Summer reads – On the magic of the Himalayas w/Anuradha Roy

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This is Living Planet. I'm Kathleen Schuster, and this is episode two of our four-part summer reading series. This year, our team has read a lot of interesting books on the environment, so we decided to interview some of the authors of our favorite picks. You can already find all four episodes in our podcast feed. Feel free to listen to them in any order you like, and be sure to share them with friends and family when you're done.  

Before we get started with this episode, a quick reminder that we want to hear from you. Let us know what you've been reading this summer, when it comes to nature and the environment, that is. You can leave us a voice note at dw.com/livingplanet. There's no need to download or sign up for anything, just hit record. That's dw.com/livingplanet. Thanks. We can't wait to hear from you.  

My summer pick is a book entitled Called by the Hills, A Home in the Himalayas by Indian author Anuradha Roy. Over the years, Roy has made a name for herself internationally with a number of award-winning novels, like Sleeping on Jupiter, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015.  

But she turned to non-fiction for this book to write about a place that's transformed her connection with nature, a tiny town in northern India called Ranikhet, where she and her husband relocated to over 20 years ago. The silvery peaks of the majestic Himalayas are the background to Roy's fascinating reflections on years of trying to breathe new life into a garden, all the while experiencing life alongside leopards, langurs, and other animals who want to let her know that they live there too. I chose this book for a few reasons. For one, it's impossible not to feel like you yourself have breathed in the champagne-like air of the Himalayas once you're done reading it.  

But the other reason is because these days when we hear about the Himalayas in the news, it's often about overtourism on Mount Everest or, of course, glacial melt. It's all a bit devoid of the deeply rooted communities, cultures, and religions that know the Himalayan environment from the inside out. Lucky for us, we have Anuradha Roy to guide us. I started my interview by asking her to read a passage from her new book. 

One long, tense night, a leopard circled our house, coughing without pause after it missed a kill. The dog hid under the bed.  

At the top of the road the morning after, we found a dead cow, its hooves pointing skyward, its belly torn apart. Still, we thought we were safe as long as we were careful, and we luxuriated in our newfound wilderness.  

The sky glittered at night with stars, and in the day was cerulean blue. The silence was profound. For those traveling from cacophonous cities to these hills, this silence can seem menacing. It is broken only by the calls of birds and animals, cowbells, and the cries of unseen herdsmen across the slopes. Some friends of mine run from it, restless and bored after a day or two. One of them was too fearful to leave the safety of our house at all. A few find that the forest changes something inside them for good. No other place, however beautiful or exciting, will ever mean to them what the Himalaya does. These are the people who keep coming back. Some decide to live here, as we have. 

That's Anuradha Roy reading from her new book Called by the Hills, A Home in the Himalaya.  

So, Anuradha, you live in northern India, more specifically in the foothills of the Himalaya. And the scene you just described offers the reader a really interesting picture of your everyday life, which is this balance between beauty, but also a kind of danger that comes with living so close to the wilderness. Why did you and your husband decide to leave Delhi to live there? 

Around the time we found this house, we happened to have left the Oxford University Press, where we both worked as editors. And we had started our own independent publishing house called Permanent Black. And this really gave us the freedom to leave the city, which we earlier did not have. And both of us had always wanted to have dogs. I had always wanted to make my own garden. And we had both grown up in small towns, which were, you know, more open than the huge mega city of Delhi.  

So that was the reason why living here seemed a natural move to us. But it didn't happen all at once. At first, we used to spend the really hard months, which are the monsoon and the winter away from here. And then bit by bit, we found that we wanted to be here more and more, even in those months. So, the transition was gradual, somewhat gradual. 

And in your book, you go on to describe how intertwined your lives have become with nature, environment on the doorstep, and also like what you were describing with a leopard circling your house.  

And we're going to get into that a little bit more later, but you spend a lot of time talking about the town you live near, Ranikhet, and how you can see the silvery peaks of the Himalayas in the distance, how the air is cool and crisp like champagne, which is a description that I personally really loved, and also how everything just moves at a much slower pace, almost sloth-like. So,what is it about that part of the world that makes life move at a different pace? 

You know, as you said, it's sort of in the middle of a forest. It has the peaks of the high Himalaya within our gaze all the time. And it seems to set our body to a different clock to the seasons and to a sense of time, which is a bit different from in the city where, you know, you are tied much more to other people's clocks, to human clocks, whereas here it's the clocks of the season, maybe. Tat's the reason, but everybody does seem to relax a lot more where time is concerned. 

You've written about the town that you lived near in a previous novel of yours called The Folded Earth. Why did you want to bring your life into nonfiction? Why did you want to make that available to readers in India and also beyond India? 

The book actually began during COVID, when my British publisher, Christopher MacLehose, suggested that I write a book about the flowers around me, which would let people imprisoned by COVID confinement travel in places far away from them, because everybody was at that time feeling kind of imprisoned in their own homes. So that's how the book began.  

