The Jungle Omnibus

by Ruskin Bond

  ‘Let’s all go up for a holiday,’ said the Memsahib. ‘We can spend a week in a boarding house. All of us need a change.’

  A few days later the house was locked up, and the family piled into the old car and drove off to the hills.

  I had the grounds to myself.

  The dog had gone too, and the gardener spent all day dozing in his hammock. There was no one around to trouble me.

  ‘We’ve got the whole place to ourselves,’ I told Slow.

  ‘Yes, but what good is that? With everyone gone, there are no throwaways, giveaways and takeaways!’

  ‘We’ll have to try the house next door.’

  ‘And be driven off by the other crows? That’s not our territory, you know. We can go across to help them, or to ask for their help, but we’re not supposed to take their pickings. It just isn’t cricket, old boy.’

  We could have tried the bazaar or the railway station, where there is always a lot of rubbish to be found, but there is also a lot of competition in those places. The station crows are gangsters. The bazaar crows are bullies. Slow and I had grown soft. We’d have been no match for the bad boys.

  ‘I’ve just realized how much we depend on humans,’ I said.

  ‘We could go back to living in the jungle,’ said Slow.

  ‘No, that would be too much like hard work. We’d be living on wild fruit most of the time. Besides, the jungle crows won’t have anything to do with us now. Ever since we took up with humans, we became the outcasts of the bird world.’

  ‘That means we’re almost human.’

  ‘You might say we have all their vices and none of their virtues.’

  ‘Just a different set of values, old boy.’

  ‘Like eating hens’ eggs instead of crows’ eggs. That’s something in their favour. And while you’re hanging around here waiting for the mangoes to fall, I’m off to locate our humans.’

  Slow’s beak fell open. He looked like—well, a hungry crow.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to follow them up to the hill station? You don’t even know where they are staying.’

  ‘I’ll soon find out,’ I said, and took off for the hills.

  You’d be surprised at how simple it is to be a good detective, if only you put your mind to it. Of course, if Ellery Queen had been able to fly, he wouldn’t have required fifteen chapters and his father’s assistance to crack a case.

  Swooping low over the hill station, it wasn’t long before I spotted my humans’ old car. It was parked outside a boarding house called Climber’s Rest. I hadn’t seen anyone climbing, but dozing in an armchair in the garden was my favourite human.

  I perched on top of a colourful umbrella and waited for Junior Sahib to wake up. I decided it would be rather inconsiderate of me to disturb his sleep, so I waited patiently on the brolly, looking at him with one eye and keeping one eye on the house. He stirred uneasily, as though he’d suddenly had a bad dream; then he opened his eyes. I must have been the first thing he saw.

  ‘Good morning,’ I cawed in a friendly tone—always ready to forgive and forget, that’s Speedy!

  He leapt out of the armchair and ran into the house, hollering at the top of his voice.

  I supposed he hadn’t been able to contain his delight at seeing me again. Humans can be funny that way. They’ll hate you one day and love you the next.

  Well, Junior Sahib ran all over the boarding house screaming: ‘It’s that crow, it’s that crow! He’s following me everywhere!’

  Various people, including the family, ran outside to see what the commotion was about, and I thought it would be better to make myself scarce. So I flew to the top of a spruce tree and stayed very still and quiet.

  ‘Crow! What crow?’ said the Colonel.

  ‘Our crow!’ cried Junior Sahib. ‘The one that persecutes me. I was dreaming of it just now, and when I opened my eyes, there it was, on the garden umbrella!’

  ‘There’s nothing there now,’ said the Memsahib. ‘You probably hadn’t woken up completely.’

  ‘He is having illusions again,’ said the boy.

  ‘Delusions,’ corrected the Colonel.

  ‘Now look here,’ said the Memsahib, ‘you’ll have to pull yourself together. You’ll take leave of your senses if you don’t.’

  ‘I tell you, it’s here!’ sobbed Junior Sahib. ‘It’s following me everywhere.’

