by Ruskin Bond
Ruskin Bond
The Book of Nature
Contents
About the Author
Introduction
I Grandfather’s Zoo
II The Civilized Wilderness
III Into the Wild
IV Foothill to Treeline
V Trees
VI Flowers
VII Rain
VIII The Winged Ones
IX Big-cat Tales
X Nature’s Fury
XI Green Notes
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE BOOK OF NATURE
Ruskin Bond’s first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written a number of novellas, essays, poems and children’s books, many of which have been published by Penguin. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.
Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.
The nightmare of modern cheapjack life was all explained . . . [a] symptom of deep disorder; all due, this feverish external business, to an odd misunderstanding with the Earth. Humanity had somehow quarrelled with her, claiming an independence that could not really last. For her the centuries of this estrangement was but a little thing perhaps—a moment or two in that huge life which counted a million years to lay a narrow bed of chalk. They would come back in time. Meanwhile she ever called. A few, perhaps, already dreamed of return . . . They heard, these few, the splendid whisper that, sweetly calling, ever passed about the world.’
—Algernon Blackwood,
The Centaur (1911)
Introduction
My introduction to the world of Nature was a painful one. Aged five, I was coming down the spiral staircase from the roof of our bungalow in Jamnagar State, when inadvertently I dislodged a beehive under one of the steps. I was immediately attacked by a swarm of angry bees, who proceeded to sting me on my face, arms and legs. I got down the stairs and ran indoors, screaming for help.
Help came in the form of my father, who calmed me down and bathed me in a solution of potassium permanganate. After two feverish days in bed, I was up and about again. But I’d learnt that Nature isn’t always birdsong and dew-drenched daffodils.
There were other, more pleasant, aspects of the natural world that remain in my memory: collecting seashells on the beach, feeding the turkeys on the State’s turkey farm, wandering through a glade of tall cosmos flowers, watching the village boys wash down their buffaloes at the edge of the lake.
I grew up with an awareness of my natural surroundings—bee stings and all—and later this was buttressed by the sort of books and stories that I enjoyed reading—Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, the wonderland of Alice, the Mowgli stories, Ballantyne’s Coral Island and Hudson Bay, Jack London’s White Fang, the Panchatantra and Jataka Tales . . .
The literature that came my way between the ages of five and fifteen was of a kind that is rare today, for most modern writers appear to be preoccupied with urban backgrounds and concerns. I wish there was a Thoreau around, or a Richard Jefferies, or an H.E. Bates: writers who lived close to Nature and made it a part of their creative work.
I have done my best to follow in their footsteps—observing and recording the natural life around me, and working it into my stories, essays and poems. A comprehensive selection of these ‘Nature writings’ (spanning half a century!) is presented here. This is not a book of natural history, rather a record of my relationship with the natural world, which has sustained and inspired me over the years.
This is a relationship that has grown stronger and more meaningful ever since I came to live in the hills over forty years ago. ‘Is Nature your religion?’ someone asked, just the other day. It would be presumptuous to say so. Nature doesn’t promise you anything—an after life, rewards for good behaviour, protection from enemies, wealth, happiness, progeny, all the things that humans desire and pray for. No, Nature does not promise these things. Nature is a reward in itself.
It is there, to be appreciated, to be understood, to be lived and loved. And in its way it gives us everything—the bounty and goodness of the earth, the sea, the sky. Food, water, the air we breathe. All the things we take for granted.
And sometimes, when we take it too much for granted, or misuse its generosity, it turns against us and unleashes forces that overwhelm us—earthquake, tidal wave, typhoon, flood, drought. But then, Nature settles down again and resumes its generous ways. For it is all about renewal—seasons and the weather, sunlight and darkness, the urgency of growth, the fertility of the seed and the egg. Governments rise and fall, machines rust away, great buildings crumble, but mountains still stand, rivers flow to the sea, and the earth is clothed with grass and verdure.
Nature gives. And takes away. And gives again.
RUSKIN BOND
August 2004
I
Grandfather’s Zoo
Back in the 1930s and ’40s, when Dehra was just a small town, most of the bungalows had large compounds—gardens in front, orchards at the back, and sometimes a bit of wilderness thrown in.
Growing up in these surroundings, one was bound to come into close contact with the natural world—the denizens of the banyan and jackfruit trees: birds, butterflies, squirrels, reptiles. And then there were the unusual pets that Grandfather brought home from time to time . . .
Garden Adventures
Though the house and grounds of our home in Dehra were Grandfather’s domain—where he kept an odd assortment of pets—the magnificent old banyan tree was mine, chiefly because Grandfather, at the age of sixty-five, could no longer climb it. Grandmother used to tease him about this, and would speak of a certain Countess of Desmond, an Englishwoman who lived to the age of hundred and seventeen, and would have lived longer if she hadn’t fallen while climbing an apple tree. The spreading branches of the banyan tree, which curved to the ground and took root again, forming a maze of arches, gave me endless pleasure. The tree was older than the house, older than Grandfather, as old as the town of Dehra, nestling in a valley at the foot of the Himalayas.
