Click here to buy A Book of Simple Living.
A cold, cold January. There is a blizzard. The storm rages for two days—howling winds, hail, sleet, snow. The power goes out. There’s coal to burn but it is hardly enough. Worst weather that I can recall in this hill station. Sick of it. Why do I stay here?
In March, there’s gentle weather at last. Peach, plum and apricot trees in blossom, birds making a racket in the branches. So this is why I stay here.
~
Darkness falls, and it is time to pull my chair to the window. Much that is lovely comes at this hour.
There is the fragrance of raat ki rani, queen of the night, from a neighbour’s balcony, two feet by two. And soon there will be moonlight falling on those white flowers, and moonbeam in my room. Sometimes a field mouse drops in for a bite (he remembers my dinner time). High in the treetops, an owl hoots softly, as if testing, trying to remember. The nightjar plays trombone, and the crickets join in to complete the orchestra. They go silent when the swamp deer calls. A leopard is out hunting.
A breeze has sprung up, it hums in the trees, and now the window is rattling. Time to shut the window. A star falls in the heavens.
~
The leaves are a fresh pale green in the spring rain. I can look at the trees from my window―look down on them almost, because the window is on the first floor of the cottage, and the hillside runs at a sharp angle into the ravine. I do nearly all my writing at this window seat. Whenever I look up, the trees remind me that they are there. They are my best critics. As long as I am aware of their presence, I may avoid the thoughtless and the trivial.
In the days when I walked a lot I went among the trees on my hillside often, acknowledging their presence with a touch of my hand against their trunks―the walnut’s smooth and polished; the pine’s patterned and whorled; the oak’s rough and gnarled, full of experience. The oak had been there the longest, and the wind had bent its upper branches and twisted a few, so that it looked shaggy and undistinguished. It was a good tree for the privacy of birds, its crooked branches spreading out with no particular effect; and sometimes the tree seemed uninhabited until there was a whirring sound, as of a helicopter approaching, and a party of long-tailed blue magpies shot out of the leaves and streamed across the forest glade.
After the monsoon, when the dark red berries had ripened on the hawthorn, this pretty tree was visited by green pigeons, the kokla birds of Garhwal, who clambered upside-down among the fruit-laden twigs. And during winter, a white-capped redstart perched on the bare branches of the wild pear tree and whistled cheerfully. He had come to winter in the garden.
The pines grew on the next hill. But there was a small blue one, a Himalayan chir, a little way below my cottage, and sometimes I sat beneath it to listen to the wind playing softly in its branches.
Opening the window at night, I usually had something to listen to, the mellow whistle of the pygmy owlet, or the cry of a barking deer which had scented the proximity of a panther.
Some sounds I could not recognize at the time. They were strange night sounds that I now know as the sounds of the trees themselves, scratching their limbs in the dark, shifting a little, flexing their fingers. Great trees of the mountains, they know me well. They know my face in the window, they see me watching them, as I did then—watching them grow, listening to their secrets, bowing my head before their outstretched arms and seeking their benediction.
Sometimes, there would be a strange silence, and I would see the moon coming up, and two distant deodars in perfect silhouette.
~
On the road outside the cottage, someone came up to me in the dark and kissed me and ran away. Who could it have been? So soft and warm and all-encompassing…The moment stayed with me all night.
Who could it have been? I must find out. No, I must never find out.
There was light snowfall by morning. Just enough to cloak the deodars for an hour or two, before it all melted away.
~
Man cannot help but live in conformity with his nature; his subconscious is more powerful than his conscious mind.
A bright young schoolgirl once asked me, ‘Sir, what is your philosophy of life?’ She had me stumped. Should I tell her that I had just bumbled along? Would I disappoint her if I said that I was old but had no wisdom to offer? Well, better give her the truth, I decided and had her stumped.
This morning I was pondering on this absence of a philosophy or religious outlook in my make-up, and feeling a little low because it was cloudy and dark outside, and gloomy weather always seems to dampen my spirits. Then the clouds broke up and the sun came out, large, yellow splashes of sunshine in my room and upon my desk, and almost immediately I felt an uplift of spirit. And at the same time I realized that no philosophy would be of any use to a person so susceptible to changes in light and shade, sunshine and shadow. I was a pagan, pure and simple; sensitive to touch and colour and fragrance and odour and sounds of every description; a creature of instinct, of spontaneous attractions, given to illogical fancies and attachments. As a guide I am of little use to anyone, least of all to myself.
