by Ruskin Bond
Grandfather bathed fairly often, but usually got back into his gardening clothes immediately after the bath. During meals, ladybugs or caterpillars would sometimes walk off his shirt sleeves and wander about on the tablecloth, and this always annoyed Granny.
Granny did not mind trees, but she preferred her flower garden and was always writing letters ordering seeds and seed catalogues. Grandfather helped her with the gardening, not because he was crazy about flower gardens, but because he liked watching butterflies. ‘There’s only one way to attract butterflies,’ he said, ‘and that’s to grow flowers for them. It’s a rule of life,’ he went on. ‘If there’s someone or something you really want, then you must prepare the ground well.’
Grandfather wasn’t content with planting trees just in our compound. During the rains, we would walk into the jungle beyond the riverbed, armed with cuttings and saplings, which we would plant in the forest.
‘But no one ever comes here!’ I protested the first time we did this. ‘Who is going to see them?’
‘We’re not planting them simply to improve the view,’ said Grandfather. ‘We’re planting for the forest—for the birds and animals who live here and need more food and shelter.
‘Of course, people need trees too,’ he added. ‘For keeping the desert away, for attracting rain, for preventing the banks of rivers from being washed away, for fruit and flower, leaf and seed—yes, and for timber too. But people are cutting down the trees without replacing them. And if we don’t plant a few ourselves, there’ll come a time when the world will be one great desert.’
The image of a world without trees became a sort of nightmare to me—one reason why I shall never want to set foot on the treeless moon—and I helped Grandfather in his tree-planting venture with even greater enthusiasm. While we went about our work, he taught me this poem by George Morris:
Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now.
‘One day the trees will move again,’ said Grandfather. ‘There was a time when trees could walk about like people, but along came an interfering busybody who cast a spell over them, rooting them to one place. They’ve been standing still for thousands of years, but one day they’ll move again. They are always trying to move—see how they reach out with their arms—and some of them, like the banyan tree with its travelling aerial roots, manage to get quite far!’
We found an island, a small rocky island in the middle of a dry riverbed. It was one of those riverbeds, so common in the foothills, which was completely dry in summer but flooded during the monsoon rains. A small mango tree was growing in the middle of the island, and Grandfather said, ‘If a mango can grow here, so can other trees.’
As soon as the rains set in, while the river could still be crossed, we set out with a number of magnolia, laburnum, Persian lilac and coral tree saplings and cuttings, and spent the day planting them on the island.
The monsoon season was the time for rambling about. At every turn there was something new to see. Out of earth and rock and leafless bough, the magic touch of the rain brought life and greenness. You could almost see the broad-leafed vines growing. Plants sprang up in the most unlikely places. A peepul would take root in the ceiling; a mango would sprout on the windowsill. We did not like to remove them, but they had to go to keep the house from falling down.
‘If you want to live in a tree, it’s all right by me,’ said Granny. ‘But I like having a roof over my head, and I’m not going to have my roof brought down by the jungle!’
When World War II came, I was sent to a boarding school on a hill station. During the holidays, I went to live in Delhi with my father, who was then serving in the Royal Air Force, and he told me that my grandparents had sold the house and gone to England. Two or three years later, I was sent to England and was away from India for several years. But as a young man I was in Dehra again, and after first visiting my grandfather’s old house (it hadn’t changed much), I walked out of town towards the riverbed.
It was February. And as I looked across the dry watercourse, my eye was immediately caught by the spectacular red plumes of the coral blossom. In contrast with the dry riverbed, the island was a small green paradise. I walked across to the trees, over the fallen petals of sweet-scented magnolia blossoms, and noticed that a number of squirrels had come to live in the bigger trees. And a koel, or crow-pheasant, challenged me with a mellow ‘who-are-you, who-are-you’.
But the trees seemed to know me. They whispered among themselves and beckoned me nearer. And looking around, I noticed that other small trees and wild plants and grasses had sprung up under the protection of the trees we had planted long ago.
Yes, our trees had multiplied! They were walking again. In one small corner of the world, Grandfather’s dream had come true, and the trees were on the march!
The Garden of Memories
Sitting in the sun on a winter’s afternoon, feeling my age just a little, I began reminiscing about my boyhood in the Dehra of long ago, and found myself missing the old times—friends of my youth, my Granny, our neighbours, interesting characters in our small town, and, of course, my eccentric relative, the dashing young Uncle Ken!
Yes, Dehra was a small town then—uncluttered, uncrowded, with quiet lanes and pretty gardens and shady orchards.
The only time in my life that I was fortunate enough to live in a house with a real garden—as opposed to a backyard or balcony or windswept veranda—was during those three years when I spent my winter holidays (December to March) in Granny’s bungalow on the Old Survey Road.
