My Favourite Nature Stories Page 4

  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. Some even sleep with their lights burning all night. They feel safer with the lights on. Safer from the phantoms conjured up by their imaginations.

  And yet, I have always felt safer by night, provided I do not deliberately wander about on cliff-tops or roads where danger may lurk. It’s true that burglars and other lawbreakers often work by night. They are not into communing with the stars. Nor are late-night revelers, who are usually to be found in brightly lit places and so are easily avoided.

  I feel safer by night, yes, but then I have the advantage of living in the mountains, in a region where crime is 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.

  Walking home at midnight in Landour can be quite eventful, but in a different way. One is conscious all the time of the silent life in the surrounding trees and bushes. I have smelled 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, owls and other birds who live by night.

  Not all on the same night, of course. That would be too many riches at once. Some night walks are uneventful. But usually there is something to see or hear or sense. Like those foxes dancing in the moonlight.

  Who else, apart from foxes, flying squirrels and night-loving writers, are at home in the dark?

  The nightjars, for one. They aren’t 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 nightjar 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) 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 that 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 in which to live and sleep.

  The little Scops owl 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 hours throughout the night.

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

  I wend my way homeward. ‘Night with her train of stars’ is enticing. The English poet W.E. Henley found her so. But he also wrote of ‘her great gift of sleep’, and it is this gift that I am about to accept with gratitude and humility. For it is also good to be up and dancing in the morning dew.

  A House Called Ivanhoe

  ‘Stand still for ten minutes, and they’ll build a hotel on top of you,’ said one old-timer, gesturing towards the concrete jungle that had sprung up along Mussoorie’s Mall, the traditional promenade. This hill-station in northern India is now one long, ugly bazaar, but if you leave the Mall and walk along some of the old lanes and by-ways, you will come across many of the old houses, most of them still bearing the names they were born with, back in the mid-nineteenth century.

  Mussoorie, like other hill resorts in India, came into existence in the 1820s or thereabouts, when the families of British colonials began making for the hills in order to escape the scorching heat of the plains. Small settlements grew into large ‘stations’, and were soon vying with each other for the title of ‘Queen of the Hills’. Mussoorie’s name derives from the Mansur shrub (Cororiana nepalensis), common in the Himalayan foothills; but many of the house-names derive from the native places of those who first built and lived in them. Today, the old houses and estates are owned by well-to-do Indians, many of whom follow the lifestyle of their former colonial rulers. In most cases, the old names have been retained.

  Take, for instance, the Mullingar. This is not one of the better preserved buildings, having been under litigation for some years; but it was a fine mansion once, and it has the distinction of being the oldest building in Mussoorie. It was the home, naturally enough, of an Irishman, Captain Young, who commanded the first Gurkha battalion when it was in its infancy. As you have probably guessed, he came from Mullingar, in old Ireland, and it was to Ireland that he finally returned, when he gave up his sword and saddle. There is a story that on moonlit nights a ghostly rider can be seen on the Mullingar flat, and that this is Captain Young revisiting old haunts.

  There must have been a number of Irishmen settling and building in Mussoorie in those pioneering days, for there are houses with names such as Tipperary, Killarney, Shamrock Cottage and Tara Hall. ‘The harp that once in Tara’s Halls’ must have sounded in Shimla too, for there is also a Tara Hall in the old summer capital of India.

  As everywhere, the Scots were great pioneers in Mussoorie too, and were quick to identify Himalayan hills and meadows with their own glens and braes. There are over a dozen house-names prefixed with ‘Glen’, and close to where I live there is a Scottsburn, a Wolfsburn and a Redburn. A burn is a small stream, but there are none in the vicinity, so the names must have been given for purely sentimental reasons.

  The English, of course, went in for castles—there’s Connaught Castle and Grey Castle and The Castle Hill, home for a time to the young Sikh prince, Dalip Singh, before he went to England to become a protege of Queen Victoria.

  Sir Walter Scott must have been a very popular writer with the British in exile, for there are many houses in Mussoorie that were named after his novels and romances—Kenilworth, Ivanhoe, Waverley, The Monastery. And there is also Abbotsford, named after Scott’s own home.

  Dickens’ lovers must have felt frustrated, because they could hardly name their houses Nicholas Nickleby or Martin Chuzzlewit; but one Dickens fan did come up with Bleak House for a name, and bleak it is, even to this day. I have never had the money to buy or build a house of my own, but I am ever the optimist, and if ever I do have one, I shall call it Great Expectations.

  Mussoorie did have a Dickens connection in 1850, when Charles Dickens was publishing his magazine, Household Words. His correspondent in India was John Lang, a popular novelist and newspaper proprietor, who spent the last years of his life in Mussoorie. His diverting account of a typical Mussoorie ‘season’, called ‘The Himalaya Club’, appeared in Household Words in the issue of March 21, 1857. Recently I was able to obtain a copy from the British Museum.

