A Time for all Things: Collected Essays and Sketches

Introduction

The word ‘essay’ can be a little disconcerting to many readers, who will recall their schooldays and those dreaded exam papers in which they were asked to write an essay on some humdrum subject. Publishers also fight shy of publishing essays. Who would want to buy a book of them?

I, too, used to be reluctant to read essays—that is, until I discovered those by J.B. Priestly, George Orwell, Somerset Maugham and others—writers who had made their mark with the novel or play, but liked to dabble in essays from time to time; and often the essays were keener observations of life than their stories. Priestly took a friendly and optimistic view of the human race. Maugham was cynical but entertaining. Orwell thought we were by nature slavish, only too ready to submit to tyrants and dictators. (Much as I loved Priestly, I can’t help feeling that the world is increasingly Orwellian.)

As one who has to make a living from his writing, most of my work has been in the field of fiction or, occasionally, autobiography or travel. But the essay has always been close to my heart. I have been writing essays of a sort for over sixty years. Not all were published. But the Sunday papers (especially The Statesman and the Deccan Herald) carried many of them, and in the 1970s my ‘nature’ pieces found a home in the Home Forum section of Boston’s Christian Science Monitor, then a highly respected and widely read newspaper. Sadly, it has now shrunk, in both size and circulation.

Another revered publication was Blackwood’s, a literary and political journal which had survived for over two hundred years (publishing Stevenson, Conrad, Jack London and others along the way) before finally succumbing to the advent of new forms of information and entertainment. It ran in the family for all those years, and G.D. Blackwood, its last editor, published several of my pieces on hill stations, leopards, rivers, cemeteries and railway stations—these were the things that interested me.

Much of my writing is nature-oriented, because I’ve spent most of my life in contemplation of the sky, the good earth and the waters of the earth, along with its inhabitants—humans, animals, birds and ladybirds. Windows and long walks have shown me beauty in the smallest things and in the most unexpected places, and recording these discoveries in short prose pieces, not in the service of a story, but complete in themselves, has brought me a lot of pleasure. I hope the essays and sketches in this collection will bring you some pleasure, too.

Ruskin Bond

Landour

20 January 2018

For All Seasons

A Mountain Stream

There is a brook at the bottom of the hill. From where I live I can always hear its murmur, but I am no longer conscious of the sound except when I return from a trip to the plains.

And yet I have grown so used to the constant music of water that when I leave it behind I feel naked and alone, bereft of my moorings. It is like getting accustomed to the friendly rattle of teacups every morning, and then waking one day to a deathly stillness and a fleeting moment of panic.

Below the house is a forest of oak and maple and rhododendron. A path twists its way down through the trees over an open ridge where red sorrel grows wild and then down steeply through a tangle of thorn bushes, creepers and ringal bamboo.

At the bottom of the hill the path leads on to a grassy verge, surrounded by wild rose. The stream runs close by the verge, tumbling over smooth pebbles over rocks worn yellow with age on its way to the plains and to the little Song river and finally to the sacred Ganga.

When I first discovered the stream it was April and the wild roses were flowering, small white blossoms lying in clusters. There were still pink and blue primroses on the hill slopes and an occasional late-flowering rhododendron provided a splash of red against the dark green of the hill.

A forktail, a bird of the Himalayan streams, was much in evidence during those early visits. It moved nimbly over the boulders with a fairy tread and continually wagged its tail. Both of us had a fondness for standing in running water. Once, while I stood in the stream. I saw a snake swim past, a slim brown snake, beautiful and lonely. A snake in water is a lovely creature.

In May and June, when the hills are always brown and dry, it remained cool and green near the stream where ferns and maidenhair and long grasses continued to thrive. Downstream, I found a small pool where I could bathe and a cave with water dripping from the roof, the water spangled gold and silver in the shafts of sunlight that pushed through the slits in the cave-roof.

Few people came here. Sometimes a milkman or a coalburner would cross the stream on his way to a village; but, the nearby hill station’s summer visitors had not discovered this haven of wild and green things.

The monkeys—langurs with white and silver-grey fur, black faces and long swishing tails—had discovered the place but they kept to the trees and sunlit slopes. They grew quite accustomed to my presence and carried on about their work and play as though I did not exist—beautiful animals with slim waists and long sinewy legs and tails full of character. They were clean and polite, much nicer than the red monkeys of the plains.