My first friend and familiar was a small grey squirrel. Arching his back and sniffing into the air, he seemed at first to resent my invasion of his privacy. But when he found that I did not arm myself with a catapult or air-gun, he became friendlier. And when I started leaving him pieces of cake and biscuit, he grew bolder, and finally became familiar enough to take food from my hands.
Before long he was delving into my pockets and helping himself to whatever he could find. He was a very young squirrel, and his friends and relatives probably thought him headstrong and foolish for trusting a human.
In the spring, when the banyan tree was full of small red figs, birds of all kinds would flock into its branches, the red-bottomed bulbul, cheerful and greedy; gossiping rosy-pastors; and parrots and crows, squabbling with each other all the time. During the fig season, the banyan tree was the noisiest place on the road.
Halfway up the tree I had built a small platform on which I would often spend the afternoons when it wasn’t too hot. I could read there, propping myself up against the bole of the tree with the cushions taken from the drawing room. Treasure Island, Huck Finn, the Mowgli Stories, and detective novels made up my bag of very mixed reading.
When
I didn’t want to read, I could look down through the banyan leaves at the world below, at Grandmother hanging up or taking down the washing, at the cook quarrelling with a fruit vendor, or at Grandfather grumbling at the hardy Indian marigold, which insisted on springing up all over his very English garden. Usually nothing very exciting happened while I was in the banyan tree, but on one particular afternoon I had enough excitement to last me through the summer.
That was the time I saw a mongoose and a cobra fight to death in the garden, while I sat directly above them in the banyan tree.
It was an April afternoon. The warm breezes of approaching summer had sent everyone, including Grandfather, indoors. I was feeling drowsy myself and was wondering if I should go to the pond behind the house for a swim, when I saw a huge black cobra gliding out of a clump of cacti and making for some cooler part of the garden. At the same time a mongoose (whom I had often seen) emerged from the bushes and went straight for the cobra.
In a clearing beneath the tree, in bright sunshine, they came face to face.
The cobra knew only too well that the grey mongoose, three feet long, was a superb fighter, clever and aggressive. But the cobra was a skilful and experienced fighter too. He could move swiftly and strike with the speed of light, and the sacs behind his long, sharp fangs were full of deadly venom.
It was to be a battle of champions.
Hissing defiance, his forked tongue darting in and out, the cobra raised three of his six feet off the ground, and spread his broad, spectacled hood. The mongoose bushed his tail. The long hair on his spine stood up (in the past, the very thickness of his hair had saved him from bites that would have been fatal to others).
Though the combatants were unaware of my presence in the banyan tree, they soon became aware of the arrival of two other spectators. One was a myna, and the other a jungle crow (not the wily urban crow). They had seen these preparations for battle, and had settled on the cactus to watch the outcome. Had they been content only to watch, all would have been well with both of them.
The cobra stood on the defensive, swaying slowly from side to side, trying to mesmerize the mongoose into making a false move. The mongoose knew the power of his opponent’s glassy, twinkling eyes, and refused to meet them. Instead, he fixed his gaze at a point just below the cobra’s hood, and opened the attack.
Moving forward quickly until he was just within the cobra’s reach, he made a feint to one side. Immediately the cobra struck. His great hood came down so swiftly that I thought nothing could save the mongoose. But the little fellow jumped neatly to one side, and darted in as swiftly as the cobra, biting the snake on the back and darting away again out of reach.
The moment the cobra struck, the crow and the myna hurled themselves at him, only to collide heavily in mid-air. Shrieking at each other, they returned to the cactus plant.
A few drops of blood glistened on the cobra’s back.
The cobra struck again and missed. Again the mongoose sprang aside, jumped in and bit. Again the birds dived at the snake, bumped into each other instead, and returned shrieking to the safety of the cactus.
The third round followed the same course as the first but with one dramatic difference. The crow and the myna, still determined to take part in the proceedings, dived at the cobra, but this time they missed each other as well as their mark. The myna flew on and reached its perch, but the crow tried to pull up in mid-air and turn back. In the second that it took him to do this, the cobra whipped his head back and struck with great force, his snout thudding against the crow’s body.
I saw the bird flung nearly twenty feet across the garden, where, after fluttering about for a while, it lay still. The myna remained on the cactus plant, and when the snake and the mongoose returned to the fray, it very wisely refrained from interfering again!
The cobra was weakening, and the mongoose, walking fearlessly up to it, raised himself on his short legs, and with a lightning snap had the big snake by the snout. The cobra writhed and lashed about in a frightening manner, and even coiled itself about the mongoose, but all to no avail. The little fellow hung grimly on, until the snake had ceased to struggle. He then smeared along its quivering length, gripping it round the hood, and dragging it into the bushes.
