Rain In the Mountains

by Ruskin Bond

  To begin with, I found that almost everyone on the hillside was busily engaged in writing a book. Was the atmosphere really so conducive to creative activity, or was it just a conspiracy to put me out of business? The discovery certainly put me out of my stride completely, and it was several weeks before I could write a word.

  There was a retired Brigadier who was writing a novel about World War II, and a retired Vice-Admiral who was writing a book about a Rear Admiral. Mrs S, who had been an actress in the early days of the talkies, was writing poems in the manner of Wordsworth; and an ageing (or rather, resurrected) ex- Maharani was penning her memoirs. There was also an elderly American who wrote salacious best-selling novels about India. It was said of him that he looked like Hemingway and wrote like Charles Bronson.

  With all this frenzied literary activity going on around me, it wasn’t surprising that I’ went into shock for some time.

  I was saved (or so I thought) by a ‘far-out’ ex-hippie and ex-Hollywood scriptwriter who decided he would produce a children’s film based on one of my stories. It was a pleasant little story, and all would have gone well if our producer friend hadn’t returned from some high-altitude poppy fields in a bit of a trance and failed to notice that his leading lady was in the family way. Although the events of the story all took place in a single day, the film itself took about four months to complete, with the result that her figure altered considerably from scene to scene until, by late evening of the same day, she was displaying all the glories of imminent motherhood.

  Naturally, the film was never released. I believe our producer friend now runs a health-food restaurant in Sydney.

  I shared a large building (it had paper-thin walls), with several other tenants, one of whom, a French girl in her thirties, was learning to play the sitar. She and her tabla-playing companion would sleep by day, but practise all through the night, making sleep impossible for me or anyone else in my household. I would try singing operatic arias to drown her out, but you can’t sing all night and she always outlasted me. Even a raging forest fire, which forced everyone else to evacuate the building for a night, did not keep her from her sitar any more than Rome burning kept Nero from his fiddle. Finally I got one of the chowkidar’s children to pour sand into her instrument, and that silenced her for some time.

  Another tenant who was there for a short while was a Dutchman, (yes, we were a cosmopolitan lot in the 1980s, before visa regulations were tightened) who claimed to be an acupuncturist. He showed me his box of needles and promised to cure me of the headaches that bothered me from time to time. But before he could start the treatment, he took a tumble while coming home from a late night party and fell down the khud into a clump of cacti, the sharp-pointed kind, which punctured the more tender parts of his anatomy. He had to spend a couple of weeks in the local mission hospital, receiving more conventional treatment, and he never did return to cure my headaches.

  How did Sisters Bazaar come by its name?

  Well, in the bad old, good old days, when Landour was a convalescent station for sick and weary British soldiers, the nursing sisters had their barracks in the long, low building that lines the road opposite Prakash’s Store. On the old maps this building is called ‘The Sisters’. For a time it belonged to Dev Anand’s family, but I believe it has since changed hands.

  Of a ‘bazaar’ there is little evidence, although Prakash’s Store must be at least a hundred years old. It is famous for its home-made cheese, and tradition has it that several generations of the Nehru family have patronized the store, from Motilal Nehru in the 1920s, to Rahul and his mother in more recent times.

  I am more of a jam-fancier myself, and although I no longer live in the area, I do sometimes drop into the store for a can of raspberry or apricot or plum jam, made from the fruit brought here from the surrounding villages.

  Further down the road is Dahlia Bank, where dahlias once covered the precipitous slope (known as the ‘Eyebrow’), behind the house. The old military hospital, (which was opened in 1827) has been altered and expanded to house the present Defence Institute of Work Study. Beyond it lies Mount Hermon, with the lonely grave of a lady who perished here one wild and windy winter, 150 years ago. And close by lies the lovely Oakville Estate, where at least three generations of the multi- talented Alter family have lived. They do everything from acting in Hindi films to climbing greasy poles, Malkhumb-style. From wise old Bob to Steve and Andy, those Alter boys are mighty handy.

  It is cold up there in winter, and I now live about 500 feet lower down, where it is only slightly warmer. But my walks take me up the hill from time to time. Most of the unusual eccentric people I have written about have gone away, but others, equally interesting, have taken their place. But for news of them you’ll have to wait for my autobiography. The Mussoorie gossips will then get a dose of their own medicine. Let them start having sleepless nights.

  Notes by the Wayside

  From a Writer’s Logbook

  1982

  22 February

  After a month’s absence, Prem and the family back from the village. Mukesh’s head in bandage, having tumbled down the steps of the village house; but he is mending fast. He was two last month.

  14 March

  After being out of print for twenty years, The Room on the Roof is reprinted in an edition for schools, largely due to my own efforts and the foresight of the Students’ Stores. Mr Sharma, the publisher, tells me the convent nuns don’t approve of Rusty kissing Meena in the forest, but he hopes to override their objections.

  21 March

  Bad weather over Holi. Room flooded. Everyone down with septic throats and fever. While abed, read Stendhal’s Scarlet and Black. Most of my serious reading seems to get done when I’m sick. No better way of recuperating!

