A Song of Many Rivers Read online

  ‘Well, I wish I was a jinn,’ said Anil. ‘Especially for volleyball matches.’

  Anil’s mother then told us about Munjia, a mischievous ghost who lives in lonely peepul trees. When a Munjia is annoyed, he rushes out from his tree and upsets tongas, bullock-carts and cycles. Even a bus is known to have been upset by a Munjia.

  ‘If you are passing beneath a peepul tree at night,’ warned Anil’s mother, ‘be careful not to yawn without covering your mouth or snapping your fingers in front of it. If you don’t remember to do that, the Munjia will jump down your throat and completely ruin your digestion!’

  In an attempt to change the subject, Kamal mentioned that a friend of his had found a snake in his bed one morning.

  ‘Did he kill it?’ asked Anil’s mother anxiously.

  ‘No, it slipped away,’ said Kamal.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘It is lucky if you see a snake early in the morning.’

  ‘It won’t bite you if you let it alone,’ she said.

  By eleven o’clock, after we had finished our dinner and heard a few more ghost stories—including one about Anil’s grandmother, whose spirit paid the family a visit—Kamal and I were most reluctant to leave the company on the verandah and retire to the room which had been set apart for us. It did not make us feel any better to be told by Anil’s mother that we should recite certain magical verses to keep away the more mischievous spirits. We tried one, which went—

  Bhoot, pret, pisach, dana

  Chhoo mantar, sab nikal jana,

  Mano, mano, Shiv ka kahna…

  which, roughly translated, means—

  Ghosts, spirits, goblins, sprites,

  Away you fly, don’t come tonight,

  Or with great Shiva you’ll have to fight!

  Shiva, the Destroyer, is one of the three major Hindu deities. But the more we repeated the verse, the more uneasy we became, and when I got into bed (after carefully examining it for snakes), I couldn’t lie still, but kept twisting and turning and looking at the walls for moving shadows. Kamal attempted to raise our spirits by singing softly, but this only made the atmosphere more eerie. After a while we heard someone knocking at the door, and the voices of Anil and the maidservant. Getting up and opening the door, I found them looking pale and anxious. They, too, had succeeded in frightening themselves as a result of Anil’s mother’s stories.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Anil. ‘Wouldn’t you like to sleep in our part of the house? It might be safer. Melia will help us to carry the beds across!’

  ‘We’re quite all right,’ protested Kamal and I, refusing to admit we were nervous; but we were hustled along to the other side of the flat as though a band of ghosts was conspiring against us. Anil’s mother had been absent during all this activity but suddenly we heard her screaming from the direction of the room we had just left.

  ‘Rusty and Kamal have disappeared!’ she cried. ‘Their beds have gone, too!’

  And then, when she came out on the verandah and saw us clashing about in our pyjamas, she gave another scream and collapsed on a cot.

  After that, we didn’t allow Anil’s mother to tell us ghost stories at night.

  3

  To the Hills

  At the end of August, when the rains were nearly over, we met at the pool to make plans for the autumn holidays. We had bathed, and were stretched out in the shade of the fresh, rain-washed sal trees, when Kamal, pointing vaguely to the distant mountains, said: ‘Why don’t we go to the Pindari Glacier?’

  ‘The glacier!’ exclaimed Anil. ‘But that’s all snow and ice!’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Kamal. ‘But there’s a path through the mountains that goes all the way to the foot of the glacier. It’s only fifty-four miles!’

  ‘Do you mean we must walk fifty-four miles?’

  ‘Well, there’s no other way,’ said Kamal. ‘Unless you prefer to sit on a mine. But your legs are too long, they’ll be trailing along the ground. No, we’ll have to walk. It will take us about ten days to get to the glacier and back, but if we take enough food there’ll be no problem. There are dak bungalows to stay in at night.’

  ‘Kamal gets all the best ideas,’ I said. ‘But I suppose Anil and I will have to get our parents’ permission. And some money.’

