The Essential Collection for Young Readers Page 8

  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 the 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 on to 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.

  The Night Train at Deoli

  wHEN I was at college I used to spend my summer vacations in Dehra, at my grandmother’s place. I would leave the plains early in May and return late in July. Deoli was a small station about thirty miles from Dehra. It marked the beginning of the heavy jungles of the Indian Terai.

  The train would reach Deoli at about five in the morning when the station would be dimly lit with electric bulbs and oil lamps, and the jungle across the railway tracks would just be visible in the faint light of dawn. Deoli had only one platform, an office for the stationmaster and a waiting room. The platform boasted a tea stall, a fruit vendor and a few stray dogs; not much else because the train stopped there for only ten minutes before rushing on into the forests.

  Why it stopped at Deoli, I don’t know. Nothing ever happened there. Nobody got off the train and nobody got on. There were never any coolies on the platform. But the train would halt there a full ten minutes and then a bell would sound, the guard would blow his whistle, and presently Deoli would be left behind and forgotten.

  I used to wonder what happened in Deoli behind the station walls. I always felt sorry for that lonely little platform and for the place that nobody wanted to visit. I decided that one day I would get off the train at Deoli and spend the day there just to please the town.

  I was eighteen, visiting my grandmother, and the night train stopped at Deoli. A girl came down the platform selling baskets.

  It was a cold morning and the girl had a shawl thrown across her shoulders. Her feet were bare and her clothes were old but she was a young girl, walking gracefully and with dignity.

  When she came to my window, she stopped. She saw that I was looking at her intently, but at first she pretended not to notice. She had pale skin, set off by shiny black hair and dark, troubled eyes. And then those eyes, searching and eloquent, met mine.

  She stood by my window for some time and neither of us said anything. But when she moved on, I found myself leaving my seat and going to the carriage door. I stood waiting on the platform looking the other way. I walked across to the tea stall. A kettle was boiling over on a small fire, but the owner of the stall was busy serving tea somewhere on the train. The girl followed me behind the stall.

  ‘Do you want to buy a basket?’ she asked. ‘They are very strong, made of the finest cane…’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want a basket.’

  We stood looking at each other for what seemed a very long time, and she said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want a basket?’

  ‘All right, give me one,’ I said, and took the one on top and gave her a rupee, hardly daring to touch her fingers.

  As she was about to speak, the guard blew his whistle. She said something, but it was lost in the clanging of the bell and the hissing of the engine. I had to run back to my compartment. The carriage shuddered and jolted forward.

  I watched her as the platform slipped away. She was alone on the platform and she did not move, but she was looking at me and smiling. I watched her until the signal box came in the way and then the jungle hid the station. But I could still see her standing there alone…<
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  I stayed awake for the rest of the journey. I could not rid my mind of the picture of the girl’s face and her dark, smouldering eyes.

  But when I reached Dehra the incident became blurred and distant, for there were other things to occupy my mind. It was only when I was making the return journey, two months later, that I remembered the girl.

  I was looking out for her as the train drew into the station, and I felt an unexpected thrill when I saw her walking up the platform. I sprang off the footboard and waved to her.

  When she saw me, she smiled. She was pleased that I remembered her. I was pleased that she remembered me. We were both pleased and it was almost like a meeting of old friends.

  She did not go down the length of the train selling baskets but came straight to the tea stall. Her dark eyes were suddenly filled with light. We said nothing for some time but we couldn’t have been more eloquent.

  I felt the impulse to put her on the train there and then, and take her away with me. I could not bear the thought of having to watch her recede into the distance of Deoli station. I took the baskets from her hand and put them down on the ground. She put out her hand for one of them, but I caught her hand and held it.

  ‘I have to go to Delhi,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘I do not have to go anywhere.’

  The guard blew his whistle for the train to leave, and how I hated the guard for doing that.

  ‘I will come again,’ I said. ‘Will you be here?’

  She nodded again and, as she nodded, the bell clanged and the train slid forward. I had to wrench my hand away from the girl and run for the moving train.

  This time I did not forget her. She was with me for the remainder of the journey and for long after. All that year she was a bright, living thing. And when the college term finished, I packed in haste and left for Dehra earlier than usual. My grandmother would be pleased at my eagerness to see her.

  I was nervous and anxious as the train drew into Deoli, because I was wondering what I should say to the girl and what I should do. I was determined that I wouldn’t stand helplessly before her, hardly able to speak or do anything about my feelings.

  The train came to Deoli, and I looked up and down the platform but I could not see the girl anywhere.

  I opened the door and stepped off the footboard. I was deeply disappointed and overcome by a sense of foreboding. I felt I had to do something and so I ran up to the stationmaster and said, ‘Do you know the girl who used to sell baskets here?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said the stationmaster. ‘And you’d better get on the train if you don’t want to be left behind.’

  But I paced up and down the platform and stared over the railings at the station yard. All I saw was a mango tree and a dusty road leading into the jungle. Where did the road go? The train was moving out of the station and I had to run up the platform and jump for the door of my compartment. Then, as the train gathered speed and rushed through the forests, I sat brooding in front of the window.

  What could I do about finding a girl I had seen only twice, who had hardly spoken to me, and about whom I knew nothing—absolutely nothing—but for whom I felt a tenderness and responsibility that I had never felt before?

  My grandmother was not pleased with my visit after all, because I didn’t stay at her place more than a couple of weeks. I felt restless and ill at ease. So I took the train back to the plains, meaning to ask further questions of the stationmaster at Deoli.

