The Best of Ruskin Bond Part 17

'Poor old Bond,' he tells his friends over evening c.o.c.ktails. 'Must be going round the bend. This morning he called me Aunty.'

A Golden Voice Remembered.

My father was very fond of opera and operetta, but, living in India fifty or sixty years ago, he had to depend on gramophone records if he wanted to listen to his favourite arias from La Boheme or Madam b.u.t.terfly. He had an impressive collection of Caruso records, as well as Chaliapin, Gigli, Galli-Curci, and others. We travelled a great deal, and the square black wind-up gramophone went with us all over India. We had to pack the records very flat, otherwise they took on strange shapes in the heat and humidity. Changing needles and winding the gramophone were ch.o.r.es that I enjoyed as a small boy.

When, in 1929-30, sound came to the cinema, it ushered in a great musical era. Although grand opera did not prove very popular with cinema audiences, operettas and stage musicals went down very well, and favourites such as Naughty Marietta (1935), Rose Marie (1936), Maytime (1937), and New Moon (1940) were soon turned into very popular screen musicals. My father took me to see some of these, in small cinemas in small cantonment towns all over northern India, and I became a great fan of the American baritone, Nelson Eddy, an opera singer who made it big in Hollywood and appeared in as many as seventeen film musicals between 1935 and 1947.

Eddy's marching songs in particular appealed to me, and I sang them l.u.s.tily in the garden, on the road, or on the rooftop. They still come booming forth when I set out for a walk in the hills around my Himalayan home: 'Stouthearted Men' from New Moon, 'Tramp, Tramp, Tramp' from Naughty Marietta, 'Tokay' from Bitter Sweet (1940), 'Ride, Cossack, Ride' from Balalaika (1939), and 'Soldiers of Fortune' from The Girl of the Golden West (1938). Sigmund Romberg, Victor Herbert, and Rudolf Friml were the stouthearted composers of most of these musicals.

A lesser-known but very pleasing Eddy vehicle was Let Freedom Ring (1939), a sort of patriotic Western in which Eddy fights small-town political corruption and discrimination. Forgotten now, it was quite a hit in its time, and featured some of his best songs, including, as a climax, his rousing rendering of 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' He was then at the height of his popularity-America's highest paid singer-and had he chosen to run for President, he might well have given his opponents a run for their money.

He is probably best remembered for the eight operettas he made with Jeanette MacDonald. Together they became known as 'America's Singing Sweethearts.' They made love in duets, such as 'Indian Love Call' (Rose Marie), 'Wanting You' (New Moon), 'Will You Remember?' (Maytime), and 'Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life' (Naughty Marietta). These were romantic, sentimental films, but the lovely ringing voices of the stars more than made up for stereotyped plots and dialogue. One exception to the formula was Sweethearts (1938), scripted by the acerbic Dorothy Parker of The New Yorker; she brought some of her acid wit to the set sugary recipe. The usually hostile critics agreed that the film was brightly acted and splendidly sung by its stars.

Another somewhat unusual operetta was The Chocolate Soldier (1941), in which Eddy appeared opposite Metropolitan opera star Rise Stevens. His masquerading as a flamboyant Cossack was a revelation to many who had dismissed him as a wooden actor. 'The most effective piece of acting he ever committed to film,' writes film historian Clive Hirschman in Hollywood Musicals. Eddy also revelled in singing Musorgsky's 'Song of the Flea'. He enjoyed singing in Russian, and his rendering of the 'Song of the Volga Boatman' in Balalaika was superb. Some of his old recordings have been reissued in Russian Songs and Arias, published by Mac/Eddy Records in 1982.

I have always been drawn to Nelson Eddy, the singer and the person. For one thing, I like baritones and don't see why it should always be the tenors who get the leading roles in opera. They are invariably the heroes, while the ba.s.ses and baritones have to make do as villains or buffoons.

Eddy was one baritone who got to play the hero. Not once, but over and over again. And it wasn't as though he couldn't sing tenor. His marvellous range enabled him to dub for both tenor and ba.s.s in Phantom of the Opera (1943); and in Walt Disney's Make Mine Music (1946), he lent his voice to Willie, an opera-singing whale whose one ambition was to sing at the Met. The music for the entire sequence comprised 'Shortnin' Bread' (a traditional song), and operatic excerpts from Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville', Donizetti's 'Lucia de Lammermoor', Leoncavallo's 'I Pagliacci', Wagner's 'Tristan and Isolde', Boito's 'Mefistofele', and Flotow's 'Martha'. All the parts in these excerpts-soprano, tenor, baritone, ba.s.s and chorus-were sung by Eddy. They were the best items in an otherwise disappointing film.

