Time Stops At Shamli & Other Stories Read online

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ I said, and went out on the verandah; but the boy had disappeared.

  ‘He must have gone to the bazaar,’ said his mother anxiously. ‘He does that when he’s upset. Sometimes I think he likes to be teased and beaten.’

  He was not in the bazaar. I found him near the stream, lying flat on his belly in the soft mud, chasing tadpoles with a stick.

  ‘Why did you kill the goat?’ I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Did you enjoy killing it?’

  He looked at me and smiled and nodded his head vigorously. ‘How very cruel,’ I said. But I did not mean it. I knew that his cruelty was no different from mine or anyone else’s; only his was an untrammelled cruelty, primitive, as yet undisguised by civilizing restraints.

  He took a pen-knife from his shirt pocket opened it, and held it out to me by the blade. He pointed to his bare stomach and

  motioned me to thrust the blade into his belly. He had such a mournful look on his face (the result of having offended me and not in remorse for the goat-sacrifice) that I had to burst out laughing.

  ‘You are a funny fellow,’ I said, taking the knife from him and throwing it into the stream. ‘Come, let’s have a swim.’

  We swam all afternoon, and Suresh went home smiling. His mother and I conspired to keep the whole affair a secret from his father—who had not in any case, been aware of the goat’s presence.

  Suresh seemed quite contented during the following weeks. And then I received a letter offering me a job in Delhi and I knew that I would have to take it, as I was earning very little by my writing at the time.

  The boy’s mother was disappointed, even depressed, when I told her I would be going away. I think she had grown quite fond of me. But the boy, always unpredictable, displayed no feeling at all. I left a little hurt by his apparent indifference. Did our weeks of companionship mean nothing to him ? I told myself that he probably did not realize that he might never see me again.

  On the evening my train was to leave, I went to the house to say goodbye. The boy’s mother made me promise to write to them, but Suresh seemed cold and distant, and refused to sit near me or take my hand. He made me feel that I was an outsider again—one of the mob throwing stones at odd and frightening people.

  At eight o’clock that evening I entered a third-class compartment and, after a brief scuffle with several other travellers, succeeded in securing a seat near a window. It enabled me to look down the length of the platform.

  The guard had blown his whistle and the train was about to leave, when I saw Suresh standing near the station turnstile, looking up and down the platform.

  ‘Suresh!’ I shouted and he heard me and came hobbling along the platform. He had run the gauntlet of the bazaar during the busiest hour of the evening.

  ‘I’ll be back next year.’ I called.

  The train had begun moving out of the station, and as I waved to Suresh, he broke into a stumbling run, waving his arms in

  frantic, restraining gestures.

  I saw him stumble against someone’s bedding-roll and fall sprawling on the ground. The engine picked up speed and the platform receded.

  And that was the last I saw of Suresh, lying alone on the crowded platform, alone in the great grey darkness of the world, crooked and bent and twisted—the most beautiful boy in the world.

  The Last Truck Ride

  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. Every day 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 every day.

  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 the 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.’

  ‘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’s 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 pilau 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 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 were no signs 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 paisa spent was a paisa off his profits.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Nathu, ‘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 closed properly unless it was slammed really hard. But it opened at a touch. Pritam always joked that his truck was held together with the selotape.

  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 roads started descending steeply to the valley.

  ‘I’ll just test the brakes,’ said Pritam and jammed down on them so suddenly that one of the labourers almost fell off at the back. They called out in protest.

  ‘Hang on!’ shouted Pritam. ‘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, and as it struck a rock outcrop, the door near Nathu burst open. He was thrown out.

  Then the truck hurtled 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 his 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 Pritam Singh out of the wreckage of his truck, and another 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 going 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.

  The Fight

  Ranji had been less than a month in Rajpur when he discovered the pool in the forest. It was the height of summer, and his school had not yet opened; and, having as yet made no friends in this semi-hill-station, he wandered about a good deal by himself into the hills and forests that stretched away interminably on all sides of the town. It was hot, very hot, at that time of the year, and Ranji walked about in his vest and shorts, his brown feet white with the chalky dust that flew up from the ground. The earth was parched, the grass brown, the trees listless, hardly stirring, waiting for a cool wind or a refreshing shower of rain.

  It was on such a day—a hot, tired day—that
Ranji found the pool in the forest. The water had a gentle translucency, and you could see the smooth round pebbles at the bottom of the pool. A small stream emerged from a cluster of rocks to feed the pool. During the monsoon, this stream would be a gushing torrent, cascading down from the hills, but during the summer it was barely a trickle. The rocks, however, held the water in the pool, and it did not dry up like the pools in the plains.

  When Ranji saw the pool, he did not hesitate to get into it. He had often gone swimming, alone or with friends, when he had lived with his parents in a thirsty town in the middle of the Rajputana desert. There, he had known only sticky, muddy pools, where buffaloes wallowed and women washed clothes. He had never seen a pool like this—so clean and cold and inviting. He threw off all his clothes, as he had done when he went swimming in the plains, and leapt into the water. His limbs were supple, free of any fat, and his dark body glistened in patches of sunlit water.

  *

  The next day he came again to quench his body in the cool

  waters of the forest pool. He was there for almost an hour, sliding in and out of the limpid green water, or lying stretched out on the smooth yellow rocks in the shade of broad-leaved sal trees. It was while he lay thus, naked on a rock, that he noticed another boy standing a little distance away, staring at him in a rather hostile manner. The other boy was a little older than Ranji, taller, thick-set with a broad nose and thick, red lips. He had only just noticed Ranji, and he stood at the edge of the pool, wearing a pair of bathing shorts, waiting for Ranji to explain himself.

  When Ranji did not say anything, the other called out, ‘What are you doing here, Mister?’

  Ranji, who was prepared to be friendly, was taken aback at the hostility of the other’s tone.

  ‘I am swimming,’ he replied. ‘Why don’t you join me?’

  ‘I always swim alone,’ said the other. ‘This is my pool, I did not invite you here. And why are you not wearing any clothes?’

  ‘It is not your business if I do not wear clothes. I have nothing to be ashamed of.’