Anuradha Roy: A Home Less Ordinary
With honesty, humour and literary grace, Anuradha Roy’s new memoir Called by the Hills traces her shift to the hills of Ranikhet, replacing the dream of pastoral bliss with something tougher, truer, and more deeply earned
In Anuradha Roy’s second novel The Folded Earth (2011), there’s a line that reads “The mountains do not reveal themselves to people who come here merely to escape the heat of the plains.” The line makes a clear distinction between vacationers and true mountain-dwellers. Roy’s new memoir Called by the Hills is the story of how she and her partner Rukun moved from the former to the latter category, setting up their new lives in a small hut at Ranikhet, a hill station and former cantonment town in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region. Along the way, the two also set up their own independent publishing house Permanent Black (2000–present day), working remotely at a time when Internet infrastructure wasn’t as widespread as it is today.
Roy, previously shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize for her novel Sleeping on Jupiter, is a fantastic writer, blending astute personal observations with an array of literary and artistic ‘anchors’, ranging from Arvind Krishna Mehrotra poems to Halldor Laxness novels to a memoir by the prolific Bengali children’s writer Leela Majumdar. She can also be very funny when she wants to be. In a sombre moment in the first chapter, she imagines looking at her new, slow-by-design life from the outside—as an observer rather than the person actually living it. And immediately, the narrative tension is released when she thinks of David Attenborough’s voice-over in her ear, assuring her that in an earlier era, a sloth bear or two would have been sighted in the cedars by now. It’s a well-executed moment of levity that brings down the tension a notch.
In Anuradha Roy’s second novel The Folded Earth (2011), there’s a line that reads “The mountains do not reveal themselves to people who come here merely to escape the heat of the plains.” The line makes a clear distinction between vacationers and true mountain-dwellers. Roy’s new memoir Called by the Hills is the story of how she and her partner Rukun moved from the former to the latter category, setting up their new lives in a small hut at Ranikhet, a hill station and former cantonment town in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region. Along the way, the two also set up their own independent publishing house Permanent Black (2000–present day), working remotely at a time when Internet infrastructure wasn’t as widespread as it is today.
Roy, previously shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize for her novel Sleeping on Jupiter, is a fantastic writer, blending astute personal observations with an array of literary and artistic ‘anchors’, ranging from Arvind Krishna Mehrotra poems to Halldor Laxness novels to a memoir by the prolific Bengali children’s writer Leela Majumdar. She can also be very funny when she wants to be. In a sombre moment in the first chapter, she imagines looking at her new, slow-by-design life from the outside—as an observer rather than the person actually living it. And immediately, the narrative tension is released when she thinks of David Attenborough’s voice-over in her ear, assuring her that in an earlier era, a sloth bear or two would have been sighted in the cedars by now. It’s a well-executed moment of levity that brings down the tension a notch.
More importantly, the author never once depicts the Himalayan life with rose-tinted glasses. Indeed, one of the most admirable aspects of the book is Roy’s honesty about the daily challenges (financial, logistical, terrain-related) thrown up by life in the hills. If you are a born city-slicker who has only ever lived in the plains, upending your life and moving to the mountains isn’t a decision to be taken lightly—for all the beautifully written sentences about staying in the moment and taking a leap of faith, Roy is always crystal-clear on this point. In fact, she goes out of her way to underline this truth in the book.
“That first night, a heaving tangle of scorpions made their displeasure at our intrusion clear. But we could no longer wait. In Himalayan villages far removed from the resources of the plains, even the transport of honest mud has a way of emptying your pockets. The details, including dissuading snakes and scorpions in their quest for rent-free accommodation, could be dealt with over time, we thought, partly because we had run out of money. We did not know that ‘over time’ meant the rest of our lives, and that the transformation would eventually have more to do with us than the cottage.”
Clearly, Roy’s journey has seen its fair share of challenges, but it has also delivered on the promise that the author foresaw in the first place—the promise of transformation, of approaching an alternative way of living and gradually, learning to wear it like a second skin. Plenty of people have what one might call dreams of the pastoral existence. Few have the courage, the resources or the tenacity to actually walk the talk; Roy and Rukun are among them. Called by the Hills is the thoughtfully written account of a life well-lived.