My Favourite Nature Stories

by Ruskin Bond

Humankind took over the earth from the dinosaurs, who perished due to natural upheavals and dramatic climate changes. We could go the same way, as we have proved to be bad tenants with little or no regard for the natural world that we have inherited.

I was thirty-five—still young enough to take a few risks. If the dream was to become reality, this was the time to do something about it.

‘Happy the cicadas, for they have voiceless wives!’ To which I would respond by saying: ‘Pity the female cicadas, for they have singing husbands!’

If there be a heaven on earth, it is this, it is this.’ The words are inscribed on the wall of the Hall of Special Audience, in the royal garden of the Red Fort of Delhi, built by the Emperor Shah Jahan in the 17th century.

Almost always, it’s the unexpected that thrills us. It may only be a shaft of sunlight, slanting through the pillars of banyan tree; or dewdrops caught in a spider’s web; or, in the stillness of the mountains, the sudden chattter of a mountain stream as you round the bend of a hill; or an emperor’s first glimpse of a winding river and the world beyond. Time, place and emotion must coalesce, hence the rarity of these occasions. Delight cannot be planned for—she makes no appointments!

And the ocean, what was it but another droplet in the universe, in the greater scheme of things? No greater than the glistening drop of water that helped start it all, where the grass grows greener around my little spring on the mountain.

For every time I see the sky I am aware of belonging to the universe rather than to just one corner of the earth.