  28 March

  Felt well enough to take a leisurely walk along the Tehri road. Trees in new leaf. The fresh young green of the maples particularly soothing. I thought: I may not have contributed anything to the progress of mankind, but neither have I robbed the world of anything—not one tree or bird or wildflower. Well, maybe the odd flower. Can’t resist plucking dandelions.

  6 April

  Raki’s turn to fall on his head. Five stitches and a black eye. He’ll be eight this year.

  11 April

  Swifts busy nesting in the roof and performing aerobatics outside my window. They do everything on the wing, it seems— including feeding and making love. Making love in mid-air is probably more fun than doing it while static. They cannot perch in the normal way.

  The spring’s first ladybird on my windowsill.

  6 May

  A local racketeer, who has been in jail a couple of times, complimented me because I was ‘always smiling’. I thought better of him for the observation. Flattery will get you everywhere!

  ‘We are all worms,’ declared Winston Churchill in 1906. ‘But I do believe that I am a glow-worm.

  1 July

  New regime. Stay slim with sex.

  1 August

  It didn’t work.

  10 July

  Seventh impression of Grandfather’s Private Zoo—these stories are my inheritance from Grandfather. Could he really have kept so many birds and animals in the house?

  18 July

  First clear morning after days of rain. Usha brings flowers—hydrangea, gladioli, dahlias. A lovely girl, the roses blooming in her cheeks.

  5 August

  Managed an article a day for over a month. Grub Street again!

  ‘Never despair. But if you do, then work in despair.’ (I don’t know who said that, but I remember reading the lines while I was at school.)

  6 August

  Dare

  Will

  Keep Silence

  And thank God for The Tribune of Chandigarh.

  25 August

  Shortage of cash. Muddle, muddle, toil and trouble.

  Learn to zigzag!

  ‘We shall not spoil what we have by desiring what we have not, but
remember that what we have too was the gift of fortune.’

  (Epicurus)

  15 September

  ‘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, 1924)

  ‘Kota Bharu . . . . It has a rest-house, a rambling and capacious building of timber, where I thought it would be easy to stay for so long that one might forget to go.’

  (Tide Marks)

  This is what happened to me in Mussoorie. I forgot to go. First it was Maplewood Lodge. And now Ivy Cottage . . . .

  23 September

  Zoo royalties and Monitor cheque to the rescue. We live to fight another day!

  27 October

  Savitri (Dolly) is one. She’ll grow into a bonny girl.

  And it’s been 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.

  By itself, the wild commelina, reflecting the blue of the sky, always catches at my heart.

  28 October

  If you have one true friend, you have more than your share.

  31 October

  Be proud. Be proud of what you are and what you’ve done.

  But be proud within. Don’t flaunt it, you will only offend. There’s something obscene about a braggart.

  17 November

  A boy stretches out on the bench like a cat, and the setting sun is trapped in his eyes, golden brown, glowing like a tiger’s eyes. He reminds me a little of Somi as a boy. (Somi of The Room on the Roof.) Not only physically, but the same lilting laughter.

  4 December

  Someone came up to me in the dark (on the road outside the cottage) and kissed me and ran away. Who could it have been? So soft and warm and all-encompassing . . . . The moment stayed with me all night . . . .

  Light snowfall by morning. Just enough to cloak the deodars for an hour or two, before it all melted away.

  1983

  5 January

  Raki writes from the village: little ones and their mother unhappy. Send Prem to fetch them.

  10 January

  Prem returns with the family.

  ‘You know, the way love can change a fellow is really frightful to contemplate.’

  (P. G. Wodehouse)

  11 March

  Feeling a bit low, so I played marbles with the children, and they won all my marbles. Felt better. Rode Raki’s rickety cycle. Fell off. Felt better.

  30 April

  So finally I have moved to the top of the mountain. It’s colder up here, a thousand feet higher than the town, and the town is six thousand feet above sea-level. The ‘foliage is superior’, as a young trainee-diplomat remarked to me the other day. He meant they there were more trees.

  There are three or four shops in the bazaar—a general store, a bania’s ration-shop, a boutique for the tourists, and a small tea-shop for the locals.

  It’s a cantonment area, neat, clean, well-maintained. Therefore the trees. In a civil area, the contractors would have had them long ago.

  But it’s a small cantonment. Only a few officers and their families. A small staff. No soldiers on parade.

  On the southern slopes, missionaries, mostly American.

  On the northern face, some foreign residents, occasional scholars (a bit vague about what they are studying or researching), trippers, ‘hippies’ (the term still lingers here) doing their thing, which is mostly smoking charas.

  Up from the villages the milkmen come. And from the town, the bakers and other tradesmen.

  A few wealthy Indians have their houses here. They come in the summer, like migrant birds. Stay a week or two, then vanish in their limousines.

  *

  Mornings, I walk Raki down to school. All the way down the hill and through the Landour bazaar (just coming to life) and up the road past the clock tower to St. Clare’s. I have to tell him stories on the way. As I was running out of ideas, I made up this man-eating leopard who terrorizes the hillside, snapping up a human victim every day. As long as there are suitable victims, I can keep the serial going. ‘But when asks Raki, ‘is someone going to kill it?’

