A Town Called Dehra Read online

  The next morning the girl looked up from the garden and saw me at my window.

  She had long black hair that fell to her waist, tied with a single red ribbon: her eyes were black like her hair and just as shiny. She must have been about ten or eleven years old.

  ‘Hallo,’ I said with a friendly smile.

  She looked suspiciously at me, ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m a ghost.’

  She laughed, and her laugh had a gay, mocking quality: ‘You look like one!’

  I didn’t think her remark particulars flattering, but I had asked for it. I stopped smiling anyway: most children don’t like adults smiling at them all the time.

  ‘What have you got up there?’ she asked.

  ‘Magic,’ I said.

  She laughed again but this time without mockery. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you come up and see for yourself?’

  She hesitated a little but came round to the steps and began climbing them, slowly, cautiously. And when she entered the room, she brought in a magic of her own.

  ‘Where’s your magic?’ she asked, looking me in the eye.

  ‘Come here,’ I said, and I took her to the window, and showed her the world.

  She said nothing but stared out of the window uncomprehendingly at first, and then with increasing interest. And after some time she turned round and smiled at me, and we were friends.

  I only knew that her name was Koki, and that she had come with her aunt for the summer months; I didn’t need to know any more about her, and she didn’t need know anything about me except that I wasn’t really a ghost—not the frightening sort any way . . . She came up my steps nearly every day, and joined me at the window. There was a lot of excitement to be had in our world, especially when the rains broke.

  At the first rumblings, women would rush outside to retrieve the washing on the clothes line and, if there was a breeze to chase a few garments across the compound. When the rain came, it came with a vengeance, making a bog of the garden and a river of the path.

  A cyclist would come riding furiously down the path, an elderly gentleman would be having difficulty with an umbrella, naked children would be frisking about in the rain. Sometimes Koki would run out on the roof, and shout and dance in the rain. And the rain would come through the open door and window of the room, flooding the floor and making an island of the bed.

  But the window was more fun than anything else. It gave us the power of detachment: we were deeply interested in the life around us, but we were not involved in it.

  ‘It is like a cinema,’ said Koki. ‘The window is the screen, the world is the picture.’

  Soon the mangoes were ripe, and Koki was in the branches of the mango tree as often as she was in my room. From the window I had a good view of the tree, and we spoke to each other from the same height. We ate far too many mangoes, at least five a day.

  ‘Let’s make a garden on the roof,’ suggested Koki. She was full of ideas like this.

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s easy. We bring up mud and bricks and make the flower-beds. Then we plant the seeds. We’ll grow all sorts of flowers.’

  ‘The roof will fall in,’ I predicted.

  But it didn’t. We spent two days carrying buckets of mud up the steps to the roof and laying out the flower-beds. It was very hard work, but Koki did most of it. When the beds were ready, we had the opening ceremony. Apart from a few small plants collected from the garden below we had only one species of seeds—pumpkin . . .

  We planted the pumpkin-seeds in the mud, and felt proud of ourselves.

  But it rained heavily that night, and in the morning I discovered that everything—except the bricks—had been washed away.

  So we returned to the window.

  A myna had been in a fight—with the crow perhaps—and the feathers had been knocked off its head. A bougainvillaea that had been climbing the wall had sent a long green shoot in through the window.

  Koki said, ‘Now we can’t shut the window without spoiling the creeper.’

  ‘Then we will never close the window,’ I said.

  And we let the creeper into the room.

  The rains passed, and an autumn wind came whispering through the branches of the banyan tree. There were red leaves on the ground, and the wind picked them up and blew them about, so that they looked like butterflies. I would watch the sun rise in the morning, the sky all red, until its first rays splashed the window sill and crept up the walls of the room. And in the evening Koki and I watched the sun go down in a sea of fluffy clouds; sometimes the clouds were pink, and sometimes orange; they were always coloured clouds, framed in the window.

  ‘I’m going tomorrow,’ said Koki one evening.

  I was too surprised to say anything.

  ‘You stay here forever, don’t you?’ she said.

  I remained silent.

  ‘When I come again next year you will still be here, won’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but the window will still be here.’

  ‘Oh, do be here next year,’ she said, ‘or someone will close the window!’

  In the morning the tonga was at the door, and the servant, the aunt and Koki were in it. Koki waved up to me at my window. Then the driver flicked the reins, the wheels of the carriage creaked and rattled, the bell jingled. Down the path went the tonga down the path and through the gate, and all the time Koki waved; and from the gate I must have looked like a ghost, standing alone at the high window, amongst the bougainvillaea.

  When the tonga was out of sight I took the spray of bougainvillaea in my hand and pushed it out of the room. Then I closed the window. It would be opened only when the spring and Koki came again.

  What’s Your Dream?

  An old man, a beggar man bent double, with a flowing white beard and piercing grey eyes, stopped on the road on the other side of the garden wall and looked up at me, where I perched on the branch of a lichi tree.

  ‘What’s your dream?’ he asked.

  It was a startling question coming from that raggedy old man on the street. Even more startling that it should have been made in English. English-speaking beggars were a rarity in those days.

