The Beauty of All My Days Read online

  RUSKIN BOND

  The Beauty of all my Days

  A Memoir

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Finding My Own Space

  A Writer and His Room

  Travels with a Mora

  Breakfast at Maplewood

  Whatever Happened to Picnics?

  So Well-remembered: Miss Kellner and the Magic Biscuit Tin

  The Lonely Times, the Lonely Crowds

  Leftovers from the Raj

  My Place of Power

  Postscript

  Footnote

  A Writer and His Room

  Whatever Happened to Picnics?

  So Well-remembered: Miss Kellner and the Magic Biscuit Tin

  Leftovers from the Raj

  My Place of Power

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  To all the kind readers and well-wishers who wait patiently outside Mussoorie’s Cambridge Book Depot on Saturday afternoons.

  It is a special time for me when I meet them and sign their books. Sometimes, if the weather is bad, I cannot make it to the store. And sometimes I’m under the weather. I know you will forgive me. I enjoy meeting everyone, and seeing the smiling faces of your children.

  May the Great Librarian watch over you and keep you and your loved ones safe and happy.

  No work of men’s hands, but the weary years

  Besiege and take it; comes its evil day.

  The written word alone flouts destiny,

  Revives the past, and gives the lie to Death.

  —Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars

  That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.

  —Charles Baudelaire

  INTRODUCTION

  Old sins cast long shadows . . .

  I came across this proverb while reading an old Agatha Christie detective story, in which Hercule Poirot probes deep into the past in order to solve a current crime or murder mystery. Most of Christie’s novels dealt with tragedies that had their origins in the past lives of the participants in the drama. It is quite possibly the secret of her long-standing popularity. She has as many readers today as when she first started out almost a hundred years ago. Most of her characters have a past, a past that they would prefer to conceal, and it is their past that influences the present, often resulting in a tragedy that poses a problem for Poirot—and the reader.

  Mother and Father during their courting, taking a ride around Mussoorie’s Camel’s Back Road. Circa 1933.

  I was thinking of this last night, and it kept me awake for some time, wondering if my life would have been very different if my parents had not committed the mistakes and indiscretions that shaped their lives and mine and the lives of my brother and sister. And had they never met, I would not have come into this world, and that would have been a pity because, on the whole, I have had a happy and fulfilling life and have given enjoyment to a few readers, young and old. I’m a person without many regrets. And yet, my parents’ marriage was not a happy one. It was the outcome of an impulsive love affair; it lasted seven or eight years. It broke up for various reasons. My father’s health suffered and he died before reaching fifty. After years of struggle, my mother died in her early fifties. I inherited nothing of a material nature—not a penny, not a room that I could call my own; but I did inherit my father’s intellect and my mother’s sensuality, and possibly the two combined to turn me into a writer!

  So here I am, delving into the past like Monsieur Poirot, not to solve a mystery, but to try to understand some of the events that have helped define the sort of person I have become. Some of it, naturally, is in the genes; but much of it is in the environment, in the circumstances in which we grow up, in the people who come into our lives, even in the air we breathe.

  Had I grown up in London or Timbuktu, I would have been a different sort of person, I’m sure. My parents (and those before them) made me. But India made me too. The soil, the air, the wind, the rain, the trees, the grass, the proximity of people—all these things made me.

  That is why there is no chronology to this memoir. Different things at different times helped to make the individual that is me, just as different things at different times helped to make you, just as they went into making your brothers and sisters, who are very different from you.

  ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself,’ said Walt Whitman.

  And so, dear reader, forgive the absence of chronology. Each chapter of this memoir is a remembrance of times past, an attempt to resurrect a person or a period or an episode, a reflection on the unpredictability of life. Some paths lead nowhere; others lead to a spring of pure water. Take any path and hope for the best. At least it will lead you out of the shadows.

  Ruskin Bond

  25 April 2018

  FINDING MY OWN SPACE

  Dormitory life seems to suit some people but I’ve always wanted my own space, my own private room, even if it’s a small one.

  Coming home from boarding school when I was ten, I found myself sharing the same bedroom as my sister, small brother and even smaller stepbrother, and after a few days of sulking I demanded (and got) a room of my own, albeit a tiny one, just an enclosed corner of the veranda. It had a bed, a small table and a cane mora, or stool, and that was enough for me. I had flung my clothes into a cupboard in the children’s room, and my school trunk was free to accommodate books, comics, a stamp album, an album of crests, another set of postcards (sent to me by my father, now gone), a cricket ball, a cup I’d won in an obstacle race (the only kind of race in which I excelled), a pocket knife, a walnut-wood stick (picked up in Simla) and a model airplane.

  If I remember well, it was a model of a Spitfire, a fighter plane, the plane that had defended London during the German Blitz. It had been given to my father, then serving in the RAF. He had died earlier that year in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and I was now with my mother and stepfather.

  That box of earthly treasures was kept under my bed, and no one was allowed to touch it.

