Flute in the Forest , livre ebook

Penguin Books Ltd - Gaur Broome Leela

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88 pages

English

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Thirteen-year-old Atiya will win the hearts of young readers. Although physically handicapped; her adventurous spirit takes her on lonely rambles into the wildlife sanctuary. She knows the ways of the jungle and its creatures great and small. A charming story; full of incident and good feeling. Atiya s flute has a special magic of its own. Ruskin Bond Atiya Sardare lives with her dad; a forest officer. An only child; afflicted by polio; she finds solace and peace in the jungle; exploring it on short; secret; often dangerous treks. On one occasion she hears the haunting notes of a flute. It gives her goose bumps. She vows to learn to play the instrument much against her father s wishes. Her music lessons bring her close to the grouchy old anthropologist; Ogre Uncle; and his Kurumba tribal daughter; Mishora. Atiya s gift transforms her father s view; it calms the rogue elephant; Rangappa and helps nurture a blossoming friendship between a teenage boy and girl. A moving; tender; and mesmerizing tale; Flute in the Forest has wonderful incidents based on the real-life experiences of the author.

Informations

Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	07 décembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9788184754193
Langue	English

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Extrait

LEELA GOUR BROOME
Flute in the Forest
Illustrations by Ajanta Guhathakurta
PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Atiya
A Fishing Trip
An Accident in the Jungle
A Bangalore Break
The New Classmate
Planning a Trek
Cave Adventure!
Disappointments
The Ogre and the Saint
A Surprise
Rangappa
First Lesson
Two of a Kind
Ogre Uncle is Ill
Premonition
A Passing
Papa Gets Suspicious
Farewell
Catch the Breeze
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
PUFFIN BOOKS
FLUTE IN THE FOREST
Leela Gour Broome enjoys playing with words-painting her puns into cartoons or cooking up real and imaginary yarns for children and anyone else who is willing to listen. She studied Western music and loves nature having experienced much of it first-hand in nine years of tea plantation life in South India. She thinks she is creative at craft, which she enjoys with her granddaughter. For sixteen glorious years she conducted nature and environment camps for kids she considers all her campers a part of her own family and from all accounts its a feeling that s apparently mutual. She collects quirky, decorative cows and has them all over her farmhouse. She is married to a diehard gentleman farmer and lives on an organic, wooded farm outside Pune, with a menagerie of pets, resident and migratory birds and some wild animals. To know more about the author and her experiences in the forest of southern India, visit her blog www.fluteintheforest.blogspot.com .
OTHER RUSKIN BOND RECOMMENDS PUFFIN TITLES
The Magic Store of Nu-Cham-Vu
Shreekumar Varma.
Shreekumar Varma excels in tales of fantastic adventure in strange lands, and the toy shop of the horrible Nu-Cham-Vu provides plenty of scope for wondrous tales within tales in an exotic setting. Never a dull moment!
Panna
Kamala Das
A famous poet gives us a lovely story of fairy tale magic set along the sea coast near her home in Kerala. Just right for reading aloud to your children, or starting them off as readers in their own right. Kids will love the Fish King and Fish Queen, and little Panna will steal your heart.
For my granddaughter Aranya Pathak Broome.
A growing bond, happy times and green memories .
Atiya
Thirteen-year-old Atiya had been alone in the jungle all day. She had no wish to be with the other children in her class. School was awfully monotonous. The teacher droned in a one-pitch voice, and most of Atiya s classmates weren t listening. She couldn t even remember what the subjects were that day. Her classmates wouldn t miss her, Atiya was sure. They said she was slow and dim. They often made fun of her, and teased her. She was sick of them all.
Early that morning, she had dressed quickly, packed her bag with her usual tiffin, and yelled out to her father that she was leaving for school.
Okay, bye! Papa yelled back. He was too busy with his paperwork to come out and wish her a nice day. No one had much time for Atiya and that was the truth of it.
So when Atiya took the left path at the fork, nobody was around to see her walk in the opposite direction from the road that led to her school. She walked away, as fast as her awkward legs could take her, never looking back to see if anyone was watching. Her rucksack felt heavy on her back as she had packed enough to eat for the day. There were also two bottles of water, just in case she needed them. At a young age she had learnt to fend for herself. Limping along on her strong foot, the other being a little shorter, she used her wooden walking stick to balance herself. She was determined that no one, not even her dear Papa was going to stop her from getting away into the forest today! The path that she took was one that not many her age dared take. It led straight to the heart of the sanctuary. It was out of bounds as it was a dangerous place to be found alone in. It was home to elephants, tigers, panthers, hyenas, wild dogs, or dhole as they were calleds and even bear. That s not counting the venomous snakes that lived there too.
