Miss Bun and Others

1 March 1975

Beer in the sun. High in the spruce tree the barbet calls, heralding summer. A few puffy clouds drift lazily over the mountains. Is this the great escape?

I could sit here all day, soaking up beer and sunshine, but at some time during the day I must wipe the dust from my typewriter and produce something readable. There’s only Rs 800 in the bank, book sales are falling off, and magazines are turning away from fiction.

Prem spoils me, gives me rice and kofta curry for lunch, which means that I sleep till four when Miss Bun arrives with patties and samosas.

Miss Bun is the baker’s daughter.

Of course that’s not her real name. Her real name is very long and beautiful, but I won’t give it here for obvious reasons and also because her brother is big and ugly.

I am seeing Miss Bun after two months. She’s been with relatives in Bareilly.

She sits at the foot of my bed, absolutely radiant. Her raven black hair lies loose on her shoulders; her eyelashes have been trimmed and blackened; so have her eyes, with kajal. Her eyes, so large and innocent—and calculating!

There are pretty glass bangles on her wrists and she wears a pair of new slippers. Her kameez is new, too; green silk, with gold-embroidered sleeves.

‘You must have a rich lover,’ I remark, taking her hand and gently pulling her toward me. ‘Who gave you all this finery?’

‘You did. Don’t you remember? Before I went away, you gave me a hundred rupees.’

‘That was for the train and bus fares, I thought.’

‘Oh, my uncle paid the fares. So I bought myself these things. Are they nice?’

‘Very pretty. And so are you. If you were ten years older, and I was ten years younger, we’d make a good pair. But, I’d have been broke long before this!’

She giggles and drops a paper-bag full of samosas on the bedside table. I hate samosas and patties, but I keep ordering them because it gives Miss Bun a pretext for visiting me. It’s all in the way of helping the bakery get by. When she goes, I give the lot to Bijju and Binya or whoever might be passing.

‘You’ve been away a long time,’ I complain. ‘What if I’d got married while you were away?’

‘Then you’d stop ordering samosas.’

‘Or get them from that old man Bashir, who makes much better ones, and cheaper!’

She drops her head on my shoulder. Her hair is heavily scented with jasmine hair-oil, and I nearly pass out. They should use it instead of anaesthesia.

‘You smell very nice,’ I lie. ‘Do I get a kiss?’

She gives me a long kiss, as though to make up for her long absence. Her kisses always have a nice wholesome flavour, as you would expect from someone who lives in a bakery.

‘That was an expensive kiss.’

‘I want to buy some face-cream.’

‘You don’t need face-cream. Your complexion is perfect. It must be the good quality flour you use in the bakery.’

‘I don’t put flour on my face. Anyway, I want the cream for my elder sister. She has pock-marks.

I surrender and give her two fives, quickly putting away my wallet.

‘And when will you pay for the samosas?’

‘Next week.’

‘I’ll bring you something nice next week,’ she says, pausing in the doorway.

‘Well, thanks, I was getting tired of samosas.’

She was gone in a twinkling.

I’ll say this for Miss Bun: she doesn’t trouble to hide her intentions.

 

4 March

My policeman calls on me this morning. Ghanshyam, the constable attached to the Barlowganj outpost.

He is not very tall for a policeman, and he has a round, cheerful countenance, which is unusual in his profession. He looks smart in his uniform. Most constables prefer to hang around in their pyjamas most of the time.

Nothing alarming about Ghanshyam’s visit. He comes to see me about once a week, and has been doing so ever since I spent a night in the police station last year.

It happened when I punched a Muzzaffarnagar businessman in the eye for bullying a rickshaw coolie. The fat slob very naturally lodged a complaint against me, and that same evening a sub-inspector called and asked me to accompany him to the thana. It was too late to arrange anything and in any case I had only been taken in for questioning, so I had to spend the night at the police post. The sub-inspector went home and left me in the charge of a constable. A wooden bench and a charpoy, were the only items of furniture in my ‘cell’, if you could call it that. The charpoy was meant for the night-duty constable, but he very generously offered it to me.

‘But where will you sleep?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I don’t feel like sleeping. Usually I go to the night show at the Picture Palace, but I suppose I’ll have to stay here because of you.’