  But we were in a rented bungalow for the first two months. My stepfather wasn’t a very good businessman; his car showroom had little to show, and his workshop did not attract many customers. He was fond of shikar, and spent more time in the surrounding jungles (usually accompanied by his workers and mechanics) than in his workshop. The business floundered, the house rent wasn’t paid, and one day all our furniture and belongings were piled into a truck and taken to my grandmother’s house, where we were given sanctuary for a couple of months. We were rather cramped there, so no room of my own; but the garden and the little orchard behind the house gave me the space I needed, since no one ventured into the neglected orchard; it had been allowed to run wild after my grandfather’s death, the year after I was born.

  My father took a lot of pictures of me when I was young. This would have been in Jamnagar, circa 1936, when we stayed in a bungalow near the Jam Sahib’s palace.

  Sixteen and just out of school, I wasn’t too sure of what I was going to do next. My first published story (‘My Calling’ in the Illustrated Weekly of India, August 1951) appeared shorty after this picture was taken.

  The front garden was well maintained, even when Granny was away, and she was away in Ranchi when we took refuge in her home. The gardener, Dhuki, had been with her for many years, and he could always be found (usually on his haunches) weeding the flower beds, planting or transplanting a variety of garden flowers, watering them, training the sweet peas to climb their trellises, pruning the hedges. I liked following him around, h
elping a little, but getting in the way most of the time.

  I loved watering the flowers. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than to fill that watering can and walk down the little pathways between the flower beds, spraying the flowers, the leaves, the earth with jets of sparkling water. I learnt the names of all the flowers, some from my mother and some from Dhuki and, as I watered them, I would address them by name, ‘Petunias, good morning!’ ‘Snapdragons, how are you today?’ ‘Zinnias, you look thirsty!’ ‘Yellow rose, you look lovely today!’ ‘Sweet peas, enjoy a shower this morning!’ I loved watching the water running down the leaves, washing away the dust, settling into the thirsty earth.

  ‘Don’t drown them!’ Dhuki would shout. ‘Not too much water, baba, you are flooding the garden!’

  My favourite flowers were the sweet peas, because of their heady perfume. But I also liked snapdragons (because you could make them snap) and zinnias because they came in so many unusual pastel shades and, of course, the flamboyant geraniums in their pots on the veranda steps. My grandmother believed that geraniums kept snakes away. According to her, snakes did not like the smell of geraniums. But this must have been folklore because geraniums don’t have a strong scent, and snakes don’t have a strong sense of smell!

  If snakes stayed away, it was probably because a pair of mongooses lived in the orchard, and a mongoose will not hesitate to attack a snake, be it a cobra or a harmless grass snake.

  On the fringes of the compound, neglected by Granny and ignored by Dhuki, small marigolds flourished in a semi-wild state. Granny was inclined to look down upon marigolds, but I felt sorry for these outcasts and went out of my way to give them a watering. They responded by growing bigger and brighter! ‘Naughty Mariettas’ I called them, after the princess in the operetta of that name.

  I had Granny’s garden to myself for little more than a month, and I was never again to have so much space to myself. Back in boarding school it was dormitory life again, although I did discover an old stone bench behind the tennis court, where few ventured because it was surrounded by nettles and a disused drainage system; but it provided a partial view of the next mountain, Tara Devi, and Simla’s Lower Bazaar, the ‘rabbit warren’ of Kipling’s Kim.

  On our occasional outings, we were allowed to visit the cinemas and restaurants on the ultra-respectable Mall, but were forbidden from entering the Lower Bazaar, for no good reason, as it was far from being a den of vice or mysterious goings-on. Humble, hard-working people lived in the Lower Bazaar. Scandals took place in Simla’s upper reaches, where phantom rickshaws still carried eloping couples off cliff edges hidden by the monsoon mist.

  That old bench, chipped and broken here and there, did provide me with the quiet corner that I was always looking for, although it did not take long for a couple of my friends to find me there. Azhar was one of them, but he was a quiet boy, a somewhat reserved Pathan from Peshawar. (This was a year before Partition, and Peshawar was still in India.) The other was Brian Adams, a dusky boy from the South, who was always trying to drag me off to bowl to him in the cricket nets. He fancied himself a batsman, and felt it was my duty, as his bosom friend, to keep bowling to him no matter how often I disturbed his stumps. But he was an affectionate chap, and out of love and loyalty I would keep bowling to him, although he never did make it to the Colts’ cricket eleven.

  * * *

  I think it was Brian, searching for a cricket ball, who discovered the tunnel.

  It was really a disused drain, which had once contained a water or sewage pipe, long since removed. It was hidden away in tall grass, beneath a prickly wild blackberry bush. One could slip into it quite easily. But how far did it go? This took some explanation, as well as the risk of getting stuck somewhere. Brian, the slimmest, went in first, and made some progress until we pulled him out by his feet. He reported that the tunnel was brick-lined and that it led in the direction of the school gate.

  At my bedroom window in Landour. It’s a windy spot and I have to keep the windows closed most of the time. Sometimes the monkeys get in and I have a hard time evicting them; they make troublesome tenants. But I have a great view of the mountains and the valley.

