A Town Called Dehra Page 4

  The clip-clop of a tonga pony, and Bansi’s tonga came rattling down the road. I called down to him and he reined in with a shout of surprise, and looked up into the branches of the banyan tree.

  ‘What are you doing up there?’ he cried.

  ‘Hiding from Grandmother,’ I said.

  ‘And when are you coming for that ride?’

  ‘On Tuesday afternoon,’ I said.

  ‘Why not today?’

  ‘Ayah won’t let me. But she has Tuesdays off.’

  Bansi spat red paan-juice across the road. ‘Your ayah is jealous,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Women are always jealous, aren’t they? I suppose it’s because she doesn’t have a tonga.’

  ‘It’s because she doesn’t have a tonga-driver,’ said Bansi, grinning up at me. ‘Never mind. I’ll come on Tuesday—that’s the day after tomorrow, isn’t it?’

  I nodded down to him, and then started backing along my branch, because I could hear Ayah calling in the distance. Bansi leant forward and smacked his pony across the rump, and the tonga shot forward.

  ‘What were you doing up there?’ asked Ayah a little later.

  ‘I was watching a snake cross the road,’ I said. I knew she couldn’t resist talking about snakes. There weren’t as many in Dehra as there had been in Kathiawar and she was thrilled that I had seen one.

  ‘Was it moving towards you or away from you?’ she asked.

  ‘It was going away.’

  Ayah’s face clouded over. ‘That means poverty for the beholder,’ she said gloomily.

  Later, while scrubbing me down in the bathroom, she began to air all her prejudices, which included drunkards (‘they die quickly, anyway’), misers (‘they get murdered sooner or later’) and tonga-drivers (‘they have all the vices’).

  ‘You are a very lucky boy,’ she said suddenly, peering closely at my tummy.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘You just said I would be poor because I saw a snake going the wrong way.’

  ‘Well, you won’t be poor for long. You have a mole on your tummy, and that’s very lucky. And there is one under your armpit, which means you will be famous. Do you have one on the neck? No, thank God! A mole on the neck is the sign of a murderer!’

  ‘Do you have any moles?’ I asked.

  Ayah nodded seriously, and pulling her sleeve up to her shoulder, showed me a large mole high on her arm.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked.

  ‘It means a life of great sadness,’ said Ayah gloomily.

  ‘Can I touch it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, touch it,’she said, and taking my hand, she placed it against the mole.

  ‘It’s a nice mole,’ I said, wanting to make Ayah happy. ‘Can I kiss it?’

  ‘You can kiss it,’ said Ayah.

  I kissed her on the mole.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said.

  Tuesday afternoon came at last, and as soon as Grandmother was asleep and Ayah had gone to the bazaar, I was at the gate, looking up and down the road for Bansi and his tonga. He was not long in coming. Before the tonga turned into the road, I could hear his voice, singing to the accompaniment of the carriage bells.

  He reached down, took my hand, and hoisted me on to the seat beside him. Then we went off down the road at a steady jog-trot. It was only when we reached the outskirts of the town that Bansi encouraged his pony to greater efforts. He rose in his seat, leaned forward and slapped the pony across the haunches. From a brisk trot we changed to a carefree canter. The tonga swayed from side to side. I clung to Bansi’s free arm, while he grinned at me, his mouth red with paan-juice.

  ‘Where shall we go, dost?’ he asked.

  ‘Nowhere,’ I said. ‘Anywhere.’

  ‘We’ll go to the river,’ said Bansi.

  The ‘river’ was really a swift mountain stream that ran through the forests outside Dehra, joining the Ganga about fifteen miles away. It was almost dry during the winter and early summer and in flood during the monsoon.

  The road out of Dehra was a gentle decline and soon we were rushing headlong through the tea gardens and eucalyptus forests, the pony’s hoofs striking sparks off the metalled road, the carriage wheels groaning and creaking so loudly that I feared one of them would come off and that we would all be thrown into a ditch or into the small canal that ran beside the road. We swept through mango groves, through guava and lichi orchards, past broad-leaved sal and shisham trees. Once in the sal forest, Bansi turned the tonga on to a rough cart-track, and we continued along it for about a furlong, until the road dipped down to the stream bed.