  ‘It’s grown fond of Uncle,’ said the boy. ‘And it seems Uncle can’t live without crows.’

  Junior Sahib looked up with a wild glint in his eye.

  ‘That’s it!’ he cried. ‘I can’t live without them. That’s the answer to my problem. I don’t hate crows—I love them!’

  Everyone just stood around goggling at Junior Sahib.

  ‘I’m feeling fine now,’ he carried on. ‘What a difference it makes if you can just do the opposite of what you’ve been doing before! I thought I hated crows. But all the time I really loved them!’ And flapping his arms, and trying to caw like a crow, he went prancing about the garden.

  ‘Now he thinks he’s a crow,’ said the boy. ‘Is he still having delusions?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Memsahib. ‘Delusions of grandeur.’

  After that, the family decided that there was no point in staying on in the hill station any longer. Junior Sahib had completed his rest cure. And even if he was the only one who believed himself cured, that was all right, because after all he was the one who mattered… If you’re feeling fine, can there be anything wrong with you?

  No sooner was everyone back in the bungalow than Junior Sahib took to hopping barefoot on the grass early every morning, all the time scattering food about for the crows. Bread, chappattis, cooked rice, curried eggplants, the Memsahib’s homemade toffee—you name it, we got it!

  Slow and I were the first to help ourselves to these dawn offerings, and soon the other crows had joined us on the lawn. We didn’t mind. Junior Sahib brought enough for everyone.

  ‘We ought to honour him in some way,’ said Slow.

  ‘Yes, why not?’ said I. ‘There was someone else, hundreds of years ago, who fed the birds. They followed him wherever he went.’

  ‘That’s right. They made him a saint. But as far as I know, he didn’t feed any crows. At least, you don’t see any crows in the pictures—just sparrows and robins and wagtails.’

  ‘Small fry. Our human is dedicated exclusively to crows. Do you realize that, Slow?’

  ‘Sure. We ought to make him the patron saint of crows. What do you say, fellows?’

  ‘Caw, caw, caw!’ All the crows were in agreement.

  ‘St Corvus!’ said Slow as Junior Sahib emerged from the house, laden with good things to eat.

  ‘Corvus, corvus, corvus!’ we cried.

  And what a pretty picture he made—a crow eating from his hand, another perched on his shoulder, and about a dozen of us on the grass, forming a respectful ring around him.

  From persecutor to protector; from beastliness to saintliness. And sometimes it can be the other way round: you never know with humans!

  COPPERFIELD IN THE JUNGLE

  randfather never hunted wild animals; he could not understand the pleasure some people obtained from killing the creatures of our forests. Birds and animals, he felt, had as much right to live as humans. There was some justification in killing for food—most animals did—but none at all in killing just for the fun of it.

  At the age of twelve, I did not have the same high principles as Grandfather. Nevertheless, I disliked anything to do with shikar or hunting. I found it terribly boring.

  Uncle Henry and some of his sporting friends once took me on a shikar expedition into the Terai forests of the Siwaliks. The prospect of a whole week in the jungle as camp follower to several adults with guns filled me with dismay. I knew that long, weary hours would be spent tramping behind these tall, professional-looking huntsmen. They could only speak in terms of bagging this tiger or that wild elephant, when all they ever got, if they were
lucky, was a wild hare or a partridge. Tigers and excitement, it seemed, came only to Jim Corbett.

  This particular expedition proved to be different from others. There were four men with guns, and at the end of the week, all that they had shot were two miserable, underweight wild fowls. But I managed, on our second day in the jungle, to be left behind at the rest house. And, in the course of a morning’s exploration of the old bungalow, I discovered a shelf of books half-hidden in a corner of the back veranda.

  Who had left them there? A literary forest officer? A memsahib who had been bored by her husband’s camp-fire boasting? Or someone who had no interest in the ‘manly’ sport of slaughtering wild animals and had brought his library along to pass the time?

