by Ruskin Bond
Rose of Tibet
Take thou this rose, but don’t forget
The wild red rose of old Tibet.
VII
Rain
‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’ and other songs testify to the effect that rain has on poets and song writers. In my debut novel, Rusty discovers the sensual delights of bathing in the first monsoon rain after the scorching Indian summer. And the scents and sounds of rain have been part of several of my novels, stories and essays since then.
India is all about waiting for the rain to come, and then waiting for it to go. Hence the proverb:
When the floods come up the fish eat ants;
When the floods go down the ants eat fish.
Barsaat
The onset of the monsoon has always been my favourite time of the year. Like every Indian, I am more keenly alive to the monsoon than to any other season. This is as true of me today as it was in the fifties, when I was a young boy. Rusty’s experience of the first rains in The Room on the Roof is also my own:
Dust. It blew up in great clouds, swirling down the road, clutching and clinging to everything it touched—burning, choking, stinging dust.
Then thunder.
The wind dropped suddenly, there was a hushed expectancy in the air. And then, out of the dust came big black rumbling clouds.
Something was happening.
At first there was a lonely drop of water on the window sill, then a patter on the roof. Rusty felt a thrill of anticipation, and a mountain of excitement. The rains had come to break the monotony of the summer months—the monsoon had arrived!
The sky shuddered, the clouds groaned, a fork of lightning struck across the sky, and then the sky itself exploded.
The rain poured down, drumming on the corrugated roof. Rusty’s vision was reduced to about twenty yards; it was as though the room had been cut off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable wall of water.
The rains had arrived, and Rusty wanted to experience, to the full, the novelty of that first shower. He threw off his clothes and ran naked on to the roof, and the wind sprang up and whipped the water across his body so that he writhed in ecstasy. The rain was more intoxicating than the alcohol, and it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from shouting and dancing in mad abandon. The force and freshness of the rain brought tremendous relief, washed away the stagnation that had been settling on him, poisoning his mind and body.
The rain swept over the town, cleansing the sky and the earth. The trees bent beneath the force of wind and water. The field was a bog, flowers flattened to the ground.
Rusty returned to the room, exhilarated, his body weeping. He was confronted by a flood. The water had come in through the door and the window and the skylight, and the floor was flooded ankle-deep. He took to his bed.
The bed took on the glamour of a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. He dried himself on the sheets, conscious of a warm, sensuous glow. Then he sat on his haunches and gazed out through the window.
The rain thickened, the tempo quickened. There was the banging of a door, the swelling of a gutter, the staccato splutter of the rain rhythmically persistent on the roof. The drainpipe coughed and choked, the curtain flew to its limit; the lean trees swayed and bowed with the burden of wind and weather. The road was a rushing torrent, the gravel path inundated with little rivers. The monsoon had arrived!
But the rain stopped as unexpectedly as it had begun.
Suddenly it slackened, dwindled to a shower, petered out. Stillness. The dripping of water from the drainpipe drilled into the drain. Frogs croaked, hopping around in the slush.
The sun came out with a vengeance. On leaves and petals, drops of water sparkled like silver and gold. A cat emerged from a dry corner of the building, blinking sleepily, unperturbed and enthusiastic.
The children came running out of their houses.
‘Barsaat, barsaat!’ they shouted. ‘The rains have come!’
The rains had come. And the roof became a general bathing place. The children, the nightwatchmen, the dogs, all trooped up the steps to sample the novelty of a freshwater shower on the roof.
The maidan became alive with footballs. The game was called monsoon football, it was played in slush, in mud that was ankle-deep; and the football was heavy and slippery and difficult to kick with bare feet. The bazaar youths played barefoot because, in the first place, boots were too cumbersome for monsoon football, and in the second place, they couldn’t be afforded.
But the rains brought Rusty only a momentary elation just as the first shower had seemed fiercer and fresher than those which followed; for now it rained every day . . .
