White Clouds, Green Mountains Read online

  ‘Come on,’ said Suresh. ‘I’m hungry.’

  They hurried along the path to the village.

  ‘Good-bye, good-bye …’ Usha heard them calling. Was it just the wind?

  The Night the Roof Blew Off

  We are used to sudden storms up here on the first range of the Himalayas. The old building in which we live has, for more than a hundred years, received the full force of the wind as it sweeps across the hills from the east.

  We’d lived in the building for more than ten years without a disaster. It had even taken the shock of a severe earthquake. As my granddaughter Dolly said, ‘It’s difficult to tell the new cracks from the old!’

  It’s a two-storey building, and I live on the upper floor with my family: my three grandchildren and their parents. The roof is made of corrugated tin sheets, the ceiling of wooden boards. That’s the traditional Mussoorie roof.

  Looking back at the experience, it was the sort of thing that should have happened in a James Thurber story, like the dam that burst or the ghost who got in. But I wasn’t thinking of Thurber at the time, although a few of his books were among the many I was trying to save from the icy rain pouring into my bedroom.

  Our roof had held fast in many a storm, but the wind that night was really fierce. It came rushing at us with a high-pitched, eerie wail. The old roof groaned and protested. It took a battering for several hours while the rain lashed against the windows and the lights kept coming and going.

  There was no question of sleeping, but we remained in bed for warmth and comfort. The fire had long since gone out as the chimney had collapsed, bringing down a shower of sooty rainwater.

  After about four hours of buffeting, the roof could take it no longer. My bedroom faces east, so my portion of the roof was the first to go.

  The wind got under it and kept pushing until, with a ripping, groaning sound, the metal sheets shifted and slid off the rafters, some of them dropping with claps like thunder on to the road below.

  So that’s it, I thought. Nothing worse can happen. As long as the ceiling stays on, I’m not getting out of bed. We’ll collect our roof in the morning.

  Icy water splashing down on my face made me change my mind in a hurry. Leaping from the bed, I found that much of the ceiling had gone, too. Water was pouring on my open typewriter as well as on the bedside radio and bed cover.

  Picking up my precious typewriter (my companion for forty years) I stumbled into the front sitting room (and library), only to find a similar situation there. Water was pouring through the slats of the wooden ceiling, raining down on the open bookshelves.

  By now I had been joined by the children, who had come to my rescue. Their section of the roof hadn’t gone as yet. Their parents were struggling to close a window against the driving rain.

  ‘Save the books!’ shouted Dolly, the youngest, and that became our rallying cry for the next hour or two.

  Dolly and her brother Mukesh picked up armfuls of books and carried them into their room. But the floor was awash, so the books had to be piled on their beds. Dolly was helping me gather some of my papers when a large field rat jumped on to the desk in front of her. Dolly squealed and ran for the door.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Mukesh, whose love of animals extends even to field rats. ‘It’s only sheltering from the storm.’

  Big brother Rakesh whistled for our dog, Tony, but Tony wasn’t interested in rats just then. He had taken shelter in the kitchen, the only dry spot in the house.

  Two rooms were now practically roofless, and we could see the sky lit up by flashes of lightning.

  There were fireworks indoors, too, as water spluttered and crackled along a damaged wire. Then the lights went out altogether.

  Rakesh, at his best in an emergency, had already lit two kerosene lamps. And by their light we continued to transfer books, papers, and clothes to the children’s room.

  We noticed that the water on the floor was beginning to subside a little.

  ‘Where is it going?’ asked Dolly.

  ‘Through the floor,’ said Mukesh. ‘Down to the flat below!’

  Cries of concern from our downstairs neighbours told us that they were having their share of the flood.

  Our feet were freezing because there hadn’t been time to put on proper footwear. And besides, shoes and slippers were awash by now. All chairs and tables were piled high with books. I hadn’t realized the extent of my library until that night!

  The available beds were pushed into the driest corner of the children’s room, and there, huddled in blankets and quilts, we spent the remaining hours of the night while the storm continued.

