by Ruskin Bond
‘I can’t, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘You have my badge. Not allowed to cook without it. Scout rule, sir.’
‘I’ve never heard of such a rule. But you can take your badges, all of you. We return to school tomorrow.’
Mr Oliver returned to his tent in a huff.
But I relented and made him a grand omelette, garnishing it with dandelion leaves and a chilli.
‘Never had such an omelette before,’ confessed Mr Oliver.
‘Would you like another, sir?’
‘Tomorrow, Bond, tomorrow. We’ll breakfast early tomorrow.’
But we had to break up our camp before we could do that because in the early hours of the next morning, a bear strayed into our camp, entered the tent where our stores were kept, and created havoc with all our provisions, even rolling our biggest degchi down the hillside.
In the confusion and uproar that followed, the bear entered Mr Oliver’s tent (our Scoutmaster was already outside, fortunately) and came out entangled in his dressing gown. It then made off towards the forest, a comical sight in its borrowed clothes.
And though we were a troop of brave little scouts, we thought it better to let the bear keep the gown.
Simply Living
These thoughts and observations were noted in my diaries through the 1980s, and may give readers some idea of the ups and downs, highs and lows, during a period when I was still trying to get established as an author.
March 1981
After a gap of twenty years, during which it was, to all practical purposes forgotten, The Room on the Roof (my first novel) gets reprinted in an edition for schools.
(This was significant, because it marked the beginning of my entry into the educational field. Gradually, over the years, more of my work became familiar to school children throughout the country.)
Stormy weather over Holi. Room flooded. Everyone taking turns with septic throats and fever. While in bed, read Stendhal’s Scarlet and Black. I seem to do my serious reading only when I’m sick.
Felt well enough to take a leisurely walk down the Tehri Road. Trees in new leaf. The fresh light green of the maples is very soothing.
I may not have contributed anything towards the progress of civilisation, but neither have I robbed the world of anything. Not one tree or bush or bird. Even the spider on my wall is welcome to his (her) space. Provided he (she) stays on the wall and does not descend on my pillow.
April
Swifts are busy nesting in the roof and performing acrobatics outside my window. They do everything on the wing, it seems—including feeding and making love. Mating in midair must be quite a feat.
Someone complimented me because I was ‘always smiling’. I thought better of him for the observation and invited him over. Flattery will get you anywhere!
(This is followed by a three-month gap in my diary, explained by my next entry.)
Shortage of cash. Muddle, muddle, toil and trouble. I don’t see myself—smiling.
Learn to zigzag. Try something different.
August
Kept up an article a day for over a month. Grub Street again!
DARE
WILL
KEEP SILENCE
These words helped Napoleon, but will they help me?
Try Cursing!
I curse the block to money.
I curse the thing that takes all my effort away.
I curse all that would make me a slave.
I curse those who would harm my loved ones.
And now stop cursing and give thanks for all the good things you have enjoyed in life.
‘We should not spoil what we have by desiring what we have not, but remember that what we have was the gift of fortune.’ (Epicurus)
‘We ought to have more sense, of course, than to try to touch a dream, or to reach that place which exists but in the glamour of a name.’
(H.M. Tomlinson, Tide Marks)
October
A good year for the cosmos flower. Banks of them everywhere. They like the day-long sun. Clean and fresh—my favourite flower en-masse.
But by itself, the wild commelina, sky-blue against dark green, always catches at the heart.
A latent childhood remains tucked away in our subconscious. This I have tried to explore…
A…stretches out on the bench like a cat, and the setting sun is trapped in his eyes, golden brown, glowing like tiger’s eyes. (Oddly enough, this beautiful youth grew up to become a very sombre-looking padre.)
December
A kiss in the dark—warm and soft and all-encompassing—the moment stayed with me for a long time.
Wrote a poem, ‘Who kissed me in the dark?’ but it could not do justice to the kiss. Tore it up!
On the night of the 7th, light snowfall. The earliest that I can remember it snowing in Landour. Early morning, the hillside looked very pretty, with a light mantle of snow covering trees, rusty roofs, vehicles at the bus stop—and concealing our garbage dump for a couple of hours, until it melted.
January 1982
Three days of wind, rain, sleet and snow. Flooded out of my bedroom. We convert dining room into dormitory. Everything is bearable except the wind, which cuts through these old houses like a knife—under the roof, through flimsy verandah enclosures and ill-fitting windows, bringing the icy rain with it.
Fed up with being stuck indoors. Walked up to Lal Tibba, in flurries of snow. Came back and wrote the story ‘The Wind on Haunted Hill’.
I invoke Lakshmi, who shines like the full moon.
Her fame is all-pervading.
Her benevolent hands are like lotuses.
I take refuge in her lotus feet.
Let her destroy my poverty forever.
Goddess, I take shelter at your lotus feet.
February
My boyhood was difficult, but I had my dreams to sustain me. What does one dream about now?
But sometimes, when all else fails, a sense of humour comes to the rescue.
