No Man is an Island Read online

  I came here when I was nearing fifty. Now I’m seventy, and instead of drying up, as some writers do in their later years, I find myself writing with as much ease and assurance as when I was twenty. And I enjoy writing. It’s not a burdensome task. I may not have anything of earth-shattering significance to convey to the world, but in conveying my sentiments to you, dear readers, and in telling you something about my relationship with people and the natural world, I hope to bring a little pleasure and sunshine into your life.

  Life isn’t a bed of roses, not for any of us, and I have never had the comforts or luxuries that wealth can provide. But here I am, doing my own thing, in my own time and my own way. What more can I ask of life? Give me a big cash prize and I’d still be here. I happen to like the view from my window. And I like to have Gautam coming up to me, patting me on the tummy, and telling me that I’ll make a good goalkeeper one day.

  It’s a Sunday morning, as I come to the conclusion of this chapter. There’s bedlam in the house. Siddharth’s football keeps smashing against the front door. Shrishti is practising her dance routine in the back veranda. Gautam has cut his finger and is trying his best to bandage it with Sellotape. He is, of course, the youngest of Rakesh’s three musketeers, and probably the most independent-minded. Siddharth, now ten, is restless, never quite able to expend all his energy. ‘Does not pay enough attention,’ says his teacher. It must be hard for anyone to pay attention in a class of sixty! How does the poor teacher pay attention?

  If you, dear reader, have any ambitions to be a writer, you must first rid yourself of any notion that perfect peace and quiet is the first requirement. There is no such thing as perfect peace and quiet except perhaps in a monastery or a cave in the mountains. And what would you write about, living in a cave? One should be able to write in a train, a bus, a bullock cart, in good weather or bad, on a park bench or in the middle of a noisy classroom.

  Of course, the best place is the sun-drenched desk right next to my bed. It isn’t always sunny here, but on a good day like this, it’s ideal. The children are getting ready for school, dogs are barking in the street, and down near the water tap there’s an altercation between two women with empty buckets, the tap having dried up. But these are all background noises and will subside in due course. They are not directed at me.

  Hello! Here’s Atish, Mukesh’s little ten-month old infant, crawling over the rug, curious to know why I’m sitting on the edge of my bed scribbling away, when I should be playing with him. So I shall play with him for five minutes and then come back to this page. Giving him my time is important. After all, I won’t be around when he grows up.

  Half an hour later. Atish soon tired of playing with me, but meanwhile Gautam had absconded with my pen. When I asked him to return it, he asked, ‘Why don’t you get a computer? Then we can play games on it.’

  ‘My pen is faster than any computer,’ I tell him, ‘I wrote three pages this morning without getting out of bed. And yesterday I wrote two pages sitting under Billoo’s chestnut tree.’

  ‘Until a chestnut fell on your head,’ says Gautam, ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘Only a little,’ I said, putting on a brave front.

  He had saved the chestnut and now he showed it to me. The smooth brown horse-chestnut shone in the sunlight.

  ‘Let’s stick it in the ground,’ I said. ‘Then in the spring a chestnut tree will come up.’

  So we went outside and planted the chestnut on a plot of wasteland. Hopefully a small tree will burst through the earth at about the time this little book is published.

  Remember the old Road

  Remember the old road,

  The steep stony path

  That took us up from Rajpur,

  Toiling and sweating

  And grumbling at the climb,

  But enjoying it all the same.

  At first the hills were hot and bare,

  But then there were trees near Jharipani

  And we stopped at the Halfway House

  And swallowed lungfuls of diamond-cut air.

  Then onwards, upwards, to the town,

  Our appetites to repair!

  Well, no one uses the old road any more.

  Walking is out of fashion now.

  And if you have a car to take you

  Swiftly up the motor road

  Why bother to toil up a disused path?

  You’d have to be an old romantic like me

  To want to take that route again.

  But I did it last year,

  Pausing and plodding and gasping for air—

  Both road and I being a little worse for wear!

  But I made it to the top and stopped to rest

  And looked down to the valley and the silver stream

  Winding its way towards the plains.

  And the land stretched out before me, and the years fell away,

  And I was a boy again,

  And the friends of my youth were there beside me,

  And nothing had changed.

  All is Life

  Whether by accident or design,

  We are here.

  Let’s make the most of it, my friend.

  Make happiness our pursuit,

  Spread a little sunshine here and there.

  Enjoy the flowers, the breeze,

  Rivers, sea and sky,

  Mountains and tall waving trees.

  Greet the children passing by,

  Talk to the old folk. Be kind, my friend.

  Hold on, in times of pain and strife:

  Until death comes, all is life.