Rain In the Mountains Read online

I think I have remained young because I have always had children around me. Not just the children in my own family, but other children too. I love to watch them grow. Adolescence is a fascinating period and I keep going back to it in my fiction.

  Raki, Muki, Dolly . . . . They have grown up under my roof, they are with me now, and God willing, they and their children will be with me when I die. If I finally close this window and leave this town for another place, they will go with me. If they grow up and go away, I will stay near them. That’s what love is all about. Staying there, prepared to render service.

  Most of my life I have given of myself, and in return I have received love in abundance. Life hasn’t been a bed of roses. And yet, quite often, I’ve had roses out of season.

  Ruskin Bond

  4 May 1993

  Mussoorie

  Footnotes

  Once Upon a Mountain Time

  1 This story was called ‘The Blue Umbrella’.

  2 Not Nelson’s song originally, but he sang it better than anyone else.

  3 This was before the advent of audiotapes

  4 When The Room on the Roof was published (1956).

  Miss Bun and Others

  1 Dalda switched over to plastic containers a few years later.

  It Must be the Mountains

  1 This little play for radio (never broadcast or published) was my only attempt at playwriting. It was written during the period of these journals, and the characters are based on Miss Bean, who shared my cottage for a time, and of course Sir Edmund. Anil was a real boy—I believe he did become a botanist!

  Growing up with Trees

  1 I found Kipling’s Second Jungle Book even more appealing than the first.

  Best of All Windows

  1 A musical play which was filmed several times; it is also the title song of the show.

  Acknowledgements

  ALL THE ESSAYS in Sections II and III of this book have appeared, at various times, in The Christian Science Monitor (Boston).

  Many of them also appeared in The Hindu, The Hindustan Times, The Telegraph, The Times of India, The Statesman, The Tribune, The Pioneer, Deccan Herald, The Economic Times, Sunday Mid-Day, The Independent, Financial Express, The Lady (London), School (Australia), Cricket (USA) and The Asia Magazine (Hong Kong).

  Some articles also appeared in magazines that have since closed down. These were: Blackwood’s (London and Edinburgh), Hemisphere (Australia), and The Heritage (Madras).

  ‘Once Upon a Mountain Time’, ‘Miss Bun and others’, ‘Time to Close the Window’ and the play ‘It Must be the Mountains’ have not appeared in print before.

  Some of the poems are also appearing here for the first time. A number of them were published by the Writers Workshop (Calcutta), Hemisphere (Australia), and Blackwood’s Magazine.

  *

  Illustrations by Vinita Chand

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  First published in Viking by Penguin Books India 1993

  Published in Penguin Books 1996

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  Copyright © Ruskin Bond 1993

  Cover design by Ahlawat Gunjan

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-140-23691-0

  This digital edition published in 2016.

  e-ISBN: 978-8-184-75446-9

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.