by Ruskin Bond
My Favourite
Nature Stories
Ruskin Bond has been writing for over sixty years, and has now over 120 titles in print—novels, collection of short stories, poetry, essays, anthologies and books for children. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, received the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Award in 1957. He has also received the Padma Shri (1999), the Padma Bhushan (2014) and two awards from Sahitya Akademi—one for his short stories and another for his writings for children. In 2012, the Delhi government gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Born in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Shimla, New Delhi and Dehradun. Apart from three years in UK, he has spent all his life in India, and now lives in Mussoorie with his adopted family.
Published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2016
7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj
New Delhi 110002
Copyright © Ruskin Bond 2016
Cover image copyright © Eisfrei/shutterstock.com
The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-81-291-3768-5
First impression 2016
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
Contents
Introduction Ruskin’s Green-World
Among the Maples and Oaks
When Cicadas Chorus
Things I love most
Heaven on Earth
Street of the Red Well
Once You have Lived with Mountains
In the Garden of My Dreams
Ferns in Foliage
Birds on Tap
In Defence of Snakes
A Marriage of the Waters
Best of All Windows
The Gentle Nights Befriend Me
A House Called Ivanhoe
Growing Up with Trees
A Boy and a River
My Trees in the Himalayas
Death of the Trees
When the Monsoon Breaks
Rosebud: A Fragment
To the End of Our Days
Introduction Ruskin’s Green-World
It is good of my long-time publishers, Rupa, to bring out this selection of some of my favourite nature pieces on my 82nd birthday.
I have been writing stories, sketches, poems and novels for over 65 years, and the greatest pleasure has come from writing about the natural world in my vicinity—wherever I may have been living.
When I came to live in Mussoorie just over fifty years ago, I lived in Maplewood Lodge, a cottage below Wynberg-Allen School. Its windows opened on to a well-forested hillside. So naturally I wrote about the trees, wild flowers and birds and other creatures who lived among them. Then circumstances forced me to move higher up the mountain, and for the last thirty-five years I have lived on the top floor of Ivy Cottage, in Landour Cantonment. Here there are windows too, and they open on to sky, clouds, the Doon valley, and range upon range of mountains. And from this perch on the hillside I feel that I am part of the greater world, mother India as well as the natural world of planet Earth.
Humankind took over the earth from the dinosaurs, who perished due to natural upheavals and dramatic climate changes. We could go the same way, as we have proved to be bad tenants with little or no regard for the natural world that we have inherited.
But I do not despair. Dawn gives way to daybreak and daybreak to sunrise. And when the sun bursts through my windows and streams across my little room, I look forward to another great day on the planet Earth. We must cherish each day as though it is our last.
Some of these pieces have appeared before in magazines or newspapers. A few are recent. Several have not been published between book covers.
I dedicate this book to all who cherish the green world of India, its forests, fields, streams and sacred rivers. Nature sustains us. Let us not do away with our natural inheritance.
Ruskin Bond
Among the Maples and Oaks
It isn’t many years since I left Maplewood, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the cottage has disappeared. Already, during my last months there, the trees were being cut and the new road was being blasted out of the Mountain. It would pass just below the old cottage. There were (as far as I know) no plans to blow up the house; but it was already shaky and full of cracks, and a few tremors, such as those produced by passing trucks, drilling machines and bulldozers, would soon bring the cottage to the ground.
If it has gone, don’t write and tell me: I’d rather not know.
When I moved in, it had been nestling there among the oaks for over seventy years. It had become a part of the forest. Birds nestled in the eaves; beetles burrowed in the woodwork. Some denizens remained, even during my residence. And I was there—how long? Eight, nine years, I’m not sure; it was a timeless sort of place. Even the rent was paid only once a year, at a time of my choosing.
I first saw the cottage in late spring, when the surrounding forest was at its best—the oaks and maples in new leaf, the oak leaves a pale green, the maple leaves red and gold and bronze; this is the Himalayan maple, quite different from the North American maple; only the winged seed-pods are similar, twisting and turning in the breeze as they fall to the ground, so that the Garhwalis call it the Butterfly Tree.
There was one very tall, very old maple above the cottage, and this was probably the tree that gave the house its name. A portion of it was blackened where it had been struck by lightning, but the rest of it lived on; a favourite haunt of woodpeckers: the ancient peeling bark seemed to harbour any number of tiny insects, and the woodpeckers would be tapping away all day. A steep path ran down to the cottage. During heavy rain, it would become a watercourse and the earth would be washed away to leave it very stony and uneven. I first took this path to see Miss Mackenzie, an impoverished old lady who lived in two small rooms on the ground floor and who was acting on behalf of the owner. It was she who told me that the cottage was to-let provided she could remain in the portion downstairs.
