by Ruskin Bond
The deal done, and the door closed, I decide it’s time to do some work. I start this little essay. If it’s nice and gets published, I will be able to take care of the electricity bill. There’s a knock at the door. Some knocks I recognize, but this is a new one. Perhaps it’s someone asking for a donation. Cucumber in hand, I stride to the door and open it abruptly only to be confronted by a polite, smart-looking chauffeur who presents me with a large bouquet of flowering gladioli!
‘With the compliments of Mr B.P. Singh,’ he announces, before departing smartly with a click of the heels. I start looking for a receptacle for the flowers, as Grandmother’s flower vase was really designed for violets and forget-me-nots.
B.P. Singh is a kind man who had the original idea of turning his property outside Mussoorie into a gladioli farm. A bare hillside is now a mass of gladioli from May to September. He sells them to flower shops in Delhi, but his heart bleeds at harvesting time.
Gladioli arranged in an ice-bucket, I return to my desk and am just wondering what I should be writing next, when there is a loud banging on the door. No friendly knock this time. Urgent, peremptory, summoning! Could it be the police? And what have I gone and done? Every good citizen has at least one guilty secret, just waiting to be discovered! I move warily to the door and open it an inch or two. It is a policeman!
Hastily, I drop the cucumber and politely ask him if I can be of help. Try to look casual, I tell myself. He has a small packet in his hands. No, it’s not a warrant. It turns out to be a slim volume of verse, sent over by a visiting DIG of Police, who has authored it. I thank his emissary profusely, and, after he has gone, I place the volume reverently on my bookshelf, beside the works of other poetry-loving policemen. These men of steel, who inspire so much awe and trepidation in the rest of us, they too are humans and some of them are poets!
Now it’s afternoon, and the knock I hear is a familiar one, and welcome, for it heralds the postman. What would writers do without postmen? They have more power than literary agents. I don’t have an agent (I’ll be honest and say an agent won’t have me), but I do have a postman, and he turns up every day except when there’s a landslide.
Yes, it’s Prakash the postman who makes my day, showering me with letters, books, acceptances, rejections, and even the occasional cheque. These postmen are fine fellows, they do their utmost to bring the good news from Ghent to Aix.
And what has Prakash brought me today? A reminder: I haven’t paid my subscription to the Author’s Guild. I’d better send it off, or I shall be a derecognized author. A letter from a reader: would I like to go through her 800-page dissertation on the Gita? Some day, my love . . . . A cheque, a cheque! From Sunflower Books, for nineteen rupees only, representing the sale of six copies of one of my books during the previous year. Never mind. Six wise persons put their money down for my book. No fresh acceptances, but no rejections either. A postcard from Goa, where one of my publishers is taking a holiday. So the post is something of an anti-climax. But I mustn’t complain. Not every knock on the door brings gladioli fresh from the fields. Tomorrow’s another day, and the postman comes six days a week.
Sounds of the Sea
FOR YEARS I had this large sea-shell, and by putting it to my ear I could hear the distant sob and hiss of the sea—or so I fancied, until this romantic notion was dispelled by twelve- year-old Mukesh, who told me that the same effect could be obtained by holding an empty cup to my ear. He was right, of course. In fact, the cup sounds better than the shell! And for years I’d gone on imagining that the sound of the sea was somehow trapped in my shell . . . . But I still cling to it, for it takes me back to Jamnagar, on the west coast of India, and memories of sea and sand, small steamers and large Arab dhows plying across the Gulf of Kutch.
My small hand in my father’s, I explored with him the little port’s harbour and beach, bringing home shells of considerable variety, and even, on one occasion, a small crab, which lived in a spare bathtub for several days and was forgotten—until a visiting aunt, deciding on a tub-bath after a long train journey, found it keeping her company among the soap-suds. Amidst much clamour and consternation, it was evicted from the house and dropped into a nearby well. But my aunt was convinced that I had deliberately placed it in the tub, and refused to speak to me for the rest of her stay.