  ‘What’s your dream?’ he repeated.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I had a dream last night.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. You know it isn’t what I mean. I can see you’re a dreamer. It’s not lichi season, but you sit in that tree all afternoon, dreaming.’

  ‘I just like sitting here,’ I said. I refused to admit that I was a dreamer. Other boys didn’t dream, they had catapults.

  ‘A dream, my boy, is what you want most in life. Isn’t there something that you want more than anything else?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said promptly. ‘A room of my own.’

  ‘Ah! A room of your own, a tree of your own, it’s the same thing. Not many people can have their own rooms, you know. Not in a land as crowded as ours.’

  ‘Just a small room.’

  ‘And what kind of room do you live in at present?’

  ‘It’s a big room, but I have to share it with my brothers and sisters and even my aunt when she visits.’

  ‘I see. What you really want is freedom. Your own tree, your own room, your own small place in the sun.’

  ‘Yes, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all? That’s everything! When you have all that, you’ll have found your dream.’

  ‘Tell me how to find it!’

  ‘There’s no magic formula, my friend. If I was a godman, would I be wasting my time here with you? You must work for your dream and move towards it all the time, and discard all those things that come in the way of finding it. And then, if you don’t expect too much too quickly, you’ll find your freedom, a room of your own. The difficult time comes afterwards.’

  ‘Afterwards?’

  ‘Yes, because it’s so easy to lo
se it all, to let someone take it away from you. Or you become greedy, or careless, and start taking everything for granted, and—poof!—suddenly the dream has gone, vanished!’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I had my dream and lost it.’

  ‘Did you lose everything?’

  ‘Yes, just look at me now, my friend. Do I look like a king or a godman? I had everything I wanted, but then I wanted more and more . . . You get your room, and then you want a building, and when you have your building you want your own territory, and when you have your own territory you want your own kingdom—and all the time it’s getting harder to keep everything. And when you lose it—in the end, all kingdoms are lost—you don’t even have your room any more.’

  ‘Did you have a kingdom?’

  ‘Something like that . . . Follow your own dream, boy, but don’t take other people’s dreams, don’t stand in anyone’s way, don’t take from another man his room or his faith or his song.’ And he turned and shuffled away, intoning the following verse which I have never heard elsewhere, so it must have been his own—

  Live long, my friend, be wise and strong,

  But do not take from any man his song.

  As Time Goes By

  Prem’s boys are growing tall and healthy, on the verge of manhood. How can I think of death, when faced with the full vigour and confidence of youth? They remind me of Somi and Daljit, who were the same age when I knew them in Dehra during our schooldays. But remembering Somi and Dal reminds me of death again—for Dal had died a young man—and I look at Prem’s boys again, haunted by the thought of suddenly leaving this world, and pray that I can be with them a little longer.

  Somi and Dal . . . I remember: it was going to rain. I could see the rain moving across the hills, and I could smell it in the breeze. But instead of turning back, I walked on through the leaves and brambles that grew over the disused path, and wandered into the forest. I had heard the sound of rushing water at the bottom of the hill, and there was no question of returning until I had found the water.

  I had to slide down some smooth rocks into a small ravine, and there I found the stream running across a bed of shingle. I removed my shoe and socks and started walking up the stream.

  1950: Somi and Dipi in their orchard, Dehradun.

  Water trickled down from the hillside, from amongst ferns and grass and wild flowers; and the hills, rising steeply on either side, kept the ravine in shadow. The rocks were smooth, almost soft, and some of them were grey and some yellow. The pool was fed by a small waterfall, and it was deep beneath the waterfall. I did not stay long, because now the rain was swishing over the sal trees, and I was impatient to tell the others about the pool.

  Somi usually chose the adventures we were to have, and would just grumble and get involved in them; but the pool was my own discovery, and both Somi and Daljit gave me credit for it.

  I think it was the pool that brought us together more than anything else. We made it a secret, private pool, and invited no others. Somi was the best swimmer. He dived off rocks and went gliding about under the water, like a long, golden fish. Dal threshed about with much vigour but little skill. I could dive off a rock too, but I usually landed on my belly.

  There were slim silverfish in the waters of the stream. At first we tried catching them with a line, but they usually took the bait and left the hook. Then we brought a bedsheet and stretched it across one end of the stream. but the fish wouldn’t come near it. Eventually Somi, without telling us, brought along a stick of dynamite, and Dal and I were startled out of a siesta by a flash across the water and a deafening explosion. Half the hillside tumbled into the pool, and Somi along with it; but we got him out, as well as a good supply of stunned fish which were too small for eating.

  The effects of the explosion gave Somi another idea, and that was to enlarge our pool by building a dam across one end. This he accomplished with Dal’s and my labour. But one afternoon, when it rained heavily, a torrent of water came rushing down the stream, bursting the dam and flooding the ravine; our clothes were all carried away by the current, and we had to wait for night to fall before creeping home through the darkest alleyways, for we used to bathe quite naked; it would have been unmanly to do otherwise.