Nothing could be more depressing than the dampness, the mildew, and the sunless heat that wrapped itself round the steaming land. Had Somi or Kishen been with Rusty, he might have derived some pleasure from the elements; had Ranbir been with him, he might have found adventure. But alone, he found only boredom.
He spent an idle hour watching the slow dripping from the pipe outside the door.
The Magic of the Moonsoon
When I was living in Delhi in the late 1950s, I made occasional forays into nearby towns. Meerut was one of the towns I travelled to, and there, one evening, I saw the magic of the monsoon.
I was staying at a small hotel. There had been no rain for a month, but the atmosphere was humid, there were clouds overhead, dark clouds burgeoning with moisture. Thunder blossomed in the air.
The monsoon was going to break that day. I knew it, the birds knew it, the grass knew it. There was the smell of rain in the air. And the grass, the birds and I responded to this odour with the same sensuous longing.
A large drop of water hit the window sill, darkening the thick dust on the woodwork. A faint breeze had sprung up, and again I felt the moisture, closer and warmer.
Then the rain approached like a dark curtain.
I could see it marching down the street, heavy and remorseless. It drummed on the corrugated tin roof and swept across the road and over the balcony of my room. I sat there without moving, letting the rain soak my sticky shirt and gritty hair.
Outside, the street rapidly became empty. The crowd dissolved in the rain. Then buses, cars and bullock-carts ploughed through the suddenly rushing water. A group of small boys, gloriously naked, came romping along a side street, which was like a river in spate. A garland of marigolds, swept off the steps of a temple, came floating down the middle of the road.
The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The day was dying, and the breeze remained cool and moist. In the brief twilight that followed, I was witness to the great yearly flight of insects into the cool brief freedom of the night.
Termites and white ants, which had been sleeping through the hot season, emerged from their lairs. Out of every hole and crack, and from under the roots of trees, huge winged ants emerged, fluttering about heavily on this, the first and last flight of their lives. There was only one direction in which they could fly—towards the light, towards the street lights and the bright neon tube light above my balcony.
The light above the balcony attracted a massive quivering swarm of clumsy termites, giving the impression of one thick, slowly revolving mass. A frog had found its way through the bathroom and came hopping across the balcony to pause beneath the light. All he had to do was gobble, as insects fell around him.
This was the hour of the geckos, the wall lizards. They had their reward for weeks of patient waiting. Playing their sticky pink tongues, they devoured insects as swiftly and methodically as children devour popcorn. For hours they crammed their stomachs, knowing that such a feast would not come their way again. Throughout the entire hot season the insect world had prepared for this flight out of darkness into light, and the phenomenon would not happen again for another year.
In hot up-country towns in India it is good to have the first monsoon showers arrive at night, while you are sleeping on the veranda. You wake up to the scent of wet earth and fallen neem l
eaves, and find that a hot and stuffy bungalow has been converted into a cool, damp place. The swish of the banana fronds and the drumming of the rain on broad-leaved sal trees soothes the most fevered brow.
During the rains the frogs have a perfect country music festival. There are two sets of them, it seems, and they sing antiphonal chants all evening, each group letting the other take its turn in the fairest manner. No one sees or hears them during the hot weather, but the moment the monsoon breaks they swarm all over the place.
When night comes on, great moths fly past, and beetles of all shapes and sizes come whirring in at the open windows. Recently, when Prem closed my window to keep out these winged visitors, I remonstrated, saying that as a nature lover I would share my room with them. I’d forgotten that I am inclined to sleep with my mouth open. In the wee hours I woke up, spluttering and choking, to find that I had almost swallowed a large and somewhat unpleasant-tasting moth. I closed the window. Moths are lovely creatures, but a good night’s sleep is even lovelier.
At night the fireflies light up their lamps, flashing messages to each other through the mango groves. Some nocturnal insects thrive mainly at the expense of humans. Sometimes one wakes up to find thirty or forty mosquitoes looking through the net in a bloodthirsty manner. If you are sleeping out, you will need that mosquito net.
