Mussoorie and Dehra Dun are rich in natural beauty and animal wealth. Both also happen to be rich in writers who spend time wandering through the environs of nature. Ruskin Bond’s Friends in Wild Places: Birds, Beasts and Other Companions, with its passing reference to Gerald Durrell in the title, is a story of his meanderings through the hills and valleys of Dehra and various encounters with animals. The book opens with a series of family tales from the days of Bond’s boyhood, his grandfather and the tiger, his grandmother and the irrepressible Tutu and a series of hysterical aunts confronted by pythons and monkeys under the most impossible circumstances.
Out of a gaggle of eccentric relatives, Bond’s grandfather comes across as the most endearing, with his no nonsense attitude to animals and birds, including feeding baby owls in an apron and slapping a tiger—even though caged—lovingly on the mouth, much to the beast’s surprise. Bond’s family manages to come quite close to Gerald Durrell’s relatives in eccentricity, with Dehra Dun standing in for Corfu—but then even the animals manage to do that, particularly the owls.
The stories move on to an older Bond and his house in Mussoorie and his companions, which are more often plants than animals. He looks out from his sunny room into a world filled with trees and more trees. Millions of them, hiding the sun, gently making way for the breeze, looking over the waterways, as would an indulgent father to a child. As the sun rises, pink, yellow and white flowers bloom, following its golden rays, and with the coming of afternoon, the petals furl. And then the world of the night takes over with its perfumes and glimmering white blossoms. Bond appears in the new guise of a plant doctor who rehabilitates stressed hydrangeas and palms belonging to friends and neighbours.
He has a few surprising discoveries—like, for instance, that there is more bird life in Delhi than in Mussoorie, discovered in the brief time that he spent in the capital, possibly because city birds like the crow and the mynah learn to coexist with man, unlike the forest birds which die through a refusal to adapt. A truth which does not bode well for tomorrow’s forests.
Underlying it all is Bond’s message that animals will not harm you if you do not take anything from the forest—he never does, which is why even though he can smell a leopard nearby, the leopard does not disturb him. The problem is, of course, that most people want something from the forest—the leopard sadly falls prey to shikaris who are out to make a quick killing by selling the pelt in Delhi. Nature, on the other hand, left to her own devices, is quite generous with her bounty. Bond has endless stories to tell about fruit trees and the usefulness of neem and other plants, snippets of folklore along with descriptions of beauty. Recounted with all Ruskin Bond’s genial humour.
Friends in Wild Places: Birds, Beasts and Other Companions is one of those books that is meant to be flipped through happily by children and adults of all ages and dispositions. In a season of gifting, it appears to be the perfect under-the-tree solution, with no traces of intolerance or all those other issues that cause a constant undercurrent of stress.
Adding an extra frisson of pleasure to the book are the illustrations by Shubhadarshini Singh, who turned Bond’s Rusty stories into a TV film, is a member of Bond’s adopted family and has an arresting line of languid leopards and dotted flowers.