He looked rather sulky. Obviously I’d ruined his plans for the night.

‘You don’t have to stay because of me.’ I said. ‘I won’t tell the SHO. You go to the Picture Palace, I’ll look after the thana.’

He brightened up considerably, but still looked a bit doubtful.

‘You can trust me,’ I said encouragingly. ‘My grandfather was a private soldier who became a Buddhist.’

‘Then I can trust you as far as your grandfather.’ He was quite cheerful now, and sent for two cups of tea from the shop across the road. It came gratis, of course. A little later he left me, and I settled down on the cot and slept fitfully. The constable came back during the early hours and went to sleep on the bench. Next morning I was allowed to go home. The Muzzaffarnagar businessman had got into another fight and was lodged in the main thana. I did not hear about the matter again.

Ghanshyam, the constable, having struck up a friendship with me, was to visit me from time to time.

And here he is today, boots shining, teeth gleaming, cheeks almost glowing, far too charming a person to be a policeman.

‘Hello, Ghanshyam bhai,’ I welcome him. ‘Sit down and have some tea.’

‘No, I can’t stop for long,’ he says, but sits down beside me on the veranda steps. ‘Can you do me a favour?’

‘Sure. What is it?’

‘I’m fed up with Barlowganj. I want to get a transfer.’

‘And how can I help you? I don’t know any netas or bigwigs.’

‘No, but our SP will be here next week, and he can have me transferred. Will you speak to him?’

‘But why should he listen to me?’

‘Well, you see, he has a weakness …’

‘We all have our weaknesses. Does your SP have a weakness similar to mine? Do we proceed to blackmail him?’

‘Yes. You see, he writes poetry. And you are a kavi, a poet, aren’t you?’

‘At times,’ I conceded. ‘And I have to admit it’s a weakness, especially as no one cares to read my poetry.’

‘No one reads the SP’s poetry, either. Although we have to listen to it sometimes. When he has finished reading out one of his poems, we salute and say “Shabash!”’

‘A captive audience. I wish I had one.’

Ignoring my sarcasm, Ghanshyam continued: ‘The trouble is, he can’t get anyone to publish his poems. This makes him bad tempered and unsympathetic to applications for transfer. Can you help?’

‘I am not a publisher. I can only salute like the rest of you.’

‘But you know publishers, don’t you? If you can get some of his poems published, he’d be very grateful. To you. To me. To both of us!’

‘You really are an optimist.’

‘Just one or two poems. You see, I’ve already told him about you. How you spent all night in the lock-up writing verses. He thinks you are a famous writer. He’s depending on me now. If the poems get published, he will give me a transfer. I’m sick of Barlowganj!’ He gives me a hug and pinches me on the cheek. Before he can go any further, I say: ‘Well, I’ll do my best—’ I was thinking of a little magazine published in Bhopal where most of my rejects found a home. ‘For your sake, I’ll try. But first I must see the poems.’

‘You shall even see the SP,’ he promised. ‘I’ll bring him here next week. You can give him a cup of tea.’

He got up, gave me a smart salute, and went up the path with a spring in his step. The sort of man who knows how to get his transfers and promotions in a perfectly honest manner.

 

7 March

It gets warmer day by day.

This morning I decided to sunbathe—quite modestly, of course. Retaining my old khaki shorts but removing all other clothing, I stretched out on a mattress in the garden. Almost immediately I was disturbed by the baker (Miss Bun’s father for a change), who presented me with two loaves of bread and half a dozen chocolate pastries, ordered the previous day. Then Prem’s small son, Raki, turned up, demanding a pastry, and I gave him two. He insisted on joining me on the mattress, where he proceeded to drop crumbs in my hair and on my chest. ‘Good morning, Mr Bond!’ came the dulcet tones of Mrs Biggs, leaning over the gate. Forgetting that she was shortsighted, I jumped to my feet, and at the same time my shorts slipped down over my knees. As I grabbed for them, Mrs Biggs’s effusiveness reached greater heights. ‘Why, what a lovely agapanthus you’ve got!’ she exclaimed, referring no doubt to the solitary lily in the garden. I must confess I blushed. Then, recovering myself, I returned her greeting, remarking on the freshness of the morning.