And the children (Raki, Muki, Dolly) bring me joy. All children do. Sometimes I think small children are the only sacred things left on this earth. Children and flowers.
Further blasts of wind and snow. In spite of the gloom, wrote a new essay.
March
Blizzard in the night. Over a foot of snow in the morning. And so it goes on…unprecedented for March. The Jupiter effect? At least the snow prevents the roof from blowing away, as happened last year. Facing east (from where the wind blows) doesn’t help. And it’s such a rickety old house.
Mid-March and the first warm breath of approaching summer. Risk a haircut. Ramkumar does his best to make me look like a 1930s film star. I suppose I ought to try another barber, but he’s too nice. ‘I look rather strange,’ I said afterwards (like Wallace Beery in Billy the Kid). ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
‘Why don’t you give me an Amitabh Bachchan haircut?’
‘You’ll need more hair for that,’ he says.
Bus goes down the mud, killing several passengers. Death moves about at random, without discriminating between the innocent and the evil, the poor and the rich. The only difference is that the poor usually handle it better.
Late March
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.
And Goddess Lakshmi smiles on me. An unprecedented flow of cheques, mainly accrued royalties on ‘Angry River’ and ‘The Blue Umbrella’. A welcome change from last year’s shortages and difficulties.
Perfection
The smallest insect in the world is a sort of fairy-fly and its body is only a fifth of a millimetre long. One can only just see it with the naked eye. Almost like a speck of dust, yet it has perfect little wings and little combs on its legs for preening itself.
Late April
Abominable cloud and chilly rain. But Us
ha brings bunches of wild roses and irises. And her own gentle smile.
Mid-May
Raki (after reading my bio-data): ‘Dada, you were born in 1934! And you are still here!’ After a pause: ‘You are very lucky.’
I guess I am, at that.
June
Did my sixth essay for The Monitor this year.
(Have written off and on, for The Christian Science Monitor of Boston from 1965 to 2002).
Wrote an article for a new magazine, Keynote, published in Bombay, and edited by Leela Naidu, Dom Moraes and David Davidar. It was to appear in the August issue. Now I’m told that the magazine has folded. (But David Davidar went on to bigger things with Penguin India!)
If at first you don’t succeed, so much for sky-diving.
July
Monsoon downpour. Bedroom wall crumbling. Landslide cuts off my walk down the Tehri road.
Usha: a complexion like apricot blossom seen through a mist.
September
Two dreams:
A constantly recurring dream or rather, nightmare—I am forced to stay longer than I had intended in a very expensive hotel and know that my funds are insufficient to meet the bill. Fortunately, I have always woken up before the bill is presented!
Possible interpretation: fear of insecurity. My own variation of the dream, common to many, of falling from a height but waking up before hitting the ground.
Another occasional dream: living in a house perched over a crumbling hillside. This one is not far removed from reality!
Glorious day. Walked up and around the hill, and got some of the cobwebs out of my head.
That man is strongest who stands alone!
Some epigrams (for future use).
A well-balanced person: someone with a chip on both shoulders.
Experience: the knowledge that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it the second time.
Sympathy: what one woman offers another in exchange for details.
Worry: the interest paid on trouble before it becomes due.
October
Some disappointment, as usual in connection with films (the screenplay I wrote for someone who wanted to remake Kim), but if I were to let disappointments get me down, I’d have given up writing twenty-five years ago.
A walk in the twilight. Soothing. Watched the winter-line from the top of the hill.
Raki first in school races.
Savitri (Dolly) completes two years. Bless her fat little toes.
Advice to myself: conserve energy. Talk less!
‘Better to have people wondering why you don’t speak than to have them wondering why you speak.’ (Disraeli)
Wrote ‘The Funeral’. One of my better stories, and thus more difficult to place.
If death was a thing that money could buy,
The rich they would live, and the poor they would die.
In California, you can have your body frozen after death in the hope that a hundred years from now some scientist will come along and bring you to life again. You pay in advance, of course.
December
I never have much luck with films or film-makers. Mr K.S. Varma finally (after five years) completed his film of my story ‘The Last Tiger’, but could not find a distributor for it. I don’t regret the small sum I received for the story. He ran out of money—and tigers!—and apparently went to heroic lengths to complete the film in the forests of Bihar and Orissa. He used a circus tiger for the more intimate scenes, but this tiger disappeared one day, along with one of the actors. Tom Alter played a shikari and went on to play other, equally hazardous roles: he’s still around, the tiger having spared him, but the film was never seen (and hasn’t been seen to this day).
A last postcard from an old friend: ‘Ruskin, dear friend—but you won’t be, unless you keep your word about lunching with us on Xmas Day. PLEASE DO COME, both Kanshi and I need your presence. It will be a small party this time as most of our friends are either hors-de-combat or dead! Bring Rakesh and Mukesh. Please let me know. I have been in bed for two days with a chill. Please don’t disappoint.
Love,
Winnie’
(We did go to the Christmas party, but sadly, the chill became pneumonia and there were no more parties with Winnie and Kanshi, who were such good company. I still miss them.)