  ‘Let us go straight into the water,’ said Bansi. ‘You and I and the pony!’ And he drove the tonga straight into the middle of the stream, where the water came up to the pony’s knees.

  ‘I am not a great one for baths,’ said Bansi, ‘but the pony needs one, and why should a horse smell sweeter than its owner?’ Saying which, he flung off his clothes and jumped into the water.

  ‘Better than bathing under a tap!’ he cried, slapping himself on the chest and thighs. ‘Come down, dost, and join me!’

  After some hesitation I joined him, but had some difficulty in keeping on my feet in the fast current. I grabbed at the pony’s tail, and hung on to it, while Bansi began sloshing water over the patient animal’s back.

  After this, Bansi led both me and the pony out of the stream and together we gave the carriage a good washing down. I’d had a free ride and Bansi got the services of a free helper for the long overdue spring-cleaning of his tonga. After we had finished the job, he presented me with a packet of aam papar—a sticky toffee made from mango pulp—and for some time I tore at it as a dog tears at a bit of old leather. Then I felt drowsy and lay down on the brown, sunwarmed grass. Crickets and grasshoppers were telephoning each other from tree and bush and a pair of bluejays rolled, dived, and swooped acrobatically overhead.

  Bansi had no watch. He looked at the sun and said, ‘It is past three. When will that ayah of yours be home? She is more frightening than your grandmother!’

  ‘She comes at four.’

  ‘Then we must hurry back. And don’t tell her where we’ve been, or I’ll never be able to come to your house again. Your grandmother’s one of my best customers.’

  ‘That means you’d be sorry if she died.’

  ‘I would indeed, my friend.’

  Bansi raced the tonga back to town. There was very little motor traffic in those days, and tongas and bullock-carts were far more numerous than they are today.

  We were back five minutes before Ayah returned. Before Bansi left, he promised to take me for another ride the following week.

  The house in Dehra had to be sold. My father had not left any money; he had never realized that his health would deteriorate so rapidly from the malarial fevers which had grown in frequency; he was still planning for the future when he died. Now that my father had gone, Grandmother saw no point in staying on in India; there was nothing left in the bank and she needed money for our passages to England, so the house had to go. Dr Ghose, who had a thriving medical practice in Dehra, made her a reasonable offer, which she accepted.

  Then things happened very quickly. Grandmother sold most of our belongings, because as she said, we wouldn’t be able to cope with a lot of luggage. The kabaris came in droves, buying up crockery, furniture, carpets and clocks at throwaway prices. Grandmother hated parting with some of her possessions, such as the carved giltwood mirror, her walnut-wood armchair, and her rosewood writing desk, but it was impossible to take them with us. They were carried away in a bullock-cart.

  Ayah was very unhappy at first but cheered up when Grandmother got her a job with a teaplanter’s family in Assam. It was arranged that she could stay with us until we left Dehra.

  We went at the end of September, just as the monsoon clouds broke up, scattered, and were driven away by soft breezes from the Himalayas. There was no time to revisit the island where my father and I had planted our trees. And in th
e urgency and excitement of the preparations for our departure, I forgot to recover my small treasures from the hole in the banyan tree. It was only when we were in Bansi’s tonga, on the way to the station, that I remembered my top, catapult and Iron Cross. Too late! To go back for them would mean missing the train.

  ‘Hurry!’ urged Grandmother nervously. ‘We mustn’t be late for the train, Bansi.’

  Bansi flicked the reins and shouted to his pony, and for once in her life Grandmother submitted to being carried along the road at a brisk trot.

  ‘It’s five to nine,’ she said, ‘and the train leaves at nine.’

  ‘Do not worry, Memsahib. I have been taking you to the station for fifteen years, and you have never missed a train!’