Mrs Biggs, at eighty, was a little deaf as well, and replied, ‘I’m very well, thank you, Mr Bond. Is that a child you’re carrying?’

‘Yes, Prem’s small son.’

‘Prem is your son? I didn’t know you had a family.’

At this point Raki decided to pluck the spectacles off Mrs Biggs’s nose, and after I had recovered them for her, she beat a hasty retreat. Later, the Rev. Mr Biggs came over to borrow a book.

‘Just light reading,’ he said. ‘I can’t concentrate for long periods.’

He has become extremely absent-minded and forgetful; one of the drawbacks of living to an advanced age. During a funeral last year, at which he took the funeral service, he read out the service for Burial at Sea. It was raining heavily at the time, and no one seemed to notice.

Now he borrows two of my Ross Macdonalds—the same two he read last month. I refrain from pointing this out. If he has forgotten the books already, it won’t matter if he reads them again.

Having spent the better part of his seventy-odd years in India, the Rev. Biggs has a lot of stories to tell, his favourite being the one about the crocodile he shot in Orissa when he was a young man. He’d pitched his tent on the banks of a river and gone to sleep on a camp-cot. During the night he felt his cot moving, and before he could gather his wits, the cot had moved swiftly through the opening of the tent and was rapidly making its way down to the river. Mr Biggs leapt for dry land while the cot, firmly wedged on the back of the crocodile, disappeared into the darkness.

Crocodiles, it seems, often bury themselves in the mud when they go to sleep, and Mr Biggs had pitched his tent and made his bed on top of a sleeping crocodile. Waking in the night, it had made for the nearest water.

Mr Biggs shot it the following morning—or so he would have us believe—the crocodile having reappeared on the river bank with the cot still attached to its back.

Now, having told me this story for the umpteenth time, Biggs says he really must be going, and, returning to the bookshelf, extracts Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, having forgotten the Ross Macdonalds on a side-table.

‘I must do some serious reading,’ he says. ‘These modern novels are so violent.’

‘Lots of violence in Decline and Fall,’ I remark.

‘Ah, but its history isn’t it? Well, I must go now, Mr Macdonald. Mustn’t waste your time.’

As he steps outside, he collides with Miss Bun, who drops samosas all over the veranda steps.

‘Oh, dear, I’m so sorry,’ he apologizes, and starts picking up the samosas, despite my attempts to prevent him from doing so. He then takes the paper-bag from Miss Bun and replaces the samosas.

‘And who is this little girl?’ he said benignly, patting Miss Bun on the head. ‘One of your nieces?’

‘That’s right, sir. My favourite niece.’

‘Well, I must not keep you. Service as usual, on Sunday.’

‘Right, Mr Biggs.’

I have never been to a local church service, but why disillusion Rev. Biggs? I shall defend everyone’s right to go to a place of worship provided they allow me the freedom to stay away.

Miss Bun is staring after Rev. Biggs as he crosses the road. Her mouth is slightly agape. ‘What’s the matter?’ I ask.

‘He’s taken all the samosas!’

 

When I kiss Miss Bun, she bites my lip and draws blood.

‘What was that for?’ I complain.

‘Just to make you angry.’

‘But I don’t like getting angry.’

‘That’s why.’

I get angry just to please her, and we take a tumble on the carpet.

 

11 March

Does anyone here make money? Apart, of course, from the traders, who tuck it all away …

A young man turned up yesterday, selling geraniums. He had a bag full of geraniums—cuttings and whole plants.

‘All colours,’ he told me confidently. ‘Only one rupee a cutting.’

‘I can buy them much cheaper at the government nursery.’

‘But you would have to walk there, sir—six miles! I have brought these to your very doorstep. I will plant them for you, in your empty ghee tins, at no extra cost!’

‘That’s all right, you can give me a few. But what makes you sell geraniums?’

‘I have nothing to eat, sir. I haven’t eaten for two days.’

He must have sold all his plants that day, because in the evening I saw him at the country liquor shop, tippling away—and all on an empty stomach, I presume!

