Penguin Book of Indian Railway Stories Page 9

  ‘I believe I must have gone round those cliffs several times, becoming more and more dazed, more and more near the last till I could do no more. There was a recess. I might as well sleep the last sleep—if it was to be that—there as anywhere else. I staggered into it and leant against the sloping rock.

  ‘And then strangely enough, I became aware that someone was singing, singing, singing. Then it couldn’t be far from the end—the end of everything—not only love—Yes! It was Isolda singing. You could hear the marvellous accompaniment. Now it was Tristram’s turn—Tristram must not be behind hand in the love duet—you see, I was something of a singer myself, and when one is near that long sleep, one dreams a bit. So Tristram broke in with the eternal cry of love.

  ‘I may have sung it well, I may have sung it badly, I don’t know. All of which I was conscious was a sudden blaze of light as something seemed to open in the cliff and a voice that said.

  ‘“Who sings!”

  ‘I was too far gone to answer. I stumbled forward to my knees, and found my hand clasped.

  ‘Did I hear a voice say “Come in out of the cold?” I don’t know. If I did it was my last conscious moment.

  ‘When I came to myself it was quite a long time before I could realize where I was, in fact I don’t realize it even now. It was a great big place full of light. Not sunlight; it was too white for that, but it cast shadows and it came from above. I judged the roof of the huge hall to be of glass—but again I don’t know. One end of the place—call it cave, room, hall, what you will—was full of growing shrubs and flowers with birds and butterflies flitting about. I found out afterwards that this part was separated from the rest of the hall by a huge pane of glass—if it was glass. It looked as if it was, but it was quite pliant and rolled up as you would roll a window blind. So you see it mayn’t have been glass. But everything was like that; familiar yet different.

  ‘I was lying on a long chair and somebody was rubbing my feet. The hands that rubbed were warm and soft.

  ‘Whose were they? I looked and looked at the figure in front of me, growing more and more confused: I suppose, really, that my brain had not begun to function properly. Finally I asked the question: ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ that it was young was indubitable. A laugh echoed and echoed. It seemed to me as if that laugh must go on and on for ever.

  ‘“I don’t glue my hair and wear baggy trousers,” said the voice, so I can’t be a boy, and as I don’t shingle or smoke or powder my nose, I can’t be a girl—can I?”

  ‘“Then what am I to call you?” I asked

  ‘“Call me Homo!” came the reply, “and if you think it descriptive add ‘Sapiens’.”

  ‘My stockings had been removed. Now a dry warm pair were being put on: but they were exactly the same pattern; cable-stitch—Lovat mixture—they were favourites of mine. My brain was still not functioning properly; for it left serious matters to intrigue itself with trifles. “But I thought my stockings would be soaked through,” I said feebly.

  ‘“That was very silly of you” came the answer “think them dry, and they are dry. It is only the mind that matters.”

  ‘I was too confused for philosophy: so I remained silent. What a face it was that looked into mine! At this distance of time I don’t remember what it was like. I only know that it flahed like fire; that it seemed to hold all things by its sheer vitality.

  ‘Once again what I am pleased to call my mind occupied itself with trivialities. “Didn’t I hear the love duet in Tristram just now?”

  ‘“You did. Would you like to hear it again? I’m afraid you will have to hold my hand if you do; for of course you haven’t become a wireless receiver like I have.”

  ‘I felt my my hand clasped by a strong, soft, warm one and instantly the air was full of music.

  ‘“Melba,” I said weakly after a pause “and, and surely that is Jean-de-Reske, but I thought he was dead?”

  ‘“What do you mean by dead?” was the quick question. ‘“Once sung always sung, you know. Ether waves and all that. Now if you want to hear anything else, you have only to put a name to it. Only please don’t say the House of Commons. I can’t stand that piffle.”