  ‘No,’ said Grandmother. ‘And I don’t suppose you’ll ever take me to the station again, Bansi.’

  ‘Times are changing, Memsahib. Do you know that there is now a taxi—a motor car—competing with the tongas of Dehra? You are lucky to be leaving. If you stay, you will see me starve to death!’

  ‘We will all starve to death if we don’t catch that train,’ said Grandmother.

  ‘Do not worry about the train, it never leaves on time, and no one expects it to. If it left at nine o’clock, everyone would miss it.’

  Bansi was right. We arrived at the station at five minutes past nine, and rushed onto the platform, only to find that the train had not yet arrived.

  The platform was crowded with people waiting to catch the same train or to meet people arriving on it. Ayah was there already, standing guard over a pile of miscellaneous luggage. We sat down on our boxes and became part of the platform life at an Indian railway station.

  Moving among piles of bedding and luggage were sweating, cursing coolies; vendors of magazines, sweetmeats, tea and betel-leaf preparations; also stray dogs, stray people and sometimes a stray stationmaster. The cries of the vendors mixed with the general clamour of the station and the shunting of a steam engine in the yards. ‘Tea, hot tea!’ Sweets, papads, hot stuff, cold drinks, toothpowder, pictures of film stars, bananas, balloons, wooden toys, clay images of the gods. The platform had become a bazaar.

  Ayah was giving me all sorts of warnings.

  ‘Remember, baba, don’t lean out of the window when the train is moving. There was that American boy who lost his head last year! And don’t eat rubbish at every station between here and Bombay. And see that no strangers enter the compartment. Mr Wilkins was murdered and robbed last year!’

  The station bell clanged, and in the distance there appeared a big, puffing steam engine, painted green and gold and black. A stray dog, with a lifetime’s experience of trains, darted away across the railway lines. As the train came alongside the platform, doors opened, window shutters fell, faces appeared in the openings, and even before the train had come to a stop, people were trying to get in or out.

  For a few moments there was chaos. The crowd surged backward and forward. No one could get out. No one could get in. A hundred people were leaving the train, two hundred were getting into it. No one wanted to give way.

  The problem was solved by a man climbing out of a window. Others followed his example and the pressure at the doors eased and people started squeezing into their compartments.

  Grandmother had taken the precaution of reserving berths in a first-class compartment, and assisted by Bansi and half-a-dozen coolies, we were soon inside with all our luggage. A whistle blasted and we were off! Bansi had to jump from the running train.

  As the engine gathered speed, I ignored Ayah’s advice and put my head out of the window to look back at the receding platform. Ayah and Bansi were standing on the platform, waving to me and I kept waving to them until the train rushed into the darkness and the bright lights of Dehra were swallowed up in the night. New lights, dim and flickering came into existence as we passed small villages. The stars too were visible and I saw a shooting star streaking through the heavens.

  I remembered something that Ayah had once told me, that stars are the spirits of good men, and I wondered if that shooting star was a sign from my father that he was aware of our departure and would be with us on our journey. And I remembered something else that Ayah had said—that if one wished on a shooting star, one’s wish would be granted, provided of course that one thrust all five fingers into the mouth at the same time!

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ asked Grandmother staring at me as I thrust my hand into my mouth.

  ‘Making a wish,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Grandmother.

  She was preoccupied, and didn’t ask me what I was wishing for; nor did I tell her.

  Growing Up with Trees

  Dehra was a good place for trees, and Grandfather’s house was, surrounded by several kinds—peepul, neem, mango, jackfruit and papaya. There was also an ancient banyan tree. I grew up amongst these Indian trees, while some of them were planted by Grandfather and grew up with me.

  There were two kinds of trees that were of special interest to me—trees that were good for climbing, and trees that provided fruit.

  The jack-fruit tree was both these things. The fruit itself—the largest in the world—grew only on the trunk and main branches. It was not my favourite food, and I preferred it cooked as a vegetable. But the tree was large and leafy and easy to climb.

