Introduction from my latest anthology, based on my backyard garden
As
I sit in my small backyard garden, staring at its green, grassy refuge, I
sometimes feel — fancifully — like an older, more settled Ruskin Bond. It is a
privilege even to entertain such a thought. I do not live in a bungalow nestled
in the hills I long for, nor have I abandoned ordinary life for the mountains.
That audacity, and the success born of it, belongs to the true writer in the
hills.
And
yet, the analogy begins and ends with something simpler. I can sit in my
enclosed patch of green — my imaginary Dehra — watching white clouds morph into
snow-capped mountains, and write. Not the Himalayas, perhaps, but a rectangle
of earth connected, somehow, to the wider neural network of nature. Enough to
bring calm, serenity, and the courage to write a line or two.
This
collection is born from that patch of serenity: my garden, its hidden nooks and
corners, the cyclical throes of the seasons, and the many residents, denizens,
and visitors that bring colour to this oasis within my city life. At first
glance, the garden may offer little—drab retaining walls topped with
filamentous plants; unevenly trimmed grasses strewn with weeds and dandelions;
clusters of succulents growing waywardly, unaccompanied by any multi-hued,
rainbow-like bloom that grace more celebrated gardens. There are no
wallpaper-worthy flowers here, no artistic arbours or gilded gazebos, no
graceful Bacchanalian grapevines.
But
look a little deeper, and a pulsating thrum of life reveals itself: in the wall
of agapanthus flowers, the geometrical cornucopia of succulents, the inevitable
entanglement of Spanish moss, or even the more utilitarian chillies, cherry
tomatoes, turnips, and basil—plants that offer at least an iota of pride to any
gardener’s curriculum vitae. As if in quiet acknowledgement, dragonflies and
butterflies arrive, along with possums, skinks, blue-tongued beauties, and a
host of birds—from spotted turtle doves to magpies, figbirds, cockatoos,
rosellas, galahs, and many more.
In
writing about these varied aspects of my garden, I have come to realise that I
am drawn to looking deeply—to taking ordinary, unpolished growths of existence
within this oasis and weaving around them songs of peacefulness, passion, and
pensiveness. The output often feels anything but ordinary; it feels
exhilarating, as though I am proving my worth as a gardener extraordinaire—this
time with a pen instead of a pruner.
It
is through this process that I feel I have edged, if only by millimetres,
closer to my writing hero, Mr Bond, who so effortlessly takes ordinary subjects
and spins from them words of gold and gossamer—poems of life and liberty, songs
of escape and gentle elusion. In his work, nature is always the sun, and his
characters—Sita, Bishnu, Rusty—are planets drawn into its orbit, blessed by
proximity to a world made magical through observation and imagination. In a
similar spirit, my own motto while scribbling these poems has been to remain
observant enough to craft paeans from paucity, celebrating one small poem after
another.
Perhaps,
then, this anthology is a quiet tribute to Ruskin Bond: for fostering
imagination, for letting a morsel of mountainous melancholy rub off across
distances and borders, allowing ink to continue flowing across ideas, words,
and pages in a land far removed from his own. To Ruskin, then, for nurturing my
love for nature—contained within my jardin—and helping a few words blossom
here, a few joys there. To Ruskin, for keeping alive the warmth of a channel
fed by glacial streams eight thousand metres above sea level. And finally, to
every form of life that has sought refuge—like myself—in this garden, enabling
me to keep scribbling, re-scribbling, and annotating the many notes from my
tiny, enduring garden of many colours.
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