The Best of Ruskin Bond (42 page)

A
t six every morning the first bus arrives, and the passengers alight, looking sleepy and dishevelled, and rather depressed at the sight of our Mohalla. When they have gone their various ways, the bus is driven into the shed. and the road is left clear for the arrival of the municipal van. The cows congregate at the dustbin, and the pavement dwellers come to life, stretching their dusty limbs on the hard stone steps. I carry the bucket up three steps to my room, and bathe for the last time on the open balcony. Our tin trunks are packed, and Suraj’s tray is empty.

At Pitamber’s village the buffaloes are wallowing in green ponds, while naked urchins sit astride them, scrubbing their backs, and a crow or water-bird purchases on a glistening neck. The parrots are busy in the crooked tree, and a slim green snake basks in the sun on our island near the brick-kiln. In the hills, the mists have lifted and the distant mountains are covered with snow.

It is autumn, and the rains are over. The earth meets the sky in one broad sweep of the creator’s brush.

*

A land of thrusting hills. Terraced hills, wood-covered and windswept. Mountains where the gods speak gently to the lonely heart. Hills of green and grey rock, misty at dawn, hazy at noon, molten at sunset; where fierce fresh torrents rush to the valleys below.

A quiet land of fields and ponds, shaded by ancient trees and ringed with palms, where sacred rivers are touched by temples; where temples are touched by the southern seas.

This is the real land, the land I should write about. My Mohalla is but a sickness, a wasting disease, and I should turn aside from it to sing instead of the splendours of tomorrow. But only yesterdays are splendid. . . . There are other singers, sweeter than I, to sing of tomorrow. I can only sing of today, of Pipalnagar, where I have lived and loved.

Yesterday I was sad, and tomorrow I may be sad again, but today I know that I am happy. I want to live on and on, delighting like a pagan in all that is physical; and I know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart.

^*
On a warrant from Bombay, charging me with writing an allegedly obscene short story!

^*
Some nature notes (made while living in Mussoorie; a writer who ignores the flora and fauna around him, does so at his own peril).

^*
Wilson inspires one of my brief forays into historical fiction in the opening chapters to
Rosebud
.

^*
My first poem, published in the
Illustrated Weekly of India
, in 1952

^*
The Rosa Rum Factory recovered, and survives to this day.

^*
From
Vagrants in the Valley
.

^*
Author’s note: If I continue with this narrative, Wilson will move further into the interior, collecting plants and making friends. In a remote village he will meet the beautiful Gulabi (Rosebud) and fall in love with her. What enchanted him was her smile. It dropped over her face slowly, like sunshine moving over brown hills.

While every effort has been made to acknowledge the publications in which the stories and essays included in this collection first appeared, in the event of any inadvertent omission, the publishers should be notified and formal acknowledgements will be included in all future editions of this book.

‘My First Love’ first appeared in
Sun
, 1994; ‘Tribute to a Dead Friend’ first appeared in
Orient/West
(Tokyo), 1963; ‘The Trouble with Jinns’ first appeared in
Sun,
1994; ‘Life At My Own Pace’ first appeared in
The
Heritage,
1986; ‘The Old Gramophone’ first appeared as ‘The Sound of Boyhood Days’ in
Miscellany,
1993; ‘Adventures of a Book Lover’ first appeared in
The
Statesman
and
Books
for
Keeps
(UK); ‘A Golden Voice Remembered’ first appeared in
Span,
1991; ‘At Home in India’ first appeared in
Miscellany,
1993; ‘Getting the Juices Flowing’ first appeared in
The
Sunday
Observer,
1981; ‘Home is Under the Big Top’ first appeared in
The
Christian
Science
Monitor,
1993; ‘Adventures in a Banyan Tree’ first appeared in
Lokmat
Times,
1994; ‘From My Notebook’ first appeared in
Writers
Workshop
Miscellany
(
Twenty
Seven
); ‘Beautiful Mandakini’ first appeared in
The
Pioneer,
1991; ‘Flowers on the Ganga’ first appeared in
Sunday
World,
1971; ‘Footloose in Agra’ first appeared in
India
Perspectives,
1993.

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Unhappy with the strict ways of his English guardian, Rusty runs away from home to live with Indian friends. Plunging for the first time into the dream-bright world of the
bazaar
, Hindu festivals and other aspects of Indian life. Rusty is enchanted . . . and is lost forever to the prime proprieties of the European community.

‘Has a special magic of its own’

—Herald Tribune Book Review

‘Considerable charm and spontaneity . . .’

—San Francisco Chronicle

‘Very engaging . . .

—The Guardian

‘Moving in its simplicity and underlying tenderness . . . a novel of marked originality.’

—The Scotsman

‘Mr Bond is a writer of great gifts . . .’

—The New Statesman

Semi-autobiographical in nature, these stories span the period from the author’s childhood to the present. We are introduced, in a series of beautifully imagined and crafted cameos, to the author’s family, friends, and various other people who left a lasting impression on him. In other stories we revisit Bond’s beloved Garhwal hills and the small towns and villages that he has returned to time and time again in his fiction.

Together with his well-known novella,
A
Flight
of
Pigeons
(which was made into the film
Junoon
), which also appears in this collection, these stories once again bring Ruskin Bond’s India vividly to life.

Ruskin Bond’s characters—who live for the most part in the country’s small towns and villages—are not the sort who make the headlines but are, nonetheless, remarkable for their quiet heroism, their grace under pressure and the manner in which they continue to cleave to the old values: honesty, fidelity, a deep-rooted faith in God, family and their neighbour. They do have problems, of course—the sudden death of a loved parent, unfulfilled dreams, natural calamities, ghostly visitations, a respected teacher gone crooked, strangers who make a nuisance of themselves in a town marooned in time—but these are solved with a minimum of fuss and tremendous dignity. Taken together these stories are a magnificent evocation of the real India by one of the country’s foremost writers.

‘An educative, charming and often memorable onetime read . . . .’

—Sunday Observer

‘An enjoyable rustic trip back in time.’

—Straits Times