October 1972- May 1973:

It wasn’t for nothing that we called him Hansmukh Hansraj. He was always smiling. Always. I remember him from the first day I joined the new school. I was shy and nervous. As any boy joining a new school three hundred miles away from his home town  would be. I was sitting in the class. Nobody sat near me. It was then that he came and sat next to me. “My name is Hansraj,” he told me in Hindi. “What is yours?” “Nitin,” I replied. “Where have you come from?” he asked me. “Delhi,” I replied. “Oh, Delhi” he said. It was clear to me that he was awestruck. “Did you see Asia ’72?” he asked me. “Oh yes,” I told him. I had really seen that  fascinating exhibition. I put my hand in my pocket and took out a small toy which Coca Cola had given us for free. I gave it to him. His face lit up with a smile. “Tell me about it. What all did you see there?” As I started describing Asia ’72 to him  I understood that I had made my first friend in this small Rajasthani town where my father had been posted in October 1972.

My father was employed with the State Bank of India as  a manager. And when he was transferred to this small nondescript town in Rajasthan he decided that my mother and the children, i.e. I and my sister, should also accompany him. So in October 1972,  my parents, I and my younger sister Neeta arrived in this small town . Getting a house was no problem as my father had tied up with his predecessor and we moved into the house he had lived in as a tenant. The houseowner was only too happy to get another tenant who would leave after a few years.

I and my sister were admitted to a small private school named Happy Convent. The owners were account holders in our bank. Everybody had warned my father against sending us to the government school. They had told my father that it was a very rough school and not suitable for the children of a bank manager. And it did not have an English section.  My sister joined Class III and I joined Class VI. Thanks to Hansraj I came to know the names of all my classmates within a day. There were 23 boys and 14 girls in my class. The boys and girls sat separately. We did not speak to the girls. But the girls would often be looking at us and smiling or laughing. I would go red in the face because I was sure that they were laughing at me. I would quickly check my post office to make sure that it was not open.

Hansraj told me everything about the others. The ones who were good at studies -  Ritesh came first in class and Swati came second. There was tough competition for the first five places as Sangeeta, Harshwardhan and Prithviraj were also very good at studies. Iqbal was the best sportsman in class and he was in the cricket, hockey and football teams of the middle section. Hansraj was an average student and nobody feared him either in the class or in the sports field. But he was extremely popular due to his good nature. He was a walking encyclopedia of information about the school. He told me all about the teachers too. Kavita Sharma Madam was our class teacher and she taught us English and Social Studies. Upadhyaya Sir taught us Mathematics. Arora Sir was the science teacher and Meenakshi Mishra Madam taught Hindi and Sanskrit. Sahasrabuddhe Madam taught music. Arora Sir used to beat the students a lot. But the rest of them were very nice. 
 

In the winter Hansraj took me to his house. They lived in a joint family of 20 members. They had many fields which were full of mustard plants and their yellow flowers. He also took me to their fruit orchard where we plucked and ate guavas. “Eat as much as you want,” he told me, “but don’t take any home.” I ate so many that  I got a stomach upset later that day and  a good scolding from my mother. Hansraj showed me things I would never see in Delhi. I remember one day he showed me wild partridges as they crossed a path in the jungle. We stopped our cycles far away and stood looking at the group with awe and reverence. Hansraj put his finger to his lips. We stood silently like the trees. One day Hansraj told me, “My English is weak you must help me.” So, every evening we would go to his fruit orchard and then into the jungle and go and sit at a quiet spot and I would help him with his reading and conversation in english. 

Hansraj showed me many things I had never dreamt of. While sitting under a neem tree in the forest  we would often see wild rabbits,  peacocks and peahen. Once we even saw a huge cobra. I prayed to Shankar Bhagwan and the cobra did not come near us. My mother was so scared that she said that she wouldn’t let me go again to Hansraj’s place. My father scolded her and told her that she must make sure that her children grew up brave. Once Hansraj showed me some harial or green pigeons. I was stunned. I did not know that such a bird existed. It was sitting quietly on a branch of a peepal tree. If he had not shown it to me I would never have seen it. When I went home I told my parents and Neeta about it. They were thrilled. Especially Neeta. “Bhaiya you must take me to Hansraj Bhaiya’s house one day and show me this harial  bird.”  I am glad that I  convinced Hansraj,who found girls to be very boring, that we must show Neeta the green pigeons. “If she is happy then my mother will also be happy and we may get some good kheer next Sunday,” I told him. Now Hansraj would befriend the most talkative girl if he were promised kheer.  That is how Neeta got to see the harial for the first time. She remembers it to this day.

