Ruskin Bond's Book of Nature Page 4

  The kingora, 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 belong 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 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.

  Zone for Dancing

  No night is so dark as it seems.

  Here in Landour, on the first range of the Himalayas, I have grown accustomed to the night’s brightness—moonlight, starlight, lamplight, firelight! Even fireflies light up the darkness.

  Over the years, the night has become my friend. On the one hand, it gives me privacy; on the other, it provides me with limitless freedom.

  Not many people relish the dark. There are some who will even sleep with their lights burning all night. They feel safer that way. Safer from the phantoms conjured up by their imaginations. A primeval instinct, perhaps, going back to the time when primitive man hunted by day and was in turn hunted by night.

  And yet, I have always felt safer by night, provided I do not deliberately wander about on cliff tops or roads where danger is known to lurk. It’s true that burglars and lawbreakers often work by night, their principal object being to get into other people’s houses and make off with the silver or the family jewels. They are not into communing with the stars. Nor are late-night revellers, who are usually to be found in brightly lit places and are thus easily avoided. The odd drunk stumbling home is quite harmless and probably in need of guidance.

  I feel safer by night, yes, but then I do have the advantage of living in the mountains, in a region where crime and random violence are comparatively rare. I know that if I were living in a big city in some other part of the world, I would think twice about walking home at midnight, no matter how pleasing the night sky would be.

  Walking home at midnight in Landour can be quite eventful, but in a different sort of way. One is conscious all the time of the silent life in the surrounding trees and bushes. I have smelt a leopard without seeing it. I have seen jackals on the prowl. I have watched foxes dance in the moonlight. I have seen flying squirrels flit from one treetop to another. I have observed pine martens on their nocturnal journeys, and listened to the calls of nightjars and owls and other birds who live by night.

  Not all on the same night, of course. That would be a case of too many riches all at once. Some night walks can be uneventful. But usually there is something to see or hear or sense. Like those foxes dancing in the moonlight. One night, when I got home, I sat down and wrote these lines:

  As I walked home last night,

  I saw a lone fox dancing

  In the bright moonlight.

  I stood and watched; then

  Took the low road, knowing

  The night was his by right.

  Sometimes, when words ring true,

  I’m like a lone fox dancing

  In the morning dew.

  Who else, apart from foxes, flying squirrels and night-loving writers are at home in the dark? Well, there are the nightjars, not much to look at, although their large, lustrous eyes gleam uncannily in the light of a lamp. But their sounds are distinctive. The breeding call of the Indian nightjar resembles the sound of a stone skimming over the surface of a frozen pond; it can be heard for a considerable distance. Another species utters a loud grating call which, when close at hand, sounds exactly like a whiplash cutting the air. ‘Horsfield’s nightjar’ (with which I am more familiar in Mussoorie) makes a noise similar to that made by striking a plank with a hammer.

  I must not forget the owls, those most celebrated of night birds, much maligned by those who fear the night. Most owls have very pleasant calls. The little jungle owlet has a note which is both mellow and musical. One misguided writer has likened its call to a motorcycle starting up, but this is libel. If only motorcycles sounded like the jungle owl, the world would be a more peaceful place to live and sleep in.

  Then there is the little scops owl, who speaks only in monosyllables, occasionally saying ‘wow’ softly but with great deliberation. He will continue to say ‘wow’ at intervals of about a minute, for several hours throughout the night.

  Probably the most familiar of Indian owls is the spotted owlet, a noisy bird who pours forth a volley of chuckles and squeaks in the early evening and at intervals all night. Towards sunset, I watch the owlets emerge from their holes one after another. Before coming out, each puts out a queer little round head with staring eyes. After they have emerged they usually sit very quietly for a time as though only half awake. Then, all of a sudden, they begin to chuckle, finally breaking out in a torrent of chattering. Having in this way ‘psyched’ themselves into the right frame of mind, they spread their short, rounded wings and sail off for the night’s hunting.

  And I wend my way homewards. ‘Night with her train of stars’ is always enticing. The poet Henley found her so. But he also wrote of ‘her great gift of sleep’, and it is this gift that I am now about to accept with gratitude and humility.

  A Village in the Mountains

  I wake to what sounds like the din of a factory buzzer but is in fact the music of a single vociferous cicada in the lime tree near my bed.

  We have slept out of doors. I wake at first light, focus on a pattern of small, glossy leaves, and then through them see the mountains, the mighty Himalayas, striding away into an immensity of the sky.

