Ruskin bonding-IV

Jyaneswar Laishram *

Ruskin Bond, author of many widely sought after books, was at the Landmark store in Forum Mall, Bangalore, on June 6, 2012, to release his new book of poems "Hip Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems" published by Penguin Books India. :: Pix - Wikipedia/Jim Ankan Deka

Artistic people possess split personality. Some of my friends do so. Perhaps 'dual' must be the appropriate term since 'split' sounds something negative like that of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. My friends: pianist Jimbo Ningombam and blues guitarist Kapil Chhetri are of dual personalities; they are simply themselves in normal way, but turned somebody else the moment they hook to their respective music instruments. Baby-faced Kapil turns into a remotely rebellious personality when he picks up his guitar to strum some Delta blues notes. On the other side is all-time jolly Jimbo who incarnates into a sleepy ocean when he is on piano, shadowing something melancholic on the face. So is my friend Ruskin Bond when he narrates a crime story.

Ruskin Bond, a vivacious hill-man storyteller, speaks little in real-that too in a soft tone, which is quite contrary to his persona involves in his crime and mystery stories. In general, he is popularly branded as 'children writer' and it's of course quite appropriately fitted into his innocent look and cool personality. But he's equally a crime writer, which is obscured somewhere on his other side that we can't see it in him in normal time. When it comes to counting all he has penned till date, Ruskin Bond writes more for adults than children. And his crime and mystery stories deliver the right attraction it takes to develop interest among some of my friends to like his writing.

My young friend Khuraijam Bono, who studied journalism to become a garment trader, is one of the few in my old circle who selectively read Ruskin Bond. He reads selectively because he is not the kind who savors any available genre in reading. It was way back in the late 1990s we both were students, not in the same class, but in a similar stream; we shared numerous evenings of discussions over writing and reading short stories. And one breezy evening, he introduced me to Millennium Gee Ahing. "What's that?" I snapped. "Ruskin Bond's short story Night of the Millennium translated into Meiteilon," he explained in reply. It was perhaps my first discovery of the other side of Ruskin Bond, beyond his children garden.

In some of his crime and mystery stories, Ruskin Bond justifiably examines the profound way of how a murderer or a psychopath or a canny police inspector behaves (hope inspector Kimat Lal requires no introduction if you are familiar with the movie Saat Khoon Maaf or the novella Who Killed The Rani?). But the best case at this point is his short story He Said It with Arsenic, in which he gives readers a peek into the way a cold-blooded murderer's mind works. And the murderer in the story is his uncle, Uncle Bill, his mother's half brother.

I often mention about Ruskin Bond using some real life people, mostly happened to be his relatives and close friends, as main characters in his fiction works by changing their names and depositions. This makes his stories sound so much semi-autobiographic and at times quite confusing whether to be categorized under fiction or memoir. Whatever it is, he writes so well with wonderful twists and trysts when it comes to his crime and thriller stories. Set in Dehradun, He Said It with Arsenic is about murderer William Jones or his Uncle Bill who used to work as male nurse in a hospital in Agra during the colonial era. And his duty was always to stand near dying patients, showing empathy and seeing them taking their way peacefully.

Killing people using arsenic came so naturally to Uncle Bill, without messy shooting or hacking or throttling. A gentle and civilized person he was, he had the hobby of collecting butterflies that he never pinned down as his ether bottles were quick and painless for the beautiful creatures. In the same manner he disposed off his first wife when he fell in love with the wife of a local station-master in Agra. As a result, he was arrested and charged with murder. As white people seldom got death sentence in India then, Uncle Bill was not hanged, he was given life sentence and lodged in Naini jail, near Allahabad. It was heard that he was released shortly after a few years of imprisonment when India became independent republic. But nobody in Ruskin's family had neither saw him nor heard from him after his release.

Almost fifteen years had been passed without any trace of Uncle Bill. But it was one day when Ruskin Bond was living in the hill-station of Fosterganj, working on his second book after the first one became a sort of bestseller, an unexpected knock pounded on his front door. When opened he found a thin, stooping, grey-haired and strangled moustache man standing at the doorstep. It was when he grinned showing his discoloured teeth partly to say something or introduce himself, Ruskin caught the glimpse of the name 'William Jones' printed on the airline sticker pasted on his suitcase.

Ruskin Bond assumed arsenic might have been a closed chapter for Uncle Bill since he had been punished and reformed. So he directed him to come inside. As he did not relish the prospect of looking after the rest of the days of the old fellow, he lied he would soon go to Bombay for some urgent work. Uncle Bill nodded agreeably, saying he wouldn't be staying too long, he just came down to meet his only nephew since he grew older and got some money put by in Johannesburg. Feeling a bit relieved, Ruskin set about trying to make his uncle as comfortable as possible.

It was on the third evening of his stay, Uncle Bill pulled out a bottle of sherry that he brought all the way from South Africa for Ruskin. When he went to the kitchen to open the bottle, Ruskin started thinking of all possible angles his uncle might have planned to lay claim to his estate and royalties after he poisoned him. Before he could finish envisaging all negative thoughts, Uncle Bill retuned with two glasses of sherry on a tray made of smooth Kashmiri walnut wood. Ruskin observed whether the glass near him appeared cloudier than the other; but there was no stark difference.

Turning the tray round with his index finger, Ruskin said that it's a regional custom to swap drinks with the guest and it brings good luck. Uncle Bill looked thoughtful and turned the tray round again to bring more luck. "Now you have spoilt it. You weren't supposed to keep revolving again. That's bad luck!" complained Ruskin turning the tray for the third time and tossed the glass meant for Uncle Bill. For a while, Uncle Bill hesitated, then shrugged and drained his glass quickly; he didn't ask to fill his glass again.

The next morning he was violently fell ill, but totally refused the idea of fetching a doctor. Ruskin pretended to blame the contaminated water of Fosterganj as main cause of illness, which Uncle Bill nodded in agreement. He was better by evening-whatever powder he had put into the sherry, according to Ruskin, must have been by the way of preliminary dose. Just before Uncle Bill packed up his suitcase to announce his departure, Ruskin asked him why he did drink it. "What did I drink? Water of Fosterganj?" inquired Uncle Bill in an innocent tone. "No, the glass of sherry into which you had slipped your powder", detailed Ruskin. In a nervous whining laugh, Uncle Bill requested Ruskin not to crack a joke in that way.

When Ruskin said he really meant it, not a joke, Uncle Bill looked down at his shoes and shrugged a little to say that in the circumstances what he did was the only decent thing to do and then turned away.

I will say this at last: It's hard to know Uncle Bill is real or not; but one thing I know is the way Ruskin Bond personifies himself into a real cold-blooded murderer in He Said It with Arsenic - indeed the other side of him.