  I haven’t been able to locate the house in which Lang lived, but from one of his descriptions it may have been White Park Forest, now practically a ruin. The name is another puzzle, because of park or forest there is no trace. But on looking up an old guide, I discovered that it had been named after its joint owners, Mr White, Mr Park and Mr Forest.

  It is well over 50 years since a parson lived in The Parsonage, and its owner today is Victor Banerji, the actor, who received an Academy award nomination for his role in
David Lean’s A Passage to India. Victor doesn’t mind his friends calling him the Vicar.

  Another name that puzzled me for a time was that of the old Charleville Hotel, now an academy for young civil servants. Was it French in its origins? Most of the locals always referred to it as the ‘Charley-Billy’ Hotel, which I thought was an obvious misprounciation; but the laugh was really on me. According to the records, the original owner had two sons, Charley and Billy, and he had named the hotel after them!

  This naming of places is never as simple as it may seem. I shall end this piece with Mossy Falls, a small waterfall on the outskirts of the hill-station. You might think it was named after the moss that is so plentiful around it, but you’d be wrong. It was really named after Mr Moss, the owner of the Alliance Bank, who was affectionately known as Mossy to his friends. When, at the turn of the century, the Alliance Bank collapsed, Mr Moss also fell from grace. ‘Poor old Mossy,’ said his friends, and promptly named the falls after him.

  Growing Up with Trees

  Dehra Dun was a place for trees, (and Grandfather’s house was surrounded by several kinds—peepul, neem, mango, jackfruit and papaya. There was also an ancient banyan tree. I grew up amongst these trees, and some of them, planted by Grandfather, grew with me.

  There were two types of trees that were of special interest to a boy—trees that were good for climbing, and trees that provided fruit.

  The jack-fruit tree was both these things. The fruit itself—the largest in the world—grew only on the trunk and main branches. I did not care much for the fruit, although cooked as a vegetable it made a good curry. But the tree was large and leafy and easy to climb. It was a very dark tree and if I hid in it, I could not easily be seen from below. In a hole in the tree-trunk I kept various banned items—a catapult, some lurid comics, and a large stock of chewing-gum. Perhaps they are still there, because I forgot to collect them when we finally went away.

  The banyan tree grew behind the house. Its spreading branches, which hung to the ground and took root again, formed a number of twisting passageways which gave me endless pleasure. The tree was older than the house, older than my grandparents, as old as Dehra. I could hide myself in its branches, behind thick green leaves, and spy on the world below. I could read in it, too, propped up against the bole of the tree, with Treasure Island or the Jungle Books or comics like Wizard or Hotspur which, unlike the forbidden Superman and others like him, were full of clean-cut schoolboy heroes.

  The banyan tree was a world in itself, populated with small beasts and large insects. While the leaves were still pink and tender, they would be visited by the delicate Map Butterfly, who committed her eggs to their care. The ‘hony’ on the leaves—an edible smear—also attracted the little striped squirrels, who soon grew used to my presence and became quite bold. Redheaded parrakeets swarmed about the tree early in the mornings.

  But the banyan really came to life during the monsoon, when the branches were thick with scarlet figs. These berries were not fit for human consumption, but the many birds that gathered in the tree—gossipy Rosy Pastors, quarrelsome Mynas, cheerful Bulbuls and Coppersmiths, and sometimes a raucous bullying crow—feasted on them. And when night fell, and the birds were resting, the dark Flying Foxes flapped heavily about the tree, chewing and munching as they clambered over the branches.

  Among nocturnal visitors to the jack-fruit and banyan trees was the Brainfever bird, whose real name is the Hawk-Cuckoo. ‘Brainfever, brainfever!’ it seems to call, and this shrill, nagging cry will keep the soundest of sleepers awake on a hot summer’s night.

  The British called it the Brainfever bird, but there are other names for it. The Mahrattas called it Paos-ala’ which means ‘Rain is coming!’ Perhaps Grandfather’s interpretation of its call was the best. According to him, when the bird was tuning up for its main concert, it seemed to say: ‘Oh dear, oh dear! How very hot it’s getting! we feel it… we FEEL IT … WE FEEL IT!’

  Yes, the banyan tree was a noisy place during the rains. If the Brainfever bird made music by night, the crickets and cicadas orchestrated during the day. As musicians, the cicadas were in a class by themselves. All through the hot weather their chorus rang through the garden, while a shower of rain, far from damping their spirits, only roused them to a greater vocal effort.

