July 31

Flower of the day: Indian pink

“Always lovely,” according to flower-lore. And when given to your sweetheart it says: “You are always lovely.”

I shall start each day of this journal with a flower and its symbolism, traditional or just my own personal meaning.

Why? Simply because it is a nice way to start the day.

Even if there’s no flower on the window ledge, there are flowers on the hillside, down in the valley, and in the greater world beyond the horizon.

Flowers are the ultimate symbol of creation. And when the last flower has faded and fallen, our world will be no more.

But this is no time to be pessimistic and melancholic. The last “pink” of summer is still blooming on my windowsill. And right next to it I see a little green shoot coming up.

It’s just a blade of grass.

But what would we do without grass? Our sheep, our cattle, our wild creatures, all depend on it. So do we, for wheat is grass; barley and maize and rice are all grass. Sugarcane is grass. Bamboo is grass, as any elephant will tell you. Most of our planet is covered with grass, except where we have replaced it with concrete. Sometimes a blade of grass will peek through the concrete as well.

Take away all the grass and we are left with an uninhabited planet.

So today I celebrate the presence of grass – so fresh and green at this time of the year, made lush by the monsoon rains. Grasslands, meadows, tall grass, short grass, sweet grass, the grass on your lawn, the grass of a desert oasis giving hope to thirsty travellers, the grass growing in an abandoned fort or palace, giving hope of nature’s ability to recover and restore.

Where there is grass there is water. Where there is water there is life.

As I write, the rain begins to come down – steadily, relentlessly – drumming on the old tin roof, even making inroads through a couple of weak spots and dripping onto a pile of books and folders stacked up on a side table. I rush to their aid, cover them with a plastic sheet (plastic has its uses!) and then look for a bucket to take the steady drip from the ceiling.

This building has stood here for well over a hundred years, but sometimes it has to give way to wind and rain. When I came to live in it some fifty years ago, the rusty old tin sheets were blown away in a blizzard, and I got up at daybreak to find my blanket under a blanket of snow. The roof was repaired and strengthened.

I love watching the gentle fall of the snowflakes. But snow is cold, and I don’t want it in the bedroom.

August 1

Flower of the day: The bean

The bean?

“My love is like a bean-field in blossom,” wrote the poet John Clare. And the bean has been a pretty flower, white or pale blue, and the long green bean is in itself an elegant thing.

It’s bean-time now, up here in the hills, and the village women are busy collecting the ripe beans, while the menfolk bring them to the town for sale in the vegetable market.

Almost every day someone is at the front door, offering us a bundle of beans at a ridiculously low price. Beans, cucumbers, radishes, these are the chief products of the season, down in the villages. After the rains, there will be maize and millets; and then, nothing. For little grows in the winter months, when the grass turns yellow and the ground is hard with frost. The villagers manage with the grain they have stored away.

The beans pile up in our kitchen. Beena sends some of them down to her mother at the flat near Mullingar. We have them cooked with potatoes – aloo-bean – but I like them best with roast chicken and mashed potatoes. But this is Shravan, Beena’s month for fasting, and she won’t be preparing meat dishes for a few more days. So I must be patient and build up my appetite for chicken roast and mutton keema with green peas.

Why is it that at the age of 88, my appetite is keener than ever? Is there something wrong with me? Yesterday I had four buttered toasts for breakfast, one with marmite, one with a sandwich spread, one with garlic pickle and one with sweet mango chutney. Mysterious are the ways of human physiology.

Shrishti – Rakesh and Beena’s daughter, now 25 – brought a bag of plums from the village near the Yamuna where a group of local village women and she have been experimenting with different plants, fruits, herbs, etc.

The plums were very good, sweet and juicy, and I put away a few of them. Not too many, because I know from experience that too many plums can give you the runs.

When we first came to Ivy Cottage, there were plum trees growing on the open hillside above the house. Then the owner of the land removed them and built a guesthouse above us. Now we see tourists instead of plums.

Never mind, we need tourists too. At least the hill station does.

And those plum trees had gone wild, the fruit being edible only for the monkeys. But when they were in blossom, they lit up the hillside with their creamy white flowers, and I would emulate the poet by exclaiming: “My love is like a plum tree in blossom.”

But that was a long time ago.

There isn’t much blossom about at this time of the year, but the ferns are flourishing everywhere, even on the trunks of the oaks and deodars. In the winter and early summer, one has to go down to streams or shady places to see the ferns. In August, they come to see us.

Excerpted with permission from Another Day in Landour, Ruskin Bond, HarperCollins India.