Ruskin Bond’s magic mountain

Editor’s note: The indefatigable Ruskin Bond, 91, paints a resplendent picture of Mussoorie, in Scenes from the Magic Mountain. This new travel-memoir collection of snapshots, vignettes, and observations brings to light his relationship with his hometown. Bond takes us through life in the mountains across all seasons and helps us live through his own memories and experiences.

Here, we feature two excerpts from this wonderful book, on solitude, creation, and unexplained silent friendships. Bond writes about spending summers at a lodge in Mussoorie in the ’60s, typing away in the company of nature. And finding a quiet friendship with a songbird in the approaching winter. Scenes from the Magic Mountain by Ruskin Bond has been excerpted with permission from Speaking Tiger Books.

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Maplewood Lodge, Mussoorie.

The summer of 1963.

The forest is still silent, until the cicadas start tuning up for their performance. On cue, like a conductor, a bird perched high in the branches of a spruce tree begins its chant. Umeew—umeew!

The forest begins to pulse with the hypnotic buzzing of the cicadas.

Big white ox-eye daisies grow on the hillside. The sorrel—almora grass—has turned red. I sit in my garden, contemplating my old Olympia typewriter. Still writing stories, still trying to sell them.

As a boy, loneliness. As a man, solitude.

And loneliness was not of my seeking. The solitude I sought. And found.

I am to spend many summers in this cottage. Mornings in the sun, evenings in the shadows.

Some mornings, I carry my small table, chair and typewriter out on to the knoll below one of the oaks and take a little help from the babblers and bulbuls that flit in and out of the canopies of leaves. White-hooded babblers; yellow-bottomed bulbuls. Never still for a moment, they help me with my punctuation.

For dialogue I depend more on the crickets, cicadas and grasshoppers who keep up a regular exchange, debating the issues of the day. But for reflective and descriptive writing I look into the distance, at the purple hills merging with the azure sky; or I examine a fallen leaf as it spirals down from the tree and settles on the typewriter keys. The summer sun bathes everything with clear, warm light. Somewhere high up on the hills, cows are grazing. I don’t see them, but I hear the bells tied around their neck.

I write in leisure. There is no hurry.

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Winter is approaching, it isn’t here yet…A lone redstart perches on the bare branches of the wild pear tree and whistles cheerfully. He has come down early from higher places and will winter in the garden. Others will follow; this solitary fellow would not wait, perhaps he likes being alone, or he’s adventurous. Or he wants to make a private connection with someone. I would like to believe it is me—well, why not? No matter how well loved we are, how fortunate in companions, none of us is immune to the fantasy of a fleeting, unexplained, silent friendship, the memory of which will stay with us for life.

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Scenes from the Magic Mountain by Ruskin Bond has been excerpted with permission from Speaking Tiger Books.