By: Ganesh Saili
A few days ago, the earth trembled again. And our phone started to ring. Curious relatives, anxious friends and oftener than not, casual acquaintances too, asked if all was well.
‘Didn’t feel a thing!’ I make light of it.
My response leaves a few disappointed and others disheartened, and a handful of those are genuinely relieved.
Living life in Zone 4 of the Rajpur Fault is no joke. The Wadia Institute tells us that the Big One is years behind schedule. The previous Big One, the Kangra earthquake of 1905, had flattened the steeple of the Methodist Church in Kulri bazaar, giving birth to the doggerel:
The Kulri clock has received a shock.
Enough to knock it off the block.
And make it rock, ah!
Hanhart and Bechtler both tried.
To titivate it’s shocked inside,
So now they’ve called Fisher,
The watchmaker and undertaker!
Dear Reader! Please note that Hanhart and Bechtler once owned jewellery and watch repair establishments, while Arthur Fisher’s special gifts were no secret – he did unto people after death what many of them had done unto others all their lives.
‘Can you please drop me off here? I’ll walk this bit!’ a casual visitor insists, adding, ‘Safer being above the mess of the South Road. See you at Clock Tower’s fork.’ Landour’s South Road could scare anyone witless. Driving past stacks of six- or seven-story ruins is strictly for the brave and the foolhardy. If an earthquake strikes, being trapped under the crumbled debris would instantly transport you, harp in hand, into the clouds.
Landour’s rabbit warren has homes built on little more than a prayer. In earlier times, shopkeepers lived on South Road making pickles and preserves to sell in North Road shops. Squashed between these homes are a dozen alleyways, each a little more than a flight of steps – an afterthought, two feet wide – that connected the two roads. In over two hundred years, not a ray of sunlight has penetrated the gloom.
Inevitably, in these congested tenements, many tales of dalliances survive. There was a tinsmith, whose tinning kept him away from home all day. Alert to the dangers of leaving his pretty wife alone he would lock her in their single room from the outside. Prudently, he would slip the key right back to her through the gap under the doorsill, so she could escape if catastrophe struck while he was away. On his return, she would pass the key back to her lord and master, letting him in. Months sped by happily, and he was content that he had managed to keep the serpent out of his Garden of Eden. She, on the contrary, was happy at the easy access it gave her to the forbidden fruit. Using the same key, Eve admitted, wooed, and shooed her lover by the clock.
That is until the day a simple ailment struck her husband. The rumblings in his stomach forced him home three hours earlier than usual. At first, even as he danced around gripping his middle, his frantic knocking remained unanswered. Then, under the door, the key appeared. The moment of his entry was the moment he forgot why he had come home. There before his aghast eyes, stood the base of the eternal triangle. An uncomfortable silence reigned, as the two men stared at each other. When he finally found his voice, he managed to utter, ‘Now! You go.’
What did our canner do? He collected all her belongings, down to the tiniest trinket he had gifted her, took her down to Dehradun, and bought her a one-way train ticket to her maiden home – and just before the train steamed out, he turned his back on her forever. Like a stuck record, he repeated, ‘Now! You go!’
Meanwhile, the village idiot tried to convince me that the tinsmith’s tale gave birth to the tongue-twister: ‘A canner exceedingly canny,
Once cannily said to his granny:
‘A canner can can anything It’s uncanny!’
‘Can he?’ said the granny,
In a manner just as canny,
‘A canner can’t can a canna, can he?’
Ganesh Saili, author-photographer, has written and illustrated twenty books, some translated into over two dozen languages. He belongs to those select few who illustrate their writing. His work has found publication in periodicals, columns, and journals.
