A Handful of Nuts

It wasn’t the room on the roof, but it was a large room with a balcony in front and a small veranda at the back. On the first floor of an old shopping complex, still known as Astley Hall, it faced the town’s main road, although a walled-in driveway separated it from the street pavement. A neem tree grew in front of the building, and during the early rains, when the neem-pods fell and were crushed underfoot, they gave off a rich, pungent odour which I can never forget.

I had taken the room at the very modest rent of thirty-five rupees a month, payable in advance to the stout Punjabi widow who ran the provisions store downstairs. Her provisions ran to rice, lentils, spices and condiments, but I wasn’t doing any cooking then, there wasn’t time, so for a quick snack I’d cross the road and consume a couple of samosas or vegetable patties. Whenever I received a decent fee for a story, I’d treat myself to some sliced ham and a loaf of bread, and make myself ham sandwiches. If any of my friends were around, like Jai Shankar or William Matheson, they’d make short work of the ham sandwiches.

 

I opened my eyes to find Sitaram, the washerman’s son, sitting at the foot of my bed.

Sitaram must have been about sixteen, a skinny boy with large hands, large feet and large ears. He had loose sensual lips. An unprepossessing youth, whom I found irritating in the extreme; but as he lived with his parents in the quarters behind the flat, there was no avoiding him.

‘How did you get in here?’ I asked brusquely.

‘The door was open.’

‘That doesn’t mean you can walk right in. What do you want?’

‘Don’t you have any clothes for washing? My father asked.’

‘I wash my own clothes.’

‘And sheets?’ He studied the sheet I was lying on. ‘Don’t you wash your sheet? It is very dirty.’

‘Well, it’s the only one I’ve got. So buzz off.’

But he was already pulling the sheet out from under me. ‘I’ll wash it for you free. You are a nice man. My mother says you are seeda-saada, very innocent.’

‘I am not innocent. And I need the sheet.’

‘I will bring you another. I will lend it to you free. We get lots of sheets to wash. Yesterday six sheets came from the hospital. Some people were killed in a bus accident.’

‘You mean the sheets came from the morgue—they were used to cover dead bodies? I don’t want a sheet from the morgue.’

‘But it is very clean. You know khatmals can’t live on dead bodies. They like fresh blood.’

He went away with my sheet and came back five minutes later with a freshly-pressed bed sheet.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s not from the hospital.’

‘Where is this one from?’

‘Indiana Hotel. I will give them a hospital sheet in exchange.’

 

 

There was some excitement, as Stewart Granger, the British film actor, was in town.

Stewart Granger in Dehradun? Occasionally, a Bombay film star passed through, but this was the first time we were going to see a foreign star. We all knew what he looked like, of course. The Odeon and Orient Cinemas had been showing British and American films since the days of the silent movies. Occasionally, they still showed ‘silents’, as their sound systems were antiquated and the protectors rattled a good deal, drowning the dialogue. This did not matter if the star was John Wayne (or even Stewart Granger) as their lines were quite predictable, but it, made a difference if you were trying to listen to Nelson Eddy sing At the Balalaika or Hope and Crosby exchanging wisecracks.

We had assembled outside the Indiana and were discussing the phenomenon of having Stewart Granger in town. What was he doing here?

‘Making a film, I suppose,’ I ventured.

Suresh Mathur, the lawyer, demurred, ‘What about? Nobody’s written a book about Dehra, except you, Ruskin, and no one has read yours. Has someone bought the film rights?’

‘No such luck. And besides, the hero is sixteen and Stewart Granger is thirty-six.’

‘Doesn’t matter. They’ll change the story.’

‘Not if I can help it.’

William Matheson had another theory.

‘He’s visiting his old aunt in Rajpur.’

‘We never knew he had an aunt in Rajpur.’

‘Nor did I. It’s just a theory.’

‘You and your theories. We’ll ask the owner of Indiana. Stewart Granger is going to stay there, isn’t he?’

Mr Kapoor of Indiana enlightened us. ‘They’re location-hunting for a shikar movie. It’s called Harry Black and the Tiger.’

‘Stewart Granger is playing a black man?’ asked William.

‘No, no, that’s an English surname.’

‘English is a funny language,’ said William, who believed in the superiority of the French tongue.

‘We don’t have any tigers left in these forests,’ I said.

‘They’ll bring in a circus tiger and let it loose,’ said Suresh.

‘In the jungle, I hope,’ said William. ‘Or will they let it loose on Rajpur Road?’

‘Preferably in the Town Hall,’ said Suresh, who was having some trouble with the municipality over his house tax.

Stewart Granger did not disappoint.

At about two in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, he arrived in an open Ford convertible, shirtless and vestless. He was in his prime then, in pretty good condition after playing opposite Ava Gardner in Bhowani Junction, and everyone remarked on his fine torso and general good looks. He made himself comfortable in a cool corner of the Indiana and proceeded to down several bottles of chilled beer, much to everyone’s admiration. Larry Gomes, at the piano, started playing Sweet Rosie O’ Grady until Granger, who wasn’t Irish stopped him and asked for something more modern. Larry obliged with Goodnight Irene, and Stewart, now into his third bottle of beer, began singing the refrain. At the next table, William, Suresh and I, trying to keep pace with the star’s consumption of beer, joined in the chorus, and before long there was a mad sing-song in the restaurant.