I think the best advice I ever had was contained in these lines from Shakespeare which my father had copied into one of my notebooks when I was nine years old:
This above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night of the day,
Thou can’st not then be false to any man.
Each one of us is a mass of imperfections, and to be able to recognize and live with our imperfections—our basic natures, defects of genes and birth—makes, I think, for an easier transit on life’s journey.
~
Beer in the sun. High in the spruce tree the barbet calls, heralding summer. A few puffy clouds drift lazily over the mountains. Is this the great escape?
At some time during the day I must put pen to paper and produce something readable. There’s not much money left in the bank.
Yes, but look at the honeybees—look at them push their way through the pursed lips of the antirrhinum and disappear completely. A few minutes later they stagger out again, bottoms first.
~
I think Tolstoy summed it all up when he said: ‘One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one’s flesh in the ink-pot each time one dips one’s pen.’
To which I might humbly add: There is something to be said for ink-pots. And the hand that holds the pen. It must be far more difficult to share one’s body and soul with a typewriter or computer. I abandoned the typewriter long ago. There is something sensual, physical, intimate about writing by hand. It takes me back to my childhood, when I was first learning to write letters and join them together. When I had any difficulty, my father would put his hand on mine and guide it along the page.
His hand is still there. I feel it now, even as I write.
And may loving, long-gone hands touch yours, dear reader. We are not alone.
Tenali Rama
By Subhadra Sen Gupta
Enter Stage Right
By Feisal Alkazi
RAAGAM TAANAM PALLAVI – A LALLI MYSTERY #EXCERPTTWO
By KALPANA SWAMINATHAN
Raagam Taanam Pallavi – A Lalli Mystery #ExcerptOne
By Kalpana Swaminathan
Colaba
By Shabnam Minwalla
Loki Takes Guard
By Menaka Raman
The Brass Notebook: A Memoir
By Devaki Jain
Bride of the Forest: The Untold Story of Yayati’s Daughter
By Madhavi Mahadevan
The Night of Broken Glass: 15 December 2019
By Seemi Pasha
The Teenage Diary of Rani Laxmibai
By Tanushree Podder
ISRO’S Magnificent Women and their Flying Machines
By Minnie Vaid
Tales from the Tail End
By Ananya Mukherjee
The Last Dance
By Anmol Arora
She Stoops to Kill
By Preeti Gill
Dancing in the Family
By Sukanya Rahman
Maharishi and Me
By Susan Shumsky
The Book of Love
By Ekarat
Those Magnificent Women and Their Flying Machines
By Minnie Vaid
On Leaders and Icons
By Kuldip Nayar
Cancer, Your Body and Your Diet
By Arati Bhatia
Great Jataka Tales
By Noor Inayat Khan
The Greatest Indian Fairy Tales
By Joseph Jacobs
Strange Worlds! Strange Times!
By Vinayak Varma
Jiya Jale
By Gulzar in conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabir
Sky Is My Father
By Easterine Kire
Shillong Times
By Nilanjan P. Choudhury
The Rise and Fall of the Emerald Tigers
By Raghu Chundawat
Right Arm Over
By Moti Nandy
Looking for the Nation
By Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
The Impossible Fairy Tale
By Han Yujoo
The Disobedient Indian
By Ramin Jahanbegloo
The Scope of Happiness
By Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
The Flavours of Nationalism
By Nandita Haksar
Travels On My Elephant
By Mark Shand
The Man Who Saw the Sun
By Makarand Sathe
Sunita De Souza Goes to Sydney and Other Stories
By Roanna Gonsalves
She Goes to War
By Rashmi Saksena
Weaving Water
By Ajeet Cour
Manspotting
By Ritu Bhatia
The Haunted Horse
By Rudyard Kipling
A Time for All Things
By Ruskin Bond
Prison Days
By Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Murder in Seven Acts
By Kalpana Swaminathan
Gardens of Love
By Meera Godbole-Krishnamurthy
Naishapur and Babylon
By Keki N. Daruwalla
The Guru Who Came Down from the Mountain
By Roshen Dalal
New Delhi Love Songs
By Michael Creighton
Dancing with the Nation
By Ruth Vanita
Don’t Run, My Love
By Easterine Kire
Woman to Woman
By Madhulika Liddle
Season of Crimson Blossoms
By Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
The Assassinations
By Vikram Kapur
Available Light
By C.P. Surendran
An Elsewhere Place
By Malay Kumar Roy
There’s a Carnival Today
By Indra Bahadur Rai
The Girl Who Couldn’t Love
By Shinie Antony
Lessons for Mrs Hauksbee
By Rudyard Kipling
Shehzadi Mircha
By Flora Annie Stee
Upcountry Tales
By Mark Tully
Smritichitre
By Lakshmibai Tilak
When the Moon Shines by Day
By Nayantara Sahgal
Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris
By Christopher Snedden
The Meaning of Civilisation
By Naguib Mahfouz
The Leopard’s Tale
By Jonathan and Angela Scott
Shiva’s Drum
By Chandrasekhar Kambar
Comeuppance
By James Tooley
Guldaar
By Stephen Alter
Is That Even a Country, Sir!