The best months were February and March, when the garden was heavy with the scent of sweet peas, the flower beds a many-coloured quilt of phlox, antirrhinum, larkspur, petunia and Californian poppy. I loved the bright yellows of the Californian poppies, the soft pinks of our own Indian poppies, the subtle perfume of petunias and snapdragons and, above all, the delicious, overpowering scent of the massed sweet peas which grew taller than me.
Flowers made a sensualist of me. They taught me the delight of smell, colour and touch—yes, touch too, for to press a rose to one’s lips is very like a gentle, hesitant, exploratory kiss . . .
Granny decided what flowers should be sown, and where. Dukhi, the gardener, did the digging and weeding, sowing and transplanting. He was a skinny, taciturn old man, who had begun to resemble the weeds he flung away. He did not mind answering my questions, but never did he allow our brief conversations to interfere with his work. Most of the time he was to be found on his haunches, hoeing and weeding with a khurpi. He would throw out the smaller marigolds because he said Granny did not care for them. I felt sorry for these colourful little discards, collected them and transplanted them to a little garden patch of my own at the back of the house, near the garden wall.
Another so-called weed that I liked was a little purple flower that grew in clusters all over Dehra, on any bit of wasteland, in ditches, on canal banks. It flowered from late winter into early summer, and it will be growing in the valley and beyond long after gardens have become obsolete, as indeed they must, considering the rapid spread of urban clutter. It brightens up fields and roads where you least expect a little colour. I have since learnt that it is called Ageratum, and that it is actually prized as a garden flower in Europe, where it is described as ‘Blue Mink’ in the seed catalogues. Here it isn’t blue but purple, and it grows all the way from Rajpur (just above Dehra) to the outskirts of Meerut; then it disappears.
Other garden outcasts include the lantana bush, an attractive wayside shrub, the thorn apple, various thistles, daisies and dandelions. But both Granny and Dukhi had declared a war on weeds, and many of these commoners had to exist outside the confines of the garden. Like slum children, they survived rather well in ditches and on the roadside, while their more pampered fellow citizens were prone to leaf diseases and parasitic infections of various kinds.
The veranda was a place wh
ere Granny herself could potter about, attending to various ferns, potted palms and colourful geraniums. She averred that geraniums kept snakes away, although she never said why. As far as I know, snakes don’t have a great sense of smell.
One day I saw a snake curled up at the bottom of the veranda steps. When it saw me, or became aware of my footsteps, it uncoiled itself and slithered away. I told Granny about it and observed that it did not seem to be bothered by the geraniums.
‘Ah,’ said Granny. ‘But for those geraniums, the snake would have entered the house!’ There was no arguing with Granny. Or with Uncle Ken, when he was at his most pontifical.
One day, while walking near the canal bank, we came upon a green grass snake holding a frog in its mouth. The frog was half in, half out, and with the help of my hockey stick I made the snake disgorge the unfortunate creature. It hopped away, none the worse for its adventure.
I felt quite pleased with myself. ‘Is this what it feels like to be god?’ I mused aloud.
‘No,’ said Uncle Ken. ‘God would have let the snake finish its lunch.’
Uncle Ken was one of those people who went through life without having to do much, although a great deal seemed to happen around him. He acted as a sort of catalyst for events that involved the family, friends, neighbours, the town itself! He believed in the fruits of hard work: other people’s hard work.
Ken was good looking as a boy, and his sisters doted on him. He took full advantage of their devotion, and as the girls grew up and married, Ken took it for granted that they and their husbands would continue to look after his welfare. You could say he was the originator of the welfare state: his own.
I’ll say this for Uncle Ken, he had a large fund of curiosity in his nature and he loved to explore the town we lived in, and any other town or city where he might happen to find himself. With one sister settled in Lucknow, another in Ranchi, a third in Bhopal, a fourth in Pondicherry, and a fifth in Barrackpore, Uncle Ken managed to see a cross section of India by dividing his time between all his sisters and their long-suffering husbands.
Uncle Ken liked to walk. Occasionally he borrowed my bicycle, but he had a tendency to veer off the main road and into ditches and other obstacles. After a collision with a bullock cart, in which he tore his trousers and damaged the handlebar of my bicycle, he concluded that walking was the best way of getting around Dehra.
Uncle Ken dressed quite smartly for a man of no particular occupation. He had a blue-striped blazer and a red-striped blazer; he usually wore white or off-white trousers, immaculately pressed (by Granny). He was the delight of shoeshine boys, for he would always have his shoes polished. Summers he wore a straw hat, telling everyone he had worn it for the Varsity Boat Race, while rowing for Oxford (he hadn’t been to England, let alone Oxford); winters, he wore one of Grandfather’s old felt hats. He seldom went bareheaded. At thirty he was almost completely bald, prompting Aunt Mabel to remark, ‘Well, Ken, you must be grateful for small mercies. At least you’ll never have bats getting entangled in your hair.’
