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121 pages

English

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For over six decades, Ruskin Bond has celebrated the wonder and beauty of nature as few other contemporary writers have, or indeed can. The Book of Nature brings together the best of his writing on the natural world, not just in the Himalayan foothills, but also in the cities and small towns that he has lived in or travelled through. In these pages, you will find leopards padding down the lanes of Mussoorie after dark, the first shower of the monsoon that brings with it a tumult of new life, the chorus of insects at twilight, ancient banyan trees and the short-lived cosmos flower, among other fascinating beings. This volume proves, yet again, that for the serenity and lyricism of his prose and his sharp yet sympathetic eye, Ruskin Bond has few equals.

Sujets

Sciences et techniques

Travel writing

Natural history

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	27 juillet 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184754476
Langue	English

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Ruskin Bond

The Book of Nature
Contents

About the Author
Introduction
I Grandfather s Zoo
II The Civilized Wilderness
III Into the Wild
IV Foothill to Treeline
V Trees
VI Flowers
VII Rain
VIII The Winged Ones
IX Big-cat Tales
X Nature s Fury
XI Green Notes
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE BOOK OF NATURE
Ruskin Bond s first novel, The Room on the Roof , written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written a number of novellas, essays, poems and children s books, many of which have been published by Penguin. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.
Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.
The nightmare of modern cheapjack life was all explained . . . [a] symptom of deep disorder; all due, this feverish external business, to an odd misunderstanding with the Earth. Humanity had somehow quarrelled with her, claiming an independence that could not really last. For her the centuries of this estrangement was but a little thing perhaps-a moment or two in that huge life which counted a million years to lay a narrow bed of chalk. They would come back in time. Meanwhile she ever called. A few, perhaps, already dreamed of return . . . They heard, these few, the splendid whisper that, sweetly calling, ever passed about the world.
-Algernon Blackwood , The Centaur (1911)
Introduction
My introduction to the world of Nature was a painful one. Aged five, I was coming down the spiral staircase from the roof of our bungalow in Jamnagar State, when inadvertently I dislodged a beehive under one of the steps. I was immediately attacked by a swarm of angry bees, who proceeded to sting me on my face, arms and legs. I got down the stairs and ran indoors, screaming for help.
Help came in the form of my father, who calmed me down and bathed me in a solution of potassium permanganate. After two feverish days in bed, I was up and about again. But I d learnt that Nature isn t always birdsong and dew-drenched daffodils.
There were other, more pleasant, aspects of the natural world that remain in my memory: collecting seashells on the beach, feeding the turkeys on the State s turkey farm, wandering through a glade of tall cosmos flowers, watching the village boys wash down their buffaloes at the edge of the lake.
I grew up with an awareness of my natural surroundings-bee stings and all-and later this was buttressed by the sort of books and stories that I enjoyed reading- Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens , the wonderland of Alice, the Mowgli stories, Ballantyne s Coral Island and Hudson Bay , Jack London s White Fang , the Panchatantra and Jataka Tales . . .
The literature that came my way between the ages of five and fifteen was of a kind that is rare today, for most modern writers appear to be preoccupied with urban backgrounds and concerns. I wish there was a Thoreau around, or a Richard Jefferies, or an H.E. Bates: writers who lived close to Nature and made it a part of their creative work.
I have done my best to follow in their footsteps-observing and recording the natural life around me, and working it into my stories, essays and poems. A comprehensive selection of these Nature writings (spanning half a century!) is presented here. This is not a book of natural history, rather a record of my relationship with the natural world, which has sustained and inspired me over the years.
This is a relationship that has grown stronger and more meaningful ever since I came to live in the hills over forty years ago. Is Nature your religion? someone asked, just the other day. It would be presumptuous to say so. Nature doesn t promise you anything-an after life, rewards for good behaviour, protection from enemies, wealth, happiness, progeny, all the things that humans desire and pray for. No, Nature does not promise these things. Nature is a reward in itself.
It is there, to be appreciated, to be understood, to be lived and loved. And in its way it gives us everything-the bounty and goodness of the earth, the sea, the sky. Food, water, the air we breathe. All the things we take for granted.
And sometimes, when we take it too much for granted, or misuse its generosity, it turns against us and unleashes forces that overwhelm us-earthquake, tidal wave, typhoon, flood, drought. But then, Nature settles down again and resumes its generous ways. For it is all about renewal-seasons and the weather, sunlight and darkness, the urgency of growth, the fertility of the seed and the egg. Governments rise and fall, machines rust away, great buildings crumble, but mountains still stand, rivers flow to the sea, and the earth is clothed with grass and verdure.
Nature gives. And takes away. And gives again .
RUSKIN BOND August 2004
I Grandfather s Zoo