 

12 March

Mrs Biggs tells me that someone slipped into her garden yesterday morning while she was out, and removed all her geraniums!

‘The most honest of people won’t hesitate to steal flowers—or books,’ I remark carelessly. ‘Never mind, Mrs Biggs, you can have some of my geraniums. I bought them yesterday.’

‘That’s extremely kind of you, Mr Bond. And you’ve only just put them down, I can tell,’ she says, spotting the cuttings in the Dalda tins. (Dalda switched over to plastic containers a few years later.) ‘No, I couldn’t deprive you—’

‘I’ll get you some,’ I offer, and generously surrender half the geraniums, vowing that if ever I come across that young man again, I’ll get him to recover all the plants he sold elsewhere.

 

19 March

Vinod, now selling newspapers, arrives as I am pouring myself a beer under the cherry tree. It’s a warm day and I can see he is thirsty.

‘Can I have a drink of water?’ he asks.

‘Would you like some beer?’

‘Yes, sir!’

As I have an extra bottle, I pour him a glass and he squats on the grass near the old wall and brings me up to date on the local gossip. There are about fifty papers in his shoulder-bag, yet to be delivered.

‘You may feel drowsy after some time,’ I warn. ‘Don’t leave your papers in the wrong houses.’

‘Nothing to worry about,’ he says, emptying the glass and gazing fondly at the bottle sparkling in the spring sunshine.

‘Have some more,’ I tell him, and go indoors to see what Prem was making for lunch. (Stuffed gourds, fried brinjal slices, pillau-rice. Prem was in a good mood, preparing my favourite dishes. Had I upset him, he would have given me string beans.) Returning to the garden, I find Vinod well into his second glass of beer. Half of Barlowganj and all of Jharipani (the next village), are snarling and cursing, waiting for their newspapers.

‘Your customers must be getting impatient,’ I remark. ‘Surely they want to know the result of the cricket test.’

‘Oh, they heard it on the radio. This is the morning edition. I can deliver it in the evening.’

I went indoors and had my lunch with little Raki, and asked Prem to give Vinod something to eat. When I came outside again, he was stretched out under the cherry tree, burping contentedly.

‘Thank you for the lunch,’ he said, and closed his eyes and went to sleep.

He’d gone by evening but his bag of papers was resting against my front door.

‘He’s left his papers behind,’ I remarked to Prem.

‘Oh, he’ll deliver them tomorrow, along with tomorrow’s paper. He’ll say the mail-bus was late, due to a landslide.’

In the evening I walk through the old bazaar and linger in front of a Tibetan shop, gazing at the brassware, coloured stones, amulets, masks; I am about to pass on, when I catch a glimpse of the girl who looks after the shop. Two soft brown eyes in a round jade-smooth face. A hesitant smile.

I step inside. I have never cared much for Tibetan handicrafts, but beautiful jade eyes are different.

‘Can I look around? I want to buy a present for a friend.’

I look around. She helps me, by displaying bangles, necklaces, rings—all on the assumption that my friend is a young lady.

I choose the more frightening of two devil masks, and promise to come again for the pair to it.

On the way home I meet Miss Bun.

‘When shall I come?’ she asks, pirouetting on the road.

‘Next year.’

‘Next year!’ Her pretty mouth falls open.

‘That’s right.’ I say. ‘You’ve just lost the election.’

 

31 March

Miss Bun hasn’t been for several days. This morning I find her washing clothes at the public tap. She gives me a quick smile as I pass.

‘It’s nice to see you hard at work,’ I remark.

She looks quickly to left and right, then says, ‘It’s punishment, because I bought new bangles with the money you gave me.’

I hurry on down the road.

During the afternoon siesta I am roused by someone knocking on the door. A slim boy, with thick hair and bushy eyebrows is standing there. I don’t know him. But his eyes remind me of someone.

He tells me he is Miss Bun’s older brother. At a guess, he would be only a year or two older than her.

‘Come in,’ I say. It’s best to be friendly! What could he possibly want?

He produces a bag of samosas and puts them down on my bedside table.

‘My sister cannot come this week. I will bring you samosas instead. Is that all right?’

‘Oh, sure. Sit down, sit down. So you’re Master Bun. It’s nice to know you.’