A small British steamer was often in port, and my father and I would visit the captain, a good-natured Welshman who gave me chocolates, a great treat in those days, for Jamnagar was too small a place for a Western confectionery shop. I was ready to go to sea with Captain Jenkins, convinced that chocolates were only to be found on tramp steamers.
We left Jamnagar when the Second World War broke out and my father joined the R.A.F. It was to be some ten years before I saw the sea again, for I went to boarding-school in the hills. I was still in my teens, but now bereft of my father, when I set sail from Bombay in the S. S. Strathnaver, a beautiful P&O liner, one of a fleet, its sister ships being the Strathaird and Stratheden. Those were the days of the big passenger liners, before fast air travel put an end to leisurely ocean voyages. It took just over a fortnight to reach Southampton or London, but there was never a dull moment on the voyage. Apart from interesting shipboard acquaintances—the sort of mixed company that gave Somerset Maugham material for his stories—there were also colourful ports of call: Aden, Port Said, Marseilles, Gibraltar. At Marseilles, I decided to miss the coach-tour and instead walk into the town. After three hours of walking along miles and miles of dockland, I finally reached the outskirts of the city—just in time to catch the coach back to the ship!
But later, living in London, I never tired of walking among the docks and wharfs along the Thames, for many of those places were associated with the novels of Dickens, which had inspired me to become a writer. Limehouse, Wapping, Shadwell Stairs, the Mile End Road, the East India Docks, these were all places I knew from Bleak House, Dombey and Son, and Our Mutual Friend. And there was the fog, a thick peasouper, that seemed to have lingered on from the fog that had enveloped the characters and the action in Bleak House, setting the tone for that masterpiece. London, I am told, no longer has fogs—they are dispersed by modern and scientific means—and although the air no doubt is cleaner and healthier now, I feel sure some of the magic has gone—along with the East End of old.
From London’s dockland to the Channel Islands was a short trip but a considerable change. I lived on the island of Jersey for two years. It had a number of bays and inlets of great charm and beauty, and it was here that I learnt to watch the tides advancing and retreating, and discovered that the tides make different sounds in different places.
Every tide has its own music, and those who live near lonely shores soon learn to recognize the familiar ripple, throb, sob, or sigh. And sometimes the tide comes up from the deep against a steep sand-bank and roars defiance.
The tide-rip which pushes through the Channel Islands off the Norman coast has a smoother thud than most, though it comes from the same Atlantic as the harsher-sounding waters among the Orkneys. The difference may be that the channel tides move through purple waters which have drifted up from sunny Portugal, while the other has a shiver from the coast of Greenland.
The music of sea waters is wonderfully varied. Every bay and headland and strait has its note which the local fisherfolk recognize even in time of dense fog; a note which guides them home or which helps them locate the place for their fishing.
For many years I have been living far from the sea. Sometimes I feel the urge to go down to the sea again, all the way from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. And maybe I will one day.
Meanwhile, if I wish to listen to the sound of the sea, there’s always my sea-shell—or Mukesh’s tea-cup.
All my Writing Days
I MUST HAVE been eight or nine when my father gave me a small diary, and I began my first tentative forays as a writer— or wordsmith, as I have sometimes described my calling.
Many of those early diary entries were lists—boo
ks read, gramophone records collected, films seen and enjoyed—but even this indulgence was a discipline of sorts and was to stand me in good stead in later years. It made me neat and meticulous, and helped me form the habit of keeping notes and filing away facts: not, perhaps, essential attributes for a writer, but useful ones. Young writers with natural talent are often handicapped by untidy working habits. A friend of mine wrote quite brilliantly but always contrived to lose his manuscripts; he now breeds Angora rabbits.
