by Ruskin Bond
At dawn I said, ‘Day, you will not begin without me.’ I was up with the whistling thrush at five. The cicadas were tuning up, the crickets were already in full cry, and the whistling thrush was calling most sweetly. As none of these songsters could be seen, it was as though the forest itself was singing.
Feeling the dawn wind stir, I was happy that I had met the day at its very beginning.
When the sun came up, the day became sultry and oppressive. I had to walk two miles to Ban Suman and back. There was no shade anywhere along the road. But we are equipped with legs for the purpose of walking. As more and more people grow dependent on their cars, a new species of humans will evolve. Around the turn of the twenty-second century, I can see legless humans being born. By then, of course, there will be flying wheelchairs.
A pall of dust hangs over the mountain.
Someone asked Sir E if he could shoot a bird on his land at Ramgarh. The man wanted the bird for dissection in a biology lab. Sir E refused.
‘It’s in the interests of science,’ protested the man. ‘Do you think a bird is better than a human?’
‘Infinitely,’ said Sir E. ‘Infinitely better.’
He goes down today to pay his farmhands. He will return in a few days unless it gets cooler in Dehra. He complains of being very bored up here, for he can’t get about, and in Dehra he has his Hillman. ‘I’m rotting with boredom,’ he says.
Vinod, I hear, is laid low with a fever—the result of a day’s hard work. He is now in retirement for the rest of the season.
Walked five miles down the Tehri road to Suakholi, where I rested in a small tea shop, a loose stone structure with a tin roof held down by stones. It serves the bus passengers, mule drivers, milkmen and others who use this road.
I find a couple of mules tethered to a pine tree. The mule drivers, handsome men in tattered clothes, sit on a bench in the shade of the tree, drinking tea from brass tumblers. The shopkeeper, a man of indeterminate age—the cold dry winds from the mountain passes having crinkled his face like a walnut—greets me enthusiastically, as he always does. He even produces a chair, which looks like a survivor from the Savoy’s 1890 ballroom. Fortunately the Mussoorie antique dealers haven’t seen it, or it would have been carried away long ago. In any case, the stuffing has come out of the seat. The shopkeeper apologizes for its condition: ‘The rats were nesting in it.’ And then, to reassure me: ‘But they have gone now.’
Unlike the shopkeeper, the mule drivers have somewhere to go and something to deliver: sacks of potatoes. From Jaunpur to Jaunsar, the potato is probably the crop best suited to these stony, terraced fields. Oddly enough, it was introduced to the Himalayas by two Irishmen, Captain Young of Dehra and Mussoorie and Captain Kennedy of Simla, in the 1820s. The slopes of Young’s house, Mullingar, were known as his Potato Farm. Looking up old books, I was surprised to learn that the potato wasn’t known in India before the nineteenth century, and now it’s an essential part of our diet in most parts of the country.
As the mule drivers lead their pack animals away, along the dusty road to Landour bazaar, I follow at a distance, singing ‘Mule Train’ in my best Nelson Eddy manner.2
A thunderstorm, followed by strong winds, brought down the temperature. That was yesterday. And today, June, it is cloudy, cool, drizzling a little, almost monsoon weather; but it is still too early for the real monsoon.
The birds are enjoying the cool weather. The green-backed tits cool their bottoms in the rainwater pool. A king crow flashes past, winging through the air like an arrow. On the wing, it snaps up a hovering dragonfly. The mynahs fetch crow feathers to line their nest in the eaves of the house. I am lying so still on the window seat that a tit alights on the sill within a few inches of my head. It snaps up a small dead moth before flying away.
Sir E is back. He found it too hot in the valley. Even up here he has given up wearing a necktie. I’ll have him wearing a kurta and pyjamas before long; the only sensible dress in summer.
At dusk I sit at the window and watch the trees and listen to the wind as it makes light conversation in the leafy tops of the maples. A large bat flits in and out of the trees. The sky is just light enough to enable me to see the bat and the outlines of the taller trees. Up on Landour hill, the lights are just beginning to come on. It is deliciously cool, eight o’clock, a perfect summer’s evening. Prem is singing to himself in the kitchen. His wife and sister are chattering beneath the walnut tree. Down the hill, a kakar is barking, alarmed perhaps by the presence of a leopard. All the birds have gone to sleep for the night. Even the cicadas are strangely silent. The wind grows stronger and the tall maples bow before it: the maple moves its slender branches slowly from side to side, the oak moves its branches up and down. It is darker now; more lights on Landour. The cry of the barking deer has grown fainter, more distant, and now I hear a cricket singing in the bushes. The stars are out, the wind grows chilly, it is time to close the window.
Bijju is very much an outdoor boy, even when he isn’t grazing cows. He isn’t very strong in the chest, but his legs are sturdy; he was having no difficulty in scaling the high retaining wall. He grinned down at me. He is rather like the whistling thrush—absent for days, then unexpectedly reappearing in the forest or on the hillside. Bijju sings too, although his voice is more vigorous than melodic.