The myna dropped cautiously to the ground, hopped about, peered into the bushes from a safe distance, and then, with a shrill cry of congratulation, flew away.
When I had also made a cautious descent from the tree and returned to the house, I told Grandfather of the fight I had seen. He was pleased that the mongoose had won. He had encouraged it to live in the garden, to keep away the snakes, and fed it regularly with scraps from the kitchen. He had never tried taming it, because a wild mongoose was more useful than a domesticated one.
From the banyan tree I often saw the mongoose patrolling the four corners of the garden, and once I saw him with an egg in his mouth and knew he had been in the poultry house; but he hadn’t harmed the birds, and I knew Grandmother would forgive him for stealing as long as he kept the snakes away.
The banyan tree was also the setting for what we were to call the Strange Case of the Grey Squirrel and the White Rat.
The white rat was Grandfather’s—he had bought it from the bazaar for four annas—but I would often take it with me into the banyan tree, where it soon struck up a friendship with one of the squirrels. They would go off together on little excursions among the roots and branches of the old tree.
Then the squirrel started building a nest. At first she tried building it in my pockets, and when I went indoors and changed my clothes I would find straw and grass falling out. Then one day Grandmother’s knitting was missing. We hunted for it everywhere but without success.
Next day I saw something glinting in the hole in the banyan tree and, going up to investigate, saw that it was the end of Grandmother’s steel knitting-needle. On looking further, I discovered that the hole was crammed with knitting. And amongst the wool were three baby squirrels—all of them white!
Grandfather had never seen white squirrels before, and we gazed at them in wonder. We were puzzled for some time, but when I mentioned the white rat’s frequent visits to the tree, Grandfather told me that the rat must be the father. Rats and squirrels were related to each other, he said, and so it was quite possible for them to have offspring—in this case, white squirrels!
The Elephant and the Cassowary Bird
The baby elephant, another of Grandfather’s unusual pets, wasn’t out of place in our home in north India because India is where elephants belong, and in any case our house was full of pets brought home by Grandfather, who was in the Forest Service. But the cassowary bird was different. No one had ever seen such a bird before—not in India, that is. Grandfather had picked it up on a voyage to Singapore, where he’d been given the bird by a rubber planter who’d got it from a Dutch trader who’d got it from a man in Indonesia.
Anyway, it ended up at our home in Dehra, and seemed to do quite well in the sub-tropical climate. It looked like a cross between a turkey and an ostrich, but bigger than the former and smaller than the latter—about five feet in height. It was not a beautiful bird, nor even a friendly one, but it had come to stay, and everyone was curious about it, especially the baby elephant.
Right from the start the baby elephant took a great interest in the cassowary. He would circle round the odd creature, and diffidently examine with his trunk the texture of its stumpy wings; of course, he suspected no evil, and his childlike curiosity encouraged him to take liberties which resulted in an unpleasant experience.
Noticing the baby elephant’s attempts to make friends with the rather morose cassowary, we felt a bit apprehensive. Self-contained and sullen, the big bird responded only by slowly and slyly raising one of its powerful legs, all the while gazing into space with an innocent air. We knew what the gesture meant: we had seen that treacherous leg raised on many an occasion, and suddenly shooting out with a force that would have done credit to a vicious camel. In fact, cam
el and cassowary kicks are delivered on the same plan, except that the camel kicks backward like a horse and the bird forward.
We wished to spare our baby elephant a painful experience, and led him away from the bird. But he persisted in his friendly overtures, and one morning he received an ugly reward. Rapid as lightning, the cassowary hit straight from the hip and knee joints, and the elephant ran squealing to Grandfather.
For several days he avoided the cassowary, and we thought he had learnt his lesson. He crossed and recrossed the compound and the garden, swinging his trunk, thinking furiously. Then, a week later, he appeared on the veranda at breakfast time in his usual cheery, childlike fashion, sidling up to the cassowary as if nothing had happened.
We were struck with amazement at this and so, it seemed, was the bird. Had the painful lesson already been forgotten, that too by a member of the elephant tribe noted for its ability never to forget? Another dose of the same medicine would serve the booby right.
The cassowary once more began to draw up its fighting leg with sinister determination. It was nearing the true position for the master-kick, kung-fu style, when all of a sudden the baby elephant seized with his trunk the other leg of the cassowary and pulled it down. There was a clumsy flapping of wings, a tremendous swelling of the bird’s wattle, and an undignified getting up, as if it were a floored boxer doing his best to beat the count of ten. The bird then marched off with an attempt to look stately and unconcerned, while we at the breakfast table were convulsed with laughter.
After this the cassowary bird gave the baby elephant as wide a berth as possible. But they were forced not to co-exist for very long. The baby elephant, getting bulky and cumbersome, was sold to a zoo where he became a favourite with young visitors who loved to take rides on his back.