  Towards morning the wind fell, and it began to snow. Through the door to the sitting room I could see snowflakes drifting through the gaps in the ceiling, settling on picture frames. Ordinary things like a glue bottle and a small clock took on a certain beauty when covered with soft snow.

  Most of us dozed off.

  When dawn came, we found the windowpanes encrusted with snow and icicles. The rising sun struck through the gaps in the ceiling and turned everything golden. Snow crystals glistened on the empty bookshelves. But the books had been saved.

  Rakesh went out to find a carpenter and tinsmith, while the rest of us started putting things in the sun to dry. By evening, we’d put much of the roof back on.

  It’s a much-improved roof now, and we look forward to the next storm with confidence!

  The Last Truck Ride

  [Twice a day Pritam Singh takes his battered, old truck on the narrow, mountainous roads, to the limestone quarry. He is in the habit of driving fast. The brakes of his truck are in good condition. What happens when a stray mule suddenly appears on the road?]

  A horn blared, shattering the silence of the mountains, and a truck came round the bend in the road. A herd of goats scattered to left and right.

  The goat-herds cursed as a cloud of dust enveloped them, and then the truck had left them behind and was rattling along the stony, unpaved hill road.

  At the wheel of the truck, stroking his gray moustache, sat Pritam Singh, a turbaned Sikh. It was his own truck. He did not allow anyone else to drive it. Everyday he made two trips to the limestone quarries, carrying truckloads of limestone back to the depot at the bottom of the hill. He was paid by the trip, and he was always anxious to get in two trips everyday.

  Sitting beside him was Nathu, his cleaner-boy. Nathu was a sturdy boy, with a round cheerful face. It was difficult to guess his age. He might have been twelve or he might have been fifteen—he did not know himself, since no one in his village had troubled to record his birthday—but the hard life he led probably made him look older than his years. He belonged to the hills, but his village was far away, on the next range.

  Last year the potato crop had failed. As a result there was no money for salt, sugar, soap and flour, and Nathu’s parents, and small brothers and sisters couldn’t live entirely on the onions and artichokes which were about the only crops that had survived the drought. There had been no rain that summer. So Nathu waved good-bye to his people and came down to the town in the valley to look for work. Someone directed him to the limestone depot. He was too young to work at the quarries, breaking stones and loading them on the trucks; but Pritam Singh, one of the older drivers, was looking for someone to clean and look after his truck. Nathu looked like a bright, strong boy, and he was taken on at ten rupees a day.

  That had been six months ago, and now Nathu was an experienced hand at looking after trucks, riding in them and even sleeping in them. He got on well with Pritam Singh, the grizzled, fifty-year-old Sikh, who had well-to-do sons in Punjab, but whose sturdy independence kept him on the road in his battered old truck.

  Pritam Singh pressed hard on his horn. Now there was no one on the road—no animals, no humans—but Pritam was fond of his horn and liked blowing it. It was music to his ears.

  ‘One more year on this road,’ said Pritam. ‘Then I’ll sell my truck and retire.’

&nb
sp; ‘Who will buy this truck? said Nathu. ‘It will retire before you do.’ ‘Don’t be cheeky, boy. She’s only twenty-years-old. There are still a few years left in her!’ And as though to prove it, he blew his horn again. Its strident sound echoed and re-echoed down the mountain gorge. A pair of wild fowl, disturbed by the noise, flew out from the bushes and glided across the road in front of the truck.

  Pritam Singh’s thoughts went to his dinner.

  ‘Haven’t had a good meal for days,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Haven’t had a good meal for weeks,’ said Nathu, although he looked quite well-fed.

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll give you dinner,’ said Pritam. ‘Tandoori chicken and pilaf rice.’

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said Nathu.

  Pritam Singh sounded his horn again before slowing down. The road had become narrow and precipitous, and trotting ahead of them was a train of mules. As the horn blared, one mule ran forward, one ran backwards. One went uphill, one went downhill. Soon there were mules all over the place.

  ‘You can never tell with mules,’ said Pritam, after he had left them behind.