As a youngster in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, where he was born on June 29, 1901, Eddy had taught himself opera by listening to phonograph records by Scotti, Werrenrath, and other great baritones of the day. He would sing along with the recording until he was satisfied with the results. After he left school, he tried his hand at a newspaper career, working for two large Philadelphia papers. Later he became a copywriter for an advertising agency, and did rather well until it became apparent that music was his first and most important love. He was fired for singing on the job. The great American baritone David Bispham heard from a newspaper friend about the 'singing reporter' and met Eddy soon afterward. Bispham was so impressed that he agreed to become Eddy's coach, thus beginning his formal vocal training.

For a time Eddy sang with the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company. While singing in Tannhauser, Eddy met Edouard Lippe, veteran opera singer, who suggested that the young man go to Europe for further training. When the impoverished singer protested that he was unable to afford the trip, Lippe suggested that Eddy borrow on his future, and the young baritone managed to obtain a loan from a banker friend of the family; he went to study under William V. Vilonat, teacher of many Philadelphia students, in Dresden, Germany. After several months of study in Dresden and Paris, Eddy was about to return to the United States when he learned that he had been chosen for baritone roles with the Dresden Opera Company. 'I don't think Vilonat has ever forgiven me for turning down that chance,' he said later. 'But I wanted to see America again. I wanted to put myself in the hands of the American public, sink or swim.'

In 1924 Eddy made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in the role of Tonio in Pagliacci. He mastered some thirty-two operatic roles. 'Nelson Eddy,' wrote the music critic of the Philadelphia Record in 1924, 'had an electrifying effect on the audience. A young man with that indefinable gift, so seldom seen, of arresting the audience's interest and holding it continuously, Mr Eddy was a star from the moment he appeared on stage.'

Concert tours occupied Eddy for the next few years, and by 1933 he had sung in nearly every large city in the United States. It was the concert stage that brought him to the attention of Hollywood. A distinguished a.s.sembly in Los Angeles was awaiting the start of a concert by a noted opera star. The star, however, had suddenly become critically ill, and a subst.i.tute was rushed by plane from San Diego. The subst.i.tute was Nelson Eddy, practically unknown on the West Coast at the time. When he began to sing, the audience at once accepted him. It was a brilliant success, with the baritone responding to no less than fourteen encores. The next day motion picture studios began calling him. Within a week he had signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and had sung his first song on the screen-in Joan Crawford's Dancing Lady (1934). A year later, with Naughty Marietta, he catapulted to stardom.

Recently on a BBC request programme, I was fortunate to pick up Nelson Eddy's rendering, in Russian, of the 'Song of the Volga Boatman' (from the 1939 film Balalaika), and was captivated all over again by the singer's full-bodied baritone. It made me wonder why so little is heard about him today, although we are constantly being reminded of the greatness of Paul Robeson or Lawrence Tibbett. Eddy was definitely in their cla.s.s, and superior to singers like Howard Keel who succeeded him in MGM musicals. Perhaps his versatility worked against him. He sang in everything from opera to musical comedy, radio shows, and nightclub acts; and music critics like to be able to pigeonhole their singers in a particular category. His popularity roused the ire of rivals and critics, who seldom missed an opportunity to snipe at him. One critic complained of his singing in Phantom of the Opera, and went on to praise the ba.s.s who was singing in the same operatic sequence; it turned out that the ba.s.s was Nelson Eddy dubbing for a non-singing actor.

Although none of his films was a flop, it was in the concert field that Nelson Eddy achieved his real fame. His screen personality was watered down, but his dynamic magnetism and masterful voice when heard live came across with full force. Besides, he hated the Hollywood game, he disliked L. B. Mayer (head of MGM studios), and he continued his film career mainly to boost his concert attendances. He firmly refused to discuss his personal life with the press, suing columnist Louella Parsons for implying that his on-screen romance with Jeanette MacDonald was continued off-screen. The 'singing sweethearts' of the screen were not, in fact, particularly fond of each other, but you wouldn't have guessed it; they were such good professionals.

'I love to sing and meet the people,' Eddy once said, and that was exactly what he did during the twenty years that followed his last film in 1947. His radio show ran for thirteen years, and in 1953 he made the transition to nightclubs. Many remember him from this period, including Buzz Kennedy, an Australian columnist who met him when Eddy toured Australia in the mid-1960s. 'He was one of the nicest people I've met,' recalls Kennedy today. And the hypercritical reviewer of Variety wrote of one of Eddy's last appearances: 'He required less than a minute to put a jam-packed audience in his hip pocket.'