By Anil Yadav
The Elephant in the Temple
By John Lockwood Kipling
One Out of Two
By Daniel Sada
Dispossessed
By Ashwin Parulkar, Saba Sharma, Amod Shah, Shikha Sethia, Rhea John, Anhad Imaan and Annie Baxi
No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight
By Parimal Bhattacharya
The Secret Life of Zika Virus
By Kalpish Ratna
The Diary of a Nobody
By George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash
By Eka Kurniawan
A Night with a Black Spider
By Ambai
The Division of Heaven and Earth
By Shokdung
Tibetan Caravans
By Abdul Wahid Radhu
The Shah of Chicago
By Nate Rabe
Azadi’s Daughter: A Memoir
By Seema Mustafa
The Ring of Truth
By Wendy Doniger
The White Umbrella
By Brian Sewell
Mishti, the Mirzapuri Labrador
By Gillian Wright
Shared Tables
By Kaumudi Marathé
Pocket Piketty
By Jesper Roine
Eve Out of Her Ruins
By Ananda Devi
Star of India
By Alice Perrin
Unforeseen Desires
By Anil Chopra
Vampire in Love
By Enrique Vila-Matas
Half-Open Windows
By Ganesh Matkari
The Vermilion Boat
By Sudhin N. Ghose
The Flame of the Forest
By Sudhin N. Ghose
Curry
By Colleen Taylor Sen
Bombay Modern
By Anjali Nerlekar
Harilal & Sons
By Sujit Saraf
Immoderate Men
By Shikhandin
Tourist Season
By Jaina Sanga
The Woman in the Bazaar
By Alice Perrin
Lords of the Global Village
By Ranendra
Intimacy Undone
By Malavika Rajkotia
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Tiger
By Prerna Singh Bindra
And Gazelles Leaping
By Sudhin N. Ghose
Snowfed Waters
By Jane Wilson-Howarth
Murder in Mahim
By Jerry Pinto
The Adivasi Will Not Dance
By Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Chandni Chowk
By Swapna Liddle
Perhaps Tomorrow
By Pooranam Elayathamby and Richard Anderson
The Sari of Surya Vilas
By Vayu Naidu
Kautik on Embers
By Uddhav J. Shelke
The Sun and Two Seas
By Vikramajit Ram
Out of War
By Swati Sengupta
Thamel
By Rabi Thapa
Son of the Thundercloud
By Easterine Kire
The Exodus Is Not Over
By Nandita Haksar
The Pocket Kamasutra
By Alka Pande
Amba
By Laksmi Pamuntjak
The Creature on the Moonlit Road
By Montague Rhodes (M. R.) James
Fatal Accidents of Birth
By Harsh Mander
The Curry Coast
By Binoo K. John
The Temple Road
By Fazlur Rahman
Loitering with Intent
By Ritu Menon
A Village Dies
By Ivan Arthur
Gandhi on Non-Violence
By Thomas Merton
A Season for Martyrs
By Bina Shah
The Haunted Dolls’ House
By M. R. James
The Big Cat Man
By Jonathan Scott
I Want to Destroy Myself
By Malika Amar Shaikh
Journey After Midnight
By UJJAL DOSANJH
Himalaya
By Ruskin Bond and Namita Gokhale
The Case of Lady Sannox
By Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sand Libraries of Timbuktu
By Rohinton Daruwala
A Full Night’s Thievery
By Mitra Phukan
Istanbul Istanbul
By Burhan Sönmez
Up Campus, Down Campus
By Avijit Ghosh
Garrisoned Minds
By Laxmi Murthy and Mitu Varma
The Sleepwalker’s Dream
By Dhrubajyoti Borah
Gulbadan
By Rumer Godden
A Book of Light
By Jerry Pinto
Kohima
By Arthur Swinson
Belonging