  ‘In a thousand ages of the gods I could not tell thee of the glories of Himachal,’ so confessed a poet at the dawn of Indian history, and no one since has been able to do real justice to the Himalayas. We have climbed their highest peaks, but still the mountains remain remote, mysterious, primeval.

  No wonder, then, that the people who live on these mountain slopes, in the mist-filled valleys of Garhwal, have long since learned humility, patience, and a quiet reserve.

  I am their guest for a few days. My friend, Gajadhar, has brought me to his home, to his village above the little Nayar river. We took a train up to the foothills and then we took a bus, and when we were in the hil
ls we walked until we came to this village called Manjari clinging to the terraced slopes of a very proud mountain.

  It is my fourth morning in the village. Other mornings I was being awakened by the throaty chuckles of the redbilled blue magpies, but today the cicada has drowned all birdsong.

  Early though it is, I am the last to get up. Gajadhar is exercising in the courtyard. He has a fine physique, with the sturdy legs that most Garhwalis possess. I am sure he will realize his ambition of getting into the army. His younger brother, Chakradhar, a slim fair youth, is milking the family’s buffalo. Their mother is lighting a fire. She is a handsome woman, although her ears, weighed down by heavy silver earrings, have lost their natural shape. The smaller children, a boy and a girl, are getting ready for school. Their father is in the army, and he is away for most of the year. Gajadhar has been going to a college in the plains, but his mother, with the help of Chakradhar, manages to look after the fields, the house, the goats, and the buffalo. There are spring sowings of corn, monsoon ploughings, September harvestings of rice, and then again autumn sowings of wheat and barley.

  They depend on rainfall here, as the village is far above the river. The monsoon is still a month away, but there must be water for cooking, washing, and drinking, and this has to be fetched from the river. And so, after a glass each of hot buffalo’s milk, the two brothers and I set off down a rough track to the river.

  The sun has climbed the mountains but it has yet to reach the narrow valley. We bathe in the river. Gajadhar and Chakradhar dive in off a massive rock, but I wade in circumspectly, unfamiliar with the river’s depth and currents. The water, a milky blue, comes from the melting snows and is very cold. I bathe quickly and then dash for a strip of sand where a little sunshine has now spilt down the mountain in warm, golden pools of light.

  A little later, buckets filled, we toil up the steep mountainside. A different way this time. We have to take the proper path if we are not to come tumbling down with our pails of water. The path leads up past the school, a small temple, and a single shop in which it is possible to buy soap, salt, and a few other necessities. It is also the post office.

  The postman is yet to arrive. The mail is brought in relays from Lansdowne, about thirty miles away. So, later in the day, Gajadhar and I trek to a bigger post office outside the village. Gajadhar has been walking there and back almost every day, anxious for a letter. He is expecting the result of his army entrance exam. If he is successful, he will be called for an interview. And then, if he makes a good impression, he will be given training as an officer cadet!

  As we pass the small village school, the children, who have been having a break, crowd round us, eager to have a glimpse of me. They have never seen a white face before. The adults had dealt with British officials in the 1940s but it is over twenty years since a European stepped into the village. I am the cynosure of all eyes. The children exclaim, point at me with delight, chatter among themselves. I might be a visitor from another planet instead of just an itinerant writer from the plains.

  We are rewarded at the end of our trek—Gajadhar gets his letter. He has passed his exam, and will leave with me in the morning. We hurry back. We have to be up early the next morning to complete the thirty-mile trek to Lansdowne in a single day. And so, after an evening with friends, and a partridge for dinner (a present from a neighbour who thinks Gajadhar will make a fine husband for his comely daughter), we retire to our beds: I, to my cot under the lime tree. The moon has not yet risen and the cicadas are silent.

  I stretch myself out on the cot under a sky brilliant with stars. And as I close my eyes someone brushes against the lime tree, bruising its leaves, and the good fresh fragrance of lime comes to me on the night air, making that moment memorable for all time.

  The Beetle Who Blundered In

  When mist fills the Himalayan valleys, and heavy monsoon rain sweeps across the hills, it is natural for wild creatures to seek shelter. Any shelter is welcome in a storm—and sometimes my cottage in the forest is the most convenient refuge.

  There is no doubt that I make things easier for all concerned by leaving most of my windows open—I am one of those peculiar people who like to have plenty of fresh air indoors—and if a few birds, beasts and insects come in too, they’re welcome, provided they don’t make too much of a nuisance of themselves.