It was in front of another jam-packed audience, in Miami Beach, Florida, on March 6, 1967, that Nelson Eddy collapsed on stage, having just sung 'Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life'. 'Would you bear with me a minute?' he asked his audience. 'I can't seem to get the words out.' These were his last words. Minutes later he was dead.

Well, my childhood record collection had long since disappeared, and I wasn't going to wait another year for the BBC to play a Nelson Eddy record. So I started making enquiries, and found, to my delight, that a number of music companies in America had reissued the old songs as well as tapes of his radio shows. The latter were fascinating, as they included songs that had never been released in his recording days. In two years of diligent collecting, I now have on tape or disk more than 200 Nelson Eddy songs, far more than I ever heard as a boy.

I open my window to look out at the Himalayas striding away into the sky, while those lovely old songs drift out over the sunwashed hillside-'While My Lady Sleeps,' 'Shenandoah,' 'The Hills of Home,' 'Song of the Open Road,' 'Neath the Southern Moon,' 'By the Waters of Minnetonka,' 'When I Have Sung My Songs to You.'

'When I have sung my songs to you, I'll sing no more,' goes the old ballad.

But for one faithful listener, Nelson Eddy is still singing.

At Home In India.

There are many among us who, given the opportunity to leave India, are only too happy to go. But whenever I have had the chance to go away, I have held back. Or something has held me back.

What is it that has such a hold on me, but leaves others free to go where they will, sometimes never to come back?

A few years ago I was offered a well-paid job on a magazine in Hong Kong. I thought about it for weeks, worried myself to distraction, and finally, with a great sigh of relief, turned it down.

My friends thought I was crazy. They still do. Most of them would have jumped at a comparable offer, even if it had meant spending the rest of their lives far from the palm-fringed coasts or pine-clad mountains of this land. Many friends have indeed gone away, never to return, except perhaps to get married, very quickly, before they are off again! Don't they feel homesick, I wonder.

I am almost paranoid at the thought of going away and then being unable to come back. This almost happened to me when, as a boy, I went to England, longed to return to India, and did not have the money for the pa.s.sage. For two years I worked and slaved like a miser (something I have never done since) until I had enough to bring me home.

And 'home' wasn't parents and brothers and sisters. They were no longer here. Home, for me, was India.

So what is it that keeps me here? My birth? I take too closely after a Nordic grandparent to pa.s.s for a typical son of the soil. Hotel receptionists often ask me for my pa.s.sport.

'Must I carry a pa.s.sport to travel in my own country?' I ask.

'But you don't look like an Indian,' they protest.

'I'm a Red Indian,' I say.

India is where I was born and went to school and grew to manhood. India was where my father was born and went to school and worked and died. India is where my grandfather lived and died. Surely that ent.i.tles me to a place in the Indian sun? If it doesn't, I can revert to my mother's family And go back to the time of Timur the Lame. How far back does one have to go in order to establish one's Indianness?

It must be the land itself that holds me. But so many of my fellow Indians have been born (and reborn) here, and yet they think nothing of leaving the land. They will leave the mountains for the plains; the villages for the cities; their country for another country; and if other countries were a little more willing to open their doors, we would have no population problem-ma.s.s emigration would have solved it.

But it's more than the land that holds me. For India is more than a land. India is an atmosphere. Over thousands of years, the races and religions of the world have mingled here and produced that unique, indefinable phenomenon, the Indian: so terrifying in a crowd, so beautiful in himself.

And oddly enough, I'm one too. I know that I'm as Indian as the postman or the paanwala or your favourite MP.

Race did not make me an Indian. Religion did not make me an Indian. But history did. And in the long run, it's history that counts.

Getting The Juices Flowing.

It has been said that life begins at forty. Possibly. But I have found that it begins to sag at forty-five.

The other morning, stooping to tie my shoelaces, I found myself out of breath. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. It was due, of course, to my stomach getting in the way and pressing against my chest. I was badly out of condition. And I decided that the best solution would be a daily jog around the hill-station where I live-Mussoorie.

I bought a new pair of keds; but, unable to find a pair of shorts of the right size, I gave a gallic shrug and decided to do my jogging in my pyjamas-around the hill, past the waterworks, the rickshaw shed, and the cemetery. But I thought it would be unwise to jog on an empty stomach, so I consumed a mini-breakfast of a soft-boiled egg and toast.

At five in the morning there was no one to watch me, and it was a very slow jog. On my return, I was so famished that I ate a second breakfast-two fried eggs with several parathas-and felt as fit as an old fiddle. But after a week of slow jogs, accompanied by two breakfasts, I discovered that even my pyjamas were getting too tight.

