Review of "Called by the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya", Anuradha Roy
Mohan Gulrajani
‘Called by the Hills’: Anuradha Roy’s profoundly likeable book about making a home in Ranikhet
Roy’s beautiful artwork in the book depicts her home, the garden, and the places and people and animals and flowers she so vividly describes.
Anuradha Roy
In Anuradha Roy’s 2011 novel The Folded Earth, the eccentric old scholar Diwan Sahib talks about the Himalaya. He says, “The mountains do not reveal themselves to people who come here merely to escape the heat of the plains. Through the summer they veil themselves in a haze. The peaks emerge for those devoted to them through the coldest of winters, the wettest of monsoons.”
These are not the words of one merely enamoured of the mountains, the traveller who comes to escape the torrid summers of more low-lying areas (or, increasingly, one only intent on getting some Instagrammable photos of snow-capped peaks and pine forests). This is a candid bit of wisdom from someone who knows the mountains and knows them well. Anuradha Roy, writer, publisher, potter and painter – and dweller in the Himalaya – brings to life her home and its surroundings in her first non-fiction work, Called by the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya.
Coming to the hills
Divided into twelve chapters, Called by the Hills begins with “Accidental Lodging”, which describes how Roy and her husband, editor and author Rukun Advani, decided 25 years ago to move to Ranikhet, in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon district. On a visit to Ranikhet, they had stumbled across a derelict cottage, with “…windows blinded by parchment-yellow sheets of newspaper, and gaping door frames. Inside, the floor was covered with a hillock of mud, while old gunny bags smelling of mildew sagged over our heads…”
To the superficial reader, that sounds unprepossessing. To Roy and R (as she refers to Advani), the moment when they saw this cottage, with a sooty-faced dog standing in it, became an epiphany: this, they knew, would be the place they would live someday. The cottage was part of a sprawling estate owned by a publisher friend of the couple’s, Ravi Dayal (who worked at Oxford University Press): the estate itself dated back to the 1800s, and this cottage, on the edge of the estate, was useless to Dayal. He let Roy and R have it, and they moved in.
Like others shifting to new homes in unfamiliar surroundings – the Durrells in Corfu, the Mayles in Provence – Roy recounts (though briefly) the challenges of learning to cope with life in a small town in the Himalaya. The unreliable Internet connection, the equally unreliable electricity supply, and the snakes and scorpions who considered it their right to share the cottage with the human residents.
“Accidental Lodging” also acts as an introduction to Ranikhet: its people, its distinct character, the wildlife in the forests abutting it. After this preliminary, Roy meanders through Ranikhet and its people, its birds and animals. Gently, with compassion as well as a sense of quiet humour, she talks of people like the Ancient, the old woman who helps her out in the garden and has very decided opinions on everything a Memsahib should be. Or the director of the government orchard, whose catchphrase – “sophar-sogud”” – proves somewhat of a leitmotif for life in Ranikhet.
The narrative encompasses various dogs who take up residence with Roy and R; the plants Roy nurtures in her garden; her forays into the forest around, to understand it and those that dwell within it. Between the forest and the town, between the now and the past, the book swings, showing its readers different facets of life for those who choose to live and work in a town like Ranikhet.
Life in the hills
Called by the Hills is a work of nonfiction, but it’s easy to see the skilful hand of the storyteller here. Roy weaves into her book not just a description of Ranikhet, but much else too. There is history; there is the geology of the place, and its geography. Its flora and fauna, as well as the species (“Illegal Immigrants”, as Roy titles the chapter) of plants that Roy brings back from travels overseas to plant in her garden.
There is (of course, there will be, Roy is a litterateur, after all) literature. Bengali writer Leena Majumdar’s Aar Konokhane fits in here, quoted by Roy as readily as she quotes (about birds and more) from Claire Leighton’s 1935 Four Hedges: A Gardener’s Chronicle. She mentions, too, writings about Ranikhet and its environs: the ninth chapter, “The Chroniclers and Preservers”, is devoted to people who have made it their life’s work to document the story of these mountains.
As with anyone who is not merely infatuated but loves deeply (and wisely) enough to see the bad alongside the good, Roy underlines, too, the ecological disaster that is already making itself visible in the area. The last chapter of the book, “The Wounded Mountain”, offers personal insights into how poorly planned “infrastructural development” has adversely affected wildlife in the area. Disappearing species, deforestation, the encroachment of the noise and pollution of the city – Roy weaves these into her narrative, along with other issues. Patriarchy, for instance, and the way it subtly (or not) makes its presence felt. Or the antipathy towards stray dogs. The precariousness of being a writer. This is a book that knows how to blend the good with the bad, the sweet with the unsavoury.
All through the book, Roy’s affection for her surroundings comes through loud and clear, her words describing it all in exquisite prose:
“…[the barbet] is always in party clothes: emerald greens and sapphire blues on top, a striped, yellow-and-blue jersey underneath, and a triangle of silken scarlet under its tail making it the very picture of gorgeousness.]
Reading this book, one can almost imagine the place. But to make that a little bit easier to do, Roy’s beautiful artwork – liberally scattered all through the pages, as also on the cover – depicts her home, the garden, the places and people and animals and flowers she so vividly describes.
It is hard to slot this book. It is a memoir; it is an observation. It is a home and garden book, a travelogue, an ode to the mountains. An art book. A book about Kumaon. Perhaps it’s a little of all of these, and profoundly likeable.
Madhulika Liddle’s latest novel For The Love of Apricots was published earlier this year by Speaking Tiger Books.
Called by the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya, Anuradha Roy, Hachette India.
Professor (Dr.) M. L. Gulrajani F.S.D.C. (UK)
Former Professor and Dean (I.R&D), IIT Delhi
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