And it began with a lot of trepidation, because I didn't think I knew enough about anything. But, gradually, I came to see it as a book about my move from the city into the countryside, my effort to build, make a garden out of what was a garbage heap. And that's how the book slowly started to come together, not exactly as planned. It became quite different from what I had thought it would be. Now you have the book as it became. 

I guess it blossomed into something somewhat different, but also very expansive in its view of that part of the world, living in a very different way than in an urban area, but also how climate change is changing our lives.  

But before we get into all of that, let's go back to your garden, because this is a protagonist in your book, as you just described. It was kind of the starting point, and turning a rubbish heap into a garden is known a small undertaking, but tell us about some of the challenges in the Himalayan foothills.  

What is different about trying to grow a garden there? 

Well, the soil around our house has 150 years of cedar needles because our house is ringed by enormous trees. And when I began to garden here, first of all, there was, as I was telling you, there was rubbish, because people had been just dumping all kinds of waste here. So, we had to dig and clear away.  

It was like doing an archaeological dig, because the deeper we'd dig, the more different were the things we'd find. So, the first layers had plastic, later, more glass.  

Finally, we came to these colonial-era sardine tins and things, and we cleared all of that. And I was not really a gardener. I wanted to have a garden, but I was quite ignorant. So, I had to learn how to deal with the acidic soil that pine needles cause. I didn't know all this stuff.  

So, it needed me to understand soil, to understand that all my dreams, which came out of picture books, were not going to come true overnight, that it needed quite a bit of patience to make a kind of garden out of this wasteland that's taken years. 

Another big aspect of having that garden and being so close to this forested land is that you get a lot of visitors.  

So, you've already talked about the leopard that circled your house, but could you read another passage about some guests that ended up on your roof, let's say. 

As if things were not bad enough, we woke the next morning to the sound of someone air-dropping a gunny bag full of stones onto our roof. It was dawn. We were groggy with sleep. We lunged for cover, and the dogs went berserk, barking.  

It took a few minutes to work out that the massive sound had been made by a langur, which had jumped onto a tin roof from a Deodar branch above the house. Langurs are human-sized monkeys, and a leaping langur is like a six-foot-tall athlete on the moon. Elegant when airborne, all black and silver with curving tails that form perfect arcs as they spring from branch to branch, beautiful at a distance.  

However beautiful they are, you don't want to wake underneath them at dawn. The rest of the langurs’ tribe had gathered for breakfast at our mulberry tree, and as if to prove how quickly monkeys can learn new tricks, each one lifted off with a mouthful of leaves to land by turn on our roof, replicating their pioneers' thundering impact.  

They ran the length of the roof and onto a tree nearby, then they insisted on an encore. We could tell they were having fun. 

So, I guess my first question is, did it take longer for you and your husband or your dogs to get accustomed to these kind of events around your house? 

They actually have a lot of fun. There was this very interesting time when we came here with our first dog, who was actually a dog who had wandered into a friend's house in Delhi. She was a little stray. And we brought her here, and she would talk to the foxes in the sense that, at night, here was this little city dog, and we would be in the darkness at night inside. And across somewhere in the forest, the foxes would start calling, and our dog would answer them in this long, slightly melancholic yodeling call.  

And I found it quite fascinating how these animals talk to each other across this vast thing that separated them. And then we've had, of course, many, many encounters where you have to save them from snakes, from, you know, things they don't see as harmful, but which frighten the life out of us. So having dogs and keeping them safe here is quite a job. 

And you talk about that more in your book. I don't want to spoil it, though, for people who still want to read it, but it's definitely something that becomes a major theme later on when you talk about the fact that there is more and more nature kind of encroaching on your everyday lives, but it's so fascinating, this balance between domestication, so to speak, and rewilding, and what you were talking about with your dog and how a domesticated animal is also kind of being rewilded by living there, and you and your husband, in a sense, too. 

Yeah, that's a very interesting thought, being claimed by the forest, in a sense. 

Well, one reason why I selected this book for our summer series was because each chapter is imbued with just different layers of what it means to live in the Himalayas. And we're not talking about the high Himalayas. We're not talking about the area near Mount Everest. We're talking about northern India and the foothills, which carry a cultural significance that was unfamiliar to me, I'm not sure, for our listeners. But it sits, the town that you live in sits on the road to famous pilgrimage sites. And you also go into the different religions that lay claim to this area of the world while also mixing that in with the history. It's absolutely fascinating and a great reminder of just all there is to learn about these places that are being impacted by climate change and what that could mean in the long term. So could you tell us what religions lay claim to the Himalayas, how they figure into culture and religious history. 