During the rains the stream became a rushing torrent, and I did not visit the place too often. There were leeches in the long grass and they would fasten themselves onto my legs and feast on my blood.

But it was always worthwhile tramping through the forest to feast my eyes on the foliage that sprang up in tropical profusion—soft, spongy moss; great staghorn fern on the trunks of trees; mysterious and sometimes evil-looking lilies and orchids, wild dahlias and the climbing convolvulus opening its purple secrets to the morning sun.

And when the rains were over and it was October and the birds were in song again, I could lie in the sun on sweet-smelling grass and gaze up through a pattern of oak leaves into a blind-blue heaven. And I would thank my God for leaves and grass and the smell of things. The smell of mint and myrtle and bruised clover, and the touch of things, the touch of grass and air and sky, the touch of the sky’s blueness.

And then after a November hail-storm it was winter and I could not lie on the frostbitten grass. The sound of the stream was the same but I missed the birds; and the grey skies came clutching at my heart and the rain and sleet drove me indoors.

It snowed—the snow lay heavy on the branches of the oak trees and piled up in the culverts—and the grass and the ferns and wild flowers were pressed to sleep beneath a cold white blanket, but the stream flowed on, pushing its way through and under the whiteness, towards another river, towards another spring.

A Marriage of the Waters

In summer the grass on the hills is still a pale yellowish green, tinged with brown, and that is how it remains until the monsoon rains bring new life to everything that subsists on the stony Himalayan soil. And then, for four months, the hills are deep and dark and emerald bright

But the other day, taking a narrow path that left the dry Mussoorie ridge to link up with Pari Tibba (Fairy Hill), I ran across a path of lush green grass, and I knew there had to be water there.

The grass was soft and springy, spotted with the crimson of small, wild strawberries. Delicate maidenhair, my favourite fern, grew from a cluster of moist, glistening rocks. Moving the ferns a little, I discovered the spring, a freshet of clear sparkling water.

I never cease to wonder at the tenacity of water—its ability to make its way through various strata of rock, zigzagging, back tracking, finding space, cunningly discovering faults and fissures in the mountain, and sometimes travelling underground for great distances before emerging into the open. Of course, there’s no stopping water. For no matter how tiny that little trickle, it has to go somewhere!

Like this little spring. At first I thought it was too small to go anywhere; that it would dry up at the edge of the path. Then I discovered that the grass remained soft and green for some distance along the verge, and that there was moisture beneath the grass. This wet stretch ended abruptly; but, on looking further, I saw it continued on the other side of the path, after briefly going underground again.

I decided to follow its fortunes as it disappeared beneath a tunnel of tall grass and bracken fern. Slithering down a stony slope, I found myself in a small ravine and there I discovered that my little spring had grown, having been joined by the waters of another spring bubbling up from beneath a path of primroses.

A short distance away, a spotted forktail stood on a rock, surveying this marriage of the waters. His long, forked tail moved slowly up and down. He paid no attention to me, being totally absorbed in the movements of a water spider. A swift peck, and the spider vanished, completing the bird’s breakfast. Thirsty, I cupped my hands and drank a little water. So did the forktail. We had a perennial supply of pure water all to ourselves!

There was now a rivulet to follow, and I continued down the ravine until I came to a small pool that was fed not only by my brook (I was already thinking of it as my very own!) but also by a little cascade of water coming down from a rocky ledge. I climbed a little way up the rocks and entered a small cave, in which there was just enough space for crouching down. Water dripped and trickled off its roof and sides. And most wonderful of all, some of these drops created tiny rainbows, for a ray of sunlight had struck through a crevice in the cave roof making the droplets of moisture radiant with all the colours of the spectrum.

When I emerged from the cave, I saw a pair of pine martens drinking at the pool. As soon as they saw me, they were up and away, bounding across the ravine and into the trees.

The brook was now a small stream, but I could not follow it much farther, because the hill went into a steep decline and the water tumbled over large, slippery boulders, becoming a waterfall and then a noisy little torrent as it sped toward the valley.

Climbing up the sides of the ravine to the spur of Pari Tibba, I could see the distant silver of a meandering river and I knew my little stream was destined to become part of it; and that the river would be joined by another that could be seen slipping over the far horizon, and that their combined waters would enter the great Ganga or Ganges farther downstream.

