The Story of Sonny Sahib | Page 8

milked. Abdul walked
beside him, but Sonny Sahib did all the shouting and the beating with a
bit of stick, which the buffaloes must have privately smiled at when
they felt it on their muddy flanks, that is if a buffalo ever smiles, which
one cannot help thinking doubtful. Sonny Sahib liked buffalo milk, and
had it every day for his dinner with chupatties, and sometimes, for a
treat, a bit of roast kid. Chupatties are like pancakes with everything

that is nice left out of them, and were very popular in Rubbulgurh.
Sonny Sahib thought nothing in the world could be better, except the
roast kid. On days of festival Abdul always gave him a pice to buy
sweetmeats with, and he drove a hard bargain with either Wahid Khan
or Sheik Luteef, who were rival dealers. Sonny Sahib always got more
of the sticky brown balls of sugar and butter and cocoa-nut for his pice
than any of the other boys. Wahid Khan and Sheik Luteef both thought
it brought them luck to sell to him. But afterwards Sonny Sahib
invariably divided his purchase with whoever happened to be his
bosom friend at the time--the daughter of Ram Dass, the blacksmith, or
the son of Chundaputty, the beater of brass--in which he differed
altogether from the other boys, and which made it fair perhaps.
At six Sonny Sahib began to find the other boys unsatisfactory in a
number of ways. He was tired of making patterns in the dust with
marigolds for one thing. He wanted to pretend. It was his birthright to
pretend, in a large active way, and he couldn't carry it out. The other
boys didn't care about making believe soldiers, and running and hiding
and shouting and beating Sonny Sahib's tom- tom, which made a
splendid drum. They liked beating the tom-tom, but they always
wanted to sit round in a ring and listen to it, which Sonny Sahib
thought very poor kind of fun indeed. They wouldn't even pretend to be
elephants, or horses, or buffaloes. Sonny Sahib had to represent them
all himself; and it is no wonder that with a whole menagerie, as it were,
upon his shoulders, he grew a little tired sometimes. Also he was the
only boy in Rubbulgurh who cared to climb a tree that had no fruit on it,
or would venture beyond the lower branches even for mangoes or
tamarinds. And one day when he found a weaver-bird's nest in a bush
with three white eggs in it, a splendid nest, stock-full of the fireflies
that light the little hen at night, he showed it privately first to Hurry
Ghose, and then to Sumpsi Din, and lastly to Budhoo, the sweeper's son;
and not one of them could he coax to carry off a single egg in company
with him. Sonny Sahib recognised the force of public opinion, and left
the weaver-bird to her house- keeping in peace, but he felt privately
injured by it.
Certainly the other boys could tell wonderful stories--stories of

princesses and fairies and demons--Sumpsi Din's were the best--that
made Sonny Sahib's blue eyes widen in the dark, when they all sat
together on a charpoy by the door of the hut, and the stars glimmered
through the tamarind-trees. A charpoy is a bed, and everybody in
Rubbulgurh puts one outside, for sociability, in the evening. Not much
of a bed, only four short rickety legs held together with knotted string,
but it answers very well.
Sonny Sahib didn't seem to know any stories--he could only tell the old
one about the fighting Abdul saw over and over again--but it was the
single thing they could do better than he did. On the whole he began to
prefer the society of Abdul's black and white goats, which bore a strong
resemblance to Abdul himself, by the way, and had more of the spirit
of adventure. It was the goat, for example, that taught Sonny Sahib to
walk on the extreme edge of the housetop and not tumble over. In time
they became great friends, Sonny Sahib and the goat, and always, when
it was not too hot, they slept together.
Then two things happened. First, Abdul died, and Sonny Sahib became
acquainted with grief, both according to his own nature and according
to the law of Mahomed. Then, after he and Tooni had mourned
sincerely with very little to eat for nine days, there clattered one day a
horseman through the village at such a pace that everybody ran out to
see. And he was worth seeing, that horseman, in a blue turban as big as
a little tub, a yellow coat, red trousers with gold lace on them, and long
boots that stuck out far on either side; and an embroidered saddle