Finally I came to the conclusion that my technique was all wrong. So I cut out the jogging and stuck to the two breakfasts.

Rai Singh, my milkman, thought it would be a good idea if I walked with him to his village, five miles from the station. I fell in with the suggestion and packed a hamper with buns, boiled eggs, fried potatoes, and two kinds of jam. As an afterthought, I added three varieties of churan digestive powder.

Rai Singh and I set out along the winding mountain path. By noon we had covered two-and-a-half miles, and I was feeling hungry. Besides, the hamper, which I had insisted on carrying as a form of yoga, was getting heavier by the minute. So we sat down in the shade of a pine tree, and I prepared an attractive spread for both of us. Rai Singh went off to wash his hands at a spring, a short distance away. As he seemed to be taking a long time, I went to see what delayed him. I found him gathering wild strawberries. We filled a shoulder-bag with wild strawberries and returned to the picnic spot.

All the food had disappeared. The hamper had gone too. Everything had been divided up equally by a band of monkeys. Several of the young ones had their faces smeared with jam. One large female had swallowed all the churan, and I couldn't help thinking that she would be an unpopular monkey by the end of the day.

Rai Singh and I sat down on the gra.s.s and ate wild strawberries. 'Never mind,' he said. 'I will prepare a meal for you as soon as we get to the village.'

He was as good as his word; and after a heavy meal of rice and beans, I slept the afternoon away in Rai Singh's hut. Towards evening he brought me a jug of home-made wine. It had been made (he a.s.sured me) from wild strawberries. After two gla.s.ses of it, I felt that all my problems were solved; I was ready to climb Everest. But Rai Singh put me to bed instead.

Next morning I breakfasted on curds, pickle and parathas, and returned to the hill-station with a milk-can full of strawberry wine. I'd got my juices flowing again.

Rai Singh had promised me a can of the wonderful tonic every time I visited him, and already I was planning a bi-weekly fitness trek to the village.

Bird Life In The City.

Having divided the last ten years of my life between Delhi and Mussoorie, I have come to the heretical conclusion that there is more bird life in the cities than there is in the hills and forests around our hill-stations.

For birds to survive, they must learn to live with and off humans; and those birds, like crows, sparrows and mynas, who do this to perfection, continue to thrive as our cities grow; whereas the purely wild birds, those who depend upon the forests for life, are rapidly disappearing, simply because the forests are disappearing.

Recently, I saw more birds in one week in a New Delhi colony than I had seen during a month in the hills. Here, one must be patient and alert if one is to spot just a few of the birds so beautifully described in Salim Ali's Indian Hill Birds. The babblers and thrushes are still around, but the flycatchers and warblers are seldom seen or heard.

But in Delhi, if you have just a bit of garden and perhaps a guava tree, you will be visited by innumerable bulbuls, tailor-birds, mynas, hoopoes, parrots and tree-pies. Or, if you own an old house, you will have to share it with pigeons and sparrows, perhaps swallows or swifts. And if you have neither garden nor rooftop, you will still be visited by the crows.

Where man goes, the crow follows. He has learnt to perfection the art of living off humans. He will, I am sure, be the first bird on the moon, scavenging among the paper-bags and cartons left behind by untidy astronauts.

Crows favour the densest areas of human population, and there must be at least one for every human. Many crows seem to have been humans in their previous lives: they possess all the cunning and sense of self-preservation of man. At the same time, there are many humans who have obviously been crows; we haven't lost their thieving instincts.

Watch a crow sidling along the garden wall with a shabby genteel air, c.o.c.king a speculative eye at the kitchen door and any attendant humans. He reminds one of a newspaper reporter, hovering in the background until his chance comes-and then pouncing! I have even known a crow to make off with an egg from the breakfast table. No other bird, except perhaps the sparrow, has been so successful in exploiting human beings.

The myna, although he too is quite at home in the city, is more of a gentleman. He prefers fruit on the tree to sc.r.a.ps from the kitchen, and visits the garden as much out of a sense of sociability as in expectation of hand-outs. He is quite handsome, too, with his bright orange bill and the mask around his eyes. He is equally at home on a railway platform as on the ear of a grazing buffalo, and, being omnivorous, has no trouble in coexisting with man.

The sparrow, on the other hand, is not a gentleman. Uninvited, he enters your home, followed by his friends, relatives and political hangers-on, and proceeds to quarrel, make love and leave his droppings on the sofa-cushions, with a complete disregard for the presence of humans. The party will then proceed into the garden and destroy all the flower-buds. No birds have succeeded so well in making fools of humans.