While at boarding-school in the hill-station of Simla, then the summer capital of British India, I discovered Dickens in the school library and, captivated by David Copperfield, decided I was going to be a writer like David, who was really Charles Dickens. At the age of thirteen I did, in fact, write a short novel, an account of school life—eulogies of my friends, mostly— but it was confiscated by a teacher, who thought I was wasting my time; he may well have been right!
Those schoolboy efforts were, however, not really wasted. I found I could write in a busy classroom, noisy dormitory, a corner of a playing-field; that is, when I really wanted to. As William Saroyan once said, ‘All you need is paper,’ and there was no shortage of that—empty paper bags, wrappers, pages torn from exercise books, the backs of calendars and school circulars. The wartime paper shortage did not defeat me.
Writing under such conditions, sometimes with a pillow- fight raging around me, was good training too. Later in life I found I was able to write in the crowded compartment of a moving train, or in a room full of children. I love solitude, and there is no pleasure to equal that of writing a poem under a blossoming cherry tree; but I am a compulsive writer, and when I want to put words to paper, I am not fussy about the conditions. Even as I write this piece, a wedding procession is passing along the road beneath my window. It is led by a twelve-piece band, at least six of the instruments being trumpets. The drummers have stationed themselves beneath the window. My cherry tree is a far cry! But the cacophony won’t stop me from completing this essay. Play on, band! Blow, blow, thou windy trumpets! Your piercing notes may have loosened the wax in my ears, but my hand remains steady, the words run on . . . .
I had lost my father before I had finished my schooling, and at the age of seventeen I found myself in the English Channel Islands, working in a grocery store, and writing late at night in an attic room provided by an aunt. Most of my relatives were pessimistic about my literary prospects, and there were no literary influences on the islands. Late one winter evening I walked along the sea-front, a lonely figure on the esplanade, while a wind of gale-force blew in from the sea, whipping the salt spray against my face. The tide was in, great waves crashed against the sea wall, sending plumes of water over the ramparts. ‘This is it!’ I thought. ‘These are signs and portents. I must have more resolve. I must not give up!’ I decided I would leave for London the next day. I was David Copperfield, of course. The grocery store found itself short of an assistant, while a London travel agency was richer by a very inexperienced clerk. I think it suffered a little because of me, but we both survived, and the first novel got written in fits and starts, at weekends and on holidays. I was bold enough to look for a publisher, and brash enough to find one!
‘All glory comes from daring to begin,’ said the blurb on the dust cover of my book; but in truth, Glory did nothing of the sort. After receiving a few encouraging reviews, the book all but disappeared from sight. But the advance I received, enabled me to return to India, more determined than ever to be a full- time writer.
In Dehradun, the small town I had known as a boy, I set up ‘shop’ in a small apartment near the bazaar and made a precarious living from submitting my stories and articles to the English language press in India. But this was one of the happiest periods of my life. Still in my twenties, I was independent, free to write as I pleased, monarch of all I surveyed—which was the local bus stand, a row of small barber shops, and a large tamarind tree dominating everything else. When I passed through Dehra the other day, I was glad to find the tamarind tree still there.
After two years of freelancing, circumstances took me to Delhi and Bombay, but I have always preferred the small- towns of India to its cities. I feel lost in the big city, and too much the stranger in a village. I’m a small town person, and when I came to live in the hills and freelanced again, it was on the outskirts of a small town that I took up residence.
This is, for the most part, a quiet place, and it suits a quiet person. If I want to write on a sunny hill-side or in the shade of a chestnut tree, there is nothing to prevent me from doing so. But I like my desk near the window, close to the busy little road leading to the bazaar. The daily business of life does not distract me.
The marriage procession with its out-of-tune band has moved on. Now a car has stalled on its way up the hill. A truck on the way down cannot get past. There is a furious honking of horns and an exchange of words which are not in the best interests of global harmony. It is all part of my writing life. Blow your horn, charioteer! My hand is steady, and the words run on.
Banyan Tree
I remember you well, old banyan tree
As you stood there, spreading quietly
Over the broken wall.
