You couldn’t have asked for a livelier or more interesting companion than Omi, my former bank manager. I say ‘former’ not because he is no longer with us, but because he has gone on to bigger and presumably better things in Mumbai and Dubai. When I knew him he was a wildlife enthusiast with his heart in the highlands and Corbett country.

Omi liked travelling by road, preferably at dawn, the drive punctuated by halts to gaze at peacocks, nilghai, and jackals and porcupines. I’d accompany him occasionally, and one crisp winter morning we got into his battered old Fiat for a leisurely drive from Delhi to Dehradun. But of course Omi had no intention of keeping to the main highway.

“From Roorkee we’ll take the Hardwar road, then take a diversion and get on the forest road through the Rajaji Sanctuary. We’ll come out near the Mohand Pass. It’s only about fifteen miles. Beautiful forest. Lots of wildlife. Tigers, herds of wild elephants. Perfectly safe!”

“If you say so,” I said.

By the time we had made it to the rough forest road, dusk had fallen and the peahens were making their last passionate love calls.

There were three raos (dry river-beds) to cross on the way to Mohand, and at the first of these the front door threatened to come off its hinges.

“Hang on to it,” urged Omi. “Keep it from falling off!”

I had an old football scarf with me — a gift from travel writer Bill Aitken, a fellow fan of bottom of the Scottish League, Aloa Athletic — and I tied this to the door handle, making it easier for me to keep the door from falling open.

Omi stopped the car and pointed enthusiastically at several hefty dung-cakes in the middle of the road.
“Look, elephant dung!” he cried.

“Maybe we’ll be lucky and meet some elephants.”

“I am quite content just viewing their leavings,” I said.

“Very good for making paper,” he observed.

Perhaps you could get the Reserve Bank to use it for making notes. The large denominations.”
Undeterred by my sarcasm, Omi started up and drove merrily on to the second boulder- strewn rao. A bump, a bang, and we had a flat tyre.

“I’ll soon fix it,” said Omi. “Can you get the spare out of the dickey?”

Fortunately my struggle with the door prevented me from getting out, because just at that moment a number of wild boar appeared at the side of the road. They had been searching for a little water in the rao and had now stopped in order to take a growing interest in the car and its occupants.

“Better wait until they’ve gone,” said Omi.

“Wild boars can be dangerous. Even a tiger will run from a charging boar. Don’t let the door fall off!”

I hung on to the door for dear life, I wasn’t about to run like a tiger.

We waited. The boars waited.

“Would you like a drink?” asked Omi after sometime. “There’s a bottle here somewhere.”

He produced a full bottle of strong Army rum and we took swigs in turn. The boars came on little nearer.

“If we’re going to be here all night, let us play Under a Scotsman’s kilt,” I suggested. “I learnt it at school.”

“I didn’t know you were gay.”

“I’m not, I’m serious. You give me the first line of a song or poem, and I’ll come in with the line ‘Under a Scotsman’s kilt.’ It’s great fun. Don’t think too hard. The first song  that comes to mind...”

“Old Macdonald had a farm,”

“Under a Scotsman’s kilt”

“I wandered lonely as a cloud”

“Under a Scotsman’s kilt.”

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright—”

“Under a Scotsman’s kilt.”

We continued in this scatological vein for some time until, fortunately for our sanity, the silence of the night was broken by the roar of an approaching motorcycle. To our amazement, two middle-aged Sikh gentlemen materialised in front of our headlights. The wild boars scattered, vanished into the night.

Our rescuers were in the habit of using the forest road as a short cut to their farm in the Terai. Elephants and wild boars did not faze them. They helped us change the tyre, and then they helped us finish the bottle of rum. They even offered to get us another bottle, courtesy a helpful forest guard; but we thanked them profusely and said we had to be on our way. Omi’s wife was waiting for him in Dehradun, rolling-pin at the ready. She would flatten him out along with the atta.

Omi negotiated the remainder of the second rao and then, at the rao before Mohand, the door finally fell off, taking my Scottish football scarf with it.

Ever loyal to Aloa Athletic, I retrieved the scarf, but Omi left the door behind in the river-bed.
“We’ll came back for it another day,” he vowed. I was sure he had another treat in store for me.

Biscuits and acid

The next time we met, a few weeks later, Omi had a new car, one of the latest Marutis.

“Come on, I’ll take you for a spin down the Tehri Road,” he said. “We’ll be back in time for lunch.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t want to miss my afternoon siesta.”

“Nothing better than a nap under a chestnut tree,” said Omi.

“The last time I slept under a chestnut tree, the langoors kept dropping chestnuts on my head. And this is October and the chestnuts are ready.”

“We’ll go not further than Suakholi,” promised Omi.

And so we set off in his new car, and on the way Omi told me he was having an ulcer problem and that Dr Bhist had told him to keep eating biscuits between meals. Apparently the biscuits soaked up the excess acid. On the seat between us I found three packets of biscuits — glucose biscuits, cream crackers, and third variety which I did not recognise.

“And what are these?” I asked.

“Dog biscuits,” he said.

“You’re eating dog biscuits for you ulcer?”

“No, of course not, we have a dog now, a Labrador. My wife told me to bring home some dog biscuits.”
Omi kept munching biscuits on the way to Suakholi, where we stopped for tea and more biscuits. “Do we go home now?” I asked.

