Classic Ruskin Bond Read Online Free

have been here all your life and never been to a chaat shop before?’
    ‘Well, my guardian is very strict,’ said Rusty. ‘He wanted to bring me up in English ways, and he has succeeded . . .’
    ‘Till now,’ said Somi, and laughed, the laugh rippling up in his throat, breaking out and forcing its way through the smoke.
    Then a large figure loomed in front of the boys, and Rusty recognized him as Ranbir, the youth he had met on the bicycle.
    ‘Another best favourite friend,’ said Somi.
    Ranbir did not smile, but opened his mouth a little, gaped at Rusty, and nodded his head. When he nodded, hair fell untidily across his forehead; thick black bushy hair, wild and uncontrollable. He wore a long white cotton tunic hanging out over his baggy pyjamas, his feet were bare and dirty; big feet, strong.
    ‘Hullo, mister,’ said Ranbir in a gruff voice that disguised his shyness. He said no more for a while, but joined them in their meal.
    They ate chaat, a spicy salad of potato, guava and orange; and then gol-guppas, baked flour-cups filled with burning syrups. Rusty felt at ease and began to talk, telling his companions about his school in the hills, the house of his guardian, Mr Harrison himself, and the supple malacca cane. The story was listened to with some amusement: apparently Rusty’s life had been very dull to date, and Somi and Ranbir pitied him for it.
    ‘Tomorrow is Holi,’ said Ranbir, ‘you must play with me, then you will be my friend.’
    ‘What is Holi?’ asked Rusty.
    Ranbir looked at him in amazement. ‘You do not know about Holi! It is the Hindu festival of colour! It is the day on which we celebrate the coming of spring, when we throw colour on each other and shout and sing and forget our misery, for the colours mean the rebirth of spring and a new life in our hearts . . . You do not know of it!’
    Rusty was somewhat bewildered by Ranbir’s sudden eloquence, and began to have doubts about this game; it seemed to him a primitive sort of pastime, this throwing of paint about the place.
    ‘I might get into trouble,’ he said. ‘I’m not supposed to come here, anyway, and my guardian might return any day . . .’
    ‘Don’t tell him about it,’ said Ranbir.
    ‘Oh, he has ways of finding out. I’ll get a thrashing.’
    ‘Huh!’ said Ranbir, a disappointed and somewhat disgusted expression on his mobile face. ‘You are afraid to spoil your clothes, mister, that is it. You are just a snob.’
    Somi laughed. ‘That’s what I told him yesterday, and only then did he join me in the chaat shop. I think we should call him a snob whenever he makes excuses.’
    Rusty was enjoying the chaat. He ate gol-guppa after golguppa, until his throat was almost aflame and his stomach burning itself out. He was not very concerned about Holi. He was content with the present, content to enjoy the newfound pleasures of the chaat shop, and said, ‘Well, I’ll see . . . If my guardian doesn’t come back tomorrow, I’ll play Holi with you, all right?’
    Ranbir was pleased. He said, ‘I will be waiting in the jungle behind your house. When you hear the drum-beat in the jungle, then it is me. Then come.’
    ‘Will you be there too, Somi?’ asked Rusty. Somehow, he felt safe in Somi’s presence.
    ‘I do not play Holi,’ said Somi. ‘You see, I am different to Ranbir. I wear a turban and he does not, also there is a bangle on my wrist, which means that I am a Sikh. We don’t play it. But I will see you the day after, here in the chaat shop.’
    Somi left the shop, and was swallowed up by smoke and steam, but the chup-chup of his loose slippers could be heard for some time, until their sound was lost in the greater sound of the bazaar outside.
    In the bazaar, people haggled over counters, children played in the spring sunshine, dogs courted one another, and Ranbir and Rusty continued eating gol-guppas.
    *
    The afternoon was warm and lazy, unusually so for spring; very quiet, as though resting