This mighty river would, in turn, wander over the rich alluvial plains of northern India, finally flowing into the ocean near the Bay of Bengal.

And the ocean, what was it but another droplet in the universe, in the greater scheme of things? No greater than the glistening drop of water that helped start it all, where the grass grows greener around my little spring on the mountain.

The Leopard

I first saw the leopard when I was crossing the small stream at the bottom of the hill. The ravine was so deep that for most of the day it remained in shadow. This encouraged many birds and animals to emerge from cover during the hours of daylight. Few people ever passed that way; only milkmen and charcoal-burners from the surrounding villages. As a result, the ravine had become a little haven of wildlife, one of the few natural sanctuaries left near Mussoorie.

Below my cottage was a forest of oak and maple and Himalayan rhododendron. A narrow path twisted its way down through the trees, over an open ridge where red sorrel grew wild, and then down steeply through a tangle of wild raspberries, creeping vines and the slender ringal bamboo. At the bottom of the hill, the path led on to a grassy verge, surrounded by wild dog roses. It is surprising how closely the flora of the lower Himalaya, between 5,000 to 8,000 feet, resembles that of the English countryside. The streams ran close by the verge, tumbling over smooth pebbles, over rocks worn yellow with age, on its way to the plains and to the little Song river and finally to the sacred Ganga.

When I first discovered the stream, it was early April and the wild roses were flowering, small white blossoms lying in clusters. There were still yellow and blue primroses on the hill slopes, saxifrage growing in the rocks, and an occasional late-flowering rhododendron providing a splash of crimson against the dark green of the hill.

I walked down to the stream almost every day, after I had done two or three hours of writing. I had lived in the cities far too long, and had returned to the hills to renew myself, physically and mentally, to get rid of some of the surplus flesh that had gathered about my waist, and, if possible, to write a novel.

Nearly every morning, and sometimes during the day, I heard the cry of the barking deer. And in the evening, walking through the forest, I disturbed parties of kaleej pheasant. The birds went gliding down the ravine on open, motionless wings. I saw pine martens and a handsome red fox; I recognized the footprints of a bear.

As I had not come to take anything from the jungle, the birds and animals soon ‘grew accustomed to my face’, as Mr Henry Higgins would have said. Or possibly they recognized my footsteps. After some time, my approach did not disturb them. A spotted forktail, which at first used to fly away, now remained perched on a boulder in the middle of the stream while I got across by means of other boulders only a few yards away. The forktail’s plumage blended with the rocks and running water, so that the bird was difficult to spot at a distance, but the white ‘Cross of St. Andrew’ across its back eventually gave it away. Its tail moved gently up and down, in a slow, elegant movement, and its sharp, creaky call followed me up the hillside.

The langurs in the oak and rhododendron trees, who would at first go leaping through the branches at my approach, now watched me with some curiosity as they munched the tender green shoots of the oak. The young ones scuffled and wrestled like boys, while their parents groomed each other’s coats, stretching themselves out on the sunlit hillside. But one evening, as I passed, I heard them chattering in the trees, and I was not the cause of their excitement.

As I crossed the stream and began climbing the hill, the grunting and chattering increased, as though the langurs were trying to warn me of some hidden danger. A shower of pebbles came rattling down the steep hillside, and I looked up to see a sinewy orange-gold leopard poised on a rock about twenty feet above me.

It was not looking towards me, but had its head thrust attentively forward in the direction of the ravine. But it must have sensed my presence, because slowly it turned its head and looked down at me. It seemed a little puzzled at my presence there; and when, to give myself courage, I clapped my hands sharply, the leopard sprang away into the thickets, making absolutely no sound as it melted into the shadows.

I had disturbed the animal in its quest for food. But a little later I heard the quickening cry of a barking deer as it fled through the forest; the hunt was still on.

The leopard, like other members of the cat family, is nearing extinction in India, and I was surprised to find one so close to Mussoorie. Probably the deforestation that had been taking place in the surrounding hills had driven the deer into this green valley; and the leopard, naturally, had followed.