Actually, the path ran straight across a landing and up to the front door of the first floor. It was the ground floor that was tucked away in the shadow of the hill; it was reached by a flight of steps, which also took the rush of water when the path was in flood.
Miss Mackenzie was eighty-six. I helped her up the steps and she opened the door for me. It led into an L-shaped room. There were two large windows, and when I pushed the first of these open, the forest seemed to rush upon me. From below, from the ravine, the deep-throated song of the whistling thrush burst upon me.
I told Miss Mackenzie I would take the place. She grew excited; it must have been lonely for her during the past several years, with most of the cottage lying empty, and only her old bearer and a mongrel dog for company. Her own house had been mortgaged to a moneylender. Her brothers and sisters were long dead.
I told her I would move in soon: my books were still in Delhi. She gave me the keys and I left a cheque with her. It was all done on an impulse—the decision to give up my job in Delhi, find a cheap house in a hill-station, and return to freelance writing. It was a dream I’d had for some time; lack of m
oney had made it difficult to realize. But then, I knew that if I was going to wait for money to come, I might have to wait until I was old and grey and full of sleep. I was thirty-five—still young enough to take a few risks. If the dream was to become reality, this was the time to do something about it.
I don’t know what led me to Maplewood; it was the first place I saw, and I did not bother to see any others. The location was far from being ideal. It faced east, and stood in the shadow of the Balahissar Hill; so that while it received the early morning sun, it went without the evening sun.
There was no view of the snows and no view of the plains. In front stood Burnt Hill. But the forest below the cottage seemed full of possibilities, and the windows opening on to it probably decided the issue. In my romantic frame of my mind, I was susceptible to magic casements opening wide. I would make a window-seat and lie there on a summer’s day, writing lyric poetry…
But long before that could happen I was opening tins of sardines and sharing them with Miss Mackenzie. And then Prem came along. And there were others, like Binya. I went away at times, but returned as soon as possible. Once you have lived with mountains, there is no escape. You belong to them.
When Cicadas Chorus
The barbet is one of those birds which are heard more often than they are seen. Summer visitors to Shimla, Mussoorie and other north-Indian hill resorts will be familiar with its monotonous, far-reaching call: ‘pee-ho, pee-ho’. It keeps to the tops of high trees, where it is not easily distinguished from the foliage.
Barbets love listening to their own voices, and often two or three birds answer each other from different trees, each trying to outdo the other in a shrill shouting match. Although most birds are noisy during the mating season, barbets are noisy all the year round.
There are some who like the barbet’s call and consider it both striking and pleasant. Others don’t like it and simply consider it striking.
Up here in the Garhwal Himalayas, there is a legend that the bird is the reincarnation of a moneylender who died of grief at the unjust termination of a law-suit. Eternally his plaintive cries rise to the heaven: ‘unn-ee-ow, unn-ee-ow’ which means ‘injustice, injustice!’
So the barbet’s call can be interpreted in various ways. To me it always sounds like: ‘pakaro, pakaro!’ or ‘catch him, catch him!’ And of course there’s a story about how a barbet helped to catch a thief.
Now that the monsoon rains are here, the occasional snake, flooded out of its home, makes its appearance on the road or hillsides.
Most of the snakes up here are perfectly harmless, carrying only enough venom to paralyse their natural prey, which consists of frogs, rats, earthworms, small birds and smaller snakes.
Recently, I saw two pretty green and brown snakes on the hillside. I have no idea what they are called; I cannot pretend to be an expert on recognising all the denizens of the wild, and never cease to wonder at the sharp-eyed observations of well-known naturalists who can tell a bullfinch from a chaffinch at a distance of 60 metres, or distinguish a pit-viper from a saw-scaled viper in one hurried glance. I suspect some of them are just showing off. The experts, I mean. Snakes do not show off.
However, as regards the snakes on my hillside, I can say with certainty that one is brown and one is green, and personally I prefer the green one.
The postman, who almost trod on it the other day, wanted it killed; but I quoted the sayings of Buddha, Krishna and Confucius, and persuaded him to let it live. In some former incarnation it might well have been related to us, I said. Perhaps an aunt or distant cousin. Although he wasn’t quite convinced, and nor was I, but the conversation gave the snake enough time to slip away. The postman no longer enters at the gate, but leaves my letters in a hole in the wall.
During monsoon, our insect musicians are roused to their greatest activity. At dusk, the air seems to tinkle and murmur to their music. To the shrilling of the grasshopper is added the staccato notes of the crickets, while in the grass and on the trees, a myriad of lesser artists are producing a variety of sounds.
As musicians, the cicadas are a class of their own. All through the monsoon, their screaming chorus rings through the forest. A shower of rain, far from dampening their ardour, only rouses them to a deafening crescendo of effort.
