Rain In the Mountains

by Ruskin Bond

  If there’s no one on the road, and I feel like a little diversion, I can always sing. I don’t sing well, but there’s no one to hear me except for a startled woodpecker, so I can go into my Nelson Eddy routine, belting out the songs my childhood gramophone taught me. ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,’ ‘Stouthearted Men,’ ‘Song of the Open Road!’ No one writes marching songs now, so I have to rely on the old ones.

  Above me the blue sky, around me the green forest, below me the dusty plains.

  Presently I am at Char-Dukaan—‘Four Shops’—and the bank and post office.

  Letters posted, I enter the bank, to be greeted effusively by the manager, Vishal Ohri—not because I have come to make a large deposit, but because he is that rarity among bank managers, a nature lover! When he learns that I have just seen the first redstart of the winter, he grows excited and insists that I take him to it. As we are nearing the office tea break, he sets off with me down the road and, to our mutual satisfaction and delight, is still in the medlar tree, putting on a special performance seemingly for our benefit.

  The manager returns to his office, happy to be working at this remote hilltop branch. Both staff and customers will find him the most understanding and sympathetic of managers today, for has he not just seen the first white-capped redstart to fly into Landour for the winter? That’s as good a ‘first’ as any in those books of records.

  As long as there are nature-loving bank managers, I muse on my way home, there’s still hope for this little old world. And for bank depositors, too!

  Hill-Station

  There is nothing to keep me here,

  Only these mountains of silence

  And the gentle reserve of shepherds and woodmen

  Who know me as one who

  Walks among trees.

  Madman, misanthropist? They make

  Their guesses, smile and pass slowly

  Down the steep path near the cottage. There is nothing

  To keep me here, walking

  Among old trees.

  Where the Grass Grows Greener

  EARLY IN SUMMER the grass on the hills is still a pale yellowish

  green, tinged with brown, and that is how it remains until the monsoon rains bring new life to everything that subsists on the stony Himalayan soil. And then, for four months, the greens are deep and dark and emerald bright.

  But the other day, taking a narrow path that left the dry Mussoorie ridge to link up with Pari Tibba, I ran across a patch of lush green grass, and I knew there had to be water there.

  The grass was soft and springy, spotted with the crimson of small, wild strawberries. Delicate maidenhair, my favourite fern, grew from a cluster of moist, glistening rocks. Moving the ferns a little, I discovered the spring, a freshet of clear sparkling water.

  I never cease to wonder at the tenacity of water—its ability to make its way through various strata of rock, zigzagging, back-tracking, finding space, cunningly discovering faults and fissures in the mountain, and sometimes travelling underground for great distances before emerging into the open. Of course, there’s no stopping water. For no matter how tiny that little trickle, it has to go somewhere!

  Like this little spring. At first I thought it was too small to go anywhere, that it would dry up at the edge of the path. Then I discovered that the grass remained soft and green for some distance along the verge, and that there was moisture beneath the grass. This wet stretch ended abruptly; but, on looking further, I saw that it continued on the other side of the path, after briefly going underground again.

  I decided to follow its fortunes as it disappeared beneath a tunnel of tall grass and bracken fern. Slithering down a stony slope, I found myself in a small ravine, and there I discovered that my little spring had grown, having been joined by the waters of another spring bubbling up from beneath a patch of primroses.

  A short distance away, a spotted forktail stood on a rock, surveying this marriage of the waters. His long, forked tail moved slowly up and down. He paid no attention to me, being totally absorbed in the movements of a water spider. A swift peck, and the spider vanished, completing the bird’s breakfast. Thirsty, I cupped my hands and drank a little water. So did the forktail. We had a perennial supply of pure aqua minerale all to ourselves!