Although the bluejay, or roller, is quite capable of making his living in the forest, he seems to show a preference for the haunts of men, and would rather perch on a telegraph wire than in a tree. Probably he finds the wire a better launching-pad for his sudden rocket-flights and aerial acrobatics.

In repose he is rather shabby; but in flight, when his outspread wings reveal his brilliant blues, he takes one's breath away. As his food consists of beetles and other insect pests, he can be considered man's friend and ally.

Parrots make little or no distinction between town and country life. They are the freelancers of the bird world-st.u.r.dy, independent and noisy. With flashes of blue and green, they swoop across the road, settle for a while in a mango tree, and then, with shrill delighted cries, move on to some other field or orchard.

They will sample all the fruit they can, without finishing any. They are destructive birds but, because of their bright plumage, graceful flight and charming ways, they are popular favourites and can get away with anything. No one who has enjoyed watching a flock of parrots in swift and carefree flight could want to cage one of these virile birds. Yet so many people do cage them.

After the peac.o.c.k, perhaps the most popular bird in rural India is the sarus crane-a familiar sight around the jheels and river banks of northern India and Gujarat. The sarus pairs for life and is seldom seen without his mate. When one bird dies, the other often pines away and seemingly dies of grief. It is this near-human quality of devotion that has earned the birds their popularity with the villagers of the plains.

As a result, they are well protected.

In the long run, it is the 'common man', and not the scientist or conservationist, who can best give protection to the birds and animals living around him. Religious sentiment has helped preserve the peac.o.c.k and a few other birds. It is a pity that so many other equally beautiful birds do not enjoy the same protection.

But the wily crow, the cheeky sparrow, and the sensible myna, will always be with us. Quite possibly they will survive the human species.

And it is the same with other animals. While the cringing jackal has learnt the art of survival, his master, the magnificent tiger, is on his way to extinction.

Home Is Under The Big Top.

The big circus tent looms up out of the monsoon mist, standing forlorn in a quagmire of mud and slush. It has rained ceaselessly for two days and nights. The chairs stand about in deep pools of water. One or two of them float around with their legs in the air. There will be no show for the third night running, and tomorrow there will be problems, with the ring-hands to be fed and the ground rent to be paid: a hundred odd bills to be settled, and no money at the gate.

Nina, a dark, good-looking girl-part Indian, part Romanian-who has been doing the high-wire act for several years, sits at the window of a shabby hotel room and gazes out at the heavy downpour.

At one time, she tells me, she was with a very small circus, touring the remote areas of the Konkan on India's west coast. The tent was so low that when she stood on her pedestal her head touched the ceiling-cloth. She can still hear the hiss of the Petromax lamps. The band was a shrill affair: It made your hair stand on end!

The manager of a big circus happened to be pa.s.sing through, and he came in and saw Nina's act, and that was the beginning of a life of constant travel.

She remembers her first night with the new circus, and the terrible suspense she went through. Suddenly feeling like a country b.u.mpkin, she looked about her in amazement. There were more than twenty elephants, countless horses, and a menacing array of lions and tigers. She looked at the immense proportions of the tent and wanted to turn and run. The lights were a blinding brilliance-she had never worked in a spotlight before.

As the programme ran through, she stood at the rear curtains waiting for her entrance. She peeped through the curtains and felt sure she would be lost in that wide circus ring. Though her costume was new, she suddenly felt shabby. She had spangled her crimson velvet costume with scarlet sequins so that the whole thing was a red blaze. Her feet were sweating in white kid boots.

She cannot recall how she entered the ring. But she remembers standing on her pedestal and looking over her shoulder to see if the supporting wires were pulled taut. Her attention was caught by the sea of faces behind her. All the artists, the ring-hands, and the stable boys were there, eager to look over the new act.

Her most critical audience was the group of foreign artists who stood to one side in a tight, curious knot. There were two Italian brothers, a family of Belgians, and a half-Russian, half-English aerial ballet artist, a tiny woman who did a beautiful act on the single trapeze.

Nina has no recollection of how she got through her act. She did get through it somehow and was almost in tears when she reached the exit gate. She hurried to the seclusion of her dressing room tent, and there she laid her head upon her arms and sobbed. She did not hear the tent flaps open and was surprised at the sudden appearance of the tiny woman at her side.

'Ah, no!' exclaimed the little trapeze-artist, laying a hand on the girl's head. 'Never tears on your first night! It was a lovely act, my child. Why do you cry? You are sensitive and beautiful in the ring.'

Nina sobbed all the more and would not be comforted by the kind woman's words. Yet it was the beginning of a friendship that lasted for several years. The woman's name was Isabella. She took the young girl under her wing with deep maternal care.