  ‘All this time a curious sense of well-being had been creeping over me. I seemed to have everything I wanted. You know it is not often that we human creatures feel absolutely content. Well, I did; but the odd thing was that I seemed to have everything I wanted, or ever could want, in myself.

  ‘So I lay for a while lost in a dreamful laziness, while the figure opposite me sat on the floor, with those soft, warm, strong hands clasped over the crunched-up knees and its wonderful eyes so dark yet so full of light, fixed on mine. Then suddenly, as if in self-explanation I fulminated—

  ‘“Evidently it is all electricity.”

  ‘My remark was countered by the query—

  ‘“What is electricity?”

  ‘And silence fell once more between us. I think it must have lasted some time, for I sat up suddenly, feeling vaguely that I had never felt better in my life. A desire to be up and doing possessed me; I looked at my companion with some pity. “Don’t you find it lonely always living up here by yourself?” I asked.

  ‘“I don’t always live here” came the reply.

  “Then where—” I began.

  ‘“Somewhere—anywhere—everywhere. And how can I feel lonely when the place is crammed full of people?”

  ‘“People!” I echoed.

  ‘There was a light laugh. “I forgot you don’t understand television; but if you’ll give me your hand once more, I think I can show you—not everything, mind you—but the outsides of things.”

  ‘And once again the strong, soft, warm clasp was mine. I saw instantly a miserable attic, bare of all things, even of a bed. On a heap of tumbled clothes in one corner lay a young man asleep. He looked hunger-stricken, but the expression on his face was content. He had evidently fallen asleep while reading, for a small book lay open beside him, his hand still marking the page. It was Paradise Regained.

  ‘“He is a poet and makes nothing by his writing,” came my companion’s voice. “He often comes here; in fact at this moment he is sitting on the garden seat yonder listening to the birds, only you can’t see him. You wouldn’t, even if I were to roll up the non-conducting glass; for television is no use for the insides of things—you can see the outsides—that’s all. And his outside isn’t here. Now for another—.”

  ‘I became aware of a dimly lighted room—dimly lit yet still light and colourful and cheerful. An empty cot stood beside the bed. It was evidently a nursery. And on the bed, clasping tight in her hand a baby’s shoe, lay a young woman who looked as if she had cried herself to sleep. But her face, also, was peaceful and content.

  ‘“She is playing with her dead child on the rug yonder,” said my companion quietly. “And so they all come-—dozens of them. Then there are the other—who come from the other side, but television is no use there for they have no husks left for us to see. One can hear them sometimes, but one can’t well tune up to an unknown wave length, can one?”

  ‘“Then it is all electricity,” I contended sleepily, for in good sooth my measureless content was making me drowsy.

  ‘“What is electricity?” came the countering question again.

  ‘“What is anything?” I re-countered feebly.

  ‘Once again that echoing laugh seemed to fill the vast hall.

  ‘“Imagination,” replied Homo Sapiens with a smile that for glory beat all the sunrise and sunsets in the world. “Doesn’t the soul lie in the imagination? Someone says that, somewhere. And now it’s time we all went to bed. You’ll be quite comfortable in that chair I expect, and here’s a rug to keep you warm. The servants will bring you tea in the morning, and I’ll take you downtown in my aeroplane after breakfast. Goodnight. Don’t be alarmed if you hear a noise. It is not the waifs, it is the music of the spheres. Don’t let it disturb you.”

  ‘I caught a glimpse of a snow-leopard ru
g that glinted with gold and silver, and then came sudden darkness. It was less confusing than the light; but I had no time to wonder, no time even to realize the strangeness of the whole incident, the almost ludicrous co-mingling of early tea and television, knickerbocker stockings and imagination, for there stole upon my sense such sweet sounds that I lay entranced. Noise? Disturbance? Ye Gods. But this was music indeed. This held all things—No! It transcended all things, it rose and rose and rose carrying me with it.