  There was now a rivulet to follow, and I continued down the ravine until I came to a small pool that was fed not only by my brook, (I was already thinking of it as my very own!) but also by a little cascade of water coming down from a rocky ledge. I climbed a little way up the rocks and entered a small cave, in which there was just enough space for crouching down. Water dripped and trickled off its roof and sides. And most wonderful of all, some of these drops created tiny rainbows, for a ray of sunlight had struck through a crevice in the cave roof making the droplets of moisture radiant with all the colours of the spectrum.

  When I emerged from the cave, I saw a pair of pine martins drinking at the pool. As soon as they saw me, they were up and away, bounding across the ravine and into the trees.

  The brook was now a small stream, but I could not follow it much further, because the hill went into a steep decline and the water tumbled over large, slippery boulders, becoming a waterfall and then a noisy little torrent as it sped toward the valley.

  Climbing up the sides of the ravine to the spur of Pari Tibba, I could see the distant silver of a meandering river, and I knew my little stream was destined to become part of it; and that the river would be joined by another that could be seen slipping over the far horizon, and that their combined waters would enter the great Ganga, or Ganges, further downstream.

  This mighty river would, in turn, wander over the rich alluvial plains of northern India, finally debouching into the ocean near the Bay of Bengal.

  And the ocean, what was it but another droplet in the universe, in the greater scheme of things? No greater than the glistening drop of water that helped start it all, where the grass grows greener around my little spring on the mountain.

  Silent Birth

  When the earth gave birth to this tree,

  There came no sound:

  A green shoot thrust

  In silence from the ground.

  Our births don’t come so quiet—

  Most lives run riot—

  But the bud opens silently,

  And flower gives way to fruit.

  So must we search

  For the stillness within the tree,

  The silence within the root.

  Better to Have a Bird in a Bush

  THE THING I like most about shrubs and small bushes is that they are about my size or thereabouts. I can meet them on equal terms. Most trees grow tall, they overtake us after a few years, and we find ourselves looking up to them with a certain amount of awe and deference. And so we should.

  A bush, on the other hand, may have been in the ground a long time—thirty or forty years or more—while continuing to remain a bush, man-sized and approachable. A bush may spread sideways or gain in substance, but it seldom towers over you. This means that I can be on intimate terms with it, know its qualities—of leaf, bud, flower, and fruit—and also its inhabitants, be they insects, birds, small mammals, or reptiles.

  Of course, we know that bushes are ideal for binding the earth together and preventing erosion. In this respect they are just as important as trees. Every monsoon I witness landslides all about me, but I know the hillside just above my cottage is well-knit, knotted and netted, by bilberry and raspberry, wild jasmine, dog-rose and bramble, and other shrubs, vines, and creepers.

  I have made a small bench in the middle of this civilized wilderness. And sitting here, I can look down on my own roof, as well as sideways and upward, into a number of bushes, teeming with life throughout the year. This is my favourite place. No one can find me here, unless I call out and make my presence known. The buntings and sparrows, ‘grown accustomed to my face’ and welcoming the grain I scatter for them, flit about near my feet. One of them, bolder than the rest, alights on my sho
e and proceeds to polish his beak on the leather. The sparrows are here all the year round. So are the whistling- thrushes, who live in the shadows between house and hill, sheltered by a waterwood bush, so-called because it likes cool, damp places.

  Summer brings the fruit-eating birds, for, now the berries are ripe, a pair of green pigeons, rare in these parts, scramble over the branches of a hawthorn bush, delicately picking off the fruit. The raspberry bush is raided by bands of finches and greedy yellow-bottomed bulbuls. A flock of bright green parrots comes swooping down on the medlar tree, but they do not stay for long. Taking flight at my approach, they wheel above, green and gold in the sunlight, and make for the plum trees further down the road.

  The kingera, a native Himalayan shrub similar to the bilberry, attracts small boys as well as birds. On their way to and from school, the boys scramble up the hillside and help themselves to the small sweet and sour berries. Then, lips stained purple, they go their merry way. The birds return.