  Or possibly the poor fellow had gone into the jungle one day, as a gesture towards his more bloodthirsty companions, and been trampled by an elephant, or gored by a wild boar, or (more likely) accidentally shot by one of the shikaris and his sorrowing friends had taken his remains away and left his books behind.

  Anyway, there they were—a shelf of some thirty volumes, obviously untouched for many years. I wiped the thick dust off the covers and examined the titles. As my reading tastes had not yet formed, I was willing to try anything. The bookshelf was varied in its contents—and my own interests have since remained fairly universal.

  On that fateful day in the forest rest house, I discovered P. G. Wodehouse and read his Love Among the Chickens, an early Ukridge story and still one of my favourites. By the time the perspiring hunters came home late in the evening, with their spent cartridges and lame excuses, I had made a start with M.R. James’s Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, which had me hooked on ghost stories for the rest of my life. It kept me awake most of the night, until the oil in the kerosene lamp had finished.

  Next morning, fresh and optimistic again, the shikaris set out for a different area, where they hoped to ‘bag a tiger’. They had employed a party of villagers to beat the jungle, and all day I could hear their drums throbbing in the distance. This did not prevent me from finishing M.R. James or discovering a book called A Naturalist on the Prowl by Edward Hamilton Aitken.

  My concentration was disturbed only once, when I looked up and saw a spotted deer crossing the open clearing in front of the bungalow. The deer disappeared among the sal trees, and I returned to my book.

  Dusk had fallen when I heard the party returning from the hunt. The great men were talking loudly and seemed excited. Perhaps they had got their tiger. I put down my book and came out to meet them.

  ‘Did you shoot the tiger?’ I asked excitedly.

  ‘No, my boy,’ said Uncle Henry. ‘I think we’ll bag it tomorrow. But you should have been with us—we saw a spotted deer!’

  There were three days left and I knew I would never get through the entire bookshelf. So I chose David Copperfield—my first encounter with Dickens—and settled down on the veranda armchair to make the acquaintance of Mr Micawber and his family, Aunt Betsy Trotwood, Mr Dick, Peggotty, and a host of other larger-than-life people. I think it would be true to say that David Copperfield set me off on the road to literature; I identified with young David and wanted to grow up to be a writer like him.

  But on my second day with the book an event occurred which disturbed my reading for a little while.

  I had noticed, on the previous day, that a number of stray dogs—belonging to watchmen, villagers and forest guards—always hung about the house, waiting for scraps of food to be thrown away. It was ten o’clock in the morning, a time when wild animals seldom come into the open, when I heard a sudden yelp in the clearing. Looking up, I saw a large leopard making off into the jungle with one of the dogs held in its jaws. The leopard had either been driven towards the house by the beaters, or had watched the party leave the bungalow and decided to help itself to a meal.

  There was no one else about at the time. Since the dog was obviously dead within seconds of being seized, and the leopard had disappeared, I saw no point in raising an alarm which would have interrupted my reading. So I returned to David Copperfield.

  It was getting late when the shikaris returned. They were dirty, sweaty, and as usual, disappointed. Next day we were to return to the city, and none of the hunters had anything to show for a week in the jungle. Swear words punctuated their conversation.

  ‘No game left in these…jungles,’ said the leading member of the party, famed for once having shot two man-eating tigers and a basking crocodile in rapid succession.

  ‘It’s this beastly weather,’ said Uncle Henry. ‘No rain for months.’

  ‘I saw a leopard this morning,’ I said modestly.

  But no one took me seriously. ‘Did you really?’ said the leading hunter, glancing at the book beside me. ‘Young Master Copperfield says he saw a leopard!’

  ‘Too imaginative for his age,’ said Uncle Henry. ‘Comes from reading too much, I suppose.’

  ‘If you were to get out of the house and into the jungle,’ said the third member, ‘you might really see a leopard! Don’t know what young chaps are coming to these days.’

  I went to bed early and left them to their tales of the ‘good old days’ when rhinos, cheetahs, and possibly even the legendary phoenix were still available for slaughter.