It was some weeks before I saw the leopard again, although I was often made aware of its presence. A dry, rasping cough sometimes gave it away. At times I felt almost certain that I was being followed. And once, when I was late getting home, and the brief twilight gave way to a dark, moonless night, I was startled by a family of porcupines running about in a clearing. I looked around nervously and saw two bright eyes staring at me from a thicket. I stood still, my heart banging away against my ribs. Then the eyes danced away, and I realized that they were only fireflies.

In May and June, when the hills were brown and dry, it was always cool and green near the stream, where ferns and maidenhair and long grasses continued to thrive. Downstream I found a small pool where I could bathe, and a cave with water dripping from the roof, the water spangled gold and silver in the shafts of sunlight that pushed through the slits in the cave roof. ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters.’ Perhaps David had discovered a similar paradise when he wrote those words; perhaps I too would write good words. The hill station’s summer visitors had not discovered this haven of wild and green things, I was beginning to feel that the place belonged to me, that dominion was mine.

The stream had at least one other regular visitor, the spotted forktail, and though it did not fly away at my approach, it became restless if I stayed too long, and then it would move from boulder to boulder uttering a long complaining cry. I spent an afternoon trying to discover the bird’s nest, which I was certain contained her young, because I had seen the parent bird carrying grubs in her bill. The problem was that when the bird flew upstream I had difficulty in following her rapidly enough, as the rocks were sharp and slippery. Eventually I decorated myself with bracken fronds, and, slowly making my way upstream, hid myself in the hollow stump of a tree, at a spot where the forktail often disappeared. I had no wish to rob the bird of its young; I was simply curious to see its home.

By crouching down, I was able to command a view of a small stretch of the stream and the sides of the ravine; but I had done little to deceive the forktail, who continued to object strongly to my presence so near her home. I summoned up my reserves of patience, and sat perfectly still for about ten minutes, when the forktail quietened down. Out of sight, out of mind! But where had she gone? Probably into the walls of the ravine where, I felt sure, she was guarding her nest. So I decided on trying to take her by surprise, and jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, in time to see—not the forktail on her doorstep, but the leopard, bounding away with a grunt of surprise! Two urgent springs and it had crossed the stream and plunged into the forest.

Needless to say, I was as astonished as the leopard, and forgot all about the forktail and her nest. Had the leopard been following me again? I decided against this possibility. Only man-eaters follow humans, and, so far as I knew, there had never been a man-eater in the vicinity of Mussoorie.

During the monsoon the stream became a rushing torrent, bushes and small trees were swept away, and the friendly murmur of the water became a threatening boom. I did not visit too often, but it was always worthwhile tramping through the forest to feast my eyes on the foliage that sprang up in tropical profusion—soft, spongy moss; great stag-ferns on the trunks of trees; mysterious-looking lilies and orchids; wild dahlias, and the climbing convolvulus opening its purple secrets to the morning sun.

One day I found the remains of a barking deer which had been partially eaten. I wondered why the leopard had not hidden the remains of his meal, and decided that it must have been disturbed while eating. Then, climbing the hill, I met a party of shikaris resting beneath the oaks. They asked me if I had seen a leopard. I said I had not. They said they knew there was a leopard in the forest. Leopard-skins, they told me, were selling in Delhi at over a thousand rupees each! Of course there was a ban on the export of skins, but they gave me to understand that there were ways and means…

I thanked them for their information and walked on, feeling uneasy and disturbed.

The shikaris had seen the carcass of the deer, and they had seen the leopard’s pug-marks, and they kept coming to the forest. Almost every evening I heard their guns banging away; for they were ready to fire at almost anything.

‘There’s a leopard about,’ they always told me ‘You should carry a gun.’

‘I don’t have one,’ I said.

There were fewer birds to be seen, and even the langurs had moved on. The red fox did not show itself; and the pine martens, who had become quite bold, now dashed into hiding at my approach. The smell of one human is like the smell of any other.

And then the rains were over and it was October and I could lie in the sun, on sweet-smelling grass, and gaze up through a pattern of oak leaves into a blinding-blue heaven. And I would praise God for leaves and grass and the smell of things, the smell of mint and bruised clover, and the touch of things, the touch of grass and air and sky, the touch of the sky’s blueness.

I thought no more of the men. I had seen them as their species Homo Sapiens, and not as individual personalities. My attitude to them was similar to the attitude of the denizens of the forest. They were men, unpredictable, and to be avoided if possible.