  Other inhabitants of this shrub-land include the skink, a tiny lizard-like reptile, quite harmless. It emerges from its home among stones or roots to sun itself or drink from a leaf-cup of water. I have to protect these skinks from a large prowling tabby cat who thinks the hillside and everything on it belongs to him. From my bench, I can see him move stealthily around the corner of my roof. He has his eye on the slow-moving green pigeons, I am sure. I shall have to watch out for him.

  There wouldn’t be much point in encouraging the birds to visit my bushes if the main beneficiary is to be that handsome, but singleminded cat!

  There are flowering shrubs, too—a tangle of dog-roses, the wild yellow jasmine, a buddleia popular with honey bees, and a spreading mayflower which today is covered with small saffron-winged butterflies.

  The grass, straw-yellow in winter, is now green and sweet, sprinkled with buttercups and clover. I can abandon the bench and lie on the grass, studying it at close quarters while repeating Whitman’s lines:

  A child said ‘What is the grass?’ fetching it to me with

  full hands.

  How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is

  any more than he.

  I am no wiser, either, but grass is obviously a good thing, providing a home for crickets and ladybirds and other small creatures. It wouldn’t be much fun living on a planet where grass could not grow.

  That cat agrees with me. He is flat on his stomach on the grass, inching closer to one of those defenceless little skinks. He has decided that a skink in hand is worth two birds in a bush. I get to my feet, and the cat runs away.

  The green pigeons have also flown away. The smaller birds remain where they are; they know they are too swift for the prowler. I return to my bench and watch the finches and coppersmiths arrive and depart.

  You might call my shrubbery an arrival and departure lounge for small birds, but they are also free to take up residence if they wish. Their presence adds sweetness to my life. A bush at hand is good for many a bird!

  Coaxing a Garden from Himalayan Soil

  I WOULDN’T GO so far as to say that a garden is the answer to all problems, but its amazing how a little digging and friendly dialogue with the good earth can help reactivate us when we grow sluggish.

  Whenever I’m stuck in the middle of a story or an essay, I go into my tiny hillside garden and get down to the serious business of transplanting or weeding or pruning or just plucking off dead blooms, and in no time at all I’m struck with a notion of how to proceed with the stalled story, reluctant essay, or unresolved poem.

  Not all gardeners are writers, but you don’t have to be a writer to benefit from the goodness of your garden. Baldev, who heads a large business corporation in Delhi, tells me that he wouldn’t dream of going to his office unless he’d spent at least half an hour in his garden that morning. If you can start the day by looking at the dew on your antirrhinums, he tells me, you can face the stormiest of board meetings.

  Or take Cyril, an old friend.

  When I met him, he was living in a small apartment on the first floor of a building that looked over a steep, stony precipice. The house itself appeared to be built on stilts, although these turned out to be concrete pillars. Altogether an ugly edifice. ‘Poor Cyril,’ I thought. ‘There’s no way he can have a garden.’

  I couldn’t have been more wrong. Cyril’s rooms were surrounded by a long veranda that allowed in so much sunlight and air, resulting in such a profusion of leaf and flower, that at first I thought I was back in one of the greenhouses at Kew Gardens, where I used to wander during a lonely sojourn in London.

  Cyril found a chair for me among the tendrils of a climbing ivy, while a coffee-table materialized from behind a plant. By the time I had recovered enough from taking in my arboreal surroundings, I discovered that there were at least two other guests—one concealed behind a tree-sized philodendron, the other apparently embedded in a pot of begonias.

  Cyril, of course, was an exception. We cannot all have sunny verandas; nor would I show the same tolerance as he does towards the occasional caterpillar on my counterpane. But he was a happy man until his landlord, who lived below, complained that water was cascading down through the ceiling.

  ‘Fix the ceiling,’ said Cyril, and went back to watering his plants. It was the end of a beautiful tenant-landlord relationship.