  Next day the camp broke up and we went our different ways. I was still only half-way through David Copperfield, but I saw no reason why it should be left behind to gather dust for another thirty years, and so I took it home with me. I have it still, a reminder of how I failed as a shikari but launched myself on a literary career.

  AN ISLAND OF TREES

  oki and her grandmother were sitting on a string cot in the shade of an old jackfruit tree, and Grandmother was talking about her father and his great love for trees and flowers.

  Grandmother said, ‘I was never able to get over the feeling that plants and trees loved my father with as much tenderness as he loved them. I was sitting beside him on the veranda steps one morning, when I noticed the tendril of a creeping vine that was trailing near my feet. As we sat there in the soft winter sunshine, I saw the tendril moving very slowly away from me and towards my father. Twenty minutes later, it had crossed the veranda steps and was touching my father’s feet.

  ‘There is probably a scientific explanation for the plant’s behaviour—something to do with light and warmth—but I like to think that it moved simply because it was fond of my father.

  ‘One felt like drawing close to him. Sometimes when I sat alone beneath a tree, I would feel a little lonely or lost. But as soon as my father joined me, the garden would become a happy place, the tree itself more friendly.

  ‘Your great-grandfather had served many years in the Indian Forest Service and so it was natural that he should know, understand and like trees. On his retirement he built this bungalow on the outskirts of the town, planting the trees that you see around it now: limes, mangoes, oranges and guavas; also jacaranda and laburnum and the Persian lilac. In our valley, given the chance, plants and trees grow tall and strong.

  ‘Of course there were other trees here before the house was built, including an old peepul which had forced its way through the walls of an old, abandoned temple, knocking the bricks down with its vigorous growth. Peepul trees are great show-offs. Even when there is no breeze, their broad-chested, slim-waisted leaves will spin like tops, determined to attract your attention and invite you into the shade.’

  ‘What happened to the temple?’ asked Koki.

  ‘Well, my mother wanted the peepul tree cut down, but my father said he would save both the tree and the temple. So he rebuilt the temple around the tree, and there it is, on the other side of the wall. The tree protects the temple, and the temple protects the tree. People from these parts feel there’s a friendly tree spirit dwelling there, and they bring offerings of flowers and leave them at the base of the tree.

  ‘Did you know that I used to climb trees when I was a girl? This jackfruit was my favourite tree, it’s quite easy to climb. You climb it
too, don’t you?

  ‘Another good tree was the banyan behind the house. Its spreading branches, which hung to the ground and took root again, formed a number of twisting passageways. The tree was older than the house, older than my grandparents. I could hide in its branches, behind a screen of thick green leaves, and spy on the world below.

  ‘Yes, the banyan tree was a world in itself, populated with small animals and large insects. While the leaves were still pink and tender, they would be visited by the delicate map butterfly, who left her eggs to their care.

  ‘The “honey” on the leaves—a sweet, sticky smear—also attracted the Utile striped squirrels, who soon grew used to having me in the tree. They became quite bold, accepting food from my hand.

  ‘At night the tree was visited by the hawk-cuckoo. Its shrill nagging cry kept us awake on hot summer nights. We call the bird “papiha”, which means “rain is coming!” But, Father said that according to Englishmen living in India, it seemed to be shouting up and up the scale: “Oh dear, oh dear! How very hot it’s getting! We feel it…we feel it…we feel it!”

  ‘Well, the banyan has long since gone. It came down in a storm, aerial roots and all. Father planted another, but as you can see, it’s still quite a young tree. The banyan takes a long time to grow.

  ‘Your great-grandfather wasn’t content with planting trees in the garden or near the house. During the monsoons he would walk into the scrubland and beyond the riverbed, armed with cuttings and saplings, and he would plant them out there, hoping to create a forest. But grazing cattle always finished them off.

  ‘‘‘No one ever goes there,” I said. “Who will see your forest?”