Review of Scenes from the Magic Mountain: Five Seasons in the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond, published by Speaking Tiger Books

By Mitali Chakravarty

Ruskin Bond’s Scenes from the Magic Mountain: Five Seasons in the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond has writings as gentle as a breeze with scents of blooms of the hills and valleys that he inhabits through his writerly life. His writing spans the passage of seasons — spring, summer, monsoons, autumn and winter, giving vignettes from different parts of his life. Divided into six parts, the sections are named after the five seasons, and the last part is “the eternal season”. At the start of each section are a few lines quoted from the Australian traveller John Lang’s Wanderings in India (1859), giving it an old-world charm.

However, the narrative shot through with rich poetic prose and poetry laced with a subtle sense of humour transcends the flavour of just a bygone era. It’s more than that. It urges you to think. At the end, he writes, “Our very thoughts have an existence of their own.  Are we so unimaginative as to presume that life is confined to the shells that are our bodies? Science and religion have not even touched upon the mysteries of our existence. Let me not confine myself to the few years between this birth and this death—which is, after all, only the period I can remember well…” There shines Bond’s unbeatable style laced with subtlety an ability to laugh at himself.

Bond is perhaps one of the best-loved writers from India. He tells us in the course of the narrative that he’s 91 — turned 92 on the 19th of May this year — but his writing is unstoppable.  He revels in words. With his characteristic light touch, he treads back to a time when he abandoned all for writing in the hills, renting a room in Ms Bean’s home, Maplewood Lodge. He celebrates his surroundings with words, writing of treks up the mountain, bathing in pools, and encounters with locals. He reminisces about his life coloured with the enchantment of the hills. He writes: “…I think of those mountain times and thank what gods there may be in the heavens for giving me a life in the magic mountains.”

His description of Holi here is reminiscent of the same festival from his first novel, The Room on the Roof. This book has vignettes that are reminiscent of his earlier stories, including the eggless omelette in ‘My Failed Omelettes and other Disasters’ and more.

Bond narrates stories of plants, birds, bears and leopards, yet, he weaves in more serious issues effortlessly: “In early June the hills are dry and dusty, and forest fires often break out, destroying shrubs and trees, killing birds and small animals. The resin in the pines makes these trees burn more fiercely, and the wind takes sparks from the trees and carries them into the dry grass and leaves, so that new fires will spring up before the old ones have died out.” It all seems to be a part of his narrative flow. Look at this exquisite description: “I wake up early after a night of thunder and rain and set out on a long walk because the sun is out. A great wild dahlia, its scarlet flowers drenched and heavy, sprawls over the hillside and an emerald-green grasshopper reclines on a petal, stretching its legs in the sunshine.”

He has even got poems intercepting his prose. And through them, he conveys his lived experiences:

And birds and butterflies recognise

No man-made border.

Bond in his lifetime felt the impact of borders sprouting in the Indian subcontinent and some of his school friends left to live in the newly-minted countries. He also chose to stay in India, the country of his birth and nurture, over his ancestral homeland, UK, where he returned to study for a few years and then, paid for his passage back to India with the money he made from The Room on the Roof which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957. By 1963, he was back to his favourite hills.

What is most endearing about Bond’s writing is his light touch and his ability to laugh at himself.  He writes: “I reserve the afternoons for doing nothing. ‘Silence and non-action are the root of all things,’ says Tao. Especially on a drowsy summer afternoon.” There’s an entertaining story about young Ruskin on a tree with a baby bear for company and many more. He is fascinated by nature. He relates an incident from his youth: “One sunny April day, I came upon a chequered water snake by a little stream. Its body was a series of bulges. I used a stick to exert pressure along the snake’s length, and it disgorged five frogs. They came out one after the other, and, to my astonishment, hopped off, little the worse for their harrowing experience. Perhaps they, too, were enchanted.”

He comments on some of life’s truths — in this case finding many writers resorting to write books from the Himalayas — with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour: “In the midst of so much literary industry, my own confidence deserted me completely. Each morning I sat at my desk with a blank sheet of paper before me, and each morning the page remained stubbornly blank.”

While Bond sees himself as a pagan in love with nature. The layering in his writing is immense. He writes: “Be like water, taught Lao-tzu, philosopher and founder of Taoism. Soft and limpid, it finds its way through, over or under any obstacle. It does not quarrel; it simply moves on.”

It is impossible to find a flaw with anything Ruskin Bond writes. At 92, he’s perhaps every writers’ role model. At least, he’s mine. His books have been my companions through life, and I would like to thank him for the wonderful world he weaves for his readers. As the lyrics of To Sir, With Love spell out:

 “But how do you thank someone

Who has taken you from crayons to perfume?”

He has always been with us as we grew up with his love, kindness, compassion, an exquisite sense of humour and an ability to laugh at himself. I hope he stays forever weaving the magic of the mountains into our mundane lives.

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Mitali Chakravarty wafts on a cloud where rests borderlessjournal.com. She’s widely published in print and online. Her most recent poems have appeared in Impspire, Lothlorien Journal, Piker Press, Poppy Road Review and Fixator Press. Her latest book of poems is From Calcutta to Kolkata: City of Dreams. She has edited three anthologies, the most recent being Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems.