Title: Let’s Be Best Friends Forever: Beautiful Stories of Friendship
Publisher: Talking Cub, Speaking Tiger Books
From ‘The Tunnel of Friendship’ by Ruskin Bond
I had already started writing my first book. It was called Nine Months, but had nothing to do with a pregnancy; it referred merely to the length of the school term, the beginning of March to the end of November, and it detailed my friendships and escapades at school and lampooned a few of our teachers. I had filled three slim exercise books with this premature literary project, and I allowed Azhar to go through them. He was my first reader and critic. ‘They’re very interesting. But you’ll get into trouble if someone finds them,’ was his verdict.
We returned to Shimla, having won our matches against Sanawar, and were school heroes for a couple of days. And then my housemaster discovered my literary opus and took it away and read it. I was given six of the best with a Malacca cane, and my manuscript was torn up. Azhar knew better than to say ‘I told you so’ when I showed him the purple welts on my bottom. Instead, he repeated the more outrageous bits he remembered from the notebooks and laughed, till I began to laugh too.
‘Will you go away when the British leave India?’ Azhar asked me one day.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘My stepfather is Indian. My mother’s family have lived here for generations.’
‘Everyone is saying they’re going to divide the country. I think I’ll have to go away.’
‘Oh, it won’t happen,’ I said glibly. ‘How can they cut up such a big country?’
‘Gandhi will stop them,’ he said.
But even as we dismissed the possibility, Jinnah, Nehru and Mountbatten and all those who mattered were preparing their instruments for major surgery.
Before their decision had any effect on our life, we found a little freedom of our own—in an underground tunnel that we discovered in a corner of the school grounds. It was really part of an old, disused drainage system, and when Azhar and I began exploring it, we had no idea just how far it extended. After crawling along on our bellies for some twenty feet, we found ourselves in complete darkness. It was a bit frightening, but moving backwards would have been quite impossible, so we continued writhing forward, until we saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Dusty, a little bruised and very scruffy, we emerged at last on to a grassy knoll, a little way outside the school boundary. We’d found a way to escape school!
The tunnel became our beautiful secret. We would sit and chat in it, or crawl through it just for the thrill of stealing out of the school to walk in the wilderness. Or to lie on the grass, our heads touching, reading comics or watching the kites and eagles wheeling in the sky. In those quiet moments, I became aware of the beauty and solace of nature more keenly than I had been till then: the scent of pine needles, the soothing calls of the Himalayan bulbuls, the feel of grass on bare feet, and the low music of the cicadas.
World War II had just come to an end, the United Nations held out the promise of a world living in peace and harmony, and India, an equal partner with Britain, would be among the great nations…
But soon we learnt that Bengal and Punjab provinces, with their large Muslim populations, were to be bisected. Everyone was in a hurry: Jinnah and company were in a hurry to get a country of their own; Nehru, Patel and others were in a hurry to run a free, if truncated, India; and Britain was in a hurry to get out. Riots flared up across northern India.
At school, the common room radio and the occasional newspaper kept us abreast of events. But in our tunnel Azhar and I felt immune from all that was happening, worlds away from all the pillage, murder and revenge. Outside the tunnel, there was fresh untrodden grass, sprinkled with clover and daisies, the only sounds the hammering of a woodpecker, and the distant insistent call of the Himalayan barbet. Who could touch us there?
‘And when all wars are done,’ I said, ‘a butterfly will still be beautiful.’
‘Did you read that somewhere?’ Azhar asked.
‘No, it just came into my head.’
‘It’s good. Already you’re a writer.’
Though it felt good to hear him say that, I made light of it. ‘No, I want to play hockey for India or football for Arsenal. Only winning teams!’
‘You’ll lose sometimes, you know, even if you get into those teams,’ said wise old Azhar. ‘You can’t win forever. Better to be a writer.’
One morning after chapel, the headmaster announced that the Muslim boys—those who had their homes in what was now Pakistan—would have to be evacuated. They would be sent to their homes across the border with an armed convoy.
It was time for Azhar to leave, along with some fifty other boys from Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar. The rest of us—Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs and Parsis—helped them load their luggage into the waiting British Army trucks that would take them to Lahore. A couple of boys broke down and wept, including our departing school captain, a Pathan who had been known for his unemotional demeanour. Azhar waved to me and I waved back. We had vowed to meet again some day. We both kept our composure.
The headmaster announced a couple of days later that all the boys had reached Pakistan and were safe. On the morning of 15 August 1947, we were marched up to town to witness the Indian flag being raised for the first time. Shimla was still the summer capital of India, so it was quite an event. It was raining that morning. We were in our raincoats and gumboots, while a sea of umbrellas covered the Mall.
(Extracted from Let’s Be Best Friends Forever: Beautiful Stories of Friendship, with an introduction by Jerry Pinto. Published by Talking Cub, the children’s imprint of Speaking Tiger Books.)
ABOUT THE BOOK
An Afghan trader and a young Bengali girl form a touching connection that transcends cultural barriers in Rabindranath Tagore’s classic story ‘The Kabuliwala’. Jo March and Laurie from Little Women meet at a dull party and become companions for life. L. Frank Baum’s timeless characters Dorothy and Toto adventure around Oz forging magical bonds of friendship.
The brave queen of Jhansi and her ally Jhalkaribai come together to fight for freedom and dignity; Jesse Owens narrates an inspiring tale of sportsmanship and solidarity from his Olympic days; and twelve-year-old Kamala and her friends, Edward, Amir and Amma, endure the Partition riots together in Bulbul Sharma’s heart-warming story.
In these pages you will also meet Nimmi and her best pal, Kabir, whose school misadventures include spirited debates; Sunny, whose love for books leads to a new friendship on a trip to Darjeeling; Cyril and Neil, who face life’s challenges with inventive word games, and Siya, who discovers that true friends can come in the most unexpected forms—even as a cherished doll.
Animal lovers will delight in the escapades of Gillu, the charming squirrel, Harold, the handsome hornbill, Rikki-tikki-tavi, the loyal mongoose, Hira and Moti, the powerful oxen, and Bagheera, the brave panther who looks after the young boy Mowgli.
With stories from beloved and popular authors—Ruskin Bond, Rudyard Kipling, Mahadevi Varma, Jerry Pinto, Shabnam Minwalla, and many more—Let’s Be Best Friends Forever is an enchanting collection that celebrates the universal power and beauty of friendship.
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