On the other side of the ravine rose Pari Tibba, Hill of the Fairies, a bleak, scrub-covered hill, where no one lived. It was said that in the previous century Englishmen had tried building their houses on the hill, but that the area had always attracted lightning, due either to the hill’s situation or to its mineral deposits; and that, after several houses had been struck by lightning, the settlers had moved on to the next hill, where the hill station now stands. To the hill-men it is Pari Tibba, haunted by the spirits of a pair of ill-fated lovers who perished there in a storm; to others it is known as Burnt Hill, because of its scarred and stunted trees.

One day, after crossing the stream, I climbed Pari Tibba—a stiff undertaking, because there was no path to the top and I had to scramble up a precipitous rock-face with the help of rocks and roots that were apt to come away in my groping hand. But at the top was a plateau with a few pine trees, their upper branches catching the wind and humming softly. There I found the ruins of what must have been the houses of the first settlers—just a few piles of rubble, now overgrown with weeds, sorrel, dandelions and nettles.

As I walked through the roofless ruins, I was struck by the silence that surrounded me, the absence of birds and animals, the sense of complete desolation. The silence was so absolute that it seemed to be shouting in my ears. But there was something else of which I was becoming increasingly aware: the strong feline odour of one of the cat family.

I paused and looked about. I was alone. There was no movement of dry leaf or loose stone. The ruins were for the most part open to the sky. Their rotting rafters had collapsed and joined together to form a low passage like the entrance to a mine; and this dark cavern seemed to lead down into the ground.

The smell was stronger when I approached this spot, so I stopped again and waited there, wondering if I had discovered the lair of the leopard, wondering if the animal was now at rest after a night’s hunt. Perhaps it crouched there in the dark, watching me, recognizing me, knowing me as the man who walked alone in the forest without a weapon. I like to think that he was there, that he knew me, and that he acknowledged my visit in the friendliest way: by ignoring me altogether.

Perhaps I had made him confident—too confident, too careless, too trusting of the human in his midst. I did not venture any further; I was not out of my mind. I did not seek physical contact, or even another glimpse of that beautiful sinewy body, springing from rock to rock. It was his trust I wanted, and I think he gave it to me.

But did the leopard, trusting one man, make the mistake of bestowing his trust on others? Did I, by casting out all fear—my own fear, and the leopard’s protective fear—leave him defenceless?

Because next day, coming up the path from the stream, shouting and beating drums, were the shikaris. They had a long bamboo pole across their shoulders; and slung from the pole, feet up, head down, was the lifeless body of the leopard. It had been shot in the neck and in the head.

‘We told you there was a leopard!’ they shouted.

I walked home through the silent forest. It was very silent, almost as though the birds and animals knew that their trust had been violated.

I remembered the lines of a poem by D.H. Lawrence; and as I climbed the steep and lonely path to my home, the words beat out their rhythm in my mind: ‘There was room in the world for a mountain-lion and me.’

A Place of Power

On the first clear day of a long-ago October, I visited the pine-knoll some distance from my cottage, my place of peace and power.

It was months since I had last been there. Trips to the plains, a crisis in my affairs, involvements with other people and their troubles, and an entire monsoon, had come between me and the grassy, pine-topped slope facing the eternal snows of the Himalaya. Now I tramped through autumn foliage—tall ferns, sky-blue commelina, wild balsam, purple and orange mushrooms, and bushes festooned with flowering convolvulus—crossed a stream by means of a little bridge of stones, and climbed the steep hill to the pine-knoll.

I felt that when the trees saw me, they made as if to turn in my direction. A puff of wind came across the valley from the distant snows. A long-tailed blue magpie took alarm and flew noisily out of an oak tree. The cicadas were suddenly silent. But yes, the trees remembered me. They bowed gently in the breeze and beckoned me nearer, welcoming me home. Three pines, a straggling oak and a wild cherry. I went among them, acknowledging their greeting with a touch of my hand against their trunks—the cherry’s smooth and polished; the pine’s patterned and whorled; the oak’s rough, gnarled and full of experience. He has been there the longest, and the wind has beat his upper branches and twisted a few, so that he looks shaggy and undistinguished. But, like the philosopher who is careless about his dress and appearance, the oak has secret, hidden wisdom. He has been here longer than anyone else and he has learnt the art of survival. In a world where entire forests are being swept away, that is quite an achievement.