Thanks to all his walking, Uncle Ken had a good digestion, which kept pace with a hearty appetite. Our walks would be punctuated by short stops at chaat shops, sweet shops, fruit stalls, confectioners, small bakeries and other eateries.
‘Have you brought any pocket money along?’ he would ask, for he was usually broke.
‘Granny gave me five rupees.’
‘We’ll try some rasgullas, then.’
And the rasgullas would be followed by gulab jamuns until my five rupees were finished. Uncle Ken received a small allowance from Granny, but he used it on clothes, preferring to spend my pocket money on perishables such as ice creams, kulfis and Indian sweets.
On one occasion, when neither of us had any money, Uncle Ken decided to venture into a sugar cane field on the outskirts of the town. He had broken off a stick of cane and was busy chewing on it, when the owner of the field spotted us and let out a volley of imprecations. We fled from the field, with the irate farmer giving chase. I could run faster than Uncle Ken, and did so. The farmer would have caught up with Uncle Ken if the latter’s hat hadn’t blown off, causing a diversion. The farmer picked up the hat, examined it, seemed to fancy it, and put it on. Several small boys clapped and cheered. The farmer marched off, wearing the hat, and Uncle Ken wisely decided against making any attempt to retrieve it.
‘I’ll get another one,’ he said philosophically.
He wore a pith helmet, or sola topi, for the next few days, as he thought it would protect him from sticks and stones. For a while he harboured a paranoia that all the sugar cane farmers in the valley were looking for him, to avenge his foray into their fields. But after sometime he discarded the topi because, according to him, it interfered with his good looks.
*
Granny grew the best sweet peas in Dehra. But she never entered them at the Annual Flower Show held every year in the second week of March. She did not grow flowers to win prizes, she said; she grew them to please the spirit of Grandfather, who still hovered about the house and grounds he’d built thirty years earlier.
Miss Kellner, Granny’s crippled but valued tenant, said the flowers were grown to attract beautiful butterflies, and she was right. In early summer, swarms of butterflies flitted about the garden.
Uncle Ken had no compunction about winning prizes, even though he did nothing to deserve them. Without telling anyone, he submitted a large display of Granny’s sweet peas for the flower show, and when the prizes were announced, lo and behold! Uncle Ken had been awarded first prize for his magnificent display of sweet peas.
Granny refused to speak to him for several days.
Uncle Ken had been hoping for a cash prize, but they gave him a flower vase. He told me it was a Ming vase. But it looked more like Meerut to me. He offered it to Granny, hoping to propitiate her, but still displeased with him, she gave it to Mr Khastgir, the artist next door, who kept his paintbrushes in it.
Although I was sometimes a stubborn and unruly boy (my hero was Richmal Crompton’s ‘William’), I got on well with old ladies, especially those who, like Miss Kellner, were fond of offering me chocolates, marzipans, soft nankhatai biscuits (made at Yusuf’s bakery in the Dilaram Bazaar), and pieces of crystallized ginger. Miss Kellner couldn’t walk—had never walked—and so she could only admire the garden from a distance, but it was from her that I learnt the names of many flowers, trees, birds and even butterflies.
Uncle Ken wasn’t any good at names, but he wanted to catch a rare butterfly. He said he could make a fortune if he caught a leaf butterfly called the Purple Emperor. He equipped himself with a butterfly net, a bottle of ether, and a cabinet for mounting his trophies; he then prowled all over the grounds, making frequent forays at anything that flew. He caught several common species—Red Admirals, a Tortoiseshell, a Painted Lady, even the occasional dragonfly—but the high-flying Purple Emperor and other exotics eluded him, as did the fortune he was always aspiring to make.
Eventually he caught an angry wasp, which stung him through the netting. Chased by its fellow wasps, he took refuge in the lily pond and emerged sometime later draped in lilies and water weeds.
After this, Uncle Ken retired from the butterfly business, insisting that tiger hunting was safer.
Coming Soon in Puffin
Rusty and the Magic Mountain
Ruskin Bond
‘If you go looking for adventure, you will find it’
Rusty and his friends Pitambar and Popat find adventure in no small measure when they set out to climb a mysterious mountain around which legend and superstition has grown over the years. On the way they shelter in a haunted rest house, encounter a tiger, and experience a hilarious mule ride which takes them to the palace of a mad Rani who presides over a murder of crows. There are other surprises in store for the boys—a beautiful but mysterious princess, a colony of dwarfs and a wonderful musical stone!
Veteran author Ruskin Bond returns with a brand new Rusty adventure afte
r more than a decade. A rollicking tale of humour and enchantment, Rusty and the Magic Mountain will win the much-loved character of Rusty a whole new band of followers.
THE BEGINNING
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This collection published 2008
Copyright © Ruskin Bond, 2008
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Aparajita Ninan
ISBN: 978-0-143-33375-3
This digital edition published in 2015.
e-ISBN: 978-8-184-75059-1
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