  Upon an old wall in Landour, R.B. makes a note of the wild flowers growing on the hillside. (Circa 2010)

  This excited us. To find a secret passage that would take us out of the school boundary was an incentive, and we began digging and widening the passage until even the chubbiest of us (yours truly) could get out, head and arms first, followed by the tummy—the most difficult part, after which, the rest was easy.

  All this wasn’t achieved at once. It took several evenings, just as it grew dark, before we had widened the drain enough to make some progress towards its exit.

  Well, it came out in a ditch just off the approach road to the school gate. The spot was well hidden by nettles and thorny raspberry bushes. The first to emerge into this thicket was Azhar, followed by Brian, followed by me. ‘You chaps clear the way,’ I said bravely. ‘Don’t worry, I’m close behind you.’

  It was dark in the tunnel. But at the other end, a beam of light could be glimpsed. It was the light from the lamp post, which stood outside the school gate, and which came on at about 6 p.m., just as the autumn twilight cast a shadow over the mountains.

  * * *

  1946 . . . One of my best years in school. I played hockey and football for the school’s junior team, discovered Dickens, and wrote my first ‘novel’, which was confiscated by my Housemaster, never to be seen again! In this same year my friends and I tunnelled our way out of the school grounds.

  Taken in my stepfather’s studio in Dehradun, in the winter of 1944–45, a few months after my father’s sudden demise. I’m wearing my school blazer. The badge says: ‘Overcome evil with good.’ I was not as angelic as I looked in this picture.

  The great escape!

  It hadn’t taken us anywhere, really, but to be outside the school instead of inside, made a lot of difference to us from a psychological viewpoint. That feeling of being hemmed in was no longer there. We returned to our dormitories the conventional way—through the open school gate—but we had broken bounds, and that made us feel special.

  If only the world had no boundaries and we could move about without hindrance, without having to produce passports and documents everywhere (even within one’s own country), it really would be ‘a great wide beautiful wonderful world’, as a poet proclaimed. But sadly, as the years go by, the barriers go up, the restrictions increase, the conflicts spread, the bombs get bigger and more powerful. Only an invasion from outer space is likely to unite the nations of the world.

  * * *

  Now I am over seventy years distant from our little tunnel in my boarding school; but all my life I have been on the lookout for tunnels.

  That passage to England was a tunnel of sorts. It took me away from a prison of my own making. And in Jersey, when I was unhappy, I walked out of St Helier, its little port, and along the bays and beaches for mile after mile. And I discovered London by walking all over the city. And back in India I did the same with Delhi and other places.

  I was always walking. But I was never a fast walker. I walked slowly because I wanted to see things—treetops, rooftops, birds in flight, kite flying, cloud formations—starting with the sky above and ending with the green grass growing at my feet.

  * * *

  Grass!

  Where would we be without grass? Our sheep and cattle graze upon it. Our good earth yearns for this velvet covering. Even in the desert the traveller seeks out a green oasis. Where the grass is green, there will you find peace and prosperity. There is money to be made in the marketplace, but on a green sward there is rest!

  As I look down from my perch in Landour, I see a grassy slope behind the little marketplace. It hasn’t been built upon as yet, because it is fairly inaccessible. Sometimes sheep or goats graze upon it, sometimes monkeys gambol on the slope. The colour of the grass changes with the seasons. Just now it is a muddy yello
w, almost khaki, having received almost no rain for several months; but the grass is there, well rooted, ready to spring to life. Next month, when the spring showers arrive, it will turn to a light green; and then as the days grow warmer and the clouds more generous, it will become a bright emerald-green. Mid June, the monsoon clouds race across the foothills, and the grass grows taller, sweet and lush, and the grazing sheep grow fat and healthy. The slope is too steep for cows, and only the more adventurous of small boys use it as a shortcut to the bazaar. September, when the monsoon ends, the colours will fade again. Even the grass must rest.

  One day, of course, the builders’ mafia will find a way of getting there. Sooner or later every bit of land is exploited. The human race invented money and must now spend most of its time in grubbing for it.

  * * *

  There is still space in front of my window. In fact, there is nothing between me and Pari Tibba, the hill across the valley. My window opens to the elements—to the night air, to the day breeze, to moonlight, to mist or sunshine, to birds and insects, to the rhythm of the seasons. Little clouds enter my window. I let them in. They are soft, caressing. They come in at the window and slip out from the front door, silent and discreet.

  Pari Tibba, ‘Hill of the Fairies’, is directly opposite us. If I could fly I’d be there in a few minutes. Walking, it used to take me over an hour, down to the stream and then up again. I can’t walk so far any more. But it is right in front of me, and in my mind’s eye I can see the pine knoll, the flat rock, buttercups growing in the grass, the St John’s wort flowering on the rocky ledges. Many wild flowers. Violets in the spring. Fat white daises in the summer. Blue periwinkles in shady places. During the monsoon, cobra lilies with their warning red shields. Colourful mushrooms; don’t touch them, they can be poisonous! Wild asters in the autumn. And in the grass, crickets and grasshoppers . . .