By Umi Sinha
The Man Who Wouldn’t be God
By Shashi Warrier
Man Tiger
By Eka Kurniawan
Shell-Shocked
By Mohammed Omer
On Art, Literature and History
By Naguib Mahfouz
Indian Dust
By Rumer & Jon Godden
One Last Drink at Guapa
By Saleem Haddad
A Little Book of Happiness
By Ruskin Bond
Empire of Tea
By Markman Ellis, Matthew Mauger and Richard Coulton
Kingpin
By Kavita Daswani
House Spirit
By Palash Krishna Mehrotra
The Prisoner of Kathmandu
By Charles Allen
One Thousand Days in a Refrigerator
By Manoj Kumar Panda
Tram 83
By Fiston Mwanza Mujila
I, the Salt Doll
By Vandana Mishra
Feasts and Fasts
By Colleen Taylor Sen
The Yard
By Aliyyah Eniath
Tales of the Metric System
By Imraan Coovadia
Growing Older without Feeling Old
By Rudi Westendorp
The Silk Road
By Jonathan Clements
The Hangman’s Journal
By Shashi Warrier
Two under the Indian Sun
By Jon Godden and Rumer Godden
Beauty Is a Wound
By Eka Kurniawan
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
By Jerome K. Jerome
The Science of Happiness
By Stefan Klein
Bicycle Dreaming
By Mridula Koshy
The Ballad of Bant Singh: A Qissa of Courage
By Nirupama Dutt
River of Flesh and Other Stories
By Ruchira Gupta
Mother, Where’s My Country?
By Anubha Bhonsle
Framed As A Terrorist
By Mohammad Aamir Khan
The Hunter’s Friends
By Jim Corbett
The Fortunate Tiger
By Jim Corbett
The Invisible Man from Salem
By Christoffer Carlsson
Bullets and Bylines: From the Frontlines of Kabul, Delhi, Damascus and Beyond
By Shyam Bhatia
The Patiala Quartet
By Neel Kamal Puri
Remember to Forget
By Neel Kamal Puri
On My Terms
By Sharad Pawar
East of Suez
By Alice Perrin
We Are All Stardust
By Stefan Klein
New Songs of the Survivors
By Yvonne Vaz Ezdani
Runaway Writers
By Indu Balachandran
Friends in Wild Places
By Ruskin Bond
The Scenes We Made
By (Ed.) Shanta Gokhale
Like a Pinprick to the Heart
By Shujoy Dutta
The Light of His Clan
By Chetan Raj Shrestha
Into the Hidden Valley
By Stuart Blackburn
The Hindus: An Alternative History
By Wendy Doniger
The Naked Surgeon: The Power and Peril of Transparency in Medicine
By Samer Nashef
The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World
By Joel K. Bourne Jr
Animal Madness
By Laurel Braitman
Asian Absences: Searching for Shangri-La
By Wolfgang Büscher
The Valley of Flowers: An Adventure in the Upper Himalaya
By Frank S. Smythe
The Adivasis Will Not Dance: Stories
By Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Breakthrough: How a Teen Innovator is Changing the World
By Jack Andraka
Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life
By Emily Nagoski
The Devil is a Black Dog: Stories of War and Revolution from the Middle East and Beyond
By Sándor Jászberényi
Nine: Poems
By Anupama Raju
Rungli-Rungliot {Thus Far and No Further}
By Rumer Godden
Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-Rated Organ
By Giulia Enders
The Many Faces of Kashmiri Nationalism: From the Cold War to the Present Day
By Nandita Haksar