The Best of Ruskin Bond Part 35

Wore a yellow waistcoat and spat red

Betel-juice the entire width of the road.

'I can spit further than any man,' he claimed.

It is natural for a man to strive to excel

At something; he spat with authority.

When he took me for rides, he lost a fare.

That was his way. He once said, 'If a girl

Wants five rupees for a fix, bargain like h.e.l.l

And then give six.'

It was the secret of his failure, he claimed,

To give away more than he owned.

And to prove it, he borrowed my pocket-money

In order to buy a present for his mistress.

A man who fails well is better than one who succeeds badly.

The rattletrap tonga and the winding road

Through the valley, to the river-bed,

With the wind in my hair and the dust

Rising, and the dogs running and barking

And Bansi singing and shouting in my ear,

And the pony farting as it cantered along,

Wheels creaking, seat shifting,

Hood slipping off, the entire contraption

Always about to disintegrate, collapse,

But never quite doing so-like the man himself. . . .

All this was music,

And the ragtime-raga lingers in my mind.

Nostalgia comes swiftly when one is forty,

Looking back at boyhood years.

Even unhappiness acquires a certain glow.

It was shady in the cemetery, and the mango trees

Did well there, nourished by the bones

Of long-dead Colonels, Collectors, Magistrates and Memsahibs.

For here, in dusty splendour, lay the graves

Of those who'd brought their English dust