  But at Deoli there was a new stationmaster. The previous man had been transferred to another post within the past week. The new man didn’t know anything about the girl who sold baskets. I found the owner of the tea stall, a small, shrivelled-up man, wearing greasy clothes, and asked him if he knew anything about the girl with the baskets.

  ‘Yes, there was such a girl here. I remember quite well,’ he said. ‘But she has stopped coming now.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What happened to her?’ ‘How should I know?’ said the man. ‘She was nothing to me.’ And once again I had to run for the train. As Deoli platform receded, I decided that one day I would have to break journey there, spend a day in the town, make inquiries, and find the girl who had stolen my heart with nothing but a look from her dark, impatient eyes.

  With this thought I consoled myself throughout my last term in college. I went to Dehra again in the summer and when, in the early hours of the morning, the night train drew into Deoli station, I looked up and down the platform for signs of the girl, knowing I wouldn’t find her but hoping just the same.

  Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to break journey at Deoli and spend a day there. (If it was all fiction or a film, I reflected, I would have got down and cleaned up the mystery and reached a suitable ending to the whole thing.) I think I was afraid to do this. I was afraid of discovering what really happened to the girl. Perhaps she was no longer in Deoli, perhaps she was married, perhaps she had fallen ill…

  In the last few years I have passed through Deoli many times, and I always look out of the carriage window half expecting to see the same unchanged face smiling up at me. I wonder what happens in Deoli, behind the station walls. But I will never break my journey there. It may spoil my game. I prefer to keep hoping and dreaming and looking out of the window up and down that lonely platform, waiting for the girl with the baskets.

  I never break my journey at Deoli but I pass through as often as I can.

  The Coral Tree

  THE NIGHT had been hot, the rain frequent, and I had been sleeping on the verandah instead of in the house. I was in my twenties, had begun to earn a living and felt I had certain responsibilities.

  In a short time, a tonga would take me to the railway station, and from there a train would take me to Bombay, and then a ship would take me to England. There would be work, interviews, a job, a different kind of life, so many things that this small bungalow of my grandfather would be remembered fitfully, in rare moments of reflection.

  When I awoke on the veranda, I saw a grey morning, smelt the rain on the red earth and remembered that I had to go away. A girl was standing on the veranda porch, looking at me very seriously. When I saw her, I sat up in bed with a start.

  She was a small dark girl, her eyes big and black, her pigtails tied up in a bright red ribbon, and she was fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth.

  She stood looking at me and was very serious.

  ‘Hullo,’ I said, smiling and trying to put her at ease. But the girl was business-like and acknowledged my greeting with a brief nod.

  ‘Can I do anything for you?’ I asked, stretching my limbs. ‘Do you stay nearby?’

  With great assurance she said, ‘Yes, but I can stay on my own.’

  ‘You’re like me,’ I said, and for a while, forgot about being an old man of twenty. ‘I like to be on my own but I’m going away today.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, a little breathlessly.

  ‘Would you care to go to England?’

  ‘I want to go everywhere,’ she said. ‘To America and Africa and Japan and Honolulu.’

  ‘Maybe you will,’ I said. ‘I’m going everywhere, and no one can stop me… But what is it you want, what did you come for?’

  ‘I want some flowers but I can’t reach them.’ She waved her hand towards the garden, ‘That tree, see?’

  The coral tree stood in front of the house surrounded by pools of water and broken, fallen blossoms. The branches of the tree were thick with scarlet, pea-shaped flowers.

  ‘All right, just let me get ready.’

  The tree was easy to climb and I made myself comfortable on one of the lower branches, smiling down at the serious upturned face of the girl.

  ‘I’ll throw them down to you,’ I said.

  I bent a branch but the wood was young and green and I had to twist it several times before it snapped.

  ‘I’m not sure I ought to do this,’ I said as I dropped the flowering branch to the girl.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said.


  I felt a sudden nostalgic longing for childhood and an urge to remain behind in my grandfather’s house with its tangled memories and ghosts of yesteryear. But I was the only one left and what could I do except climb tamarind and jackfruit trees?

  ‘Have you many friends?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And who is the best?’

  ‘The cook. He lets me stay in the kitchen which is more interesting than the house. And I like to watch him cooking. And he gives me things to eat and tells me stories…’

  ‘And who is your second best friend?’

  She inclined her head to one side and thought very hard.

  ‘I’ll make you second best,’ she said.

  I sprinkled coral blossoms on her head. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’m happy to be second best.’

  A tonga bell sounded at the gate and I looked out from the tree and said, ‘It’s come for me. I have to go now.’

  I climbed down.

  ‘Will you help me with my suitcases?’ I asked, as we walked together towards the veranda. ‘There’s no one here to help me. I am the last to go. Not because I want to go but because I have to.’

  I sat down on the cot and packed a few last things in my suitcase. All the doors of the house were locked. On my way to the station, I would leave the keys with the caretaker. I had already given instructions to the agent to try and sell the house. There was nothing more to be done. We walked in silence to the waiting tonga, thinking and wondering about each other. The girl stood at the side of the path, on the damp earth, looking at me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I hope I shall see you again.’

  ‘I’ll see you in London,’ she said. ‘Or America or Japan, I want to go everywhere.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ I said. ‘And perhaps I’ll come back and we’ll meet again in this garden. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’

  She nodded and smiled. We knew it was an important moment. The tonga driver spoke to his pony and the carriage set off down the gravel path, rattling a little. The girl and I waved to each other. In the girl’s hand was a sprig of coral blossom. As she waved, the blossoms fell apart and danced lightly in the breeze.