“Just a little further,” he urged. “Don’t you want to see the phosphate mines?”

I said I had no particular interest in phosphate mines, but he said we were sure to see some pheasants along the way, and so I let him talk me into an extension of the drive. A little way after Suakholi we took a turning to the right, and continued along a rough dirt road which was obviously resented by the springs of Omi’s new car. We passed the phosphate mines, which appeared to have been shut down and continued through a patch of mixed forest in the general direction of the next mountain.

“This is not the way home,” I remarked.

“There’s a forest rest house around the next bend,” said Omi. “Maybe the chowkidar can prepare some lunch for us.”

There was indeed a rest house around the bend, but it looked as though it hadn’t been occupied for years. Most of the roof was missing. A wild cat spat at us from a broken wall. There was no sign of chowkidar or any other human being.

“We’d better go back,” said Omi. We shared the cream crackers and washed them down with mineral water. Omi hadn’t brought any rum along this time, which was just as well. He hadn’t brought enough petrol, either. We hadn’t gone very far when the over-taxed car spluttered to a stop.

“We should have turned back from Suakholi,” he said accusingly, as though it was all my fault.

“Well, you might get some in Suakholi,” I said, “Ask a passing truck-driver. I’ll stay here with the car.”

So Omi trudged up to Suakholi, while I settled down in the shade of a whispering pine and enjoyed my afternoon siesta. When I woke up, it was evening and I was feeling hungry. I went to the car and through the window glass saw that there were still some biscuits on the front seat. But Omi had locked all the doors! I returned to the rest house and explored the ruins. There was nothing there that I could eat, except for some wild sorrel growing in the cracks of the building.

Omi came back just as it was getting dark. He’d brought the petrol, but had neglected to bring any food.
On our way back we ate the dog biscuits.

Try them sometime. They are really quite nourishing. And they don’t taste too bad if you’re really hungry.
When Omi’s wife scolded him for not bringing the dog biscuits, all he could say was “Ruskin ate them.”
Bank and borrow Banks are not normally exciting places, except when there’s a bank robbery. But with Omi around there was never a dull moment.

Our small branch is now computerised, but a few years ago it did not have a typewriter. They used to borrow mine. Not every day, but once a year, for a week or two, when their auditors came around.

I had three typewriters — a heavy Godrej, and an old Olympia (which I still use occasionally) and an ancient German machine gifted to me by Mrs Goel, who is Swiss. The bank’s chaprassi would walk down to my place, collect the Godrej, and struggle back up the hill with it. I did not share my Olympia with the bank. But on one occasion, while I was out, the chaprassi took the German machine by mistake and this led to some confusion.

On German typewriter the letter ‘z’ occurs where there is normally a ‘y’ on an English machine, and if you are not used to it, and are typing fast, you are apt to type a certain amount of gibberish. If you want to say ‘you might pick up yellow fever in Zanzibar,’ it could come out ‘Zou might pick up zellow fever in Yanyibar.’ The auditors and my friends at the bank got into many a tangle. Zeros became yeros and even Euros. Japanese yens became zens. Chinese yuans became zuans.

It was after this that the bank was hurriedly computerised.

Omi had left by then. As a last treat he took me along on a nocturnal excursion to see a black panther which, he said, was on the prowl in the vicinity of Barlowganj.

“Black panthers are very rare now,” he told me. “No one has seen one here in over 50 years.”

“Not since General Barlow shot the last one,” I added rather mischievously.

“We’ll go down to Barlowganj tonight,” he said, as enthusiastic as ever. “We’ll sit up for it until dawn.”

“Don’t forget the dog biscuits,” I said. “I get hungry around midnight.”

Biscuits were not required. Mrs Omi gave us a substantial dinner, guaranteed to put me to sleep while Omi sat up looking for his black panther.

“It’s just a big black dog,” she told me. The chowkidar at St George’s school has a Bhotia mastiff. At night it gets mistaken for a panther.”

This wasn’t going to deter Omi from driving us down to the valley and back again, with numerous stops for panther-watching and swigs of rum. The stars looked down from a clear night sky. Omi waxed poetic. “The night has a thousand eyes —”

“Under a Scotsman’s kilt,” I put in.

“Shh... we mustn’t talk too much. We’ll frighten it away.”

“If you see a panther, don’t anther,” I quoted Ogden Nash.

Omi complained that I wasn’t taking the expedition seriously, so I closed my eyes and fell asleep. Presently I was awake again. Omi was shaking me, whispering urgently — “Look, there’s something in those bushes, you can see them moving!”

They were indeed moving, and parted to reveal an elderly villager who’d got up early in order to relieve himself in the great outdoors. He was not pleased at having his privacy disturbed.

“Have you seen a panther?” asked Omi. “Kala Baghera?”

“Baghera yourself,” snapped the villager, who seemed equally at home with Hindi and English. “Can’t have a decent ... in peace. Tourists all over the place.” And he stomped off into the darkness.

We were home before dawn. Mrs Omi gave us a splendid breakfast.

“Did you see anything?” she asked.

“Too many people about,” I said.

“No room left for leopards, black or spotted.”

“We heard it,” insisted Omi.

“I heard it growling in the bushes.”

“How do you know it was a black panther,” asked Mrs Omi. “It may have been spotted.”

“Not only that,” I added, “It was carrying an empty mineral water bottle in lieu of a lota!”