The editor of the local paper, The Doon Chronicle, tried interviewing the star, but made little progress. Someone gave him an information and publicity sheet which did the rounds. It said Stewart Granger was born in 1913, and that he had black hair and brown eyes. He still had them—unless the hair was a toupee. It said his height was 6ft. 2 inches, and that he weighed 196 pounds. He looked every pound of it. It also said his youthful ambition was to become a ‘nerve specialist’. We looked at him with renewed respect, although none of us was quite sure what a ‘nerve specialist’ was supposed to do.

‘We just get on your nerves,’ said Mr Granger when asked, and everyone laughed.

He tucked into his curry and rice with relish, downed another beer, and returned to his waiting car. A few good-natured jests, a wave and a smile, and the star and his entourage drove off into the foothills.

We heard, later, that they had decided to make the film in Mysore, in distant south India.

No wonder it turned out to be a flop. Sorry, Stewart.

Two months later, Yul Brynner passed through but he didn’t cause the same excitement. We were getting used to film stars. His film wasn’t made in Dehra, either. They did it in Spain. Another flop.

 

 

In a couple of weeks’ time it would be my twenty-first birthday, and I was feeling good about it.

I had mentioned the date to someone—Suresh Mathur, I think—and before long I was being told by everyone I knew that I would have to celebrate the event in a big way, twenty-one being an age of great significance in a young man’s life.

And where would the money come from for all these celebrations? My bank balance stood at a little over three hundred rupees—enough to pay the rent and the food bill at Komal’s and make myself a new pair of trousers. The pair I’d bought on the Mile End Road in London, two years previously, were now very baggy and had a shine on the seat. The other pair, made of non-shrink material, got smaller at every wash; I had given them to a tailor to turn into a pair of shorts.

Sitaram, of course, was willing to lend me any number of trousers provided I wasn’t fussy about who the owners were, and gave them back in time for them to be washed and pressed again before being delivered to their rightful owners. I did, on an occasion, borrow a pair made of a nice checked material, and was standing outside the Indiana, chatting to the owner, when I realized that he was staring hard at the trousers.

‘I have a pair just like yours,’ he remarked.

‘It shows you have good taste,’ I said, and gave Sitaram an earful when I got back to the flat.

‘I can’t trust you with other people’s trousers!’ I shouted. ‘Couldn’t you have lent me a pair belonging to someone who lives far from here?’

He was genuinely contrite. ‘I was looking for the right size,’ he said. ‘Would you like to try a dhoti? You will look good in a dhoti. Or a lungi. There’s a purple lungi here, it belongs to a sub-inspector of police.’

‘A purple lungi? The police are human, after all.’

 

 

Someone was getting married, and the wedding band, brought up on military marches, unwittingly broke into the Funeral March. And they played loud enough to wake the dead.

After a medley of Souza marches, they switched to Hindi film tunes, and Sitaram came in, flung his arms around, and shattered my ear-drums with Talat Mehmood’s latest love ballad. I responded with the Volga Boatmen in my best Nelson Eddy manner, and my landlady came running out of her shop downstairs wanting to know if the washerman had strangled his wife or vice-versa.

Anyway, it was to be a week of celebrations …

When I opened my eyes next day, it was to find a bright red geranium staring me in the face, accompanied by the aromatic odour of a crushed geranium leaf. Sitaram was thrusting a potted geranium at me and wishing me a happy birthday. I brushed a caterpillar from my pillow and sat up. Wordsworthian though I was in principle, I wasn’t prepared for nature red in tooth and claw.

I picked up the caterpillar on its leaf and dropped it outside.

‘Come back when you’re a butterfly,’ I said.

Sitaram had taken his morning bath and looked very fresh and spry. Unfortunately, he had doused his head with some jasmine-scented hair oil, and the room was reeking of it. Already a bee was buzzing around him.

‘Thank you for the present,’ I said. ‘I’ve always wanted a geranium.’

‘I wanted to bring a rose-bush but the pot was too heavy.’

‘Never mind. Geraniums do better on verandas.’

I placed the pot in a sunny corner of the small balcony, and it certainly did something for the place. There’s nothing like a red geranium for bringing a balcony to life.

While we were about to plan the day’s festivities, a stranger walked through my open door (one day, I’d have to shut it), and declared himself the inventor of a new flush-toilet which, he said, would revolutionise the sanitary habits of the town. We were still living in the thunderbox era, and only the very rich could afford Western-style lavatories. My visitor showed me diagrams of a seat which, he said, combined the best of East and West. You could squat on it, Indian-style, without putting too much strain on your abdominal muscles, and if you used water to wash your bottom, there was a little sprinkler attached which, correctly aimed, would do that job for you. It was comfortable, efficient, safe. Your effluent would be stored in a little tank, which could be detached when full, and emptied—where? He hadn’t got around to that problem as yet, but he assured me that his invention had a great future.

