Page 54 - English Reader - 7

7 7 Colours of Nature

Colours of Nature

Warm-Upm-Up
War
Jim Corbett was an Indian-born British hunter, conservationist, naturalist, and an avid
photographer who after his retirement, authored books. His love for nature can be felt in
every description of the forms and colours of birds, flowers, fruits, and trees found in the
forest.

Let us now climb the hill above the salt-lick to a point from where we can get a bird’s eye view of
the foothills and the forests that lie at their feet before us stretches the forest through which we
have just come to our starting point, the canal. This forest is as nature made it, for it has little timber
of commercial value and has, therefore,
escaped the devastating hand of man. The
light green patches in the foreground are

shisham saplings which have grown from
seeds washed down from the foothills by
monsoon floods. Later, when these saplings
grow to maturity, they will provide the best
timber for cartwheels, and for furniture.
The dark-green patches `with clusters of
red berries are runi trees, which provide
the powder known to commerce as kamala.

When the poor people who migrate in
winter from the high hills to the foothills in
search of food and warmth-as do the birds- can spare a day from their regular labours, the old and
young resort to the jungles to collect kamala.
Kamala is a red powder which adheres to the runi berry, and the method of collection is to cut down

the branches, strip the berries into big shallow baskets and then with the hand rub the berries
against the sides of the basket. The powder when freed from the berries drifts through the cracks
in the basket and is caught on a cheetal skin or a square of cloth. A family of five – a man and his
wife along with three children—working from sunrise up to sunset can, when the crop is plentiful,
collect four pounds of powder worth from one to two rupees, according to the market price. The
powder is used in India and the middle–east for dyeing wool and until dishonest middlemen started
adulterating Kamala with brick dust, it was extensively used in United States for colouring butter. The

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