Hinduism, for a start, most of the very, very revered sacred sites for Hinduism are in the Himalayas. The source of the Ganges, which is the sacred river, is in the Himalayas. And there is a lake called Mansarovar, which is in the high Himalayas, where people go on pilgrimages. There are also places like Kedarnath and Badrinath. One of them is open only seasonally, because it's so snowed in in winter.  

And of course, the Buddhist trails, you know, travels of the Buddhist monks go all over the mountains. And the Buddha himself attained enlightenment somewhere in the very north of India, close to Nepal. Strangely enough, there are even legends about Christ in the Kashmir Himalayas. So, there is a... a lot going on religion-wise in these mountains. And so, a lot of the travel is pilgrim travel, which earlier used to happen on foot and now happens on helicopter, by buses and cars. The numbers of people going up to these sites has hugely increased, which, of course, expands the environmental impact hugely as well. 

You write so beautifully about, you know, this element of the divine being very present in Ranikhet and your region, but also how this proximity to nature is something that, even for people who aren't religious, resonates deeply and creates deep connections to what's going on around you. Has that also changed your life as an artist? Because you write, you also include beautiful watercolors and sketches in your book of your life there. You do pottery… 

Oh, well, you know, I want to tell you about this writer called Bill Aitkin, who was Scottish by origin and became an Indian national leader. But he came to India as a young man, and he started off in Goa and came right up to the north. And it was when he caught sight of the peak that is called the Nanda Devi. Now, the peak is nothing but rock and ice, after all. But when he saw Nanda Devi, which looks like a hooded face, in different lights, the shadows move on it. He felt that he had glimpsed something so divine that he had to spend the rest of his life at her feet.  

And it's this change of light when you look at the forest or when you look at the mountains or even look at the way the colors change in the garden, that as somebody who paints and who makes ceramics, it's something that's a continuous source of frustration, because you can't quite capture it, and a continual inspiration as well, because you want to keep painting those colors and shapes over and over and over again, so that you come closer to what it really is. 

And then writing, of course, allows you yet another avenue of trying to capture something that's hard to describe. 

Yes. Yeah, it's surprising how elusive it is that it escapes all these things. 

Coming up, we'll hear more from Anuradha Roy about how climate change is transforming life in the Himalayas. But first, this message.  

Anuradha, you've been living in the Himalayas for about 25 years now, and the past few years have been ones of dramatic change to the landscape. Could I get you to read one last passage to us about coming back home during a monsoon a few years ago? 

It had started as a blue and sunny day. But in the afternoon, just as we began our uphill drive, the rain came down with annihilating force. When, after about an hour, it stopped, we resumed our journey. There were by then many cars on the narrow and winding road that goes up the steep 6,000 feet we have to climb to reach Ranikhet.  

From parts of the road you look down vertiginous drops to the valley floor a thousand feet below. On the other side are rock faces, which, against all sane advice, are being blown open with dynamite to widen the roads. These ravaged hillsides look wounded, their trees and bushes gone, their untethered rocks tumbling down without warning. At certain places, the rock falls from the roadworks have blocked streams, and in others, they have led to permanent landslide zones. These are marked with painted signs advising drivers to be careful of falling rocks. Such a pointless suggestion that it makes you laugh. There are no alternative routes.  

It was when we were passing below one such rock face that we felt something thud onto the roof of the car. Within seconds, there were more thuds. And then a dark shape was crashing towards my face as a boulder hit the windshield. I saw the glass break, but soundlessly and softly, as if in a nightmare. And the windscreen shuddered into a web of cracks, though the shatterproof glass did not splinter.  

Another rock hit the back, and this time the glass did break into thousands of shards that covered the puppy and Shanti. The drumming of rocks on the car was now continuous, but Harish kept driving. To stop would have meant being buried alive. Nobody spoke. It was as if we were in a trance of fear, and a single word would break the spell of calm we were holding on to. 

So, you managed to get back to Ranikhet by nightfall. But I have to say, reading that passage, I thought of many times that I've driven through mountains and, you know, seeing signs that say, beware of falling rock, and never having witnessed anything like that. And just reading that passage, I could feel my heart beating faster. It really took my breath away and just thinking, how do you travel through those passages anymore?  

But yeah, I mean, first of all, how far up the road do you have to travel on one of those journeys? Like what's the typical amount of time it takes and how many meters up or feet up are you traveling? 

We are coming up from about, you know, Delhi, which is in the plains, so sea level, to 6,500 feet. And the climb is quite sudden because the plains come and sort of as if you have a bookshelf in front of a tablecloth.  

Suddenly the mountains are in front of you and you begin climbing and in places it can be very narrow and steep. Every monsoon, because there are rockfalls that gouge out part of the hill, in many places, these roads become half the width they are supposed to be. So, it is quite hair-raising. And you do have to kind of shut your eyes and pray for luck. And of course, the Himalayas being a place, as we've talked about, full of sacred sites. 