He sits down on the edge of the bed and studies the picture on the wall—a print of Kurosawa’s Wave.

‘Shall I pay you now for the samosas?’ I ask.

‘No, no, whenever you like.’

‘And do you go to school or college?’

‘No, I help my father in the bakery. Are you ill, sir?’

‘No. What makes you think so?’

‘Because you were lying down.’

‘Well, I like lying down. It’s better than standing up. And I do get a headache if I read or write for too long.’

He offers to give me a head massage, and I submit to his ministrations for about five minutes. The headache is now much worse, but I pay for both massage and samosas and tell him he can come again—preferably next year.

My next visitor is Constable Ghanshyam Singh, who tells me that the SP has extracted confessions from a couple of thieves simply by making them stand for hours and listen to him reciting his poetry. I know our police have a reputation for torturing suspects, but I think this is carrying things a bit too far.

‘And what about your transfer?’ I ask.

‘As soon as those poems are published in the Weekly.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I promise.

They appeared in the Bhopal Weekly.

And a year later, when I was editing Imprint, I was able to publish one of the SP’s poems. He has always maintained that if I’d published more of them, the magazine would never have folded.

A note on Miss Bun:

 

Little Miss Bun is fond of bed,
But she keeps a cash-box in her head.

 

8 April

Rev. Biggs at the door, book in hand.

‘I won’t take up your time, Mr Bond. But I thought it was time I returned your Butterfly book.’

‘My butterfly book?’

‘Yes, thank you very much. I enjoyed it a great deal.’

Mr Biggs hands me the book on butterflies, a handsomely illustrated volume. It isn’t my book, but if Mr Biggs insists on giving me someone else’s book, who am I to quibble? He’d never find the right owner, anyway.

‘By the way, have you seen Mrs Biggs?’ he asks.

‘No, not this morning, sir.’

‘She went off without telling me. She’s always doing things like that. Very irritating.’

After he has gone, I glance at the fly-leaf of the book. The name-plate says W. Biggs. So it’s one of his own …

A little later Mrs Biggs comes by.

‘Have you seen Will?’ she asks.

‘He was here about fifteen minutes ago. He was looking for you.’

‘Oh, he knew I’d gone to the garden shed. How tiresome! I suppose he’s wandered off somewhere.’

‘Never mind, Mrs Biggs, he’ll make his way home when he gets hungry. A good lunch will always bring a wanderer home. By the way, I’ve got his book on butterflies. Perhaps you’d return it to him for me? And he shouldn’t lend it to just anyone, you know. It’s a valuable book; you don’t want to lose it.’

‘I’m sure it was quite safe with you, Mr Bond.’

Books always are, of course. On principle, I never steal another man’s books. I might take his geraniums or his old school tie, but I wouldn’t deprive him of his books. Or the song or melody or dream he lives by. And I wrote a little lullaby for Raki:

 

Little one, don’t be afraid of this big river.
Be safe in these warm arms for ever.
Grow tall, my child, be wise and strong.
But do not take from any man his song.
Little one, don’t be afraid of this dark night.
Walk boldly as you see the truth and light.
Love well, my child, laugh all day long,
But do not take from any man his song.

 

16 April

Is there something about the air at this height that makes people light-headed, absent-minded? Ten years from now I will probably be as forgetful as Mr Biggs. I must climb the next mountain before I forget where it is.

 

Outline for a story:

Someone lives in a small hut near a spring, within sound of running water. He never leaves the place, except to walk into the town for books, post, and supplies. ‘Don’t you ever get bored here?’ I asked. ‘Do you never wish to leave?’ ‘No,’ he replies, and tells me of his experience in the desert, when for two days and two nights (the limit of human endurance in regard to thirst), he went without water. On the second night, half dead, lying in the open beneath the stars, he dreamt of just such a spring in the mountains, and it was as though it gave him spiritual sustenance. So later, when he was fully recovered, he went in search of the spring (which he was sure existed), and found it while hiking in the Himalayas. He knew that as long as he remained by the spring he would never feel unsafe; it was where his guardian-spirit lived …

And so I feel safe near my own spring, my own mountain, for this is where my guardian-spirit lives too.