While the oak and the pine are much older than me, and have been here since the turn of the century, the cherry tree is exactly ten years old. I know, because I planted it.

One day I had this cherry seed in my hand, and on an impulse I thrust it into the soft earth and then went away and forgot all about it. A few months later I found a tiny cherry tree in the long grass. I did not expect it to survive. But the following year it was two feet tall. And then some goats ate the young leaves and a grasscutter’s scythe injured the stem, and I was sure the tree would wither away. But it renewed itself, sprang up even faster. In three years, it was a healthy growing tree, about five feet tall.

I left the hills for a few years—forced by circumstances to make a living in the plains—but this time I did not forget the cherry tree. I thought about it quite often, even sent it telepathic messages of love and encouragement! And when, last year, I returned in the autumn, my heart did a somersault when I found the tree sprinkled with pale pink blossom. (The wild Himalayan cherry flowers in November and not in the spring.) Later, when the fruit was ripe, the tree was visited by finches, tits, bulbuls and other small birds, all coming to feast on the sour red cherries.

In the summer I spent a night on the pine-knoll, sleeping on the grass beneath the cherry tree. I lay awake for hours, listening to the chatter of the stream, the singing of crickets and the occasional chuckle of some night bird; and watching, through the branches overhead, the stars permanent and impartial in the sky and I felt the power of sky and earth, and the power of a small cherry seed.

And so, when the rains are over, this is where I come, that I might feel the peace and power of this magic place. It’s a big world, and momentous events are taking place all the time. But this is where I have seen it all happen.

My Trees in the Himalayas

Living in a cottage at 7,000 feet in the Garhwal Himalayas, I am fortunate to have a big window that opens out on the forest so that the trees are almost within my reach. If I jumped, I could land quite neatly in the arms of an oak or horse chestnut. I have never made that leap, but the big langurs—silver-gray monkeys with long, swishing tails—often spring from the trees onto my corrugated tin roof, making enough noise to frighten all the birds away.

Standing on its own outside my window is a walnut tree, and truly this is a tree for all seasons. In winter the branches are bare, but beautifully smooth and rounded. In spring each limb produces a bright green spear of new growth, and by midsummer the entire tree is in leaf. Toward the end of the monsoon the walnuts, encased in their green jackets, have reached maturity. When the jackets begin to split, you can see the hard brown shells of the nuts, and inside each shell is the delicious meat itself.

Every year this tree gives me a basket of walnuts. But last year the nuts were disappearing one by one, and I was at a loss as to who had been taking them. Could it have been the milkman’s small son? He was an inveterate tree climber, but he was usually to be found on the oak trees, gathering fodder for his herd. He admitted that his cows had enjoyed my dahlias, which they had eaten the previous week, but he stoutly denied having fed them walnuts.

It wasn’t the woodpecker either. He was out there every day, knocking furiously against the bark of the tree, trying to pry an insect out of a narrow crack, but he was strictly non-vegetarian. As for the langurs, they ate my geraniums but did not care for the walnuts.

The nuts seemed to disappear early in the morning while I was still in bed, so one day I surprised everyone, including myself, by getting up before sunrise. I was just in time to catch the culprit climbing out of the walnut tree. She was an old woman who sometimes came to cut grass on the hillside. Her face was as wrinkled as the walnuts she so fancied, but her arms and legs were very sturdy.

‘And how many walnuts did you gather today, Grandmother?’ I asked.

‘Just two,’ she said with a giggle, offering them to me on her open palm. I accepted one, and thus encouraged, she climbed higher into the tree and helped herself to the remaining nuts. It was impossible for me to object. I was taken with admiration for her agility. She must have been twice my age, but I knew I could never get up that tree. To the victor, the spoils!

Unlike the prized walnuts, the horse chestnuts are inedible. Even the rhesus monkeys throw them away in disgust. But the tree itself is a friendly one, especially in summer when it is in full leaf. The lightest breeze makes the leaves break into conversation, and their rustle is a cheerful sound. The spring flowers of the horse chestnut look like candelabra, and when the blossoms fall, they carpet the hillside with their pale pink petals.