  I must confess that I did lose patience with a bamboo beetle who blundered in the other night and fell into the water jug. I rescued him and pushed him out of the window. A few seconds later he came whirring in again, and with unerring accuracy landed with a plop in the same jug. I fished him out once more and offered him the freedom of the night. But attracted no doubt by the light and warmth of my small sitting room, he came buzzing back, circling the room like a helicopter looking for a good place to land. Quickly I covered the water jug. He landed in a bowl of wild dahlias, and I allowed him to remain there, comfortably curled up in the hollow of a flower.

  Sometimes, during the day, a bird visits me—a deep purple whistling-thrush, hopping about on long dainty legs, peering to right and left, too nervous to sing. She perches on the window sill, looking out at the rain. She does not permit any familiarity. But if I sit quietly in my chair, she will sit quietly on her window sill, glancing quickly at me now and then just to make sure that I’m keeping my distance. When the rain stops, she glides away, and it is only then, confident in her freedom, that she bursts into full-throated song, her broken but haunting melody echoing down the ravine.

  A squirrel comes sometimes, when his home in the oak tree gets waterlogged. Apparently he is a bachelor; anyway, he lives alone. He knows me well, this squirrel, and is bold enough to climb on to the dining table looking for tidbits which he always finds, because I leave them there deliberately. Had I met him when he was a youngster, he would have learned to eat from my hand, but I have only been here a few months. I like it this way. I am not looking for pets: these are simply guests.

  Last week, as I was sitting down at my desk to write a long-deferred article, I was startled to see an emerald-green praying mantis sitting on my writing pad. He peered up at me with his protruberant glass-bead eyes, and I stared down at him through my reading glasses. When I gave him a prod, he moved off in a leisurely way. Later I found him examining the binding of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; perhaps he had found a succulent bookworm. He disappeared for a couple of days, and then I found him on the dressing table, preening himself before the mirror. Perhaps I am doing him an injustice in assuming that he was preening. Maybe he thought he’d met another mantis and was simply trying to make contact. Anyway, he seemed fascinated by his reflection.

  Out in the garden, I spotted another mantis, perched on the jasmine bush. Its arms were raised like a boxer’s. Perhaps they’re a pair, I thought, and went indoors and fetched my mantis and placed him on the jasmine bush, opposite his fellow insect. He did not like what he saw—no comparison with own image!—and made off in a huff.

  My most interesting visitor comes at night, when the lights are still burning—a tiny bat who prefers to fly in at the door, should it be open, and will use the window only if there’s no alternative. His object in entering the house is to snap up the moths that cluster around the lamps.

  All the bats I’ve seen fly fairly high, keeping near the ceiling as far as possible, and only descending to ear level (my ear level) when they must; but this particular bat flies in low, like a dive bomber, and does acrobatics amongst the furniture, zooming in and out of chair legs and under tables. Once, while careening about the room in this fashion, he passed straight between my legs.

  Has his radar gone wrong, I wondered, or is he just plain crazy?

  I went to my shelves of Natural History and looked up Bats, but could find no explanation for this erratic behaviour. As a last resort, I turned to an ancient volume, Sterndale’s Indian Mammalia (Calcutta, 1884), and in it, to my delight, I found what I was looking for:

  a bat found near Mussoorie by Captain Hutton, on the
southern range of hills at 5500 feet; head and body, 1.4 inch; skims close to the ground, instead of flying high as bats generally do; habitat, Jharipani, N.W. Himalayas.

  Apparently the bat was rare even in 1884.

  Perhaps I’ve come across one of the few surviving members of the species: Jharipani is only two miles from where I live. And I feel rather offended that modern authorities should have ignored this tiny bat; possibly they feel that it is already extinct. If so, I’m pleased to have rediscovered it. I am happy that it survives in my small corner of the woods, and I undertake to celebrate it in verse:

  Most bats fly high,

  Swooping only

  To take some insect on the wing;

  But there’s a bat I know

  Who flies so low

  He skims the floor,

  He does not enter at the window

  But flies in at the door,

  Does stunts beneath the furniture—

  Is his radar wrong,

  Or does he just prefer

  Being different from other bats?

  And when sometimes

  He settles upside down

  At the foot of my bed,

  I let him be.

  On lonely nights, even a crazy bat

  Is company.

  III

  Into the Wild

  Living in the hills, or near the great forests, or near the sea, does of course make it easier to engage with the natural world. As a boy and then as a young man, a sense of adventure often took me down unknown roads, to experiences that were often memorable. Encounters with the larger animals, such as the leopard, were rare. But in the hills there is always something new waiting for you around the next bend. For at every bend the entire vista is altered, and our perspective changes too. When we walk close to nature, we come to a better understanding of life; for, it is from the natural world that we first emerged and to which we still belong.