  ‘My mother won’t let me go,’ said Anil. ‘She says the mountains are full of ghosts. And she thinks I’ll get up to some mischief. How can one get up to mischief on a lonely mountain?’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t be dangerous, people are always going to the glacier. Can you see that peak above the others on the right?’ Kamal pointed to the distant snow-range, barely visible against the soft blue sky. ‘The Pindari Glacier is below it. It’s at 12,000 feet, I think, but we won’t need any special equipment. There’ll be snow only for the final two or three miles. Do you know that it’s the beginning of the river Sarayu?’

  ‘You mean our river?’ asked Anil, thinking of the little river that wandered along the outskirts of the town, joining the Ganges further downstream.

  ‘Yes. But it’s only a trickle where it starts.’

  ‘How much money will we need?’ I asked, determined to be practical.

  ‘Well, I’ve saved twenty rupees,’ said Kamal.

  ‘But won’t you need that for your books?’ I asked.

  ‘No, this is extra. If each of us brings twenty rupees, we should have enough. There’s nothing to spend money on, once we are up on the mountains. There are only one or two villages on the way, and food is scarce, so we’ll have to take plenty of food with us. I learnt all this from the Tourist Office.’

  ‘Kamal’s been planning this without our knowledge,’ complained Anil.

  ‘He always plans in advance,’ I said, ‘but it’s a good idea, and it should be a fine adventure.’

  ‘All right,’ said Anil. ‘But Rusty will have to be with me when I ask my mother. She thinks Rusty is very sensible, and might let me go if he says it’s quite safe.’ And he ended the discussion by jumping into the pool, where we soon joined him.

  Though my mother hesitated about letting me go, my father said it was a wonderful idea, and was only sorry because he couldn’t accompany us himself (which was a relief, as we didn’t want our parents along); and though Anil’s father hesitated—or rather, because he hesitated—his mother said yes, of course Anil must go, the mountain air would be good for his health. A puzzling remark, because Anil’s health had never been better. The bazaar people, when they heard that Anil might be away for a couple of weeks, were overjoyed at the prospect of a quiet spell, and pressed his father to let him go.

  On a cloudy day, promising rain, we bundled ourselves into the bus that was to take us to Kapkote (where people lose their caps and coats, punned Anil), the starting point of our trek. Each of us carried a haversack, and we had also brought along a good sized bedding-roll which, apart from blankets, also contained rice and flour thoughtfully provided by Anil’s mother. We had no idea how we would carry the bedding-roll once we started walking; but an astrologer had told Anil’s mother it was a good day for travelling, so we didn’t worry much over minor details.

  We were soon in the hills, on a winding road that took us up and up, until we saw the valley and our town spread out beneath us, the river a silver ribbon across the plain. Kamal pointed to a patch of dense sal forest and said, ‘Our pool must be there!’ We took a sharp bend, and the valley disappeared, and the mountains towered above us.

  We had dull headaches by the time we reached Kapkote; but when we got down from the bus a cool breeze freshened us. At the wayside shop we drank glasses of hot sweet tea, and the shopkeeper told us we could spend the night in one of his rooms. It was pleasant at Kapkote, the hills wooded with deodar trees, the lower slopes planted with fresh green paddy. At night, there was a wind moaning in the trees, and it found its way through the cracks in the windows and eventually through our blankets. Then, right outside the door, a dog began howling at the moon. It had been a good day for travelling, b
ut the astrologer hadn’t warned us that it would be a bad night for sleep.

  Next morning we washed our faces at a small stream about a hundred yards from the shop, and filled our water bottles for the day’s march. A boy from the nearby village sat on a rock, studying our movements.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked, unable to suppress his curiosity.

  ‘To the glacier,’ said Kamal.

  ‘Let me come with you,’ said the boy. ‘I know the way.’

  ‘You’re too small,’ said Anil. ‘We need someone who can carry our bedding-roll.’

  ‘I’m small,’ said the boy, ‘but I’m strong. I’m not a weakling like the boys in the plains.’ Though he was shorter than any of us, he certainly looked sturdy, and had a muscular well-knit body and pink cheeks. ‘See!’ he said; and picking up a rock the size of a football, he heaved it across the stream.

