by Ruskin Bond
‘And what is your philosophy?’ I asked my sabzi-wala.
‘You have asked me this before, sir,’ he said, as he chose a bunch of fresh greens for me.
‘Yes, but what is your philosophy today?’
‘The same as it was yesterday. Anything that helps me find a good customer.’
‘My money will make you happy?’
‘Only if my palak makes you happy and you come back for more,’ he said and sent me on my way.
‘Finish every day and be done with it,’ wrote Emerson. ‘You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt, crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.’
But to get past our blunders, is it enough to forget? I’m not sure we can ever forget unless we remember, and accept that we were wrong.
We cannot undo what we have done, but we can earn a second chance.
Unpleasant experiences are best forgotten if one is not to become a bitter old cynic. But I was reminded of one recently, reading a memoir by the veteran journalist Vinod Mehta.
A story of mine that he had carried in Debonair magazine (of which he was the editor in the 1970s) had offended the guardians of our morals. The result was a criminal charge and I found myself under arrest.
No one who is under arrest is likely to enjoy the experience. Warrants make bad reading, except in detective stories. So how does a writer of modest prose and light verse take it? A nervous breakdown would not have been surprising, and did in fact seem likely. But I was saved from one by swallows.
There I was, sitting on a hard bench on the police station veranda, waiting for a couple of friends to arrive and stand bail for me, when I noticed the swallows wheeling in and out of the veranda, busily building a nest in the eaves of the old building. Nothing unusual about that. Swallows love old police stations. But just because it was so usual, so commonplace, I took heart.
The right word is reassuring. That is what we all need when we are in a tight corner—a little reassurance. Like a friendly, familiar face. Or the sleepy drone of a cricket commentary in the background. Or someone whistling cheerfully in a gloomy corridor. Something to let you know that even if things seem to be getting out of hand for a while, the rest of the world is still going on quite normally. And for me, nothing could have been more reassuring than the sight of several swallows—all oblivious to the terrors of the thana—going about their business.
Business as usual. That’s what reassures. It bucked me up tremendously, just watching those little birds.
Presently an official came along, took me into his office, and asked me to fill a form. I said to him, ‘Have you noticed that the swallows are nesting in the veranda?’ He looked at me blankly. He hadn’t noticed the swallows. What were swallows, anyway? Obviously I was deranged—a candidate for an asylum and not for jail.
But I knew then, watching the blank look on his face, that I was equal to the situation—that I was dealing with a human being whose plight was worse than mine, because he would never be able to find reassurance so quickly or so easily.
A night in the mountains:
It is the beginning of summer and I have trekked with a friend to his village in the Garhwal Himalayas. It has taken us a full day, and we are greeted outside the village by a buffalo herd wending its way homeward in the twilight, the gurgle of hookahs and the homely smell of cow-dung smoke.
And after an evening with friends over rum, and a partridge for dinner, we retire to our beds: I to my charpai under a lime tree at the edge of the courtyard. The moon had not yet risen and the cicadas are silent.
I stretch myself out on the charpai under a sky tremendous with stars. And as I close my eyes someone brushes against the lime tree, bruising its leaves, and the good fresh fragrance of lime comes to me on the night air, making the moment memorable for all time.
A morning in the mountains:
I wake to the sound of a loud cicada in the lime tree near my bed. It is just after first light, and through the pattern of the leaves I see the outlines of the mighty Himalayas as they stride away into an immensity of sky. I can see the small house, where I am a guest, standing in the middle of its narrow terraced fields. I can see the other houses, standing a little apart from each other in their own bits of land. I can see trees and bushes, and a path leading up the hill to the deodar forest on the summit.
The tops of the distant mountains suddenly light up as the sun torches the snow peaks. A door bangs open. The house is stirring. A cock belatedly welcomes the daylight and elsewhere in the village dogs are barking. A magpie flies with a whirring sound as it crosses the courtyard and then glides downhill. And suddenly everyone, everything comes to life, and the village is buzzing with activity.
Trekking in the Himalayan foothills back when I could do that, I once walked for kilometres without encountering habitation. I was just scolding myself for not having brought along a water bottle when I came across a patch of green on a rock face. I parted a curtain of tender maidenhair fern and discovered a tiny spring issuing from the rock—nectar for the thirsty traveller.
I stayed there for hours, watching the water descend, drop by drop, into a tiny casement in the rocks. Each drop reflected creation. That same spring, I later discovered, joined other springs to form a swift, tumbling stream, which went cascading down the hill into other streams until, in the plains, it became part of a river. And that river flowed into another mightier river that kilometres later emptied into the ocean.
Be like water, taught Lao-Tzu, philosopher and founder of Taoism. Soft and limpid, it finds its way through, over or under any obstacle, sometimes travelling underground for great distances before emerging into the open. It does not quarrel; it simply moves on.