And that reminds me of the story of the whistling thrush. The bird was once a village boy who tried very hard to play the flute in the same style as the god Krishna. When the god heard his favourite melody being plagiarized, he was furious and turned the unfortunate boy into a bird. The whistling thrush still tries to copy the divine melody, but somehow it always breaks off right in the middle of a stanza. There ought to be a moral here, especially in a land full of plagiarists. Or to be fair, I should say film-land…
The Whistler. This is my name for the youth who labours part-time in the school. He is something of a character—scatterbrained, carefree, easy-going. He is always whistling—loudly and quite tunefully (this time a bird turned into a boy?)—so that you know when he’s coming round a bend or through the trees, and even when it’s dark you know who it is. He’s usually out quite late, because he spends all his money at the pictures. He has three sisters, and they and the mother are all working as maids or ayahs, and as they are quite indulgent to him (the only brother) he doesn’t have to work too hard. His shoes are always torn, even though his clothes look new.
He has a reputation for being a waster, but he returned the few rupees he borrowed from me last month. I suppose a youth who is always singing and whistling on the roads gives everyone the impression that he has nothing to do from morn till night, unlike that jolly miller of Dee who worked and sang the whole day through. (I know one man who forbids his children from singing in the home.)
But back to the Whistler, he is really quite enterprising. The other day he asked me for one of my books, and as I knew he hadn’t squandered too many years in school, I gave him an easy Hindi translation of one of my children’s books. But it was the paper he valued, not the words. He flogged it to the bania’s small son, who took it apart and converted the large pages into envelopes, which were then used for selling gram and peanuts. In India it doesn’t take long for anything to be recycled. On the way home, I saw a couple of customers throwing their empty packets away, and these were promptly consumed by a stray cow. There went my beautiful story!
Is there a lesson to be learnt from this? Yes. Don’t give away complimentaries.
It rained all night, and the morning is cool and fresh. Parrots are on the wing. I feel like tap-dancing like Gene Kelly, but you can’t tap dance on a hillside, you’d break an ankle. Only the roads (and not all of them) are suitable for a song-and-dance act, and no doubt the Whistler will oblige before long. At forty, I must refrain from being too frisky and boyish. But I’ll do a reel in the garden when no one is looking.
♦
24 June
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.
Feeling sorry for Sir E (or maybe for myself), I walked over to see him. The door was closed, so I looked in at the French window (nothing could be more English than a French window, and no Agatha Christie mystery would be complete without one), I saw him sleeping in his chair with his chin on his chest. There was no dagger sticking out of his back, only a bit of stuffing from his old coat. My footsteps on the gravel woke him, and he got up and opened the door for me. He said he felt a bit tipsy; had taken his usual peg, but thought the quality of whisky varied from bottle to bottle, and wished he could lay his hands on a bottle of Scotch or even Irish. He could only offer me an Uttar Pradesh brand. I said I’d given up drinking, and this pleased him because in truth he hates anyone drinking his whisky; said he might give it up himself, it ‘cost too damn much’! I told him it would be unwise to give up drinking at this stage of his life. As he had reached the age of eighty-six on two pegs a day, he was obviously thriving on it. Giving it up now would only play havoc with the orderly working of his system. I’d given it up in order to help an alcoholic friend abstain, and also because I wanted to give up something, and strong drink seemed the easiest thing to do without.
A cicada starts up in the tree nearest my window seat. What has he been doing all these weeks, and why does he choose this particular moment and this particular evening to play the fiddle so loudly? The cicadas are late this year, the monsoon has been late. But soon the forest will be ringing with the sound of the cicadas—an orchestra constantly tuning up but never quite getting into tune—and the sound of the birds will be pushed into the background.
Outside the front door I found an elegant young praying mantis reclining on a leaf of the honeysuckle creeper. I say young because he hadn’t grown to his full size, and was that very tender pale green which is the colour of a young mantis. They are light brown to begin with, like dry twigs, but as they grow older and the monsoon foliage becomes greener, they too change, and by mid-August they are dark green.
As though to make up for lost time, the monsoon rains are now here with a vengeance. It has been pouring all day, and already the roof is leaking. But nothing dampens Prem’s spirits. He is still singing love songs in the kitchen.
Kailash, whom I have known for a couple of weeks, asks me for twenty-five rupees.
‘What do you need it for?’ I ask.
‘It’s for my Sanskrit teacher,’ he says. ‘I have failed in Sanskrit but if I give the teacher twenty-five rupees he’ll alter my marks. You see, I’ve passed in all the other subjects, but if I fail in Sanskrit I’ll fail the entire exam and remain a pre-Inter student for another year.’
I took a little time to digest this information and ponder on the pitfalls of the examination system.