The road outside is lined with fine babul trees, now covered with powdery little balls of yellow blossom, filling the air with a faint scent. After the first showers there is a great deal of water around, and for many miles the trees are standing in it. The common monsoon sights along an up-country road are often picturesque—the wide plains, with great herds of smoke-coloured, delicate-limbed cattle being driven slowly home for the night, accompanied by troops of ungainly buffaloes and flocks of black long-tailed sheep. Then you come to a pond, where the buffaloes are indulging in a sensuous wallow, no part of them visible but the tips of their noses.
Within a few days of the first rain the air is full of dragonflies, crossing and re-crossing, poised motionless for a moment, then darting away with that mingled grace and power which is unmatched among insects. Dragonflies are the swallows of the insect world; their prey is the mosquito, the gnat, the midge and the fly. These swarms, therefore, tell us that the moistened surface of the ground, with its mouldering leaves and sodden grass, has become one vast incubator teeming with every form of ephemeral life.
After the monotony of a fierce sun and a dusty landscape quivering in the dim distance, one welcomes these days of mild light, green earth, and purple hills coming nearer in the clear and transparent air.
And later on, when the monsoon begins to break up and the hills are dappled with light and shade, dark islands of cloud moving across the bright green sea, the effect on one’s spirits is strangely exhilarating.
A Short Monsoon Diary
June 24
The first day of monsoon mist. And it’s strange how all the birds fall silent as the mist comes climbing up the hill. Perhaps that’s what makes the mist so melancholy; not only does it conceal the hills, it blankets them in silence too. Only an hour ago the trees were ringing with birdsong. And now the forest is deathly still, as though it were midnight.
Through the mist Bijju is calling to his sister. I can hear him running about on the hillside but I cannot see him.
June 25
Some genuine early-monsoon rain, warm and humid, and not that cold high-altitude stuff we’ve been having all year. The plants seem to know it too, and the first cobra lily rears its head from the ferns as I walk up to the bank and post office.
The mist affords a certain privacy.
A schoolboy asked me to describe the hill station and valley in one sentence, and all I could say was: ‘A paradise that might have been.’
June 27
The rains have heralded the arrival of some seasonal visitors—a leopard, and several thousand leeches.
Yesterday afternoon the leopard lifted a dog from near the servants’ quarter below the school. In the evening it attacked one of Bijju’s cows but fled at the approach of Bijju’s mother, who came screaming imprecations.
As for the leeches, I shall soon get used to a little bloodletting every day. Bijju’s mother sat down in the shrubbery to relieve herself, and later discovered two fat black leeches feeding on her fair round bottom. I told her she could use one of the spare bathrooms downstairs. But she prefers the wide open spaces.
Other new arrivals are the scarlet minivets (the females are yellow), flitting silently among the leaves like brilliant jewels. No matter how leafy the trees, these brightly coloured birds cannot conceal themselves, although, by remaining absolutely silent, they sometimes contrive to go unnoticed. Along come a pair of drongos, unnecessarily aggressive, chasing the minivets away.
A tree creeper moves rapidly up the trunk of the oak tree, snapping up insects all the way. Now that the rains are here, there is no dearth of food for the insectivorous birds.
August 2
All night the rain has been drumming on the corrugated tin roof. There has been no storm, no thunder, just the steady swish of a tropical downpour. It helps me to lie awake; at the same time, it doesn’t keep me from sleeping.
It is a good sound to read by—the rain outside, the quiet within—and, although tin roofs are given to springing unaccountable leaks, there is a feeling of being untouched by, and yet in touch with, the rain.
August 3
The rain stops. The clouds begin to break up, the sun strikes the steep hill on my left. A woman is chopping up sticks. I hear the tinkle of cowbells. In the oak tree, a crow shakes the raindrops from his feathers and caws disconsolately. 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.