The whistling thrush is here again, bathing in the rainwater puddle beneath the window. He loves this spot. So now, when there is no rain, I fill the puddle with water, just so that my favourite bird keeps coming.
His bath finished, he perches on a branch of the walnut tree. His glossy blue-black wings glitter in the sunshine. At any moment he will start singing.
Here he goes! He tries out the tune, whistling to himself, Late March. End of winter. and then, confident of the notes, sends his thrilling voice far over the forest.
Late March. End of winter.
The blackest cloud I’ve ever seen squatted over Mussoorie, and then it hailed marbles for half an hour. Nothing like a hailstorm to clear the sky. Even as I write, I see a rainbow forming.
The rain stops and my friend departs. I wish he had stayed, I wish the rain had not stopped so soon.
But then the clouds begin to break up, and the sun strikes the hill on my left. A woman is chopping up sticks. I hear the tinkle of cowbells. Water drips from a leaking drainpipe. And suddenly, clear and pure, the song of the whistling thrush emerges like a dark sweet secret from the depths of the ravine.
A smart young journalist came up to interview me on the occasion of my eightieth birthday, and the release of a new book. (Whether it was the former that was more newsworthy or the latter, I don’t know!) ‘You are eighty and yet you are so active and continue to write. What is the secret of your energy?’ he asked.
‘The secret,’ I told him, ‘is to give in to my lazy nature. Sleep when I want to, eat when I want to, read a lot of books and sit on old walls, dreaming.’
Sitting on walls, apparently doing nothing, has always been my favourite form of inactivity. But for these walls, and the many idle hours I’ve spent upon them, I would not have written even a fraction of the stories, essays and other diversions that I have. It is not the walls themselves that set me off or give me ideas, but a personal view of the world that I receive from sitting there.
Creative idleness, you could call it. A receptivity to the world around me—the breeze, the warmth of the old stone, the lizard on the rock, a raindrop on a blade of grass—these and other impressions impinge upon me as
I sit in that passive, benign condition that makes people smile tolerantly at me as they pass. ‘Eccentric writer,’ they remark to each other, as they drive on, hurrying towards the pot of gold at the end of their personal rainbows. I wave to them as they rush off, and wish them luck.
Sitting inside Mussoorie’s Cambridge Bookshop on a rainy day, watching the world pass by, signing books or pieces of paper for the occasional reader (it is off season), I am reminded of E.M. Forster. Not Forster himself, but his immortal line of exactly two words: ‘Only connect.’
As in life, so in art: only connect. I have always believed that to communicate and be readable is all that a writer should aim for. People ask me why my style is so simple. I think it is because I want my readers to feel what I feel, to see what I see, and big words and big sentences get in the way of this sharing. It is clarity and honesty that I am striving to attain; there can be no lasting connection with my readers without these. And to be clear and open is to be simple.
The heart of the matter is never complicated. Nor do we need too many words to get to it and share it. My theory of writing is that the conception should be as clear as possible, and that words should flow like a stream of clear water. You will, of course, encounter boulders, but you will learn to go over them or around them, so that your flow is unimpeded. If your stream gets too sluggish or muddy, it is better to put aside that particular piece of writing. Go to the source, go to the spring, where the water is purest, your thoughts as clear as the mountain air; where there is no struggle.
Of course some people want literature to be difficult. And there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. Perhaps they hope to be taken more seriously that way. Well, that is not my way, but I wish them loyal readers, too!
And as I write this, I think of my father. Long before I began thinking seriously about words and sentences, and the art of simplicity, he gave me advice on communication. It was in the last letter he wrote me:
‘I wanted to write before about your writing, Ruskin, but forgot. Sometimes I get letters from you written in very small handwriting, as if you wanted to squeeze a lot of news into one sheet of letter paper. I know your handwriting is good and that you came first in class for handwriting, but try and form a larger style of writing and do not worry if you can’t get all your news into one sheet of paper—but stick to big letters.’
It was my first lesson in clarity.
‘Writing is easy,’ said Red Smith. ‘All you have to do is sit at your typewriter till little drops of blood appear on your forehead.’ That’s true for some of us. But I refuse to suffer. At the first sign of drops of blood or perspiration, I get up from my desk and do something totally different—make myself a sandwich, water my ferns, take a walk or discuss politics and the weather with the milkman. If the writing isn’t easy, if I’m not enjoying it, I know I’m better off doing something else.
And yet writing is easy if I’m happy with my theme. Ask me to write a piece on petunias and I’ll turn out an enthusiastic essay on this underrated flower. I might even write a story on someone who grows petunias, because such a person must obviously have sterling qualities. And I might delve into the love life of a petunia grower because those who love flowers must, by their very nature, be loving, even sensual and passionate people. But ask me to write the life story of a political leader or media tycoon and I’m stumped and stymied. Those little drops of blood threaten to appear. I cannot breathe life into these subjects, noble though they might be. Their true personalities, the essence of their natures, somehow elude me. It is not that they are too complicated, but rather that one has to peel off too many layers of protective armour to get at the flesh and blood that lies beneath the skin. The big words delivered for effect, the careful poses, the smooth manner in which they can say one thing and mean quite another—or nothing at all—prevent us from coming anywhere close to the heart and mind of our hero.