  ‘Whitherwards? Oh, Whitherwards? Whitherwards?—

  ‘When I awoke the sun was streaming full on my face. But this was real sunlight. I sat up and looked round me. I had been lying on a perfect bed of maidenhair fern close to a little runnel of water. Behind me lay the snows, before me a cluster of hill huts which I recognized as the village to which I had been bound, but over me, keeping me warm, was this very leopard skin rug!

  ‘How it got there—and indeed how I got there—I cannot say, even now. You in fact, are in precisely the same condition as I was, as I am now. The whole thing remains in my mind like some fantastic dream, though I am bound to confess I learnt, and am still learning, very much from it. I started to enquire, to experiment; but that is beside the question. Here as you see is the leopard skin rug. That at any rate is not imagination. For the rest, I questioned the villagers, and my servants who had arrived safely the night before. I re-climbed the snows, and searched for the amphitheatre of rocks. All to no avail. The most I could glean was a certain dread on the part of the villagers of the highest peak of the immediate range of snows, which was due apparently to a gigantic white bird that was said to be seen on moonlight nights hovering over it—most likely an aero . . . .

  At this moment the door of the compartment was noisily pushed aside and a monstrous head all goggles and fur cap was thrust in.

  ‘Oh! there you are old chap,’ said a cheery voice. ‘Got your wireless twenty minutes ago, and, as the missus didn’t like keeping dinner waiting, I’ve brought the aero round waiting in the next field. Where are your duds?’

  ‘Good for you,’ cried my companion briskly.

  The leopard skin rug was bundled up, a suitcase dragged down from the rack, and with a brief ‘Good-night, glad the tale was finished,’ the dreamy-eyed man disappeared into the darkness.

  A minute later I heard, very faintly, the hum of a rising plane.

  I asked myself how the dickens the man had managed to send a wireless? Twenty minutes ago? Why, he had not left his seat . . . Was it possible . . . ?

  The By-gone Days

  A JOURNEY BY THE EASTERN Bengal State Railway to-day is a care-free and comfortable one. Every amenity that a railway company can provide for the comfort and convenience of the traveller has been introduced and the journey of 400 odd miles is finished in the waking hours of the morning to the regret of many.

  With the bridging of the Padma river the acceleration of the train service has been possible and the northern terminus, Siliguri, is reached at the comfortable hour of 6 a.m. It was not always thus. While enjoying the comforts of modern travel, one regrets the pleasant break in the journey to the foot of the Himalayas, provided by the steamer service across the river and dinner aboard ship. This, however, is the only regret.

  Casting the mind back to the days when khus-khus tatties did duty for electric fans and smelling, sometimes leaky castor oil lamps shed a feeble light, the traveller felt thankful the journey by the Eastern Bengal State Railway was performed in day light, although the horrors of the night were still ahead in a journey from Sara Ghat to Siliguri by the Northern Bengal State Railway. That train service, the pioneer which prompted present amenities, must have been designed with a purpose. It was an absolute nightmare, nerve-racking and a severe strain on the system. Noisy, bumpy and shaking in all directions, it plodded its way toward the Himalayas, regardless of passengers’ comforts. It had to get there and it got there, though many parted with their dinner and their sleep—and then remained but fifty-two miles by the D.H. Railway, which had just cast off its original appellation of a steam railway to take on that of a railway. The journey over those fifty-two miles absolutely put in the shade the discomforts endured on the N.B.S.R.

  Whereas the latter had shaken one in all directions, the convert did a sort of Charleston—an up and down movement—which still clings to it between Siliguri and Sukna. By the time travellers reached their destination they were pale and limp, and the commiseration of their friends on their enforced residence in the horrid plains fell on deaf ears.

  They looked positively ill and done and when with the comforts of a fireside in house or hotel food was put in front of them, the horror of what they had endured in the past twenty-four hours brought forth a prompt head shake negating the idea of eating.

  Darjeeling was reached at 4 p.m.