August 12
Endless rain, and a permanent mist. We haven’t seen the sun for eight or nine days. Everything damp and soggy. Nowhere to go. Pace the room, look out of the window at a few bobbing umbrellas. At least it isn’t cold rain. The hillsides are lush as late-monsoon flowers begin to appear—wild balsam, dahlias, begonias and ground orchids.
August 31
It is the last day of August, and the lush monsoon growth has reached its peak. The seeds of the cobra lily are turning red, signifying that the rains are coming to an end.
In a few days the ferns will start turning yellow, but right now they are still firm, green and upright. Ground orchids, mauve lady’s slipper and the white butterfly orchids put on a fashion display on the grassy slopes of Landour. Wild dahlias, red, yellow and magenta, rear their heads from the rocky crevices where they have taken hold.
Snakes and rodents, flooded out of their holes and burrows, take shelter in roofs, attics and godowns. A shrew, weak of eyesight, blunders about the rooms, much to the amusement of the children.
‘Don’t kill it,’ admonishes their grandmother. ‘Chuchundars are lucky—they bring money!’
And sure enough, I receive a cheque in the mail. Not a very large one, but welcome all the same.
October 3
We have gone straight from monsoon into winter rain. Snow at higher altitudes.
After an evening hailstorm, the sky and hills are suffused with a beautiful golden light.
January 26
Winter Rain in the Hills
In the hushed silence of the house
when I am quite alone, and my friend, who was here,
has gone, it is very lonely, very quiet,
as I sit in a liquid silence, a silence within,
surrounded by the rhythm of rain,
the steady drift
of water on leaves, on lemons, on roof,
drumming on drenched dahlias and window panes,
while the mist holds the house in a dark caress.
As I pause near a window, the rain stops.
And starts again.
And the trees, no longer green but grey,
menace me with thei
r loneliness.
March 23
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.
VIII
The Winged Ones
Why do car horns jangle the nerves but birdsongs never? I suppose it’s the difference between artificial man-made noise and the harmonious sounds of nature. Even insects sing in harmony.
If I burst into a song, all the birds fly away. So I have learnt to remain silent. To live in harmony with nature we must become good listeners . . .
Birds of the Night
Having for a number of years suffered from rather poor vision, I am not the most eagle-eyed of birdwatchers. But, like many who don’t see too well, I have good powers of hearing, awakening in the night at the squeak of a mouse or the fluttering of a moth against the window pane. And when, at times, sleep is elusive, I can lie awake and derive pleasure from the sounds and calls of those birds who live largely by night.
Not that all bird-calls are pleasing to the ear. The hawk-cuckoo semitones until one begins to think that the performer must surely burst. But the brainfever bird never bursts. Its cry is repeated for hours at a stretch.
He is a hot-weather bird who haunts the groves and gardens in almost all parts of the country, his range extending from the Himalayan foothills to Cape Comorin. Only Assam and Punjab appear to be free from the attentions of this cuckoo.
Another cuckoo, the common Indian cuckoo, has quite a pleasant note, which may be rendered by the words ‘wherefore, wherefore,’ with quite a musical cadence. It begins to call about two hours before sunset, and continues through the night until the morning hours. It is usually silent during the middle of the day, when presumably it rests its vocal chords.
There is a third night-loving cuckoo, the koel, who, like the brainfever bird, is not very popular with those who must try to sleep within hearing distance. His ‘ku-oo’ grows more strident with each successive rise in scale until sleep becomes almost impossible for anyone in the vicinity. Cunningham described it as a ‘highly pitched, trisyllabic cry, repeated many times in ascending’, as Douglas Dewar writes, ‘the jaded dweller in the plains, uttering strange oaths, rushes for his gun and seeks out the disturber of his slumber’. But the clamour breaks off abruptly, and the sleeper returns to bed, rejoicing in the thought that the wretched bird has choked itself. And it is just then that the bird begins all over again!