I am most at home in small places—Shamli and Saharanpur; Darjeeling and Dehra; Karnal and Kasauli; Meerut and Mussoorie….These are the places I know best, and where I have found my friends and heroes, and my stories.
I think Tolstoy summed it all up when he said: ‘One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one’s flesh in the ink-pot each time one dips one’s pen.’
To which I might humbly add: There is something to be said for ink-pots. And the hand that holds the pen. It must be far more difficult to share one’s body and soul with a typewriter or computer. I abandoned the typewriter long ago. There is something intimate about writing by hand. It takes me back to my childhood, when I was first learning to write letters and join them together. When I had any difficulty, my father would put his hand on mine and guide it along the page.
His hand is still there. I feel it now, even as I write.
And may loving, long-gone hands touch yours, dear reader.
We are not alone.
Quarrelled with R___, and later felt foolish and made up. When will I learn that life is not a novel? Life does not have the organization of a novel. People are not characters in a play; they refuse to conform to the exigencies of a plot, or our desires, or even our needs.
We have to accept people as they are if we want to live with them. We can’t really change people. Only a chameleon can change colour, and then only in order to deceive us.
You cannot take the love but spurn the lover.
We age without really knowing that it’s happening.
I got up one morning, sat on the edge of my bed, went into a reverie, and ten minutes later, found I was still sitting on the edge of my bed. And I was the goalkeeper of my school football team! When did I become so old?
Later that day, I thought I would take a walk. I climbed down the steps from the flat, and immediately sat on the parapet wall on the road to rest.
Professor Uniyal rode up on his scooter, stopped and remarked, ‘Mr Bond, I recognized you from behind!’
‘Well, thank you, kind sir,’ I said, ‘better to be recognized from behind than never to be recognized at all.’
A sense of humour will help you get through the worst of times!
I wish to be a Taoist. I’m old and still trying. But here’s a page from a journal I kept in my thirties:
‘A mighty storm last night. It was as if the entire hillside would be carried away by the terrible wind. Prem is happy, laughing, giggling all the time. Sometimes it is a little annoying for me, because he is obviously unaware of what is happening around him—such as the fact that part of the roof blew away in the storm—but I am a good Taoist, I say nothing, I wait for the right moment! Besides, it is a crime to interfere with anyone’s happiness.’
Who says we get better with age?
Cervantes: ‘God bless the inventor of sleep, the clock that covers all men’s thoughts.’
Cervantes got it right. He usually did. The siesta was of course invented in Spain, before it was exported to Mexico and the rest of the world. Here, in India, it was something of a necessity. The perspiring farmer takes an afternoon nap beneath a banyan tree. The bania pulls down the shutters of his shop, if only for an hour’s slumber. The busy executive switches on the air-conditioning and is unavailable because of a ‘meeting’.
I have my meetings too, usually at night, or at dawn, when the sweetest of dreams come to me and make me long to sleep again. My afternoon siestas are not dreamy, they are made up of solid sleep, and woe betide the intruder who awakens me. My language is then at its most colourful.
Why do I sleep so soundly and so peacefully, at any time of the day or night? Some say it’s because of a clear conscience. But my conscience is not clear. I am full of guilt. Is sleep the clock that covers my guilt?
Or is it age? Or is it simply because I have a soft pillow? A pillow can make all the difference to one’s life. Sleep with the wrong pillow and you’ll wake up an angry man. The right pillow, and you wake up a happy man.
A restaurant in town has acquired a brand new look. The walls are now co
vered with tall mirrors. Wherever the diners turn, they see their reflection. Most of them stare in fascination and often forget their food. Few look happy, the rest are self-conscious. I preferred the old wooden panels. Everyone was much better company then, and gave their food and each other their undivided attention.
I find that it is usually a waste of time gazing at our reflection in a mirror. No matter what we do to improve our appearance, it will be the same old unexciting face that will look back at us from one day to the next. And we will only get a one-dimensional view—a face to launch a thousand ships, but not the sagging backside that helped to sink them!
Avoid mirrors as far as possible. You might need one for shaving, or dabbing a little something of whatever must be dabbed on your face, but afterwards put it away and try looking at the world instead—the contours are far more interesting.
A wild species of geranium (the round-leaved crane’s bill, to give its English name) with a tiny lilac flower has responded to my overtures, making a great display in a tub where I encouraged it to spread. Never one to spurn a gesture of friendship, I have given it the freedom of the shady back veranda. Let it be my flower of the month, this rainy August.