The Very Best of Ruskin Bond, the Writer on the Hill: Selected Fiction and Non-Fiction Read Free

and orange and purple, all rich emotional colours—burst out everywhere.
    Children formed groups. They were armed mainly with bicycle pumps, or pumps fashioned from bamboo stems, from which was squirted liquid colour. The children paraded the main road, chanting shrilly and clapping their hands. The men and women preferred the dust to the water. They too sang, but their chanting held a significance, their hands and fingers drummed the rhythms of spring, the same rhythms, the same songs that belonged to this day every year of their lives.
    Ranbir was met by some friends and greeted with great hilarity. A bicycle pump was directed at Rusty and a jet of sooty black water squirted into his face.
    Blinded for a moment, Rusty blundered about in great confusion. A horde of children bore down on him, and he was subjected to a pumping from all sides. His shirt and pyjamas, drenched through, stuck to his skin; then someone gripped the end of his shirt and tugged at it until it tore and came away. Dust was thrown on the boy, on his face and body, roughly and with full force, and his tender, under-exposed skin smarted beneath the onslaught.
    Then his eyes cleared. He blinked and looked wildly round at the group of boys and girls who cheered and danced in front of him. His body was running mostly with sooty black, streaked with red, and his mouth seemed full of it too, and he began to spit.
    Then, one by one, Ranbir’s friends approached Rusty.
    Gently, they rubbed dust on the boy’s cheeks, and embraced him; they were like so many flaming demons that Rusty could not distinguish one from the other. But this gentle greeting, coming so soon after the stormy bicycle-pump attack, bewildered Rusty even more.
    Ranbir said, ‘Now you are one of us, come,’ and Rusty went with him and the others.
    ‘Suri is hiding,’ cried someone. ‘He has locked himself in his house and won’t play Holi!’
    ‘Well, he will have to play,’ said Ranbir, ‘even if we break the house down.’
    Suri, who dreaded Holi, had decided to spend the day in a state of siege; and had set up camp in his mother’s kitchen, where there were provisions enough for the whole day. He listened to his playmates calling to him from the courtyard, and ignored their invitations, jeers, and threats; the door was strong and well barricaded. He settled himself beneath a table, and turned the pages of the English nudists’ journal, which he bought every month chiefly for its photographic value.
    But the youths outside, intoxicated by the drumming and shouting and high spirits, were not going to be done out of the pleasure of discomfiting Suri. So they acquired a ladder and made their entry into the kitchen by the skylight.
    Suri squealed with fright. The door was opened and he was bundled out, and his spectacles were trampled.
    ‘My glasses!’ he screamed. ‘You’ve broken them!’
    ‘You can afford a dozen pairs!’ jeered one of his antagonists.
    ‘But I can’t see, you fools, I can’t see!’
    ‘He can’t see!’ cried someone in scorn. ‘For once in his life, Suri can’t see what’s going on! Now, whenever he spies, we’ll smash his glasses!’
    Not knowing Suri very well, Rusty could not help pitying the frantic boy.
    ‘Why don’t you let him go?’ he asked Ranbir. ‘Don’t force him if he doesn’t want to play.’
    ‘But this is the only chance we have of repaying him for all his dirty tricks. It is the only day on which no one is afraid of him!’
    Rusty could not imagine how anyone could possibly be afraid of the pale, struggling, spindly-legged boy who was almost being torn apart, and was glad when the others had finished their sport with him.
    All day Rusty roamed the town and countryside with Ranbir and his friends, and Suri was soon forgotten. For one day, Ranbir and his friends forgot their homes and their work and the problem of the next meal, and danced down the roads, out of the town and into the forest. And, for one day, Rusty forgot his