* * *
On my way back from the graveyard, when I reached Mall Road, I saw Mr Chauhan standing at the fork of the road leading down towards the Light House. I was tired and aching; my clothes were filthy and my fingernails black and split from returning the lily bulbs to their places with my bare hands. Mr Chauhan did not seem to notice my dishevelled condition. He was studying one of his signs, which said, “Don’t Drive Rash, You Will Crash”. The yellow paint still glistened wetly on the dark rockface. He swayed back on his heels and tilted his head for a different view, caressing his thin moustache with a smile of satisfaction. I had not noticed the purple birthmark by his ear before. It was shaped like Australia.
When he saw me, he smiled. “Ah Mam, as you see, I’m doing what I can for our town. I think it has potential, but nobody has known how to tap it. This could be a great tourist destination. I am going to beautify it from top to bottom before the Regimental Reunion in November.”
“What needs beautifying is the graveyard,” I said. “Have you ever been there?” I knew I sounded short, but could not help my tone.
“These signs, you see,” Mr Chauhan went on, as if I had not spoken. “Daily you will pass them, without thinking you will read them, and slowly — what will happen?” He smiled in triumph. “They will start altering your mind. You will begin to think differently. I don’t mean you, of course, you are a good citizen. I mean all these … “ He waved an arm over all the landscape. “All these wretched villagers, their dirty children … they have to learn.” The grass along the side of the road was strewn with plastic cups, beedi wrappers, and deflated foil packets that had once contained fries and gutka. He poked at the rubbish with a stick and said, “No civic sense, I tell you, none. This road was swept only last week.” Then he spotted Charu at a distance, slapping the rump of a cow to make it move. Instead it raised its tail and let out great dollops of dung that steamed in the cool air.
“That is exactly what I mean,” Mr Chauhan said. “Disgusting, disgusting! Is this what an army cantonment should be filled with? Dung?”
Charu threw us a guilty look over her shoulder, as if she had overheard Mr Chauhan, and harried her animals to make them go down the hillside, out of sight. She gave me a quick, apologetic smile as she passed us and tugged at Bijli’s collar to make him follow her. He had other plans.
“I went to the graveyard,” I said, trying to control the tremor in my voice. “And not only was my husband’s grave vandalised, I saw that the wings of the angels on one of the colonial graves have been broken — smashed deliberately. Many of the graves had rubbish on them. The wall around the graveyard is broken.”
Mr Chauhan said, “Do you know what I think the real problem of the Indian state is?” He paused for effect. “We are too soft, far too soft on everything. Just as we are with terrorists. They keep dropping bombs here and there and what do we do about it? Nothing. And here? Same thing, different situation. All anti-socials. These cows, dumping dung, is anyone able to stop them?”
He was startled into silence by a voice exclaiming in foreign accents, “Oh look! Another foraging party!” We had not noticed the bearded man who had stationed himself on the grassy slope below, with binoculars round his neck. He was pointing them skyward at a flock of passing birds. A backpacked woman stood next to him, staring up through an identical pair of binoculars.
Mr Chauhan lowered his voice to a hiss. “What sort of impression does the tourist get of Ranikhet when he arrives expecting a neat and clean army town and sees all this garbage? In foreign countries I have heard people have to pick up even their dog’s … waste from roads.”
“Mr Chauhan, I am trying to tell you something,” I said. “A genuine problem.”
Maybe I was shouting, because he said in a soft, dangerous voice, “I heard you Madam, please do not raise your voice. People throw rubbish everywhere, it is a big problem in Ranikhet, not only Ranikhet, all of India. I have seen it in Lucknow, Bareilly, Dehra Dun — wherever I have been posted. Foreigners rightly remark that India is a country ruined by us Indians. We requisition dustbins, but nobody uses them. As for the old graves, and angels’ wings, even stone has a lifespan, and these are two hundred years old. And your late husband’s grave? — I will send someone to check. We will look into it. We have correct procedures for everything.”
I was about to retort with something acid when a pleased expression spread over his face. The Army band had just struck up. The first notes of brass music were rolling over the hills. Sounds of instruments being tuned reached our ears. A baritone voice joined them, with a line from a sentimental Hindi film song. “Ek akela is shahar mein, raat mein aur dopahar mein”, the voice warbled mournfully. “Alone in this city, all alone, at night and through the afternoon.”
Mr Chauhan stood with his eyes closed in pleasure until the song was interrupted by the General’s barks. The General rounded the bend, thwacking Bozo with his Naga spear in an effort to stop the dog from tugging at his leash to get at Bijli, who was growling back from a parapet across the road. “What is the reason, Bozo?” the General demanded as he pitted his wispy strength against his dog’s muscle. “I fail to understand. What is the reason?” He glimpsed the bird-watching couple and called out to them: “Hello there! Spotted anything yet?”
“Before the regimental reunion,” Mr Chauhan said, walking towards the General with a wide smile, “I will make it all new. This town will be the star of the hills, that is my promise.”
* * *
I gave up on Mr Chauhan and headed for the Light House. I was earlier than usual and Diwan Sahib, expecting no visitors at that time, was sitting in his garden practising birdcalls. Once a year, he went to St Hilda’s and put on a performance, educating the children about forest sounds and signs. He had done so for the past sixteen years and it was now part of the school’s Annual Day celebrations. The assembly hall would ring with his leopard and barking deer and owl calls while the children sat in rows on the floor, shrieking in delight and terror. He had got the idea from Corbett, who used to put on similar performances at schools in Nainital. I was not able to make sense of it in someone as irritable and solitary as he was, but he took it seriously and began practising months ahead, so I stood still, waiting for him to finish. After a long while he noticed me, and stopped a chital’s call midway with a frown.
I handed him the receipt for his electricity bill, and his newspaper.
He looked at the receipt and said, “Today? You were supposed to pay it two weeks ago. It’s long overdue, there must be a fine.”
My knees and fingernails were sore. The cloud of my headache hovered as if it would return at the least inkling of distress. Diwan Sahib’s tone made my head throb. “Not two weeks ago, one,” I said, and then, for no reason that I could think of, I lied. “I did pay it then, just forgot to give you the receipt.” Diwan Sahib raised a sceptical eyebrow.
“It’s paid, isn’t it? That’s all that matters.”
I turned away to go, without waiting for tea or our newspaper session. He said, “What is it? Why do you look as if you walked into a tree?”
Diwan Sahib could be perverse. When you least thought you would find sympathy he could be kindness personified. Yet when you felt battered, afraid, uncertain, he might turn it all into a joke. It was with some reluctance that I told him what had happened at the graveyard. A mocking smile began curling his lips before I had finished.