 

16 April

Visited the Tibetan shop and bought a small brass vase encrusted with pretty stones.

I’d no intention of buying anything, but the girl smiled at me as I passed, and then I just had to go in; and once in, I couldn’t just stand there, a fatuous grin on my face.

I had to buy something. And a vase is always a good thing to buy. If you don’t like it, you can give it away.

If she smiles at me every time I pass, I shall probably build up a collection of vases.

She isn’t a girl, really; she’s probably about thirty. I suppose she has a husband who smuggles Chinese goods in from Nepal, while her children—‘charity cases’—go to one of the posh public schools; but she’s fresh and pretty, and then of course I don’t have many young women smiling at me these days. I shall be forty-three next month.

 

17 April

Miss Bun still smiles at me, even though I frown at her when we pass.

This afternoon she brought me samosas and a rose.

‘Where’s your brother?’ I asked gruffly. ‘He has more to talk about.’

‘He’s busy in the bakery. See, I’ve brought you a rose.’

‘How much did it cost?’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s a present.’

‘Thanks. I didn’t know you grew roses.’

‘I don’t. It’s from the school garden.’

‘Well, thank you anyway. You actually stole something on my behalf!’

‘Where shall I put it?’

I found my new vase, filled it with fresh water, placed the rose in it, and set it down on my dressing-table.

‘It leaks,’ remarked Miss Bun.

‘My vase?’ I was incredulous.

‘See, the water’s spreading all over your nice table.’

She was right, of course. Water from the bottom of the vase was running across the varnished wood of my great-grandmother’s old rosewood dressing-table. The stain, I felt sure, would be permanent.

‘But it’s a new vase!’ I protested.

‘Someone must have cheated you. Why did you buy it without looking properly?’

‘Well, you see, I didn’t buy it actually. Someone gave it to me as a present.’

I fumed inwardly, vowing never again to visit the brassware shop. Never trust a smiling woman! I prefer Miss Bun’s scowl.

‘Do you want the vase?’ she asks.

‘No. Take it away.’

She places the rose on my pillow, throws the water out of the window, and drops the vase into her cloth shopping-bag.

‘What will you do with it?’ I ask.

‘I’ll seal the leak with flour,’ she says.

 

21 April

A clear fresh morning after a week of intermittent rain. And what a morning for birds! Three doves acourting, a cuckoo calling, a bunch of mynas squabbling, and a pair of king-crows doing Swedish exercises.

I find myself doing exercises of an original nature, devised by Master Bun; these consist of various contortions of the limbs which, he says, are good for my sex drive.

‘But I don’t want a sex drive,’ I tell him. ‘I want something that will take my mind off sex.’

So he gives me another set of exercises, which consist mostly of deep breathing.

‘Try holding your breath for five minutes,’ he suggests.

‘I know of someone who committed suicide by doing just that.’

‘Then hold it for two minutes.’

I take a deep breath and last only a minute.

‘No good,’ he says. ‘You have to relax more.’

‘Well, I am tired of trying to relax. It doesn’t work this way. What I need is a good meal.’

And Prem obliges by serving up my favourite kofta curry and rice. Satiated, I have no problem in relaxing for the rest of the afternoon.

 

28 April

Master Bun wears a troubled expression.

‘It’s about my sister,’ he says.

‘What about her?’ I ask, fearing the worst.

‘She has run away.’

‘That’s bad. On her own?’

‘No … With a professor.’

‘That should be all right. Professors are usually respectable people. Maths or English?’

‘I don’t know. He has a wife and children.’

‘Then obviously he hasn’t taken them along.’

‘He has taken her to Roorkee. My sister is an innocent girl.’

‘Well, there is a certain innocence about her,’ I say, recalling Nabokov’s Lolita. ‘Maybe the professor wants to adopt her.’

‘But she’s a virgin.’

‘Then she must be rescued! Why are you here, talking to me about it, when you should be rushing down to Roorkee?’

‘That’s why I’ve come. Can you lend me the bus fare?’

‘Better still, I’ll come with you. We must rescue the professor—sorry, I mean your sister!’