‘He must be failing a lot of boys,’ I said. ‘Twenty-five rupees each! Are there many others?’
‘Some. But he dare not fail the good ones. They can ask for a recheck. It’s the borderline cases like me who give him a chance to make money.’
This placed me in a quandary. Should I yield to the evils of the examination system and provide the money for pass-marks? Or should I adopt a high moral stance and allow the boy to fail?
Whatever the evils of the exam system, they are not the fault of the student. And either way he isn’t going to turn into a great Sanskrit scholar. So why be a hypocrite? I gave him the money.
Kailash slogs in his uncle’s orchard all morning, gets a midday meal (no breakfast), and hasn’t any shoes. And yet his uncle, a member of one of Garhwal’s well-known upper-caste families, is a wealthy man.
Kailash tells me he will return to his village once he knows his result. According to him his uncle is such a miser that at mealtimes he pauses before each mouthful, wondering: ‘Ought I to eat it? Or should I keep it for tomorrow?’
I am visited by another kind of student, a small girl from one of the private schools. Her mother has brought her to me for my autograph.
‘She studies your book in class six,’ I was informed.
‘And what book is that?’ I asked the little girl.
‘Tom Sawyer,’ she replied promptly. So I signed for Mark Twain. When a small storeroom collapsed during the last heavy rains, I was forced to rescue a couple of old packing cases that had been left there for three or four years—since my arrival here, in fact. The contents were well soaked and most of it had to be thrown away—old manuscripts that had been obliterated, negatives that had got stuck together, gramophone records that had taken on strange shapes (dear ‘Ink Spots’, how will I ever listen to you again?3)… Unlike most writers, I have no compunction about throwing away work that hasn’t quite come off, and I am sure there are a few critics who would prefer that I throw away the lot! Sentimental rubbish, no doubt. Well, we can’t please everyone; and we can’t preserve everything either. Time and the elements will take their toll.
But a couple of old diaries, kept in exercise books almost twenty years ago, had managed to survive the rain, and I put them out in the sun to dry, and then, almost unwillingly, started browsing through them. It was instructive, and sometimes a little disconcerting, to discover the sort of person I had been in my twenties. In some ways, no different from what I am today. In other ways, radically different. A diary is a useful tool for self-examination, particularly if both diary and diarist are still around after some years.
One particular entry caught my eye, and I reproduce it here without any alteration, because it represented my credo as a young writer, and it set me wondering if I had lived up to my own expectations. (Nobody else had any expectations of me!)
The entry was made on 19 January 1958, when I was living on my own in Dehradun:
The things I do best are those things I do on my own, alone, of my own accord, without the advice or approval of others. Once I start doing what other people tell me to do, both my character and creativity take a dip. It is when I strike out on my own that I succeed best.
There was a time when I was much younger and poorer than I am now. I had been over a year in Jersey, in the Channel Islands; I was unhappy, and the atmosphere in which I was writing was one of discouragement and disapproval. And that was why I wrote so well—because I was defiant! That was why I finished the only book I have finished so far. I had to prove to myself that I could do it.
One night I was walking alone along the beach. There was a strong wind blowing, dashing the salt spray in my face, and the sea was crashing against the St Helier rocks. I told myself: I will go to London; I will take up a job; I will finish my book; I will find a publisher; I will save money and I will return to India, because I can be happier there than here.
And that was just what I did.
I had guts then.
What’s more, I had an end in view.
The writing itself is not enough for me. Success and money are not enough. I had a little of both recently,4 but they did not help me to do anything wonderful. I must have something to write for, just as I must have something to live for. And that’s something I have yet to find.
There was more in that vein, but I give this excerpt as an example of a young man’s determination to be a writer in what were then adverse circumstances. Thirty-five years later, I’m still trying.
♦
27 June
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’ quarters 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 th
e 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.
In spite of there being water in several places, the whistling thrush still comes to my pool. He, at least, is a permanent resident.
Kailash has a round, cheerful face, only slightly marred by a swivel eye. His hair comes down over his forehead, hiding a deep scar. He is short, but quite compact and energetic. He chatters a good deal but in a general sort of way, and a response isn’t obligatory.
It’s quite possible that he will go away as soon as he gets his exam results. He’s fed up with being the Cinderella of his uncle’s house. He tells of how his miserly uncle went to see a rather permissive film, and was very shocked and wanted to walk out, but couldn’t bear the thought of losing his ticket money; so he sat through the film with his eyes closed.
Sir E departed for Dehra with his large retinue of servants and their dependants, all of whom would have done justice to an eighteenth-century nabob. ‘I am at the mercy of my servants,’ he told me the other day.
But he had placed himself at their mercy long ago, by setting himself up as a country squire surrounded by ‘faithful retainers’—all of whom received generous salaries but did little or no work. If he sold his white elephant of a farm, he’d be quite comfortable with one servant.
