waist, and after a moment’s pause heard the sound of trickling water on grass. All else was quiet but for the tapping of a woodpecker making its way up a nearby tree trunk, grub by grub. Ama sighed, then said: “He is half mad. Pisses into the bushes like some common villager and they say he was a prince before. He drinks so much he keeps falling down. Did you hear, he fell down yesterday too? His shoulder has a big black mark. Himmat Singh told me.”
Diwan Sahib was hidden by the bushes. I could hear thumping, as if someone was beating carpets. Then my landlord was yelling, “Arre O! Can you hear me? What are you doing?”
The monotonous “whump-whump” from below stopped for a minute, then started again. Diwan Sahib stumbled down the slope clutching his pyjama’s waistband and yelling, “Leave the nettles alone, you donkey!” Now we could see him through a gap in the hydrangeas, tall, thin, teetering at the very edge of the slope, looking as if he would trip and roll downhill with his next step.
I half got up, started to call out, “Be careful!” but stopped myself. He detested what he called “clucking”.
“It’s only nettle,” a man’s voice said from below. “I’m not cutting your precious bushes, am I?” His stick hit the bushes again. I stood up to look, and saw that the man had already beaten down many of the high, overgrown nettle bushes into damp green rags. The nettles formed a barrier around the house and protected it from the road a few metres below. The more impenetrable they grew, the more Diwan Sahib rejoiced at keeping prying people out. The nettles would spring back in a month, so there was no need for an argument. But once annoyed, Diwan Sahib was difficult to reason with. He shouted back, “I planted those nettles!”
“Oh yes? Who plants nettle? Weeds – dirty, stinging weeds! He plants them he says.” “Whump!” The man’s stick began hitting the nettle bushes with even greater force. As the stick came down on the bushes again and again, I winced, imagining the man behind me on a lonely forest road, armed with that stick. “Useless old fool,” we heard the man shout in a harsh voice. “Sanki lunatic! Says he plants nettles!”
“You aren’t young yourself,” Diwan Sahib yelled. “Have you seen how old you are?”
Diwan Sahib came back towards the garden. “Have you seen how old he is? And he has the insolence to call me old.” His white hair stood on end, from his having torn off his cap in a hurry. His dressing gown flapped around his ankles. He had climbed back too quickly and now each gasping breath was accompanied by a whistling sound. He stooped and searched for a glass, one he must have flung into the bushes earlier that morning. He wiped it on his shirt and splashed rum into it from the bottle at the table next to him. Then he sat back in his chair and laughed until it turned into a hacking cough. “Someone’s been attacking the nettle for days, and I’ve never managed to catch the fellow in the act before,” he wheezed. “I recognised him today. He’s that retired forest guard – Himmat says he’s lost his mind.”
Ama said, “Why wouldn’t he have? He’s forever grabbing our sickles and axes and taking them away. Claimed we were stealing wood from the forest. And in secret he was selling our axes in the bazaar. We cursed him, many times. So he went mad.”
“Why don’t you use your curses on a more deserving target – Chauhan, or that politician stirring up trouble?” Diwan Sahib said, picking up his packet of cigarettes.
“You’d better not smoke,” I said. “Your performance is next week, and you can’t cough all the time you’re there, so don’t – ” I stopped as he lit up.
Diwan Sahib had been practising for months and his day at St Hilda’s was almost upon us. Usually he talked of jungle craft and imitated the calls of animals and birds. Sometimes he told the children stories of illustrious Himalayan travellers, old and new, such as Frank Smythe, Edmund Hillary, or Bill Aitken.
“What are you going to do this year?” I asked him.
“This year – ” All of a sudden Diwan Sahib became almost bashful. “This year I want to tell them how fortunate they are. How absolutely fortunate they are. I want your little perishers to understand that.”