  The tree-crickets were a band of willing artistes who commenced their performance at almost any time of the day but preferably in the evenings. Delicate pale green creatures with transparent green wings, they were hard to find amongst the lush monsoon foliage; but once located, a tap on the leaf or bush on which they sat would put an immediate end to the performance.

  At the height of the monsoon, the banyan tree was like an orchestra-pit with the musicians constantly turning up. Birds, insects and squirrels expressed their joy at the end of the hot weather and the cool quenching relief or the rains.

  A flute in my hands, I would try adding my shrill piping to theirs. But they thought poorly of my musical ability, for, whenever I played on the flute, the birds and insects would subside into a pained and puzzled silence.

  A Boy and a River

  Between the boy and the river was a mountain. I was a small boy, and it was a small river, but the thickly forested mountain was big and hid the river. Yet I knew it was there and what it looked like. I had never seen the river with my own eyes, but from the villagers I had heard of it, of the fish in its waters, of its rocks and currents and waterfalls; and it only remained for me to touch the water and know it personally.

  I stood in front of our house on the hill opposite the mountain, and gazed across the valley, dreaming of the river. I was barefooted; not because I couldn’t afford shoes, but because I felt free with my bare feet, because I liked the feel of warm stones and cool grass, because not wearing shoes saved me the trouble of taking them off.

  It was eleven o’clock and I knew my parents wouldn’t be home till evening. There was a loaf of bread I could take with me, and on the way I might find some fruit. Here was the chance I had been waiting for: it would not come again for a long time, because it was seldom my father and mother visited friends for the entire day. If I came back before dark, they wouldn’t even know where I had been.

  I went into the house and wrapped the loaf of bread in a newspaper. Then I closed all the doors and windows.

  The path to the river dropped steeply into the valley, then rose and went round the big mountain. It was frequently used by the villagers—woodcutters, milkmen, shepherds, mule-drivers—but there were no villages beyond the mountain or near the river.

  I passed a woodcutter and asked him how far it was to the river. He was a short, powerful man, with a creased and weathered face and muscles that stood out in hard lumps.

  ‘Seven miles,’ he said. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I am going there,’ I said.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It will take you three hours to reach it, and then you have to come back. It will be getting dark, and it is not an easy road.’

  ‘But I’m a good walker,’ I said, though I had never walked farther than the two miles between our house and my school.

  I left the woodcutter on the path and continued down the hill.

  It was a dizzy, winding path, and I slipped once or twice and slid into a bush or down a slope of slippery pine-needles. The hill was covered with lush green ferns, the trees were entangled in creepers, and a great wild dahlia would suddenly rear its golden head from the leaves and ferns.

  Soon I was in the valley, and the path straightened out and then began to rise. I met a girl who was coming from the opposite direction. She held a long curved knife with which she had been cutting grass, and there were rings in her nose and ears, and her arms were covered with heavy bangles. The bangles made music when she moved her wrists. It was as though her hands spoke a language of their own.

  ‘How far is it to the river?’ I asked.

  The girl had probably never bee
n to the river, or she may have been thinking of another one, because she said, without any hesitation, ‘Twenty miles.’

  I laughed and ran down the path. A parrot screeched suddenly and flew low over my head, a flash of blue and green. It took the course of the path, and I followed its dipping flight, running until the path rose and the bird disappeared amongst the trees.

  A trickle of water came down the hillside, and I stopped to drink. The water was cold and sharp and very refreshing. But I was soon thirsty again. The sun was striking the side of the hill, and the dusty path became hotter, the stones scorching my feet. I was sure I had covered half the distance: I had been walking for over an hour.

  Presently I saw a boy ahead of me, driving a few goats down the path.

  ‘How far is it to the river?’ I asked.

  The village boy smiled and said, ‘Oh, not far, just round the next hill and straight down.’

  Feeling hungry, I unwrapped my loaf of bread and broke it in two, offering one half to the boy. We sat on the hillside and ate in silence. When we finished, we walked on together and began talking; and, talking, I did not notice the smarting of my feet and the heat of the sun and the distance I had covered and the distance I had yet to cover. But after some time my companion had to take another path, and once more I was on my own.

  I missed the village boy; I looked up and down the mountain path but no one else was in sight. My own home was hidden from view by the side of the mountain, and there was no sign of the river. I began to feel discouraged. If someone had been with me, I would not have faltered; but alone, I was conscious of my fatigue and isolation.

  I had come more than half way, and I couldn’t turn back; I had to see the river. If I failed, I would always be a little ashamed of the experience. So I walked on, along the hot, dusty, stony path, past stone huts and terraced fields, until there were no more fields or huts, only forest and sun and loneliness. There were no men, and no sign of man’s influence—only trees and rocks and grass and small flowers—and silence…