As with most insect musicians, the males do the performing, while the females remain silent. This moved one chauvinist Greek poet to exclaim: ‘Happy the cicadas, for they have voiceless wives!’ To which I would respond by saying: ‘Pity the female cicadas, for they have singing husbands!’
Probably the most familiar and homely of insect singers are the crickets. I won’t attempt to go into detail on how the cricket produces its music, except to say that its louder notes are produced by a rapid vibration of the wings, the right wing usually working over the left, the edge of one acting on the file of the other to produce a shrill, long-sustained note, like a violinist gone mad. Cicadas, on the other hand, use their abdominal muscles to produce their sound.
One of our best-known crickets is a large black fellow who lives underground and rarely comes to earth by day, except when the rains flood him out of his burrow. But when night falls, he sits on his doorstep and pours out his soul in strident song. This troubadour’s name is as impressive as his sound—Brachytrypes portentosus.
The mole-cricket is a genius by itself. Mole-crickets are tillers of the soil. They use their powerful forelimbs for shovelling up the earth and their hard heads for butting into it.
Notwithstanding its earthly occupations, the mole-cricket is sometimes moved to music. But as he repeats his note—a solemn deep-toned chirp (more burp than chirp) about a hundred times a minute—the performance can be monotonous.
The cone-headed katydids are probably the most notable performers. Katydids are trim, slender insects, much in evidence in the fresh green grass of the monsoon. In the fields, their loud shrill notes may be heard by day and night. Sometimes one of them comes into the house and treats us to a sudden outburst of high-pitched fiddling. In a room, it can be quite deafening, and the sound is always most difficult to locate—it seems to come from everywhere!
And finally there are the tree-crickets, a band of willing artistes who commence their performance at dusk. Their sounds are familiar, but it is difficult to see the musicians. A tap on the bush upon which one of them sits will bring an immediate end to the performance.
I wish the tree-crickets would duet, in the manner of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald. But it is only the males who sing, in order to please their consorts.
And speaking of Nelson Eddy, this is the 100th anniversary of his birth. A fine baritone, unjustly neglected. When I listen to his songs (on tape or disk), the crickets and cicadas maintain a respectful silence. I’m sure they are listening.
Things I love most
Sea-shells. They are among my earliest memories. I was five years old, walking barefoot along the golden sands of a Kathiawar beach, collecting shells and cowries and taking them home to fill up an old trunk. Some of these shells have remained with me through the years. I still have one which I place against my ear to listen to the distant music of the Arabian Sea.
A jackfruit tree. It stood outside my grandfather’s house in Dehra Dun: it was easy to climb and generous with its shade and in its trunk was a large hole where I kept my marbles, sweets, prohibited books and other treasures.
I have always liked the smell of certain leaves, perhaps even more than the scent of flowers. Crushed geranium and chrysanthemum leaves, mint and myrtle, lime and neem trees after the rain, and the leaves of ginger, marigolds and nasturtiums.
Of course, there were other smells which as a boy I especially liked—the smells of pillau and kofta, curry, hot jalebis, roast chicken and fried prawns. But these are smells loved most by gourmets (and most boys) and are not as personal as the smell of leaves and grass.
I have always liked trains and railway stations I like eating at railway stations—hot gram, peanut, puris, oranges.
As a boy, I travelled to Shimla on a little train that crawls round and through the mountains. In March, the Dowers on the rhododendron trees provided splashes of red against the dark green of the hills. Sometimes there would be snow on the ground to add to the contrast.
What else do I love and remember of the hills? Smells again. The smells of fallen pine needles, cow-dung smoke, spring, rain, bruised grass, the pure cold water of mountain streams, the depth and blue-ness of the sky.
In the hills, I have loved forests. In the plains, I have loved single trees. A lone tree on a wide, flat plain—even if it is a thin, crooked, nondescript tree—gains beauty and nobility from its isolation, from the precarious nature of its existence.
‘Of course, I have had my favourites among trees. The banyan, with its great branches spreading to form roots and intricate passageways. The peepul with its beautiful heart-shaped leaves catching the breeze and fluttering even on the stillest of days. It is always cool under a peepul. The Jacaranda and golmohour bursting into blossom with the coming of summer. The cherries, peaches and apricots flowering in the hills—the tall, handsome chestnuts and the whispering deodars.
Deodars have often inspired me to poetry. One day I wrote:
Trees of God, we call them. Planted there when the world was young.
The first trees
Their fingers pointing to the stars,
Older than the cedars of Lebanon.
Several of these trees were cut down recently and I was furious
They cut them down last spring
With quick and efficient tools,
The sap was rising still.
The trees bled,
Slaughtered
To make furniture for tools.
And which flower is most redolent of India? Not for me the lotus or the water-lily but the simple marigold, fresh, golden, dew-drenched, kissed by the morning sun.