  The hills were bare and dry. Much of the forest had long since disappeared. Just a few scraggy old oaks still grew on the steep hillside. This particular range was rich in limestone, and the hills were scarred by quarrying.

  ‘Are your hills as bare as these?’ asked Pritam.

  ‘No, they have not started blasting there as yet,’ said Nathu.

  ‘We still have a few trees. And there is a walnut tree in front of our house, which gives us two baskets of walnuts every year’.

  ‘And do you have water?’

  ‘There is a stream at the bottom of the hill. But for the fields, we have to depend on the rainfall. And there was no rain last year.’

  ‘It will rain soon,’ said Pritam. ‘I can smell rain. It is coming from the north.’

  ‘It will settle the dust.’

  The dust was everywhere. The truck was full of it. The leaves of the shrubs and the few trees were thick with it. Nathu could feel the dust near his eyelids and on his lips. As they approached the quarries, the dust increased—but it was a different kind of dust now—whiter, stinging the eyes, irritating the nostrils—limestone dust, hanging in the air.

  The blasting was in progress.

  Pritam Singh brought the truck to a halt. ‘Let’s wait a bit,’ he said.

  They sat in silence, staring through the windscreen at the scarred cliffs about a hundred yards down the road. There was no sign of life around them.

  Suddenly, the hillside blossomed outwards, followed by a sharp crack of explosives. Earth and rock hurtled down the hillside.

  Nathu watched in awe as shrubs and small trees were flung into the air. It always frightened him not so much the sight of the rocks bursting asunder, but the trees being flung aside and destroyed. He thought of his own trees at home—the walnut, the pines—and wondered if one day they would suffer the same fate, and whether the mountains would all become a desert like this particular range. No trees, no grass, no water—only the choking dust of the limestone quarries.

  Pritam Singh pressed hard on his horn again, to let the people at the site know he was coming. Soon they were parked outside a small shed, where the contractor and the overseer were sipping cups of tea. A short distance away some labourers were hammering at chunks of rock, breaking them up into manageable blocks. A pile of stones stood ready for loading, while the rock that had just been blasted lay scattered about the hillside.

  ‘Come and have a cup of tea,’ called out the contractor.

  ‘Get on with the loading,’ said Pritam. ‘I can’t hang about all afternoon. There’s another trip to make and it gets dark early these days.’

  But he sat down on a bench and ordered two cups of tea from the stall-owner. The overseer strolled over to the group of labourers and told them to start loading. Nathu let down the grid at the back of the truck.

  Nathu stood back while the men loaded the truck with limestone rocks. He was glad that he was chubby: thin people seemed to feel the cold much more—like the contractor, a skinny fellow who was shivering in his expensive overcoat.

  To keep himself warm, Nathu began helping the labourers with the loading.

  ‘Don’t expect to be paid for that,’ said the contractor, for whom every extra paise spent was a paisa off his profits.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Nadhu, ‘I don’t work for contractors. I work for Pritam Singh.’

  ‘That’s right,’ called out Pritam. ‘And mind what you say to Nathu—he’s nobody’s servant!’

  It took them almost an hour to fill the truck with stones. The contractor wasn’t happy until there was no space left for a single stone. Then four of the six labourers climbed on the pile of stones. They would ride back to the depot on the truck. The contractor, his overseer, and the others would follow by jeep. ‘Let’s go!’ said Pritam, getting behind the steering wheel. ‘I want to be back here and then home by eight o’clock. I’m going to a marriage party tonight!’

  Nathu jumped in beside him, banging his door shut. It never opened at a touch. Pritam always joked that his truck was held together with Sellotape.

  He was in good spirits. He started his engine, blew his horn, and burst into a song as the truck started out on the return journey.

  The labourers were singing too, as the truck swung round the sharp bends of the winding mountain road. Nathu was feeling quite dizzy. The door beside him rattled on its hinges.

  ‘Not so fast,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Pritam, ‘And since when did you become nervous about fast driving?’

  ‘Since today,’ said Nathu.