The deodar stands erect and dignified and does not bend with the wind. In spring the new leaves, or needles, are a tender green, while during the monsoon the tiny young cones spread like blossoms in the dark green folds of the branches. The deodar enjoys the company of its own kind: where one deodar grows, there will be others. A walk in a deodar forest is awe inspiring—surrounded on all sides by these great sentinels of the mountains, you feel as though the trees themselves are on the march.

I walk among the trees outside my window often, acknowledging their presence with a touch of my hand against their trunks. The oak has been there the longest, and the wind has bent its upper branches and twisted a few so that it looks shaggy and undistinguished. But it is a good tree for the privacy of birds. Sometimes it seems completely uninhabited until there is a whining sound, as of a helicopter approaching, and a party of long-tailed blue magpies flies across the forest glade.

Most of the pines near my home are on the next hillside. But there is a small Himalayan blue a little way below the cottage, and sometimes I sit beneath it to listen to the wind playing softly in its branches.

When I open the window at night, there is almost always something to listen to—the mellow whistle of a pygmy owlet, or the sharp cry of a barking deer. Sometimes, if I am lucky, I will see the moon coming up over the next mountain, and two distant deodars in perfect silhouette.

Some night sounds outside my window remain strange and mysterious. Perhaps they are the sounds of the trees themselves, stretching their limbs in the dark, shifting a little, flexing their fingers, whispering to one another. These great trees of the mountains. I feel they know me well, as I watch them and listen to their secrets, happy to rest my head beneath their outstretched arms.

Birdsong in the Hills

Bird-watching is more difficult in the hills than on the plains. It is hard to spot many birds against the dark trees of the varying shades of the hillside. There are few birds who remain silent for long, however, and one learns of their presence from their calls or songs. Birdsong is with you wherever you go in the Himalayas, from the foothills to the treeline; and it is often easier to recognize a bird from its voice than from its colourful but brief appearance.

The barbet is one of those birds which is heard more often than it is seen. It has a monotonous, far-reaching call, which carries for about a mile. These birds love listening to their own voices, and often two or three will answer each other from different trees, each trying to outdo the rest in a shrill shouting match. Some people like the barbet’s call and consider it both striking and pleasant. Some just find it striking.

Hodgson’s grey-headed flycatcher-warbler is the long name that ornithologists, in their infinite wisdom, have given to a very small bird. This tiny warbler is heard, if not seen, more often than any other bird throughout the western Himalayas. Its voice is heard in every second tree, and yet there are few who can say what it looks like. Its song (if you can call it that) is not very tuneful and puts me in mind of the notice that sometimes appeared in saloons out West: ‘The audience is requested not to throw things at the pianist. He is doing his best.’

Our little warbler does his best, incessantly emitting four or five unmusical, but nevertheless joyful and penetrating notes.

Another tiny bird heard more often than it is seen is the green-backed tit, a smart little fellow about the size of a sparrow. It utters a sharp, rather metallic, but not unpleasant call which sounds like ‘kiss me, kiss me, kiss me’.

A real songster is the grey-winged ouzel, found here in the Garhwal hills. Throughout the early summer he makes the wooded hillsides ring with a melody that Nelson Eddy would have been proud of. Joining in sometimes with a sweet song of its own is the green pigeon. As though to mock their arias, the laughing thrushes, who are exponents of heavy rock, give vent to some weird calls of their own.

Nightjars are birds that lie concealed during the day in shady woods, coming out at dusk on silent wings to hunt for insects. The nightjar has a huge, frog-like mouth, but is best recognized by its unusual call—‘tonk-tonk, tonk-tonk’—a noise like that produced by striking a plank with a hammer.

When I came to live in the hills, it was the song of the Himalayan whistling thrush that first caught my attention. It is a song that never fails to enchant me. The bird starts with a hesitant whistle, as though trying out the tune; then, confident of the melody, it bursts into full song, a crescendo of sweet notes and variations ringing clearly across the hillside. Suddenly the song breaks off, right in the middle of a cadenza, and I am left wondering what happened to make the bird stop. Nothing really, because the song is taken up again a few moments later.