Back in the 1930s and 40s, when Dehra was just a small town, most of the bungalows had large compounds-gardens in front, orchards at the back, and sometimes a bit of wilderness thrown in.
Growing up in these surroundings, one was bound to come into close contact with the natural world-the denizens of the banyan and jackfruit trees: birds, butterflies, squirrels, reptiles. And then there were the unusual pets that Grandfather brought home from time to time . . .
Garden Adventures
Though the house and grounds of our home in Dehra were Grandfather s domain-where he kept an odd assortment of pets-the magnificent old banyan tree was mine, chiefly because Grandfather, at the age of sixty-five, could no longer climb it. Grandmother used to tease him about this, and would speak of a certain Countess of Desmond, an Englishwoman who lived to the age of hundred and seventeen, and would have lived longer if she hadn t fallen while climbing an apple tree. The spreading branches of the banyan tree, which curved to the ground and took root again, forming a maze of arches, gave me endless pleasure. The tree was older than the house, older than Grandfather, as old as the town of Dehra, nestling in a valley at the foot of the Himalayas.
My first friend and familiar was a small grey squirrel. Arching his back and sniffing into the air, he seemed at first to resent my invasion of his privacy. But when he found that I did not arm myself with a catapult or air-gun, he became friendlier. And when I started leaving him pieces of cake and biscuit, he grew bolder, and finally became familiar enough to take food from my hands.
Before long he was delving into my pockets and helping himself to whatever he could find. He was a very young squirrel, and his friends and relatives probably thought him headstrong and foolish for trusting a human.
In the spring, when the banyan tree was full of small red figs, birds of all kinds would flock into its branches, the red-bottomed bulbul, cheerful and greedy; gossiping rosy-pastors; and parrots and crows, squabbling with each other all the time. During the fig season, the banyan tree was the noisiest place on the road.
Halfway up the tree I had built a small platform on which I would often spend the afternoons when it wasn t too hot. I could read there, propping myself up against the bole of the tree with the cushions taken from the drawing room. Treasure Island , Huck Finn, the Mowgli Stories, and detective novels made up my bag of very mixed reading.
When I didn t want to read, I could look down through the banyan leaves at the world below, at Grandmother hanging up or taking down the washing, at the cook quarrelling with a fruit vendor, or at Grandfather grumbling at the hardy Indian marigold, which insisted on springing up all over his very English garden. Usually nothing very exciting happened while I was in the banyan tree, but on one particular afternoon I had enough excitement to last me through the summer.
That was the time I saw a mongoose and a cobra fight to death in the garden, while I sat directly above them in the banyan tree.
It was an April afternoon. The warm breezes of approaching summer had sent everyone, including Grandfather, indoors. I was feeling drowsy myself and was wondering if I should go to the pond behind the house for a swim, when I saw a huge black cobra gliding out of a clump of cacti and making for some cooler part of the garden. At the same time a mongoose (whom I had often seen) emerged from the bushes and went straight for the cobra.
In a clearing beneath the tree, in bright sunshine, they came face to face.
The cobra knew only too well that the grey mongoose, three feet long, was a superb fighter, clever and aggressive. But the cobra was a skilful and experienced fighter too. He could move swiftly and strike with the speed of light, and the sacs behind his long, sharp fangs were full of deadly venom.
It was to be a battle of champions.
Hissing defiance, his forked tongue darting in and out, the cobra raised three of his six feet off the ground, and spread his broad, spectacled hood. The mongoose bushed his tail. The long hair on his spine stood up (in the past, the very thickness of his hair had saved him from bites that would have been fatal to others).
Though the combatants were unaware of my presence in the banyan tree, they soon became aware of the arrival of two other spectators. One was a myna, and the other a jungle crow (not the wily urban crow). They had seen these preparations for battle, and had settled on the cactus to watch the outcome. Had they been content only to watch, all would have been well with both of them.
The cobra stood on the defensive, swaying slowly from side to side, trying to mesmerize the mong