  ‘You don’t want the story to end, do you?’ I ask. ‘We have a population of ten thousand in this town. Let’s see how many survive.

  ‘If there were two leopards, it would be quicker says Raki.

  I walk up alone, huffing and puffing all the way, it’s one long steep climb, and the road doesn’t level out until you’re at the church. On the way I pass other children going to school (most of them to the Hindi schools). I have been passing them for several months, and receive a variety of greetings—namaste, salaam, good-morning, hello, according to their inclination— and I reply in kind. They are politer up here than down in the town. Could it be the altitude? Possibly. Because down in the town they are politer than down in the valley. And in the valley they are politer (only just) than on the plain.

  I believe the highland Scots, are very polite too, except at football matches.

  *

  Fox-Burn. The name is still on the gate. Of the house only the walls remain.

  I take an overgrown path through the deodars and find this knoll with the ruins on it. I can only call it the murder of a house, Its lovely Doric pillars still stand, supporting the sky. A magnificent old horse-chestnut throws its shadow over the broken masonry.

  When its owner, an old English (Scottish?) lady died here in the Fifties, there were no heirs, and the property fell into strange hands. The banias and kabaris got hold of the house, and pulled it down, because there was more money to be had from selling the iron beams, the mahogany flooring, the rosewood furnishings. So they stripped the house of everything. They might at least have taken the walls away too, instead of leaving behind this sad reminder of former glory. For a fine house it must have been, the long veranda letting in the afternoon sunshine, the wide lawn lending itself to genteel tea parties and moonlit walks. All that has gone of course, but why should the house have been violated? Now no one can live in it; no one can buy it—for no one is certain who it belongs to—and the walls are so thick, it would take a hundred years of wind and rain to bring them down. Even the cemetery presents a more cheerful sight. Flowers grow between the graves.

  12 May

  Made Raki’s day—had his cycle repaired.

  Made Mukesh’s day—brought him a cricket bat from Dehra.

  Made Mrs Santra’s day—said her poems were lovely.

  (If, by telling a lie, one can make someone happy, why not tell the damn lie?)

  19 May

  Prem, Raki, Muki, make it a merry birthday morning, and launch me into my fifties with love and tenderness.

  10 June

  Went down to Dehra, hoping to find Manohar and repay him for his goodness in caring for me when I was down with a fever in the hotel last month. Too late. He’d left the White House and returned to his village without leaving an address. I’m sorry, friend. Now I shall never be able to thank you properly for your kindness.

  28 June

  To Dehra again, to see the General, who wants me to write a history of the Military Academy (just twenty-five years old). He evinced great enthusiasm, but wouldn’t talk money. Could the army be short of money? Should I do it as a matter of honour? Anyway, I walked all the way back to town (six miles) in the blazing afternoon sun. Authors don’t merit army transport.

  The evening was pleasant, and I sat on the veranda of the White House (a hotel which was built when I was a boy here), and wrote a poem called Parts of Old Dehra:

  Parts of old Dehra remain . . . .

  A peepul tree I knew

  And flying foxes

  In a mango grove

  And here and there

  A moss-encrusted wall

  Old bungalows

  Gone to seed

  And giving way

  To concrete slabs.

  A garden town’s become a city />
  And the people faceless

  As they pass or rather rush

  Hell-bent

  From place of work

  To crowded tenement.

  So change must come,

  Fields make way for factories,

  The trees succumb

  To real-estate,

  The rivers plunge

  Silt-laden

  To our doom . . . .

  Too late to do a thing

  About it now,

  For we have grown

  Too many,

  And the world’s no bigger

  Than before.

  Do-gooders, don’t despair!

  Nature will repair

  Her own, long after

  We are dust.

  26 July

  At fifty, I have received more love than at any other period of my life. Waves of tenderness . . . .

  16 August

  Raki completes ten. Muki was four earlier this year; Dolly will be three in October. Bright sparks! All power to them.

  Julia MacRae Books publish Tigers Forever, and I give them a new one, Earthquake, which worked quite well, I thought. This is my tenth storybook for children published in the UK. And I have yet to meet my publishers! Odd, how everyone finds it necessary to haunt the offices of editors and publishers, as though a public relations exercise is vital to getting something published.

  19 October

  ‘Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.’

  (Soren Kierkegaard)

  1984

  1 January

  Refuse to lose.

  6 January

  Bitterly cold. The snow came in through the bedroom roof. Not enough money for going away, but at least there’s enough for wood and coal. I hate the cold and the snow, but the children love it. Raki, Muki and Dolly in constant high spirits. Snowballing on the road would have touched the heart of Dickens, but right now I would rather be ‘bareheaded in the blazing sun at mid-day’ like one of Kipling’s sunstroke victims.

  19 January

  Went down to Dehra for the day and had my eyes checked. ‘Progressive myopia’. I shall just have to put up with stronger glasses, I suppose.