Gone to seed
And giving way
To concrete slabs.
A garden town’s become a city
And the people faceless
As they pass or rather rush
Hell-bent
From place of work
To crowded tenement.
So change must come,
Fields make way for factories,
The trees succumb
To real-estate,
The rivers plunge
Silt-laden
To our doom…
Too late to do a thing
About it now,
For we have grown
Too many,
And the world’s no bigger
Than before.
Do-gooders, don’t despair!
Nature will repair
Her own, long after
We are dust.
Hill-Station
There is nothing to keep me here,
Only these mountains of silence
And the gentle reserve of shepherds and woodmen
Who know me as one who
Walks among trees.
Madman, misanthropist? They make
Their guesses, smile and pass slowly
Down the steep path near the cottage. There is nothing
To keep me here, walking
Among old trees.
A Song for Lost Friends
The past is always with us, for it feeds the present…
1
As a boy I stood on the edge of the railway-cutting,
Outside the dark tunnel, my hands touching
The hot rails, waiting for them to tremble
At the coming of the noonday train.
The whistle of the engine hung on the forest’s silence.
Then out of the tunnel, a green-gold dragon
Came plunging, thundering past—
Out of the tunnel, out of the grinning dark.
And the train rolled on, every day
Hundreds of people coming or going or running away—
Goodbye, goodbye!
I haven’t seen you again, bright boy at the carriage window,
Waving to me, calling,
But I’ve loved you all these years and looked for you everywhere,
In cities and villages, beside the sea,
In the mountains, in crowds at distant places;
Returning always to the forest’s silence,
To watch the windows of some passing train…
2
My father took me by the hand and led me
Among the ruins of old forts and palaces.
We lived in a tent near the tomb of Humayun
Among old trees. Now multi-storeyed blocks
Rise from the plain—tomorrow’s ruins…
You can explore them, my son, when the trees
Take over again and the thorn-apple grows
In empty windows. There were seven cities before…
Nothing my father said could bring my mother home;
She had gone with another. He took me to the hills
In a small train, the engine having palpitations
As it toiled up the steep slopes peopled
With pines and rhododendrons. Through tunnels
To Simla. Boarding-school. He came to see me
In the holidays. We caught butterflies together.
‘Next year,’ he said, ‘when the War is over,
We’ll go to England.’ But wars are never over
And I have yet to go to England with my father.
He died that year
And I was dispatched to my mother and stepfather—
A long journey through a dark tunnel.
No one met me at the station. So I wandered
Round Dehra in a tonga, looking for a house
With lichi trees. She’d written to say there were lichis
In the garden.
But in Dehra all the houses had lichi trees,
The tonga-driver charged five rupees
for taking me back to the station.
They were looking for me on the platform:
‘We thought the train would be late as usual.’
It had arrived on time, upsetting everyone’s schedule.
In my new home I found a new baby in a new pram.
Your little brother, they said; which made me a hundred.
But he too was left behind with the servants
When my mother and Mr H went hunting
Or danced late at the casino, our only wartime night-club.
In a private war for the favours of stale women.
Lonely in the house with the servants and the child
And books I’d read twice and my father’s letters
Treasured secretly in the small trunk beneath my bed:
I wrote to him once but did not post the letter
For fear it might come back ‘Return to sender…’
One day I slipped into the guava orchard next door—
It really belonged to Seth Hari Kishore
Who’d gone to the Ganga on a pilgrimage—
The guavas were ripe and ready for boys to steal
(Always sweeter when stolen)
And a bare leg thrust at me as I climbed:
‘There’s only room for one,’ came a voice.
I looked up at a boy who had blackberry eyes
And guava juice on his chin, grabbed at him
And we both tumbled out of the tree
On to the ragged December grass. We rolled and fought
But not for long. A gardener came shouting,
And we broke and ran—over the gate and down the road
And across the fields and a dry river bed,
Into the shades of afternoon…
‘Why didn’t you run home?’ he said.
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘There’s no one there, my mother’s out.’
‘And mine’s at home.’
3
His mother was Burmese; his father
An English soldier killed in the War.
They were waiting for it to be over.
Every day, beyond the gardens, we loafed:
Time was suspended for a time.
On heavy wings, ringed pheasants rose
At our approach.
The fields were yellow with mustard,
Parrots wheeled in the sunshine, dipped and disappeared
Into the morning mist on the foothills.