It was a boy from the next village who acquainted me with the legend of the whistling thrush, or the kastura or kaljit, as the hill-men call the bird. According to the story, the young god Krishna fell asleep near a stream, and while he slept a small boy made off with Krishna’s famous flute. Upon waking and finding his flute gone, Krishna was so angry that he changed the culprit into a bird. But having once played on the flute, the boy had learnt bits and pieces of the god’s enchanting music. And so he continued, in his disrespectful way, to play the music of the gods, only stopping now and then (as the whistling thrush does) when he couldn’t remember the tune.

The wild cherry tree, which grows just outside my bedroom window, attracts a great many small birds, both when it is in flower and when it is in fruit.

When it is covered with small pink blossoms, the most common visitor is a little yellow-backed sunbird, who emits a squeaky little song as she flits from branch to branch. She extracts the nectar from the blossoms with her long tubular tongue.

Amongst other visitors are the flycatchers, gorgeous birds, especially the paradise flycatcher with its long white tail and ghostlike flight. Basically an insect eater, it likes fruit for dessert, and will visit the tree when the cherries are ripening. While moving along the boughs of the tree, they utter twittering notes, with occasional louder calls, and now and then the male breaks into a sweet little song, thus justifying the name of shah bulbul (king of the nightingales), by which he is known in northern India.

The Song of the Whistling Thrush

I had been in the hills for only a few days when I heard the song of the Himalayan whistling thrush. I did not see the bird that day. It kept to the deep shadows of the ravine below the old stone cottage. I was sitting at the window, gazing out at the new leaves on the walnut and wild pear trees. All was still; the wind was at peace with itself, the mountains brooded massively under a darkening sky. Then, emerging from the depths of the forest like a dark sweet secret came the indescribably beautiful call of the whistling thrush.

At first the bird was heard but never seen. Then one day I found the whistling thrush perched on the broken garden fence. He was a glistening deep purple, his shoulders flecked with white; he had sturdy black legs and a strong yellow beak; rather a dapper fellow, who would have looked well in a top hat, dancing with Fred Astaire. When he saw me coming down the path, he uttered a sharp ‘kreeee’— unexpectedly harsh when one remembered his singing—and flew off into the shadowed ravine.

But as the months passed, he grew used to my presence and became less shy. One of my drain pipes had blocked, resulting in an overflow of rainwater and a small permanent puddle under the stone steps. This became the whistling thrush’s favourite bathing-place. On sultry summer afternoons, while I was taking a siesta upstairs, I would hear the bird flapping about in the rainwater pool. A little later, refreshed and sunning himself on the tin roof, he would treat me to a little concert, performed, I cannot help feeling, especially for my benefit.

It wasn’t long before the thrush was joined by a female, who was exactly like him. (In fact, I have never been able to tell one from the other.) The pair did not sing together but preferred to give solo performances, waiting for each other to finish before bursting into a song. When, as sometimes happened, they started off together, the effect was not so pleasing to my human ear.

These were love-calls, no doubt, and it wasn’t long before the pair were making forays into the rocky ledges of the ravine, looking for a suitable nesting site; but a couple of years were to pass before I saw any of their progeny.

After almost two years in the hills, I came to realize that the thrushes were birds ‘for all seasons’. They were liveliest in midsummer; but even in the depths of winter, with snow lying on the ground, they would suddenly start singing, as they flitted from pine to oak to naked chestnut.

As I write, there is a strong wind rushing through the trees and bustling about in the chimney, while distant thunder threatens a summer storm. Undismayed, the whistling thrushes are calling to each other as they roam the wind-threshed forest. At other times I have heard them clearly above the sound of rushing water. And sometimes they leave the vicinity of the cottage and fly down to the stream, half a mile away, sending me little messages on the wind. Down there, they are busy snapping up snails and insects, the chief items on their menu.

Whistling thrushes usually nest on rocky ledges, near water; but my overtures of friendship may give my visitors other ideas. Recently I was away from Mussoorie for about a fortnight. When I returned, I was about to open my window when I noticed a large bundle of ferns, lichen, grass, mud and moss balanced outside on the window ledge. Peering through the glass, I was able to recognize this untidy basket as a nest. Could such tidy birds make such an untidy nest? Indeed they could, because they arrived and proved their ownership a few minutes later.

Of course that meant I couldn’t open the window again. (The nest would have gone over the ledge, if I had.) Fortunately, the room has another window, and I kept this one open to let in sunshine, fresh air, the music of birds and cicadas and the call of