Boyhood by Bhisham Sahni

Author:Bhisham Sahni [Sahni, Bhisham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Ages seem to have passed since then. The sounds of the neighbourhood haven’t changed, but have somewhat lost their flavour. Things which formerly had loomed large, now seem to have shrunk and grown small. The four walls of the house have fallen down, as it were, and those casements, to which I used to remain glued watching our neighbourhood activities out in the street, are broken. I have stepped out of the house, and every single thing outside seems to draw me powerfully to itself like the eyes of a python. It seems a mere glimpse of the outside world has forced me to run out of the house. There is a flood of impressions . . .

Standing below the house with a chhajja which has blue, green and red windowpanes, stood a tonga. Two burqa-clad women got into it, and the tonga started coming towards our house. In front of Attar Singh’s sweetmeat shop, I sprang on to the footboard. Feeling a weight fall on his footboard, the tonga driver swung his whip round to the back. I felt the sting of the lash on my back, and my whole body started burning. The whip also touched my right ear. But I still kept standing on the footboard. Before lashing out for the second time, the tonga driver turned around to have a look. ‘My goodness, it’s Babu’s son!’ He turned back again and looked straight ahead. The tonga was passing along new streets. On all sides, things seemed to be floating past my eyes—houses, roofs, clothes hanging out to dry, innumerable people on the streets. At every turning, the scene changed. Sometimes the houses were tall, sometimes low-built. Every day, I jumped on to the footboard of some tonga or the other and visited different parts of the town.

The monsoon rains were coming down in torrents. Clad in loincloths, my brother and I ran as far as Lunda Bazaar. The street gutters and the main open drain of the road were brimming over with brown muddy water.

I was sitting on the back of our horse Laloo, and my brother was walking alongside. We were going out of town to study in a gurukul. When the houses ended, vast fields came into view, extending as far as the mountains. Tulsi, be-turbaned and clad in Father’s long coat, walked along, carrying our bags.

We reached the last house and Tulsi stopped. Catching hold of the horse’s bridle, he helped me to dismount. Now it was my brother’s turn. He would ride to the school and I would walk alongside. In the darkness of the innermost room of the gurukul, there was a very large creature. Tulsi said it was a peacock and that it was slowly dying. Sitting with the celibates, Tulsi ate chickpeas and jaggery and recited the rules of the Ashtadhyayi, Panini’s famous treatise on grammar, consisting of eight chapters. At break time, he did push-ups with them.

Playing gulli-danda out in the street, we suddenly heard a noise. It

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