  ‘I think he can come with us,’ I said.

  And the boy, whose name was Bisnu, clashed off to inform his people of his employment—we had agreed to pay him a rupee a day for acting as our guide and ‘sherpa’.

  And then we were walking—at first, above the little Sarayu river, then climbing higher along the rough mule track, always within sound of the water. Kamal wanted to bathe in the river. I said it was too far, and Anil said we wouldn’t reach the dak bungalow before dark if we went for a swim. Regretfully, we left the river behind, and marched on through a forest of oaks, over wet, rotting leaves that made a soft carpet for our feet. We ate at noon, under an oak. As we didn’t want to waste any time making a fire—not on this first crucial day—we ate beans from a tin and drank most of our water.

  In the afternoon, we came to the river again. The water was swifter now, green and bubbling, still far below us. We saw two boys—in the water, swimming in an inlet which reminded us of our own secret pool. They waved, and invited us to join them. We returned their greeting; but it would have taken us an hour to get down to the river and up again; so we continued on our way.

  We walked fifteen miles on the first day—our speed was to decrease after this—and we were at the dak bungalow by six o’clock. Bisnu busied himself collecting sticks for a fire. Anil found the bungalow’s watchman asleep in a patch of fading sunlight, and roused him. The watchman, who hadn’t been bothered by visitors for weeks, grumbled at our intrusion, but opened a room for us. He also produced some potatoes from his quarters, and these were roasted for dinner.

  It became cold after the sun had gone down, and we remained close to Bisnu’s fire. The damp sticks burnt fitfully. But Bisnu had justified his inclusion in our party. He had balanced the bedding-roll on his shoulders as though it were full of cotton wool instead of blankets. Now he was helping with the cooking. And we were glad to have him sharing our hot potatoes and strong tea.

  There were only two beds in the room, and we pushed these together, apportioning out the blankets as fairly as possible. Then the four of us leapt into bed, shivering in the cold. We. were already over 5,000 feet. Bisnu, in his own peculiar way, had wrapped a scarf round his neck, though a cotton singlet and shorts were all that he wore for the night.

  ‘Tell us a story, Rusty,’ said Anil. ‘It will help us to fall asleep.’

  I told them one of his mother’s stories, about a boy and a girl who had been changed into a pair of buffaloes; and then Bisnu told us about the ghost of a Sadhu, who was to be seen sitting in the snow by moonlight, not far from the glacier. Far from putting us to sleep, this story kept us awake for hours.

  ‘Aren’t you asleep yet?’ I asked Anil in the middle of the night.

  ‘No, you keep kicking me,’ he lied.

  ‘We don’t have enough blankets,’ complained Kamal, ‘It’s too cold to sleep.’

  ‘I never sleep till it’s very late,’ mumbled Bisnu from the bottom of the bed.

  No one was prepared to admit that our imaginations were keeping us awake.

  After a little while we heard a thud on the corrugated tin sheeting, and then the sound of someone—or something—scrambling about on the roof. Anil, Kamal and I sat up in bed, startled out of our wits. Bisnu, who had been winning the race to be fast asleep, merely turned over on his side and grunted.

  ‘It’s only a bear,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you notice the pumpkins on the roof? Bears love pumpkins.’

  For half an hour we had to listen to the bear as it clambered about on the roof, feasting on the watchman’s ripening pumpkins. Finally, there was silence. Kamal and I crawled out of our blankets and went to the window. And through the frosted glass we saw a black Himalayan bear ambling across the slope in front of the bungalow, a fat pumpkin held between its paws.

  4

  To The River

  It was raining when we woke, and the mountains were obscured by a heavy mist. We delayed our departure, playing football on the verandah with one of the pumpkins that had fallen off the roof. At noon the rain stopped, and the sun shone through the clouds. As the mist lifted, we saw the snow range, the great peaks of Nanda Kot and Trisul stepping into the sky.

  ‘It’s different up here,’ said Kamal. ‘I feel a different person.

  ‘That’s the altitude,’ I said. ‘As we go higher, we’ll get lighter in the head.’