We found a pool, fed by a freshet
Of cold spring water. ‘One day when we are men,’
He said, ‘We’ll meet here at the pool again.
Promise?’ ‘Promise,’ I said. And we took a pledge.
In blood, nicking our fingers on a penknife
And pressing them to each other’s lips. Sweet salty kiss.
Late evening, past cowdust time, we trudged home:
He to his mother, I to my dinner.
One wining–dancing night I thought I’d stay out too.
We went to the pictures—Gone with the Wind—
A crashing bore for boys, and it finished late.
So I had dinner with them, and his mother said:
‘It’s past ten. You’d better stay the night.
But will they miss you?’
I did not answer but climbed into my friend’s bed—
I’d never slept with anyone before, except my father—
And when it grew cold, after midnight,
He put his arms around me and looped a leg
Over mine and it was nice that way
But I stayed awake with the niceness of it
My sleep stolen by his own deep slumber…
What dreams were lost, I’ll never know!
But next morning, just as we’d started breakfast,
A car drew up, and my parents, outraged,
Chastised me for staying out and hustled
me home.
Breakfast unfinished. My friend unhappy. My pride wounded.
We met sometimes, but a constraint had grown upon us,
And the following month I heard he’d gone
To an orphanage in Kalimpong.
4
I remember you well, old banyan tree,
As you stood there spreading quietly
Over the broken wall.
While adults slept, I crept away
Down the broad veranda steps, around
The outhouse and the melon-ground…
In that winter of long ago, I roamed
The faded garden of my mother’s home.
I must have known that giants have few friends
(The great lurk shyly in their private dens),
And found you hidden by a thick green wall
Of aerial roots.
Intruder in your pillared den, I stood
And shyly touched your old and wizened wood,
And as my heart explored you, giant tree,
I heard you singing!
The spirit of the tree became my friend,
Took me to his silent throbbing heart
And taught me the value of stillness.
My first tutor; friend of the lonely.
And the second was the tonga-man
Whose pony-cart came rattling along the road
Under the furthest arch of the banyan tree.
Looking up, he waved his whip at me
And laughing, called, ‘Who lives up there?’
‘I do,’ I said.
And the next time he came along, he stopped the tonga
And asked me if I felt lonely in the tree.
‘Only sometimes,’ I said. ‘When the tree is thinking.’
‘I never think,’ he said. ‘You won’t feel lonely with me.’
And with a flick of the reins he rattled away,
With a promise he’d give me a ride someday.
And from him I learnt the value of promises kept.
5
From the tree to the tonga was an easy drop.
I fell into life. Bansi, tonga-driver,
Wore a yellow waistcoat and spat red
Betel-juice the entire width of the road.
‘I can spit further than any man,’ he claimed.
It is natural for a man to strive to excel
At something; he spat with authority.
When he took me for rides, he lost a fare.
That was his way. He once said, ‘If a girl
Wants five rupees for a fix, bargain like hell
And then give six.’
It was the secret of his failure, he claimed,
To give away more than he owned.
And to prove it, he borrowed my pocket-money
In order to buy a present for his mistress.
A man who fails well is better than one who succeeds badly.
The rattletrap tonga and the winding road
Through the valley, to the river-bed,
With the wind in my hair and the dust
Rising, and the dogs running and barking
And Bansi singing and shouting in my ear,
And the pony farting as it cantered along,
Wheels creaking, seat shifting,
Hood slipping off, the entire contraption
Always about to disintegrate, collapse,
But never quite doing so—like the man himself…
All this was music,
And the ragtime-raga lingers in my mind.
Nostalgia comes swiftly when one is forty,
Looking back at boyhood years.
Even unhappiness acquires a certain glow.
It was shady in the cemetery, and the mango trees
Did well there, nourished by the bones
Of long-dead Colonels, Collectors, Magistrates and Memsahibs.
For here, in dusty splendour, lay the graves
Of those who’d brought their English dust
To lie with Ganges soil: some tombs were temples,
Some were cenotaphs; and one, a tiny Taj.
Here lay sundry relatives, including Uncle Henry,
Who’d been for many years a missionary.
‘Sacred to the Memory
Of Henry C. Wagstaff’,
Who translated the Gospels into Pashtu,
And was murdered by his own Chowkidar.
‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’—
So ran his epitaph.