While adults slept, I crept away
Down the broad veranda steps, around
The outhouse and the melon-ground
Into the shades of afternoon . . . .
Those summers in India no one stirred
Till evening brought the Fever-Bird
And the mem-sahibs rose with the Rising Moon.
In that June of long ago, I roamed
The faded garden of my father’s home;
He’d gone away. There was nothing to do
And no one to talk to . . . .
I must have known that giants have few friends
(The great lurk shyly in their private dens)—
And found you hidden by a dark green wall
Of aerial roots.
Intruder in your pillared den, I stood
And shyly touched your old and rugged wood.
And as my hands explored you, giant tree,
I heard you singing!
The Trail to the Bank
LOCAL RESIDENTS HAVE got fed up with offering me lifts on the
road to our hilltop bank and post office. They typically drive up the steep road to Landour in third (or is it fourth?) gear, see me plodding along on foot, and out of the goodness of their hearts, stop and open the door for me.
Although I hate to disappoint them, I close the door, thank them profusely, and insist that I am enjoying my walk. They don’t believe me, naturally; but with a shrug, the drivers get into gear again and take off, although sometimes they have difficulty getting started, the hill being very steep. As I don’t wish to insult them by reaching the bank first, I sit on the parapet wall and make encouraging sounds until they finally take off. Then I renew my leisurely walk up the hill, taking note of the fact that the wild geraniums and periwinkles have begun to flower and that the whistling-thrushes are nesting under the culvert over which those very cars pass every day.
Most people, car drivers anyway, think I’m a little eccentric. So be it. I probably am eccentric! But having come to the Himalayan foot-hills over twenty-five years ago in order to enjoy walking among them, I am not about to stop now, just because everyone else has stopped walking. The hills are durable in their attractions, and my legs have proved durable too, so why should we not continue together as before?
The friends who once walked beside me now have their shiny new cars or capacious vans, and seldom emerge from them, unless it be to seek refreshment at some wayside tea shop or cafe.
Now, I’m no fitness freak. I don’t jog either. If I did, I would almost certainly miss the latest wildflower to appear on the hillside, and I would not be able to stop awhile and talk to other people on the road—villagers with their milk and vegetables, all-weather postmen, cheeky schoolchildren, inquisitive tourists—or to exchange greetings with ca
ts, dogs, stray cows, and runaway mules.
Runaway mules are friendly creatures except toward their owners. I chat with the owners too, when they come charging up the road. I try to put them in good humour, so as to save the mules from a beating.
Most of the people I have mentioned are walkers from necessity. Those who walk for pleasure grow fewer by the day.
I don’t mean long-distance trekkers or high altitude climbers, who are almost professional in their approach to roads and mountains. I mean people such as myself who are not great athletes but who enjoy sauntering through the woods on a frosty morning, leaving the main road and slithering downhill into a bed of ferns, or following a mountain stream until you reach the small spring in the rocks where it begins . . . . But, no—everyone must have a destination in mind, for this is the age of destinations, be it the Taj Mahal, the casino at Cannes, or the polar icecap. I glanced at a bestselling book of records the other day, and my eye lighted upon an entry stating that somebody’s grandmother had knitted a scarf that was over twenty miles long. Where was it going, I wondered, and who would be wearing it? The book didn’t say. It was just another destination, another ‘first’ to be recorded.
Personally I prefer people who come in second. I feel safer with them.
It takes a car less than five minutes up the hill to get to the bank. It takes me roughly twenty-five minutes. But there is never a dull minute. Apart from having interesting animal and human encounters, there are the changes that occur almost daily on the hill slopes: the ferns turning from green to gold, the Virginia creepers becoming a dark crimson, horse chestnuts falling to the ground.
On today’s walk I spot a redstart, come down early from higher altitudes to escape the snow. He whistles cheerfully in a medlar tree. Wild ducks are flying south. There they go, high over the valley, heading for the lakes and marshlands.
