The Very Best of Ruskin Bond, the Writer on the Hill: Selected Fiction and Non-Fiction by Ruskin Bond
Authors: Ruskin Bond
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words? There are no absolutes except birth and death.’
The boy squatted down at her feet, cradling his head in her lap. With the end of her sari, she began wiping his face.
‘Have you tried teaching him to talk properly?’ I asked.
‘He has been like this since childhood. The doctors can do nothing.’
While we were talking the father came in, and the boy slunk away to the kitchen. The man thanked me curtly for bringing the boy home, and seemed at once to dismiss the whole matter from his mind. He seemed preoccupied with business matters. I got the impression that he had long since resigned himself to having a deformed son, and his early disappointment had changed to indifference. When I got up to leave, his wife accompanied me to the front door.
‘Please do not mind if my husband is a little rude,’ she said. ‘His business is not going too well. If you would like to come again, please do. Suresh does not meet many people who treat him like a normal person.’
I knew that I wanted to visit them again—more out of sympathy for the mother than out of pity for the boy. But I realized that she was not interested in me personally, except as a possible mentor for her son.
After about a week I went to the house again.
Suresh’s father was away on a business trip, and I stayed for lunch. The boy’s mother made some delicious parathas stuffed with ground radish, and served it with pickle and curds. If Suresh ate like an animal, gobbling his food, I was not far behind him. His mother encouraged him to overeat. He was morose and uncommunicative when he ate, but when I suggested that he come with me for a walk, he looked up eagerly. At the same time a look of fear passed across his mother’s face.
‘Will it be all right?’ she asked. ‘You have seen how other children treat him. That day he slipped out of the house without telling anyone.’
‘We won’t go towards the bazaar,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of a walk in the fields.’
Suresh made encouraging noises and thumped the table with his fists to show that he wanted to go. Finally his mother consented, and the boy and I set off down the road.
He could not walk very fast because of his awkward legs, but this gave me a chance to point out to him anything that I thought might arouse his interest—parrots squabbling in a banyan tree, buffaloes wallowing in a muddy pond, a group of hermaphrodite musicians strolling down the road. Suresh took a keen interest in the hermaphrodites, perhaps because they were grotesque in their own way: tall, masculine-looking people dressed in women’s garments, ankle bells jingling on their heavy feet, and their long, gaunt faces made up with rouge and mascara. For the first time, I heard Suresh laugh. Apparently he had discovered that there were human beings even odder than he. And like any human being, he lost no time in deriding them.
‘Don’t laugh,’ I said. ‘They were born that way, just as you were born the way you are.’
But he did not take me seriously and grinned, his wide mouth revealing surprisingly strong teeth.
We reached the dry riverbed on the outskirts of the town and crossing it entered a field of yellow mustard flowers. The mustard stretched away towards the edge of a subtropical forest. Seeing trees in the distance, Suresh began to run towards them, shouting and clapping his hands. He had never been out of town before. The courtyard of his house and, occasionally, the road to the bazaar, were all that he had seen of the world. Now the trees beckoned him.
We found a small stream running through the forest and I took off my clothes and leapt into the cool water, inviting Suresh to join me. He hesitated about taking off his clothes, but after watching me for a while, his eagerness to join me overcame his self-consciousness, and he exposed his misshapen little body to the soft spring sunshine.
He waded clumsily towards me. The water which came only to my knees reached up to his chest.
‘Come,
The boy squatted down at her feet, cradling his head in her lap. With the end of her sari, she began wiping his face.
‘Have you tried teaching him to talk properly?’ I asked.
‘He has been like this since childhood. The doctors can do nothing.’
While we were talking the father came in, and the boy slunk away to the kitchen. The man thanked me curtly for bringing the boy home, and seemed at once to dismiss the whole matter from his mind. He seemed preoccupied with business matters. I got the impression that he had long since resigned himself to having a deformed son, and his early disappointment had changed to indifference. When I got up to leave, his wife accompanied me to the front door.
‘Please do not mind if my husband is a little rude,’ she said. ‘His business is not going too well. If you would like to come again, please do. Suresh does not meet many people who treat him like a normal person.’
I knew that I wanted to visit them again—more out of sympathy for the mother than out of pity for the boy. But I realized that she was not interested in me personally, except as a possible mentor for her son.
After about a week I went to the house again.
Suresh’s father was away on a business trip, and I stayed for lunch. The boy’s mother made some delicious parathas stuffed with ground radish, and served it with pickle and curds. If Suresh ate like an animal, gobbling his food, I was not far behind him. His mother encouraged him to overeat. He was morose and uncommunicative when he ate, but when I suggested that he come with me for a walk, he looked up eagerly. At the same time a look of fear passed across his mother’s face.
‘Will it be all right?’ she asked. ‘You have seen how other children treat him. That day he slipped out of the house without telling anyone.’
‘We won’t go towards the bazaar,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of a walk in the fields.’
Suresh made encouraging noises and thumped the table with his fists to show that he wanted to go. Finally his mother consented, and the boy and I set off down the road.
He could not walk very fast because of his awkward legs, but this gave me a chance to point out to him anything that I thought might arouse his interest—parrots squabbling in a banyan tree, buffaloes wallowing in a muddy pond, a group of hermaphrodite musicians strolling down the road. Suresh took a keen interest in the hermaphrodites, perhaps because they were grotesque in their own way: tall, masculine-looking people dressed in women’s garments, ankle bells jingling on their heavy feet, and their long, gaunt faces made up with rouge and mascara. For the first time, I heard Suresh laugh. Apparently he had discovered that there were human beings even odder than he. And like any human being, he lost no time in deriding them.
‘Don’t laugh,’ I said. ‘They were born that way, just as you were born the way you are.’
But he did not take me seriously and grinned, his wide mouth revealing surprisingly strong teeth.
We reached the dry riverbed on the outskirts of the town and crossing it entered a field of yellow mustard flowers. The mustard stretched away towards the edge of a subtropical forest. Seeing trees in the distance, Suresh began to run towards them, shouting and clapping his hands. He had never been out of town before. The courtyard of his house and, occasionally, the road to the bazaar, were all that he had seen of the world. Now the trees beckoned him.
We found a small stream running through the forest and I took off my clothes and leapt into the cool water, inviting Suresh to join me. He hesitated about taking off his clothes, but after watching me for a while, his eagerness to join me overcame his self-consciousness, and he exposed his misshapen little body to the soft spring sunshine.
He waded clumsily towards me. The water which came only to my knees reached up to his chest.
‘Come,
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