  The peepul was a good tree to sit beneath on hot days. Its heart-shaped leaf, sensitive to the slightest breeze, would be flapping gently when the clouds were standing still and not another tree witnessed the least movement in the air. There is a peepul tree in every Indian village, and it is common to see a farmer, tired at the end of an afternoon’s toil in the fields, being lured to sleep by the rustling of its leaves.

  A banyan grew behind our house. Its spreading branches, which hung to the ground and took root again, formed a number of twisting passageways which gave me endless pleasure. The tree was older than the house, older than my grandparents, as old as the town. I could hide myself in its branches, behind thick green leaves, and spy on the world below. I could read in it, too, propped up against the bole of the tree with Treasure Island, Huck Finn, The Jungle Books*, David Copperfield, and English comics like Wizard and Hotspur, which were for reading, not just looking at.

  The banyan tree was a world in itself, populated with small beasts and large insects. While the leaves were still pink and tender, they would be visited by the delicate map butterfly, who committed her eggs to their care. The ‘honey’ on the leaves—an edible smear—also attracted the little striped squirrels, who soon grew used to my presence in the tree and became quite bold, accepting peanuts from my hand. Red-headed parakeets swarmed about the tree early in the mornings.

  But the banyan really came to life during the monsoon, when the branches were thick with scarlet figs. These berries were not fit for human consumption, but the many birds that gathered in the tree—gossipy rosy pastors, quarrelsome mynas, cheerful bulbuls and coppersmiths, and sometimes a raucous, bullying crow—feasted on them. And when night fell, and the birds were resting, the dark flying foxes flapped heavily about the tree, chewing and munching as they clambered over the branches.

  One of my favourite trees was the jamun, also known as the Java plum. Its purple astringent fruit ripened during the rains, and then I would join the gardener’s young son in its branches, and we would feast like birds on the smooth succulent fruit until our lips and cheeks were stained a bright purple.

  The neem (or margosa) was another tree that came into its own during the monsoon rains. The first heavy shower made it shed its small yellow berries, and as they were crushed by passing feet they gave off a strong sweet smell. Its leaves were a pale green, and their fresh, shiny texture added charm to a tree that had many uses. (The gum and oil are used medicinally; the leaves can be cooked as a vegetable; the oil-cake makes an excellent fertilizer; and the green twigs are used as toothbrushes in almost every Indian village.)

  Among nocturnal visitors to the jack-fruit and b
anyan trees was the brainfever bird, whose real name is the hawk-cuckoo. ‘Brainfever, brainfever!’ it seems to call, and this shrill, nagging cry will keep the soundest of sleepers awake on a hot summer’s night.

  The British called it the brainfever bird, but there are other names for it. The Marathas called it paos-ala which means ‘rain is coming’! Perhaps Grandfather’s interpretation of its call was the most suitable. According to him, when the bird was tuning up for its main concert, it seemed to say: ‘Oh dear, oh dear! How very hot it’s getting! We feel it ... we feel it ... we feel it!’

  Yes, the banyan tree was a noisy place during the rains. If the brainfever bird made music by night, the crickets and cicadas orchestrated during the day. As musicians, the cicadas were in a class by themselves. All through the hot weather their chorus rang through the garden, while a shower of rain, far from dampening their spirits, only roused them to a greater choral effort.

  The tree-crickets were a band of willing artists who commenced their performance at almost any time of the day but preferably in the evenings. Delicate pale green creatures with transparent green wings, they were hard to find amongst the lush monsoon foliage; but once located, a tap on the bush or leaf on which they sat would put an immediate end to the performance.

  At the height of the monsoon, the banyan tree was like an orchestra-pit with the musicians constantly tuning up. Birds, insects and squirrels expressed their joy at the termination of the hot weather and the cool quenching relief of the monsoon.

  A toy flute in my hands, I would try adding my shrill piping to theirs. But they thought poorly of my musical ability, for, whenever I piped, the birds and the insects maintained a pained and puzzled silence

  * * *

  *(I found Kipling’s Second Jungle Book even more appealing than the first.)