hadn’t enough money.

  So I sold my bicycle for thirty rupees

  And left a note in the dining room:

  ‘Going away. Don’t worry—(hoping they would)—

  I’ll come home

  When I’ve grown up.’

  We crossed the rushing waters of the Ganga

  Where they issued from the doors of Vishnu

  Then took the pilgrim road, in those days

  Just a stony footpath into the mountains:

  Not all who ventured forth returned;

  Some came to die, of course,

  Near the sacred waters or at their source.

  We took this route and spent a night

  At a wayside inn, wrapped tight

  In the single blanket I’d brought along;

  Even then we were cold

  It was not the season for pilgrims

  And the inn was empty, except for the locals

  Drinking a local brew.

  We drank a little and listened

  To an old soldier from the hills
>
  Talking of the women he’d known

  In the first Great War, when stationed in Rome;

  His memories were good for many drinks

  In many inns; his face pickled in the suns

  Of many mountain summers.

  The mule-drivers slept in one room

  And talked all night over hookahs.

  Manohar slept bravely, but I lay watching

  A bright star through the tiny window

  And wished upon it, already knowing that wishes

  Had no power, but wishing all the same…

  And next morning we set off again

  Leaving the pilgrim-route to march

  Down a valley, above a smaller river,

  Walking until I felt

  We’d walk and walk for ever.

  Late at night, on a cold mountain,

  Two lonely figures, we saw the lights

  Of scattered houses and knew we had arrived.

  7

  ‘Not death, but a summing-up of life,’

  Said the village patriarch, as we watched him

  Treasure a patch of winter sunshine

  On his string cot in the courtyard.

  I remember his wisdom.

  And I remember faces.

  For it’s faces I remember best.

  The people were poor, and the patriarch said:

  ‘I have heard it told that the sun

  Sets in splendour in Himalaya—

  But who can eat sunsets?’

  Perhaps, if I’d stayed longer,

  I would have yearned for creature comforts.

  We were hungry sometimes, eating wild berries

  Or slyly milking another’s goat,

  Or catching small fish in the river…

  But I did not long for home.

  Could I have grown up a village boy,

  Grazing sheep and cattle, while the Collected Works

  Of W. Shakespeare lay gathering dust

  In Dehra? Who knows? But it was nice

  Of my stepfather to send his office manager

  Into the mountains to bring me home!

  Manohar.

  He called goodbye and waved

  As I looked back from the bend in the road.

  Bright boy on the mountainside,

  Waving to me, calling, and I’ve loved you

  All these years and looked for you everywhere,

  In the mountains, in crowds at distant places,

  In cities and villages, beside the sea.

  And the trains roll on, every day

  Hundreds of people coming or going or running away—

  Goodbye, goodbye!

  Into the forest’s silence,

  Outside the dark tunnel,

  Out of the tunnel, out of the dark…

  Secondhand Shop in Hill Station

  The smell of secondhand goods

  Is everywhere. Lost causes,

  Lonely lives, and deaths in small cottages

  Among the pines, meet here in the mildewed dark

  Of his shop—Abdul Salaam, Proprietor.

  Tales of a hundred failures