  ‘And what’s wrong with today?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just that kind of day, I suppose.’

  ‘You are getting old,’ said Pritam. That’s your trouble.’

  ‘Just wait till you get to be my age,’ said Nathu.

  ‘No more cheek,’ said Pritam, and stepped on the accelerator and drove faster. As they swung round a bend, Nathu looked out of his window. All he saw was the sky above and the valley below. They were very near the edge. But it was always like that on this narrow road. After a few more hairpin bends, the road started descending steeply to the valley.

  ‘I’ll just test the brakes,’ said Pritam and jammed down on there so suddenly that one of the labourers almost fell off at the back.

  They called out in protest.

  ‘Hang on!’ shouted Pritarn.

  ‘You’re nearly home!’

  ‘Don’t try any short cuts,’ said Nathu.

  Just then a stray mule appeared in the middle of the road. Pritam swung the steering wheel over to his right; but the road turned left, and the truck went straight over the edge.

  As it tipped over, hanging for a few seconds on the edge of the cliff, the labourers leapt from the back of the truck.

  ‘The truck pitched forward, bouncing over the rocks, turning over on its side and rolling over twice before coming to rest against the trunk of a scraggy old oak tree. Had it missed the tree, the truck would have plunged a few hundred feet down to the bottom of the gorge.

  Two labourers sat on the hillside, stunned and badly shaken.

  The other two had picked themselves up and were running back to the quarry for help.

  Nathu had landed in a bed of nettles. He was smarting all over, but he wasn’t really hurt.

  His first impulse was to get up and run back with the labourers. Then he realized that Pritam was still in the truck. If he wasn’t dead, he would certainly be badly injured.

  Nathu skidded down the steep slope, calling out, ‘Pritam, Pritam, are you all right?

  There was no answer.

  Then he saw Pritam’s arm and half his body jutting out of the open door of the truck. It was a strange position to be in, half in and half out. When Nathu came nearer, he saw Pritam was jammed in the driver’s seat, held there by the steering wheel which was pressed hard against h
is chest. Nathu thought he was dead. But as he was about to turn away and clamber back up the hill, he saw Pritam open one blackened swollen eye. It looked straight up at Nathu.

  ‘Are you alive?’ whispered Nathu, terrified.

  ‘What do you think?’ muttered Pritam. He closed his eye again.

  When the contractor and his men arrived, it took them almost an hour to get him to a hospital in the town. He had a broken collarbone, a dislocated shoulder, and several fractured ribs. But the doctors said he was repairable- which was more than could be said for his truck.

  ‘The truck’s finished,’ said Pritam, when Nathu came to see him a few days later. ‘Now ‘I’ll have to go home and live with my sons. But you can get work on another truck.’

  ‘No,’ said Nathu. ‘I’m gong home too.’

  ‘And what will you do there?’

  ‘I’ll work on the land. It’s better to grow things on the land than to blast things out of it.’

  They were silent for some time.

  ‘Do you know something?’ said Pritam finally. ‘But for that tree, the truck would have ended up at the bottom of the hill and I wouldn’t be here, all bandaged up and talking to you. It was the tree that saved me. Remember that, boy.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ said Nathu.

  And Now We Are Twelve

  People often ask me why I’ve chosen to live in Mussoori for so long—almost forty years without any significant breaks. ‘I forgot to go away,’ I tell them, but of course, that isn’t the real reason.

  The people here are friendly, but then people are friendly in a great many other places. The hills, the valleys are beautiful; but they are just as beautiful in Kulu or Kumaon.

  ‘This is where the family has grown up and where we all live,’ I say, and those who don’t know me are puzzled because the general impression of the writer is of a reclusive old bachelor.

  Unmarried I may be, but single I am not. Not since Prem came to live and work with me in 1970. A year later, he was married. Then his children came along and stole my heart; and when they grew up, their children came along and stole my wits. So now I’m an enchanted bachelor, head of a family of twelve. Sometimes I go out to bat, sometimes to bowl, but generally I prefer to be twelfth man, carrying out the drinks!