  ‘Anil is light in the head already,’ said Kamal. ‘I hope the altitude isn’t too much for him.’

  ‘If you two are going to be witty,’ said Anil, ‘I shall go off with Bisnu, and you’ll have to find the way yourselves.’

  Bisnu grinned at each of us in turn to show us that he wasn’t taking sides; and after a breakfast of boiled eggs, we set off on our trek to the next bungalow.

  Rain had made the ground slippery, and we were soon ankle-deep in slush. Our next bungalow lay in a narrow valley, on the banks of the rushing Pindar river, which twisted its way through the mountains. We were not sure how far we had to go, but nobody seemed in a hurry. On an impulse, I decided to hurry on ahead of the others. I wanted to be waiting for them at the river.

  When Anil, Kamal and Bisnu arrived, the four of us bravely decided to bathe in the little river. The late afternoon sun was still warm, but the water—so clear and inviting—proved to be ice-cold. Only twenty miles upstream the river emerged as a little trickle from the glacier, and in its swift descent down the mountain slopes it did not give the sun a chance to penetrate its waters. But we were determined to bathe, to wash away the dust and sweat of our two days’ trudging, and we leapt about in the shallows like startled porpoises, slapping water on each other, and gasping with the shock of each immersion. Bisnu, more accustomed to mountain streams than ourselves, ventured across in ail attempt to catch an otter, but wasn’t fast enough. Then we were on the springy grass, wrestling each other in order to get warm.

  The bungalow stood on a ledge just above the river, and the sound of the water rushing down the mountain defile could be heard at all times. The sound of the birds, which we had grown used to, was drowned by the sound of the water; but the birds themselves could be seen, many coloured, standing out splendidly against the dark green forest foliage: the red-crowned jay, the paradise flycatcher, the purple whistling-thrush, others we could not recognize.

  Higher up the mountain, above some terraced land where oats and barley were grown, stood a small cluster of huts. This, we were told by the watchman, was the last village on the way to the glacier. It was, in fact, one of the last villages in India, because if we crossed the difficult passes beyond the glacier; we would find ourselves in Tibet. We told the watchman we would be quite satisfied if we reached the glacier.

  Then Anil made the mistake of mentioning the Abominable Snowman, of whom we had been reading in the papers. The people of Nepal believe in the existence of the Snowman, and our watchman was a Nepali.

  ‘Yes, I have seen the Yeti,’ he told us. ‘A great shaggy flat-footed creature. In the winter, when it snows heavily, he passes by the bungalow at night. I have seen his tracks the next morning.’

  ‘Does he come this way in the summ
er?’ I asked anxiously. We were sitting before another of Bisnu’s fires, drinking tea with condensed milk, and trying to get through a black, sticky sweet which the watchman had produced from his tin trunk.

  ‘The yeti doesn’t come here in the summer,’ said the old man. ‘But I have seen the Lidini sometimes. You have to be careful of her.’

  ‘What is a Lidini?’ asked Kamal.

  ‘Ah!’ said the watchman mysteriously. ‘You have heard of the Abominable Snowman, no doubt, but there are few who have heard of the Abominable Snowwoman! And yet she is far the more dangerous of the two!’

  ‘What is she like?’ asked Anil, and we all craned forward.

  ‘She is of the same height as the Yeti—about seven feet when her back is straight—and her hair is much longer. She has very long teeth and nails. Her feet face inwards, but she can run very fast, especially downhill. If you see a Lidini, and she chases you, always run away in an uphill direction. She tires quickly because of her feet. But when running downhill she has no trouble at all, and you have to be very fast to escape her!’

  ‘Well, we’re all good runners,’ said Anil with a nervous laugh, ‘but it’s just a fairy story, I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘But you must believe fairy stories,’ I said, remembering a performance of Peter Pan in London, when those in the audience who believed in fairies were asked to clap their hands in order to save Tinker Bell’s life. ‘Even if they aren’t true,’ I added, deciding there was a world of difference between Tinker Bell and the Abominable Snowwoman.

  ‘Well, I don’t believe there’s a Snowman or a Snowwoman!’ declared Anil.