  Things have changed for the very much better all round. The open trolleys on the wee railway have been replaced by comfortable carriages and electricity within recent years has in no small measure helped the avoidance of rushing into landslides which were not there on the downward journey.

  But, even in those by-gone days people were thanking an all-wise Providence for the introduction of the railway, uncomfortable as it was, which had done away with a previous nightmare of travel—a journey from Calcutta to Bhagulpur and thence by boat to Karigola and the tonga service from Karigola to Pankhabari—the home of the palm-leaf fan, so greatly appreciated in the humid atmosphere of the Himalayan foothills a few hundred feet above the scorched up plains.

  People are prone to grumble at all times, but when the mind goes back to those days, even though they were childhood’s days, there seems to have been every reason for a grumble.

  From Karigola to Titaliya, the military camping ground, sitting up in a tonga with the ear-piercing notes of the horn in one’s ear most of the time, blown by the attendant to the driver even at the sight of a slinking jackal—there were tigers also by the way side in those days—generally brought a sigh of relief at the sight of the walls of the military cemetery ahead. It meant a rest, if not a pleasant halt, two miles up the road and an indifferent meal provided by the Titaliya dak bungalow khansama, who departed this life as an extensive landholder but his numerous charities, drawn from the pockets of tired and unsuspecting travellers, endure today giving him a baranam (bignam).

  It was a restful break before repeating the experience in the last twenty-five miles that lay between Titaliya and Pankhabari via Maligara.

  The indifferent food and the halt ahead put a different aspect on the last stage of the journey. The giant trees of the swamp, for this is the meaning of the word Terai, with orchids of many varieties hanging from their branches, the quaint thatch covered huts in the village of Mech or Bodo and Dhimal—aborigines—made a scene that still lies impressed on the mind. They have quaint customs. These aborigines of the Terai and of them much could be said, for since the nightmare of travel by tonga superseded by the horrors of a night journey by a newly constructed metre-gauge line, one had lived to see things undreamt of in one’s philosophy, and chance directed I have journeyed to the land of Mech and Dhimal under pleasant circumstances undreamt of in the years I write of, and have lived and had my being with these quaint people all around me.

  Times have indeed changed. The Pankhabari dak bungalow with its enviable visitor’s book, containing names of men who made history and certainly made Darjeeling what it is today, has fallen under the hammer, leaving the old road up which one rode on diminutive ponies to Kurseong and thence by the old military road, via ‘The Chimneys,’ into Ghoom, abandoned and the haunt of unpleasant animals. The Terai tea planters’ bazaar coolie alone treads the first half into Kurseong with chits for necessaries. He does other errands for the tea garden staff, but the nature of these errands is only relieved when he has looked upon the rakshi, provided at the Panighata grogshop, more than once.

  Tea had been introduced in the Terai long prior to the introduction of the N.B.S.R., but with the comin
g of the railway there can be little doubt the industry received an impetus. The life of the tea planter in those days was a harum-scarum one, sort of sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. One day Messrs. Hurt and Feltwell and others journeyed down the line from Siliguri. They alighted at several stations inspecting tickets and giving advice gratis regarding changes of trains and the best means of arriving at Euston and Paddington.

  At one station the train moved off with its usual jerk before Hurt and Feltwell had reached their own carriage. They made a rush for it, Feltwell got in all right but Hurt slipped and fell and but for Feltwell making a grab at him and dragging him bodily into the carriage, he would have been seriously injured, if not killed.

  The station master noticing the accident stopped the train for enquiries of names and addresses. One asking Hurt his name, he replied, ‘I am Hurt.’ ‘I know that sir,’ said the station master, ‘but what is your name?’ ‘I am Hurt.’ ‘My God, sir, I know that and will report accordingly, but I must have your name.’ ‘I am Hurt, I tell you.’

  Turning to Feltwell in disgust, the poor station master enquired his name. ‘I? Feltwell.’ ‘I know, sir, you are all right but the other gentleman is Hurt.’ ‘Quite, right, station master.’