 

1 May

To Roorkee, to Roorkee, to find a sweet girl,
Home again, home again, oh what a whirl!

We did everything except find Miss Bun. Our first evening in Roorkee we roamed the bazaar and the canal banks; the second day we did the rounds of the University, the regimental barracks, and the headquarters of the Boys’ Brigade. We made enquiries from all the bakers in Roorkee (many of them known to Master Bun), but none of them had seen his sister. On the college campus we asked for the professor, but no one had heard of him either.

Finally we bought platform tickets and sat down on a bench at the end of the railway platform and watched the arrivals and departures of trains, and the people who got on and off; we saw no one who looked in the least like Miss Bun. Master Bun bought an astrological guide from the station bookstall, and studied his sister’s horoscope to see if that might help, but it didn’t. At the same bookstall, hidden under a pile of pirated Harold Robbins novels, I found a book of mine that had been published ten years earlier. No one had bought it in all that time. I replaced it at the top of the pile. Never lose hope!

On the third day we returned to Barlowganj and found Miss Bun at home.

She had gone no further than Dehra’s Paltan Bazaar, it seemed, and had ditched the professor there, having first made him buy her three dress pieces, two pairs of sandals, a sandalwood hair brush, a bottle of scent, and a satchel for her schoolbooks.

 

5 May

And now it’s Mr Biggs’s turn to disappear.

‘Have you seen our Will?’ asks Mrs Biggs at my gate.

‘Not this morning, Mrs Biggs.’

‘I can’t find him anywhere. At breakfast he said he was going out for a walk, but nobody knows where he went, and he isn’t in the school compound, I’ve just enquired. He’s been gone over three hours!’

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Biggs. He’ll turn up. Someone on the hillside must have asked him in for a cup of tea, and he’s sitting there talking about the crocodile he shot in Orissa.’

But at lunchtime Mr Biggs hadn’t returned; and that was alarming, because Mr Biggs had never been known to miss his favourite egg curry and pillau rice.

We organized a search. Prem and I walked the length of the Barlowganj bazaar, and even lodged an unofficial report with Constable Ghanshyam. No one had seen him in the bazaar. Several members of the school staff combed the hillside without picking up the scent.

Mid-afternoon, while giving my negative report to Mrs Biggs, I heard a loud thumping coming from the direction of her storeroom.

‘What’s all that noise downstairs?’ I asked.

‘Probably rats. I don’t hear anything.’

I ran downstairs and opened the storeroom door, there was Mr Biggs looking very dusty and very disgruntled; he wanted to know why the devil (the first time he’d taken the devil’s name in vain) Mrs Biggs had shut him up for hours. He’d gone into the storeroom in search of an old walking-stick, and Mrs Biggs, seeing the door open, had promptly bolted it, failing to hear her husband’s cries for immediate release. But for Mr Bond’s presence of mind, he averred, he might have been discovered years later, a mere skeleton!

The cook was still out hunting for him, so Mr Biggs had his egg curry cold. Still in a foul mood, he sat down and wrote a letter to his sister in Tunbridge Wells, asking her to send out a hearing-aid for Mrs Biggs.

Constable Ghanshyam turned up in the evening, to inform me that Mr Biggs had last been seen at Rajpur, in the foothills, in the company of several gypsies!

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘These old men get that way. One last fling, one last romantic escapade, one last tilt at the windmill. If you have a dream, Ghanshyam, don’t let them take it away from you.’

He looked puzzled, but went on to tell me that he was being transferred to Bareilly jail, where they keep those who have been found guilty but of unsound mind. It’s a reward, no doubt, for his services in getting the SP’s poems published.

 

These journal entries date back some thirty-two years. What happened to Miss Bun? Well, she finally opened a beauty parlour in New Delhi, but I still can’t tell you where it is, or give you her name.

Two or three years later, Mrs Biggs was laid to rest near her old friends in the Mussoorie cemetery. Rev. Biggs was flown home to Turnbridge Wells; his sister gave him a solid tombstone, so that he wasn’t tempted to get up and wander off somewhere, in search of crocodiles.

A lot can happen in thirty-two years, and unfortunately not all of it gets recorded. ‘Little Raki’ is today a married man!