Ruskin Bond wrote his first short story, ‘Untouchable’, at the age of sixteen in 1950. Since then he has written over a hundred stories, including the classics ‘A Face in the Dark’, ‘The Kitemaker’, ‘The Tunnel’, ‘The Room of Many Colours’, ‘Dust on the Mountain’ and ‘Time Stops at Shamli’. This volume brings together the best of all the short fiction Ruskin Bond has ever written.
‘[Ruskin Bond’s stories] bring to life the special flavours of life in the hills…strengthen[s] the “Rudyardian thesis” that the smell of the Himalayas, if it once creeps into the blood of a man, he will return to the hills again and again and will love to live and die among them.’–Tribune
‘[Ruskin Bond] is a writer who has, with intense depth and sensitivity, absorbed the essence of the culturally syncretic Indian society.’–Telegraph
A comprehensive
selection from
six decades of short
fiction by
India’s best-loved
contemporary author
Cover photograph by Tommy Oshima
Cover design by Chandan Crasta
PENGUIN BOOKS
DUST ON THE MOUNTAIN:
COLLECTED STORIES
Ruskin Bond’s first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written several novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley, A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far), essays, poems and children’s books, many of which have been published by Penguin India. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999.
Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955 and has never left the country since. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
Fiction
The Room on the Roof & Vagrants in the Valley
The Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories
Time Stops at Shamli and Other Stories
Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra
A Season of Ghosts
When Darkness Falls and Other Stories
A Flight of Pigeons
Delhi Is Not Far
A Face in the Dark and Other Hauntings
The Sensualist
A Handful of Nuts
Non-fiction
Rain in the Mountains
Scenes from a Writer’s Life
The Lamp Is Lit
The Little Book of Comfort
Landour Days
Notes from a Small Room
Anthologies
Dust on the Mountain: Collected Stories
The Best of Ruskin Bond
Friends in Small Places
Indian Ghost Stories (ed.)
Indian Railway Stories (ed.)
Classical Indian Love Stories and Lyrics (ed.)
Tales of the Open Road
Ruskin Bond’s Book of Nature
Ruskin Bond’s Book of Humour
A Town Called Dehra
Poetry
Ruskin Bond’s Book of Verse
Dust on the Mountain
COLLECTED STORIES
Ruskin Bond
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Group (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Viking as Complete Short Stories and Novels by Penguin Books India 1996
Published as Collected Fiction in Penguin Books 1999
This edition published by Penguin Books India 2009
Copyright © Ruskin Bond 1996, 1999, 2009
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-14306-712-2
This digital edition published in 2011.
e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-158-1
This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.
Contents
Copyright
Untouchable
The Coral Tree
Going Home
The Daffodil Case
The Eyes Have It
The Night Train at Deoli
The Woman on Platform No. 8
The Thief
The Photograph
The Window
The Boy Who Broke the Bank
Most Beautiful
The Haunted Bicycle
The Fight
A Rupee Goes a Long Way
Faraway Places
How Far Is the River?
Tribute to a Dead Friend
The Trouble with Jinns
Time Stops at Shamli
The Crooked Tree
The Flute Player
Chachi’s Funeral
The Man Who Was Kipling
The Girl from Copenhagen
Hanging at the Mango Tope
A Tiger in the House
All Creatures Great and Small
Calypso Christmas
Bhabiji’s House
Masterji
As Time Goes By
Death of a Familiar
Dead Man’s Gift
The Most Potent Medicine of All
The Story of Madhu
My First Love
The Kitemaker
The Prospect of Flowers
Sita and the River
The Tunnel
The Leopard
Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright
Coming Home to Dehra
My Father’s Trees in Dehra
The Room of Many Colours
The Last Tonga Ride
The Tiger in the Tunnel
A Face in the Dark
Binya Passes By
He Said It with Arsenic
Whispering in the Dark
Escape from Java
The Last Time I Saw Delhi
Love Is a Sad Song
Listen to the Wind
The Garlands on His Brow
His Neighbour’s Wife
The Monkeys
A Case for Inspector Lal
Panther’s Moon
The Good Old Days
Death of the Trees
Miss Bun and Others
The Funeral
The Last Truck Ride
Dust on the Mountain
Would Astley Return?
A Job Well Done
A Crow for All Seasons
The Playing Fields of Simla
The Wind on Haunted Hill
From Small Beginnings
When Darkness Falls
Whistling in the Dark
Something in the Water
Wilson’s Bridge
On Fairy Hill
Reunion at the Regal
Grandfather Fights an Ostrich
Grandfather’s Many Faces
Here Comes Mr Oliver
Susanna’s Seven Husbands
What’s Your Dream?
Eyes of the Cat
The Cherry Tree
When You Can’t Climb Trees Any More
A Love of Long Ago
Untouchable
The sweeper boy splashed water over the khus matting that hung in the doorway and for a while the air was cooled.
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring out of the open window, brooding upon the dusty road shimmering in the noon-day heat. A car passed and the dust rose in billowing clouds.
Across the road lived the people who were supposed to look after me while my father lay in hospital with malaria. I was supposed to stay with them, sleep with them. But except for meals, I kept away. I did not like them and they did not like me.
For a week, longer probably, I was going to live alone in the red-brick bungalow on the outskirts of the town, on the fringe of the jungle. At night the sweeper boy would keep guard, sleeping in the kitchen. Apart from him, I had no company; only the neighbours’ children, and I did not like them and they did not like me.
Their mother said, ‘Don’t play with the sweeper boy, he is unclean. Don’t touch him. Remember, he is a servant. You must come and play with my boys.’