But Atiya was not afraid of the jungle. Her father, a Range Forest Officer, often took her in his jeep when he went out to make sure that his precious wild animals were safe from the poachers. She had grown up in jungle lodges in many South Indian sanctuaries. She was more comfortable with trees and wild animals around her, than with scores of loud, yelling, teasing children. The forest, for her, was a place of peace. A glorious green sanctuary, like it was for the wild animals that lived in it.
The sun had just risen when she reached the forest edge. A heavy chain hung across a mud road from one pole to the other. Locked! It was to protect the animals from being poached, or trees being felled and carted off in the dead of night in big trucks. Atiya knew that these things happened. Some sanctuaries, like the one Papa looked after were extra special. And Papa was a good man. No one could bribe or corrupt him. He was proud to have such a valuable and beautiful forest in his care. He had extra men to keep an eye on things. That helped too. Like their boss, this band of men was fiercely proud of their jungle, and though they came from all over India, they understood the responsibility of caring for their jungle. They made sure everyone knew that they meant to do their jobs properly.
As Atiya walked along, she remembered Papa s instructions. It s the home of the wild animals, he would tell her with a smile. We are only guests in the jungle. Like a good guest, you must be quiet and respect their space. No yelling, shouting, littering, chopping trees, stealing fruit or shooting any of the birds, animals or reptiles you may be lucky enough to see. Atiya smiled to herself as she hobbled along, remembering that conversation. Yes, yes, Papa! she had replied with a wave of her delicate fingers, I know what you mean.
Ten minutes later, she turned a corner. She spotted a large clump of trees on the left side of the road. It was getting warmer. Tired from all the hobbling, Atiya decided to get a moment s rest. She leaned against a very and gnarled old teak tree. Phew! She was quite out of breath.
Faintly, she could still hear the sounds from the village about a kilometre away. The wind was blowing her way. The tinkle of cow bells, people s voices, a child wailing and even the horn of a passing vehicle. Her watch told her it was almost 9 a.m. It was the time when the rangers came into the sanctuary for their early morning patrol. She decided to get off the path and into the forest quickly or she might be spotted by a passing vehicle.
Her thirst quenched, and her bottle secure in her backpack, she hobbled on. Soon she walked off the main mud road, on to a side track and away from the village. She knew these roads like the back of her hand. This one was not too long-only two kilometres. After crossing another checkpost, it took you out of the sanctuary on the other side where across the river, there were a few tiled cottages. A popular jungle resort lay further down the road. She hardly ever saw either the owners or their endless stream of guests. The small homes and the resort were privately owned. Sadly, most of the cottages were empty, built by weekend visitors, who came to stay a couple of times a year. There were no walls, fences or barbed wire boundaries around them. Her father knew all the owners, but he was too busy to visit any of them in his free time. She often wished she could make friends with the owners, but like her father, Atiya had little free time for such things-what with school and homework.
The teenager was the only child of Forest Officer Ram Deva Sardare and his beautiful wife Sarojini. Atiya s parents had met in Dehradun and had fallen madly in love. Everyone warned Ram to think seriously before he decided to marry Sarojini. They said she was born to dance and would never be happy in a forest looking after just a home and family. Dancing was her life! But Ram was besotted with the beautiful lissome dancer. It was not long before he had swept her off her feet. They were soon married and set up home in a famous Sanctuary in South India. A year later, Atiya was born. They adored their sweet baby daughter. Papa took her everywhere, teaching her all about nature. First it was the tiny ants searching for food and then it was the cute tadpoles in the puddles in every dip and hollow of the roads that they travelled together. He introduced her to army ants and fire ants, paper wasps and potter wasps, harvest spiders and giant mygalomorphs -the large hairy tarantula spiders that live in tunnels in mud banks. He talked about snakes and their eating habits, their habitat and their prey. Sometimes as they walked together, he would hear a rustle in the leaves. They both knew it was probably a snake. On one occasion, he ran up to where the sound came from, squinted to get a good look and then pounced on a snake. Once it was a cobra, hissing furiously at him! Holding it by the tail, he showed Atiya its hood, spectacles and fangs. He told her that of all the snakes, its cousin, the King Cobra was probably the most intelligent. She knew that the Kings, as she called them, were rare, and she would cringe if she heard about someone having caught and killed one. Luckily, she knew several wildlife research scientists who were capturing them, multiplying them in captivity and then setting them free with their young in their own habitat again. She so hoped that the Kings would be saved from extinction.
Other than the tribal Kurumba children, there were few children in the forest. They often came by their lodge, as they walked through the forest, with their curly-haired unobtrusive parents. Barefoot and scantily clad, the tribals roamed the forests freely, hunting for berries and roots of indigenous plants and trees. As they had lived here for centuries, they had the right to some forest produce like honey and wild berries. Before she began to attend regular sch