  So let us move on to the washer-woman who lives down the road, a little distance from my own abode. She and her family live at the subsistence level. They have one square meal at midday, and they keep the leftovers for the evening. But the steps to their humble quarters are brightened by geraniums potted in large tin cans, all ablaze with several shades of flower.

  Hard as I try, I cannot grow geraniums to match hers. Does she scold her plants the way she scolds her children? Maybe I’m not firm enough with my geraniums. Or has it something to do with the washing? Anyway, her abode certainly looks more attractive than some of the official residences here in Mussoorie, India.

  Some gardeners like to specialize in particular flowers, but specialization has its dangers. My friend, Professor Saili, an ardent admirer of the nature poetry of William Wordsworth, decided he would have his own field of nodding daffodils, and planted daffodil bulbs all over his frontyard. The following spring, after much waiting, he was rewarded by the appearance of a solitary daffodil that looked like a railway passenger who had gotten off at the wrong station. This year he is specializing in ‘easy-to-grow’ French marigolds. They grow easily enough in France, I’m sure; but the professor is discovering that they are stubborn growers on our stony Himalayan soil.

  Not everyone in this Indian hill-station has a lovely garden. Some palatial, homes and spacious hotels are approached through forests of weeds, clumps of nettle, and dead or dying rose bushes. The owners are often plagued by personal problems that prevent them from noticing the state of their gardens. Loveless lives, unloved gardens.

  On the other hand, there was Annie Powell, who, at the age of ninety, was up early every morning to water her lovely garden. Watering-can in hand, she would move methodically from one flower-bed to the next, devotedly giving each plant a sprinkling. She said she loved to see leaves and flowers sparkling with fresh water; it gave her a new lease on life every day.

  And there were my maternal grandparents, whose home in Dehra in the valley was surrounded by a beautiful, well-kept garden. How I wish I had been old enough to prevent that lovely home from passing into other hands. But no one can take away our memories.

  Grandfather looked after the orchard, Grandmother looked after the flower garden. Like all people who have lived together for many years, they had the occasional disagreement.

  Grandfather would proceed to sulk on a bench beneath the jack-fruit tree while, at the other end of the garden, Grandmother would start clipping a hedge with more than her usual vigour. Silently, imperceptibly, they would make their way toward the centre of the garden, where the flower-beds gave way to a vegetable patch. This was neutral g
round. My cousins and I looked on like UN observers. And there among the cauliflowers, conversation would begin again, and the quarrel would be forgotten. There’s nothing like home-grown vegetables for bringing two people together.

  Red roses for young lovers. French beans for longstanding relationships!

  Where Rivers Meet

  IT’S A FUNNY thing, but long before I arrive at a place I can usually tell whether I am going to like it or not.

  Thus, while I was still some twenty miles from the town of Pauri, I felt it was not going to be my sort of place; and sure enough, it wasn’t. On the other hand, while Nandprayag was still out of sight, I knew I was going to like it. And I did.

  Perhaps it’s something on the wind—emanations of an atmosphere—that are carried to me well before I arrive at my destination. I can’t really explain it, and no doubt it is silly to make judgements in advance. But it happens and I mention the fact for what it’s worth.

  As for Nandprayag, perhaps I’d been there in some previous existence, I felt I was nearing home as soon as we drove into this cheerful roadside hamlet, some little way above the Nandakini’s confluence with the Alakananda river. A prayag is a meeting place of two rivers, and as there are many rivers in the Garhwal Himalayas, all linking up to join either the Ganga or the Jamuna, it follows that there are numerous prayags, in themselves places of pilgrimage as well as wayside halts en route to the higher Hindu shrines at Kedarnath and Badrinath. Nowhere else in the Himalayas are there so many temples, sacred streams, holy places and holy men.

  Some little way above Nandprayag’s busy little bazaar, is the tourist rest-house, perhaps the nicest of the tourist lodges in this region. It has a well-kept garden surrounded by fruit trees and is a little distance from the general hubbub of the main road.