The gardener, who looked after the trees,
Also dug graves. One day
I found him working at the bottom of a new cavity,
‘They never let me know in time,’ he grumbled.
‘Last week I dug two graves, and now, without warning,
Here’s another. It isn’t even the season for dying.
There’s enough work all summer, when cholera’s about—
Why can’t they keep alive through the winter?’
Near the railway-lines, watching the trains
(There were six every day, coming or going),
And across the line, the leper colony…
I did not know they were lepers till later
But I knew they were different: some
Were without fingers or toes
And one had no nose
And a few had holes in their faces
And yet some were beautiful
They had their children with them
And the children were no different
From other children.
I made friends with some
And won most of their marbles
And carried them home in my pockets.
One day my parents found me
Playing near the leper colony.
There was a big scene.
My mother shouted at the lepers
And they hung their heads as though it was all their fault,
And the children had nothing to say.
I was taken home in disgrace
And told all about leprosy and given a bath.
My clothes were thrown away
And the servants wouldn’t touch me for days.
So I took the marbles I’d won
And put them in my stepfather’s cupboard,
Hoping he’d catch leprosy from them.
6
A slim dark youth with quiet
Eyes and a gentle quizzical smile,
Manohar. Fifteen, working in a small hotel.
He’d come from the hills and wanted to return,
I forget how we met
But I remember walking the dusty roads
With this gentle boy, who held my hand
And told me about his home, his mother,
His village, and the little river
At the bottom of the hill where the water
Ran blue and white and wonderful,
‘When I go home, I’ll take you with me.’
But we hadn’t enough money.
So I sold my bicycle for thirty rupees
And left a note in the dining room:
‘Going away. Don’t worry—(hoping they would)—
I’ll come home
When I’ve grown up.’
We crossed the rushing waters of the Ganga
Where they issued from the doors of Vishnu
Then took the pilgrim road, in those days
Just a stony footpath into the mountains:
Not all who ventured forth returned;
Some came to die, of course,
Near the sacred waters or at their source.
We took this route and spent a night
At a wayside inn, wrapped tight
In the single blanket I’d brought along;
Even then we were cold
It was not the season for pilgrims
And the inn was empty, except for the locals
Drinking a local brew.
We drank a little and listened
To an old soldier from the hills
Talking of the women he’d known
In the first Great War, when stationed in Rome;
His memories were good for many drinks
In many inns; his face pickled in the suns
Of many mountain summers.
The mule-drivers slept in one room
And talked all night over hookahs.
Manohar slept bravely, but I lay watching
A bright star through the tiny window
And wished upon it, already knowing that wishes
Had no power, but wishing all the same…
And next morning we set off again
Leaving the pilgrim-route to march
Down a valley, above a smaller river,
Walking until I felt
We’d walk and walk for ever.
Late at night, on a cold mountain,
Two lonely figures, we saw the lights
Of scattered houses and knew we had arrived.
7
‘Not death, but a summing-up of life,’
Said the village patriarch, as we watched him
Treasure a patch of winter sunshine
On his string cot in the courtyard.
I remember his wisdom.
And I remember faces.
For it’s faces I remember best.
The people were poor, and the patriarch said:
‘I have heard it told that the sun
Sets in splendour in Himalaya—
But who can eat sunsets?’
Perhaps, if I’d stayed longer,
I would have yearned for creature comforts.
We were hungry sometimes, eating wild berries
Or slyly milking another’s goat,
Or catching small fish in the river…
But I did not long for home.
Could I have grown up a village boy,
Grazing sheep and cattle, while the Collected Works
Of W. Shakespeare lay gathering dust
In Dehra? Who knows? But it was nice
Of my stepfather to send his office manager
Into the mountains to bring me home!
Manohar.
He called goodbye and waved
As I looked back from the bend in the road.
Bright boy on the mountainside,
Waving to me, calling, and I’ve loved you
All these years and looked for you everywhere,
In the mountains, in crowds at distant places,
In cities and villages, beside the sea.
And the trains roll on, every day
Hundreds of people coming or going or running away—
Goodbye, goodbye!
Into the forest’s silence,
Outside the dark tunnel,
Out of the tunnel, out of the dark…
Secondhand Shop in Hill Station
The smell of secondhand goods
Is everywhere. Lost causes,
Lonely lives, and deaths in small cottages
Among the pines, meet here in the mildewed dark
Of his shop—Abdul Salaam, Proprietor.
Tales of a hundred failures