As Hansraj’s English improved so did my knowledge of trees , birds, animals and also Rajasthani Hindi. “You have taught me a lot,” Hansraj would say. “You have taught me a lot too,” I would tell him. “Arrey nahin,” he would say “these are ordinary things even the gaonwallahs know .” How could I tell him that none of my friends in Delhi knew even one percent of what he knew ?  I remember an occasion when I had gone to his house and his Chachi had given us aloo ka paratha with aam ka achar, dahi and green chillie. It was so tasty. We even had a laddoo and a piece of barfi each. I still remember that meal. Once we went to Ashok Talkies and saw a film. It was titled Anand and Rajesh Khanna and a tall man named Babu Moshai acted in it. Hansraj did not know much about films so I told him about Dharmendra ,Jitendra, Dev Anand, Sadhna, Babita and Pran. Sometimes we would go to Saraswati Book Stall and go through Nandan, Champak, LotPot and also see the pictures in Filmfare and Star & Style magazines. The shopowner would let us do so because the bank bought many newspapers and magazines from this shop. “Arrey yaar,” said Hansraj with his trademark smile, “If I go to Bombay na I will go and see Shashi Kapoor.” “That’s ok,” I would tease him, “but would he see you?” Hansraj would start giggling when I said this. Sometimes I had to tell him, "Ab bas bhi kar." But he would not stop.

I celebrated Holi at Hansraj’s house. His parents had told my parents that they would like to keep me at their place for two days. On the night of Holi we had Holika Dahan. We lit a huge bonfire and enjoyed ourselves. Hansraj’s elder brother Deshraj who was in college even sang a film song “Hiya Tara Tara, Duniya mein logon ko dhokha kabhi ho jata hai….” He was very smart. He wore bell bottom trousers and Rajesh Khanna kurtas. We were not allowed to wear bell bottoms. “Sala, hippy lagega,” my father used to say. I had promised myself that when I reached class 9^th I would get a pair of bell bottoms stitched. The next day we had played with colours and we enjoyed ourselves a lot. The other children picked me up and threw me into a  tank full of coloured water. Later when I started laughing when Hansraj fell into the tank I could not stop. “There was bhang in the pakodas,” Hansraj told me later. I did not tell my parents about this.

Soon the summer had arrived. We could see the flowers in the mango trees. “These are called mor,” Hansraj told me. It was only then that I understood the meaning of aam ke ped par mor aa gaye hain. Before Hansraj told me I used to think that peacocks would go and sit on mango trees and then the trees would give fruit. Hansraj laughed a lot when I told him this. We gave our final exams in April. After the exam we would go to Hansraj’s orchard and eat raw mangoes with salt and chilli powder. It was so tasty. Our results came in the first week of May. I came sixth in class. The first five positions were just as Hansraj had predicted. He came twentieth. He was very happy. His parents distributed sweets in their locality. My father was horrified when I asked him if I could do so too, “Abey, sixth aaya hai class mein  aur mithai baantega? Mujhay kangaal karega kya?”  Now that was too much. Why would I wish to make my father bankrupt? In any case there was so much money in his bank.

                       
In the second week of May 1973 my mother, my sister and I left for Delhi. We would be spending the holidays with Nana and Nani. We would come back a day or two before the school reopened in the first week of July. Hansraj had gone to Jodhpur to his mamaji’s house so we could not meet. Unfortunately my father’s poor health  forced him to shift back to Delhi on medical grounds before the holidays ended. The doctor said something about sugar and blood pressure. We never went back to Rajasthan. Father shifted all our luggage back to Delhi. The school gave him our tranfer certificates. In July we went back to our old school in Delhi.  I wrote a letter to Hansraj explaining to him what had happened. But I never got a reply from him. I  missed Rajasthan and the small town we lived in, the smell of cowdung and all the wild life and plants and trees that  I  had seen there. But most of all I missed Hansraj and his smile. For many months all the old memories would repeat in my dreams. I would wake up crying.

January 1987:

I am taking a convoy of tanks by train and we are on the way to the Pakistan border. My tank regiment is participating in Operation Brasstacks. We are on the verge of war with Pakistan. General Sundarji and General Zia-Ul-Haq are trying to defuse the situation. Zia is flying down to Jaipur to see the one-day international cricket match between India and Pakistan. But the Indian Army is taking no chances. We are going as far as we can towards the  border without breaking international law. I have been called back from Mhow where I was attending a course. In the morning when I wake up I see that our train has stopped at a small station. A soldier from our regiment has brought a small glass full of tea for me. He has to speak loudly, "Sahibji, chai le lo," before I realise he is offering me tea. I smile at him weakly.

I am in a state of mild shock. This is the same town I had left in 1973. Nothing had changed. Nothing. The station was just the same fourteen years later. The same neem trees. The same overbridge and dirty platforms. I wonder whether Hansraj is still here. He must be looking after his father’s fields. He must be married with kids. Should I ask someone at the station? I know that I cannot go out and find out.  I am sure that wherever he is Hansraj must be the same smiling Hansmukh Hansraj that I  knew in school. At this moment I am a soldier on a mission. I have no time for friends, relatives and loved ones. The engine whistles loudly. The train jerks a bit. We are about to move. 

The train starts moving. I lean back and look out through the window as familiar sights go past. I pray that there is no war. I pray that no Pakistani bomber drops bombs on this small town, this perfect universe. I am happy that the train is moving. It had been  a shock to find myself in the same town where I had spent the best poart of my childhood. I was not prepared to get down and go and meet Hansraj.  Maybe I can do that after a few years when I am married and a father of two or three kids. Or maybe I should let it remain a closed chapter of my life. Time I got back to thinking about my tanks and their manoeuvres.  Que Sera Sera.

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My previous short story: Paying the right price  (Rakesh, the young marketing executive, will  haggle wih the fruit seller for two rupees. After all, as his father had told him, every rupee counts.)