A Book of Simple Living: Brief Notes from the Hills
SynopsisPlot
'Mist fills the Himalayan valleys, and monsoon rain sweeps across the hills. Sometimes, during the day, a bird visits me-a deep purple whistling thrush. She perches on the window sill, and looks out with me at the rain.' This personal diary records the many small moments that constitute a life of harmony-with the self, the natural world, and friends, family and passersby. In these pages, we watch a wild plum blossom and the moon come up between two deodar trees; we hear a redstart whistle and the rain drum on a tin roof; we recognize the aftermath of loss and the consolation of old companions.
Story
About this book
Ruskin Bond's A Book of Simple Living collects short diary-like entries written from his home in the Himalayan hills of northern India. The entries turn toward small, specific moments: mist settling into valleys, monsoon rain on a tin roof, a wild plum tree in blossom, or the moon rising between two deodar trees. A deep purple whistling thrush visits his window sill and looks out at the rain beside him. Bond watches, listens, and sets down what he notices in plain, unhurried prose.
The book rests on the idea that a life lived close to the natural world and a few trusted companions can hold together without grand events. Bond places loss and its aftermath in the same quiet register as birdsong and seasonal change. A redstart whistles; an old companion returns. The entries record what simplicity looks like day by day rather than arguing for it.
Bond has lived for decades in Mussoorie, a hill station in the northern state of Uttarakhand, and that setting shapes nearly every page. Deodar cedars, the summer monsoon, resident and passing birds, and neighbours walking the road all enter the notes as they come.
