'If it is that simple, you can come.'

'I have to think of my parents, you know. It would ruin them if I ran away.'

'Yes, but they do not care if they have broken your heart.'

She shrugged and looked away towards the village. 'I am not so unhappy. He is an old fool, my husband, and I get some fun out of teasing him. He will die one day, and so will the Seth, and then I will be free.'

'Will you?'

'Why not? And anyway, you can always come to see me, and n.o.body will be made unhappy by it.'

I felt sad and frustrated but I couldn't take my frustration out on anyone or anything.

'It was Suraj, not I, who stole your heart,' she said.

She touched my face softly and then abruptly ran towards her little hut. She waved once and then was gone.

Twenty-Two.

At six every morning the first bus arrives, and the pa.s.sengers alight, looking sleepy and dishevelled, and rather depressed at the sight of our Mohalla. When they have gone their various ways, the bus is driven into the shed. and the road is left clear for the arrival of the munic.i.p.al van. The cows congregate at the dustbin, and the pavement dwellers come to life, stretching their dusty limbs on the hard stone steps. I carry the bucket up three steps to my room, and bathe for the last time on the open balcony. Our tin trunks are packed, and Suraj's tray is empty.

At Pitamber's village the buffaloes are wallowing in green ponds, while naked urchins sit astride them, scrubbing their backs, and a crow or water-bird purchases on a glistening neck. The parrots are busy in the crooked tree, and a slim green snake basks in the sun on our island near the brick-kiln. In the hills, the mists have lifted and the distant mountains are covered with snow.

It is autumn, and the rains are over. The earth meets the sky in one broad sweep of the creator's brush.

A land of thrusting hills. Terraced hills, wood-covered and windswept. Mountains where the G.o.ds speak gently to the lonely heart. Hills of green and grey rock, misty at dawn, hazy at noon, molten at sunset; where fierce fresh torrents rush to the valleys below.

A quiet land of fields and ponds, shaded by ancient trees and ringed with palms, where sacred rivers are touched by temples; where temples are touched by the southern seas.

This is the real land, the land I should write about. My Mohalla is but a sickness, a wasting disease, and I should turn aside from it to sing instead of the splendours of tomorrow. But only yesterdays are splendid. . . . There are other singers, sweeter than I, to sing of tomorrow. I can only sing of today, of Pipalnagar, where I have lived and loved.

Yesterday I was sad, and tomorrow I may be sad again, but today I know that I am happy. I want to live on and on, delighting like a pagan in all that is physical; and I know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart.

From Small Beginnings.

* On a warrant from Bombay, charging me with writing an allegedly obscene short story!

From My Notebook.

* Some nature notes (made while living in Mussoorie; a writer who ignores the flora and fauna around him, does so at his own peril).

Ganga Descends.

* Wilson inspires one of my brief forays into historical fiction in the opening chapters to Rosebud.

Lost.

* My first poem, published in the Ill.u.s.trated Weekly of India, in 1952

Extract From A Flight Of Pigeons.

* The Rosa Rum Factory recovered, and survives to this day.

The Lafunga.

* From Vagrants in the Valley.

Extract From Rosebud.

* Author's note: If I continue with this narrative, Wilson will move further into the interior, collecting plants and making friends. In a remote village he will meet the beautiful Gulabi (Rosebud) and fall in love with her. What enchanted him was her smile. It dropped over her face slowly, like sunshine moving over brown hills.

Acknowledgements.

While every effort has been made to acknowledge the publications in which the stories and essays included in this collection first appeared, in the event of any inadvertent omission, the publishers should be notified and formal acknowledgements will be included in all future editions of this book.

'My First Love' first appeared in Sun, 1994; 'Tribute to a Dead Friend' first appeared in Orient/West (Tokyo), 1963; 'The Trouble with Jinns' first appeared in Sun, 1994; 'Life At My Own Pace' first appeared in The Heritage, 1986; 'The Old Gramophone' first appeared as 'The Sound of Boyhood Days' in Miscellany, 1993; 'Adventures of a Book Lover' first appeared in The Statesman and Books for Keeps (UK); 'A Golden Voice Remembered' first appeared in Span, 1991; 'At Home in India' first appeared in Miscellany, 1993; 'Getting the Juices Flowing' first appeared in The Sunday Observer, 1981; 'Home is Under the Big Top' first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, 1993; 'Adventures in a Banyan Tree' first appeared in Lokmat Times, 1994; 'From My Notebook' first appeared in Writers Workshop Miscellany (Twenty Seven); 'Beautiful Mandakini' first appeared in The Pioneer, 1991; 'Flowers on the Ganga' first appeared in Sunday World, 1971; 'Footloose in Agra' first appeared in India Perspectives, 1993.

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ROOM ON THE ROOF.

Ruskin Bond.

Unhappy with the strict ways of his English guardian, Rusty runs away from home to live with Indian friends. Plunging for the first time into the dream-bright world of the bazaar, Hindu festivals and other aspects of Indian life. Rusty is enchanted . . . and is lost forever to the prime proprieties of the European community.

'Has a special magic of its own'

-Herald Tribune Book Review.

'Considerable charm and spontaneity . . .'

-San Francisco Chronicle.

'Very engaging . . .

-The Guardian.

'Moving in its simplicity and underlying tenderness . . . a novel of marked originality.'

-The Scotsman.

'Mr Bond is a writer of great gifts . . .'

-The New Statesman.

OUR TREES STILL GROW IN DEHRA.

Ruskin Bond.

Semi-autobiographical in nature, these stories span the period from the author's childhood to the present. We are introduced, in a series of beautifully imagined and crafted cameos, to the author's family, friends, and various other people who left a lasting impression on him. In other stories we revisit Bond's beloved Garhwal hills and the small towns and villages that he has returned to time and time again in his fiction.

Together with his well-known novella, A Flight of Pigeons (which was made into the film Junoon), which also appears in this collection, these stories once again bring Ruskin Bond's India vividly to life.

TIME STOPS AT SHAMLI.