Somebody told me that if you die here, you'll die in a beautiful place, and that's the consolation. But it's true that every monsoon, particularly, when it's torrents of water coming down the sky, then a lot of people lose lives, scars fall down into the ravine. It's a very, very difficult and hair-raising time. 

Of course, you talk about climate change and how the differences that you're seeing now compared to 25 years ago, for example, temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius, which is about 104 Fahrenheit, how the monsoon season is changing as well. But there are other things going on.  

Could you tell us a little bit about why the landscape is changing and climate pressure is part of it, but it's not the only part of it? 

Yes, because climate pressure is, as you say, part of it, but here the change is quite a lot man-made. So, there are new roads being made for which the hillside is being blasted with dynamite. Trees are cut for these roads to be made, dams are made at high altitudes, all of these things, there is a great deal of building work because there's the pressure of population.  

So, it's really sort of balance that's very difficult to get right between what the humans living in these parts need in order to earn money, in order to, you know, survive. So obviously you do need roads because you need to build all sorts of things which are necessary, like schools, hospitals, et cetera, workplaces. And at the same time, the impact it has on nature is what causes all of these other changes to happen, which are not entirely due to climate change at all. In fact, climate change is a very, it's a word that's become too routine. I feel like the correct word is really a kind of destruction that is human-made, man-made. 

Right, and when you consider the issue of glacial melt that you're dealing with in the Himalayas and then you combine it with these changes, yeah, man-made changes to the landscape, yeah. 

Yes, you know, the glacial melts are happening because of climate change and this causes... all the whole behavior of snow at very high altitudes to be different, and for new high-altitude lakes to form, for these lakes to burst their banks and floods. So these things are caused by climate change, which is almost a passive word, as if the climate has decided to change. But what has brought it about is a very complex set of actions, among which man-made actions have quite a high spot in the ladder of actions. 

So, in your book, you refer to a lot of different writers who've depicted the Himalayas from different angles, so to speak, mainly the High Himalayas. But you also express a little bit of uncertainty of like where you might fit into all of that, because you're not writing about the High Himalayas. And so that made me wonder, what do you hope people will take from your book, whether it's somebody who's in India, living in India, or somebody like myself or our listeners who are in all parts of the world. 

Well, I think my book is really about somebody who has lived in a completely urban setting for all her life, moving into a rural setting and making a home and a garden over there and learning to live to a completely different rhythm and in a totally different sort of mind space as well. Because here you don't have, you know, things that we take for granted in cities like cafes, cinemas, shopping, none of that exists here. So, it wasn't just the pace that you were talking about earlier changed, but also your sense of how you are to live in this very, very remote sort of area.  

And the reason my book is different from those books is when I was reading a lot around my book to be able to write my own, there are very specialized and, you know, high adventure books about the High Himalaya, or there are very specialized books about nature here, about the wildlife, about the plant life, ecological studies. There are only a few books about actually just daily life here, especially if you've come from elsewhere. So that's what I hope anybody reading it will find interesting. because they might well be in such a situation. 

I love how, as you're talking about daily life, we can hear your dogs in the background. 

He wants to go for a walk, so he's just really talking to me to say, come on now. 

Yeah. Well, I have just one last question for you, and that is related to your garden, of course. What is in bloom, and what do you hope will still blossom this summer? 

Oh, it's looking absolutely gorgeous right now. And what is (dog whines in the background) … do I need to shut this dog up? 

That's OK. It's the last question. 

The thing I noticed is that at springtime, everything that's blooming seems to be shades of yellow and orange. There's yellow jasmine. There are great big orange sprays of flowers everywhere. But now, as if, you know, when the monsoon is going to come and the sky is kind of slightly dark with clouds, everything blooming seems to be shades of violet and blue. There's a plumbago, there's hydrangeas, which are these intense bluey-violet. Then there are agapanthus lilies, which are also a sort of bluey-violet. So it's looking absolutely beautiful. 

That sounds wonderful and something for us to also think about as we read your book or revisit it in my case. But I think now we have to let you go because your poor dog has been waiting to go on a walk. 

You know, they don't brook any kind of, you might be intensely in the middle of writing a crucial sentence, but when it's time for a walk, that's more serious. 

Dogs wait for no one.  

Anuradha Roy, thank you so much for coming on to Living Planet to talk about your book. 

Thank you for having me. This was lovely. 

Anuradha Roy is an Indian novelist and publisher. She was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015 for her novel Sleeping on Jupiter. Her latest book is a work of non-fiction, Called By the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya. She spoke to me from her cottage in the Himalayan foothills. That's all we have for you for this week's show. This episode was part two of our four-part summer reading series. You can check out the other episodes by visiting our podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get podcasts. And be sure to leave us a review. Thanks for listening.