The Flame Trees of Thika

Memories of an African Childhood

Elspeth Huxley

London

Some books are like friends; one wants to continue reading them and also leave some pages for later. One is interrupted only by some stunner of a line that bowls one over. Thoughts would cross one’s mind as one read, accompanied with the dilemma of whether one should dwell on these or flip the page and experience more of ‘that’ world. With friends, as one meets after a while, one wants to chat and chat; the only likeable interruption in a long conversation is possibly that of another experience (one has just remembered) to share. Also one wishes for the talks to go on for a long time. I missed this book the morning after it was over, in the manner one misses friends.

What a life the author had? What an arena to learn of life? A ‘free’ childhood amidst nature, of learning beyond books, of interactions with people culturally distant, of listening to numerous sounds of nature and multiple languages of humans around, of interacting with animals tame and learning of animals wild at close quarters! That eagerness of younger ones to know of the complete story, that listening to parts of the story and interpreting in their own way, that tinge of unhappiness at being considered way below equal by adults – all this is very interestingly captured in the book. A young person’s world view is endearingly presented. At one point I was reminded of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic ‘The Little Prince’ and at more than one point could identify with the window author saw the world from. As I put pen on paper I remembered interacting with young ones playing snakes and ladders on ipad some time back and felt sad!

So much of natural history without being ‘teachy’; wildlife interwoven with human life every few pages. The mahoul of wild Africa and unfamiliar tribes present throughout. Wonder how some of the words are Hindi or Indian or as then referred to Hindoostani? The author presents a rare balanced view of the natives. What one comes across even today is that of the locals painted either in white or black and seldom in the different shades of grey that all of us humans espouse. It this as she stayed with the people and most of us today commenting on ‘natives’ are based in cities far away?

I recalled reading Pico Iyer’s essay Whispers from a Friend where he writes ‘SMSes bring us up to the surface of ourselves, books take us back down to the depths. CNN tells us what happened a minute ago, books remind us of what will happen next year, or decade, and open up a universe that stretches back through centuries.’ As I would pick up the book to continue from where I left I would be very soon transported to a separate and different world, that of an Africa a century ago; a world as the author puts in ‘very near to what Eden was’. There is a happiness that the author lived this life and I could in some ways a century later see the colours, smell the scents, experience . . .

I am glad I picked it up that afternoon at Jor Baug (New Delhi) as I leisurely scouted the dainty book store. Sometime back a friend has suggested writing of a phase in life that changed a lot for me and as I read this book I thought this would be the ideal tone I would aspire if I were to go significantly higher – in terms of number of words - than I usually do. Life should be like this with the thrust on journey and not a goal set by the majority (which as they say is seldom correct) and we should get to experience something new – a fresh creation, a fresh place rather than striving for perfection . . .

The simplicity with which author brings out starkness of issues is heartening to read and lot of it holds true in our part of the globe even today -

Be it on religion

‘Mission boys,’ Hereward exclaimed with distaste. ‘The ruin of perfectly good natives. Just what you’d expect.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Tilly complained in English. ‘They won’t save Njombo’s life because he hasn’t been baptized, and they won’t baptize him because he’s dying. It that’s their idea of Christianity…’

Or life

‘Perhaps it’s as bad to feel one isn’t getting old fast enough, as to know that one is getting old too fast,’ Lettice agreed. ‘We are always trying to make time go at a different pace, as if it were an obstinate pony. Perhaps we should do better to let it amble along as it wishes, without taking much notice of it.’

‘That is what the natives do,’ Tilly said.

Perhaps gratitude was simply a habit Africans had never acquired towards each other, and therefore could not display towards Europeans; or perhaps Europeans were looked upon as beings of another order to whom the ordinary rules did not apply; if they wished to help you, they would do so for reasons of their own, and were no more to be thanked than rivers for providing water, or trees for shade.

Or while describing the nature, the vastness she was a part of

‘Look at that sunset: time can never be wasted when there are such sights to look at, and such things to enjoy.’

The sunset was, indeed, spectacular. The whole western sky was aflame with the crimson of the heart of a rose. Deep-violet clouds were stained and streaked with red, and arcs of lime-green and saffron-yellow swept across the heavens. It was all on such a scale that the whole world might have been burning.

This remains a favourite

Nervously I touched the leopard; the flesh was warm, it seemed impossible that anything so splendid, so magnificently made, and so instinct with life should be lying there drained and empty. I fingered one of its great pads, large as a plate, rough as sandstone, and yet springy and yielding, and ran a hand down the great sweep of its flank, built for speed like the flank of a race-horse; I could feel hard sinews under a silk-soft skin and sense perfection of design, not a single wasted molecule of tissue, nothing in excess, nothing lacking, nothing ugly or misshapen, the whole thing moulded by its purpose into a miraculous yellow engine of speed, ferocity, and skill. Why did it have to be dead and useless, the agents of putrefaction at work already in its clotting blood? I knew the answer that satisfied my elders – it had failed to respect their property, their goats and calves and dogs, but it was a beast so much finer that the miserable goats it preyed upon that for a moment, as I touched the leopard, that answer seemed ridiculous; rather one would have offered goats as tributes to a creature so imperial.

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