Well, I did not intend playing with the sweeper boy … but neither did I intend playing with her children. I was going to sit on my bed all week and wait for my father to come home.
Sweeper boy … all day he pattered up and down between the house and the water-tank, with the bucket clanging against his knees.
Back and forth, with a wide, friendly smile.
I frowned at him.
He was about my age, ten. He had short-cropped hair, very white teeth, and muddy feet, hands, and face. All he wore was an old pair of khaki shorts; the rest of his body was bare, burnt a deep brown.
At every trip to the water tank he bathed, and returned dripping and glistening from head to toe.
I dripped with sweat.
It was supposedly below my station to bathe at the tank, where the gardener, water carrier, cooks, ayahs, sweepers, and their children all collected. I was the son of a ‘sahib’ and convention ruled that I did not play with servant children.
But I was just as determined not to play with the other sahibs’ children, for I did not like them and they did not like me.
I watched the flies buzzing against the windowpane, the lizards scuttling across the rafters, the wind scattering petals of scorched, long-dead flowers.
The sweeper boy smiled and saluted in play. I avoided his eyes and said, ‘Go away.’
He went into the kitchen.
I rose and crossed the room, and lifted my sun helmet off the hatstand.
A centipede ran down the wall, across the floor.
I screamed and jumped on the bed, shouting for help.
The sweeper boy darted in. He saw me on the bed, the centipede on the floor; and picking a large book off the shelf, slammed it down on the repulsive insect.
I remained standing on my bed, trembling with fear and revulsion.
He laughed at me, showing his teeth, and I blushed and said, ‘Get out!’
I would not, could not, touch or approach the hat or hatstand. I sat on the bed and longed for my father to come home.
A mosquito passed close by me and sang in my ear. Half-heartedly, I clutched at it and missed; and it disappeared behind the dressing-table.
That mosquito, I reasoned, gave the malaria to my father. And now it was trying to give it to me!
The next-door lady walked through the compound and smiled thinly from outside the window. I glared back at her.
The sweeper boy passed with the bucket, and grinned. I turned away.
In bed at night, with the lights on, I tried reading. But even books could not quell my anxiety.
The sweeper boy moved about the house, bolting doors, fastening windows. He asked me if I had any orders.
I shook my head.
He skipped across to the electric switch, turned off the light, and slipped into his quarters. Outside, inside, all was dark; only one shaft of light squeezed in through a crack in the sweeper boy’s door, and then that too went out.
I began to wish I had stayed with the neighbours. The darkness worried me—silent and close—silent, as if in suspense.
Once a bat flew flat against the window, falling to the ground outside; once an owl hooted. Sometimes a dog barked. And I tautened as a jackal howled hideously in the jungle behind the bungalow. But nothing could break the overall stillness, the night’s silence …
Only a dry puff of wind …
It rustled in the trees, and put me in mind of a snake slithering over dry leaves and twigs. I remembered a tale I had been told not long ago, of a sleeping boy who had been bitten by a cobra.
I would not, could not, sleep. I longed for my father …
The shutters rattled, the doors creaked. It was a night for ghosts.
Ghosts!
God, why did I have to think of them?
My God! There, standing by the bathroom door …
My father! My father dead from the malaria, and come to see me!
I threw myself at the switch. The room lit up. I sank down on the bed in complete exhaustion, the sweat soaking my nightclothes.
It was not my father I had seen. It was his dressing gown hanging on the bathroom door. It had not been taken with him to the hospital.
I turned off the light.
The hush outside seemed deeper, nearer. I remembered the centipede, the bat, thought of the cobra and the sleeping boy; pulled the sheet tight over my head. If I could see nothing, well then, nothing could see me.
A thunderclap shattered the brooding stillness.
A streak of lightning forked across the sky, so close that even through the sheet I saw a tree and the opposite house silhouetted against the flashing canvas of gold.
I dived deeper beneath the bedclothes, gathered the pillow about my ears.
But at the next thunderclap, louder this time, louder than I had ever heard, I leapt from my bed. I could not stand it. I fled, blundering into the sweeper boy’s room.
The boy sat on the bare floor.
‘What is happening?’ he asked.
The lightning flashed, and his teeth and eyes flashed with it. Then he was a blur in the darkness.
‘I am afraid,’ I said.
I moved towards him and my hand touched a cold shoulder.
‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I too am afraid.’
I sat down, my back against the wall; beside the untouchable, the outcaste … and the thunder and lightning ceased, and the rain came down, swishing and drumming on the corrugated roof.
‘The rainy season has started,’ observed the sweeper boy, turning to me. His smile played with the darkness, and then he laughed. And I laughed too, but feebly.
But I was happy and safe. The scent of the wet earth blew in through the skylight and the rain fell harder.
*
* *
This was my first short story, written when I was sixteen.
The Coral Tree
The night had been hot, the rain frequent, and I slept on the veranda instead of in the house. I was in my twenties and I had begun to earn a living and felt I had certain responsibilities. In a short while a tonga would take me to a 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’s 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 she was very serious.
‘Hello,’ I said, smiling, trying to put her at ease.
But the girl was businesslike. She acknowledged my greeting with a brief nod.
‘Can I do anything for you?’ I asked, stretching my limbs. ‘Do you stay near here?’
She nodded again.
‘With your parents?
With great assurance she said, ‘Yes. But I can stay on my own.’
‘You’re like me,’ I said, and for a while I forgot about being an old man of twenty. ‘I like to do things on my own. 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?’