January 1984
To Maniram’s home near Lal Tibba. He was brought up by his grandmother—his mother died when he was one. Keeps two calves, two cows (one brindled), and a pup of indeterminate breed. Made me swallow a glass of milk. Haven’t touched milk for years, can’t stand the stuff, but drank it so as not to hurt his feelings. (Mani and his Granny turned up in my children’s story Getting Granny’s Glasses.)
On the 6th it was bitterly cold, and the snow came in through my bedroom roof. Not enough money to go away, but at least there’s enough for wood and coal. I hate the cold—but the children seem to enjoy it. Raki, Muki and Dolly in constant high spirits.
February
Two days and nights of blizzard—howling winds, hail, sleet, snow. Prem bravely goes out for coal and kerosene oil. Worst weather we’ve ever had up here. Sick of it.
March
Peach, plum and apricot trees in blossom. Gentle weather at last. Schools reopen.
Sold German and Dutch translation rights in a couple of my children’s books. I wish I could write something of lasting worth. I’ve done a few good stories but they are so easily lost in the mass of wordage that pours forth from the world’s presses.
Here are some statistics which I got from the U.K. a couple of years ago:
There are over nine million books in the British Museum and they fill 86 miles of shelving.
There are over 50,000 living British authors. They don’t get rich. The latest Society of Authors survey shows that only 55 per cent of those whose main occupation is writing earn over £700 a year.
Britain has 8,500 booksellers, as well as many other shops where books are sold.
The first book to be printed in Britain was The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, which was translated and printed by William Caxton in 1477.
As many books were published in Britain between 1940 and 1980 as in the five centuries from Caxton’s first book.
Who says the reading habit is dying?
April
The ‘adventure wind’ of my boyhood—I felt it again today. Walked five miles to Suakholi, to look at an infinity of mountains.
The feeling of space—limitless space—can only be experienced by living in the mountains.
It is the emotional, the spiritual surge, that draws us back to the mountains again and again. It was not altogether a matter of mysticism or religion that prompted the ancients to believe that their gods dwelt in the high places of this earth. Those gods, by whatever name we know them, still dwell there. From time to time we would like to be near them, that we may know them and ourselves more intimately.
May
Completed my half century and launched into my 51st year.
Fifty is a dangerous age for most men. Last year there was nothing to celebrate, and at the end of it my diary went into the dustbin. There was an abortive and unhappy love affair (dear reader, don’t fall in love at fifty!), a crisis in the home (with Prem missing for weeks), conflicts with publishers, friends, myself. So skip being fifty. Become fifty-one as soon its possible; you will find yourself in calmer waters. If you fall in love at the age of fifty, inner turmoil and disappointment is almost guaranteed. Don’t listen to what the wise men say about love. P.G. Wodehose said the whole thing more succinctly: ‘You know, the way love can change a fellow is really frightful to contemplate.’ Especially when a fifty-year-old starts behaving like a sixteen-year-old!
Most of my month’s earnings went to the dentist. And I notice he’s wearing a new suit.
June
A name—a lovely face—turn back the years: 45 years to be exact, when I was a small boy in Jamnagar, where my father taught English to some of th
e younger princes and princesses—among them M—whose picture I still have in my album (taken by my father). She wrote to me after reading something I’d written, wanting to know if I was the same little boy, i.e., Mr Bond’s mischievous son. I responded, of course. A link with my father is so rare; and besides, I had a crush on her. My first love! So long ago—but it seems like yesterday…
Monsoon breaks.
Money-drought breaks.
And if there’s a connection, may the rain gods be generous this year.
(The rest of the year’s entries were fairly mundane, implying that life at Ivy Cottage, Landour, went on pretty smoothly. But the rain gods played a trick or two. Although they were fairly generous to begin with, the year ended with a drought, as my mid-December entry indicates: ‘Dust covers everything, after nearly two and half months of dry weather. Clouds build up, but disperse.’ Always receptive to Nature’s unpredictability, I wrote my story Dust on the Mountain.)
1995
On the flyleaf of this year’s diary are written two maxims: ‘Pull your own strings’ and ‘Act impeccably’. I’m not sure that I did either with much success, but I did at least try. And trying is what it’s all about…
January
My book of poems and prayers finally published by Thomson Press, seven years after acceptance. Received a copy. Hope it won’t be the only one. Splendid illustrations by Suddha. (Shortly afterwards Thomson Press closed down their children’s book division and my book vanished too!)
Can thought (consciousness) exist outside the body? Can it, be trained to do so? Can its existence continue after the body has gone? Does it need a body? (but without a body it would have nothing to do.)
Of course thoughts can travel. But do they travel of their own volition, or because of the bodily energy that sustains them?
We have the wonders of clairvoyance, of presentiments, and premonitions in dreams. How to account for these?
Our thinking is conditioned by past experience (including the past experience of the human race), and so, as Bergson said: ‘We think with only a small part of the past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of the soul, that we desire, will, and act.’