‘But why are you telling me all this?’ I asked, ‘I can’t afford a fancy toilet-seat.’

‘No, no, I don’t expect you to buy one.’

‘You mean I should demonstrate?’

‘Not at all. But you are a writer, I hear. I want a name for my new toilet-seat. Can you help?’

‘Why not call it the Sit-Safe?’ I suggested.

‘The Sit-Safe! How wonderful. Young Mr Bond, let me show my gratitude with a small present.’ And he thrust a ten-rupee note into my hand and left the room before I could protest. ‘It’s definitely my birthday,’ I said. ‘Complete strangers walk in and give me money.’

‘We can see three films with that,’ said Sitaram.

‘Or buy three bottles of beer,’ I said.

But there were no more windfalls that morning, and I had to go to the old Allahabad Bank—where my grandmother had kept her savings until they had dwindled away—and withdraw one hundred rupees.

‘Can you tell me my balance?’ I asked Mr Jain, the elderly clerk who remembered my maternal grandmother.

‘Two hundred and fifty rupees,’ he said with a smile. ‘Try to save something!’

I had no relatives to support, but here was William Matheson waiting for me under the old peepul tree. His hands were shaking.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘Haven’t had a cigarette for a week. Come on, buy me a packet of Charminar.’

Sitaram went out and bought samosas and jalebis and little cakes with icing made from solidified ghee. I fetched a few bottles of beer, some orangeades and lemonades and a syrupy cold drink called Vimto which was all the rage then. My landlady, hearing that I was throwing a party, sent me pakoras made with green chillies.

The party, when it happened, was something of an anticlimax:

Jai Shankar turned up promptly and ate all the jalebis.

William arrived with Suresh Mathur, finished the beer, and demanded more.

Nobody paid much attention to Sitaram, he seemed so much at home. Caste didn’t count for much in a fairly modern town, as Dehra was in those days. In any case, from the way Sitaram was strutting around, acting as though he owned the place, it was generally presumed that he was the landlady’s son. He brought up a second relay of the lady’s pakoras, hotter than the first lot, and they arrived just as the Maharani and Indu appeared in the doorway.

‘Happy birthday, dear boy,’ boomed the Maharani and seized the largest chilli pakora. Indu appeared behind her and gave me a box wrapped in gold and silver cellophane. I put it on my desk and hoped it contained chocolates, not studs and a tie-pin.

The chilli pakoras did not take long to violate the Maharani’s taste-buds.

‘Water, water!’ she cried, and seeing the bathroom door open, made a dash for the tap.

Alas, the bathroom was the least attractive aspect of my flat. It had yet to be equipped with anything resembling the newly-invented Sit-Safe. But the lid of the thunderbox was fortunately down, as this particular safe hadn’t been emptied for a couple of days. It was crowned by a rusty old tin mug. On the wall hung a towel that had seen better days, remnants of a cake of Lifebuoy soap stood near a washbasin. A lonely cockroach gave the Maharani a welcoming genuflection.

Taking all this in at a glance, she backed out, holding her hand to her mouth.

‘Try a Vimto,’ said William, holding out a bottle gone warm and sticky.

‘A glass of beer?’ asked Jai Shankar.

The Maharani grabbed a glass of beer and swallowed it in one long gulp. She came up gasping, gave me a reproachful look—as though the chilli pakora had been intended for her—and said, ‘Must go now, just stopped by to greet you. Thank you very much—you must come to Indu’s birthday party. Next year.’

Next year seemed a long way off. ‘Thank you for the present,’ I said.

And then they were gone, and I was left to entertain my cronies.

Suresh Mathur was demanding something stronger than beer, and as I felt that way myself, we trooped off to the Royal Cafe; all of us, except Sitaram, who had better things to do.

After two rounds of drinks, I’d gone through what remained of my money. And so I left William and Suresh to cadge drinks off one of the latter’s clients, while I bid Jai Shankar goodbye on the edge of the parade-ground. As it was still light, I did not have to see him home.

Some workmen were out on the parade-ground, digging holes for tent-pegs.

Two children were discussing the coming attraction.

‘The circus is coming!’

‘Is it big?’

‘It’s the biggest! Tigers, elephants, horses, chimpanzees! Tight-rope walkers, acrobats, strong men …’

‘Is there a clown?’

‘There has to be a clown. How can you have a circus without a clown?’

I hurried home to tell Sitaram about the circus. It would make a change from the cinema. The room had been tidied up, and the Maharani’s present stood on my desk, still in its wrapper.

‘Let’s see what’s inside,’ I said, tearing open the packet.

It was a small box of nuts—almonds, pistachios, cashew nuts, along with a few dried figs.

‘Just a handful of nuts,’ said Sitaram, sampling a fig and screwing up his face.

I tried an almond, found it was bitter and spat it out.

‘Must have saved them from her wedding day,’ said Sitaram

‘Appropriate in a way,’ I said. ‘Nuts for a bunch of nuts.’