  Our activities at the pool included wrestling and buffalo-riding. We wrestled on a strip of sand that ran beside the stream, and rode on a couple of buffaloes that sometimes came to drink and wallow in the more muddy parts of the stream. We would sit astride the buffaloes, and kick and yell and urge them forward, but on no occasion did we ever get them to move. At the most, they would roll over on their backs, taking us with them into a pool of slush.

  But the buffaloes were always comfortable to watch. Solid, earthbound creatures, they liked warm days and cool, soft mud. There is nothing more satisfying to watch than buffaloes wallowing in mud, or ruminating over a mouthful of grass, absolutely oblivious to everything else. They watched us with sleepy, indifferent eyes, and tolerated the pecking of crows. Did they think all that time, or did they just enjoy the sensuousness of soft, wet mud, while we perspired under a summer sun . . .? No, thinking would have been too strenuous for those supine creatures; to get neck-deep in water was their only aim in life.

  It didn’t matter how muddy we got ourselves, because we had only to dive into the pool to get rid of the muck. In fact, mud-fighting was one of our favourite pastimes. It was like playing snowballs, only we used mud balls.

  If it was possible for Somi and Dal to get out of their houses undetected at night, we would come to the pool and bathe by moonlight, and at that time we would bathe silently and seriously, because there was something subduing about the stillness of the jungle at night.

  I don’t exactly remember how we broke up, but we hardly noticed it at the time. That was because we never really believed we were finally parting, or that we would not be seeing the pool again. After about a year, Somi passed his matriculation and entered the military academy. The last time I saw him, he was about to be commissioned, and sported a fierce and very military moustache. He remembered the pool in a sentimental, military way, but not as I remembered it.

  Shortly after Somi had matriculated, Dal and his family left town, and I did not see him again, until after I returned from England. Then he was in Air Force uniform, tall, slim, very handsome, completely unrecognizable as the chubby little boy who had played with me in the pool. Three weeks after this meeting I heard that he had been killed in an air crash. Sweet Dal ... I feel you are close to me now ... I want to remember you exactly as you were when first we met. Here is my diary for 1951 (This diary formed the nucleus of my first novel, The Room on the Roof), when I was sixteen and you thirteen or fourteen:

  1950: Somi in the lichi orchard behind his Dehradun home.

  September 7: ‘Do you like elephants?’

  Somi asked me.

  ‘Yes, when they are tame.’

  ‘That’s all right, then. Daljit!’ he called. ‘You can come up, Ruskin likes elephants.’

  Dal is not exactly an elephant. He is one of us.

  He is fat, oh yes he is fat, but it is his good nature that is so like an elephant’s. His fatness is not grotesque or awkward; it is a very pleasant plumpness, and nothing could suit him better. If Dal were thin he would be a failure.

  His eyes are bright and round, full of mischievousness and a sort of grumpy gaiety.

  And what of the pool?

  I looked for it, after an interval of more than thirty years, but couldn’t find it. I found the ravine, and the bed of shingle, but there was no water. The stream had changed its course, just as we had changed ours.

  I turned away in disappointment, and with a dull ache in my heart. It was cruel of the pool to disappear; it was the cruelty of time. But I hadn’t gone far when I heard the sound of rushing water, and the shouting of children; and pushing my way through jungle, I found another stream and another pool and about half-a-dozen ch
ildren splashing about in the water.

  They did not see me, and I kept in the shadow of the trees and watched them play. But I didn’t really see them. I was seeing Somi and Daljit and the lazy old buffaloes, and I stood there for almost an hour, a disembodied spirit, romping again in the shallows of our secret pool. Nothing had really changed. Time is like that.

  The Silver Screen

  It has gone now, the little cinema opposite the old Parade Ground in Dehra. A shopping arcade has taken its place. It was called the Odeon, and back in the 1940s and early ’50s, when I was a boy, it screened the latest productions from Hollywood and Britain. The cinema could seat about 150 people, and in its best years it was well attended by Anglo-Indians and English-educated Indians resident in Dehra.

  For me, then a lonely and insecure boy, it provided the great escape into another world.

  My mother and stepfather were not overly interested in what I did with myself during the school holidays. I missed my father’s companionship and found it difficult to make friends with young people of my own age. There were a few books at home; but the town had no bookshops to speak of, and I had soon exhausted the contents of the small lending library down the road. So I saved my meagre pocket money and went to the cinema whenever I could.

  It was a twenty-minute walk from where we lived, and after the evening show I would walk home across the deserted Parade Ground, the starry night adding to my dreams of a starry world where tap-dancers, singing cowboys, keystone cops, swashbuckling swordsmen and beautiful women in sarongs reigned supreme in the firmament. I wasn’t a day-dreamer, I was a star-dreamer. I’d try dancing like Gene Kelly or singing (very successfully) like Nelson Eddy. I even did my hair in a puff like tough guy Alan Ladd.

  Dehra was then a town of cyclists, and rows of bicycles would be neatly stacked in front of the Odeon while a show was in progress. Those were pre-popcorn days, but during the intervals cups of tea could be taken into the hall.