By Ruskin Bond: A boy finds a purple stone that glows in the sunlight. But this is no ordinary stone

All was silent in the forest. The only sound was the gentle throb of the little stream, like a pulse-beat in the clear mountain air. A forktail hopped from boulder to boulder. A small fish swam between my feet as I waded through the shallow water.

I was 12 this year, spending my summer holidays in a rented cottage on the outskirts of Mussoorie, a popular hill station. Granny was with me; so was her helper, Bimla, who was twice Granny’s size but as gentle as a butterfly. There was a cook. And sometimes my cousin Roshan dropped in to make a nuisance of himself and cadge a few rupees off Granny.

I liked being on my own most of the time. The steep hillsides were full of little paths that led to interesting places – a hill called Pari Tibba, supposedly inhabited by fairies; a forest of oaks, where long-tailed magpies roamed in noisy parties; a cave where robbers were said to gather at night; a village where the inhabitants kept agile hill cows, and grew maize and apricots; and the stream at the bottom of the hill.

How I loved that little stream. For a curious and adventurous boy there is nothing to equal the delights of a mountain stream! As it is always on the move, it belongs to no one in particular, but to anyone who discovers and explores it.

Dragonflies hovered about me as I waded barefoot over the smooth, rounded stones on the bed of the stream. The exposed boulders were rough and jagged, but the stones beneath my feet had been worn down by hundreds and thousands of years of running water. The mountain, the stones, the trees, the grass, were all part of the earth’s primaeval past. It was home to the dragonflies. Only I was the intruder.

Some of the stones were colourful and beautifully shaped. I examined them as I went along. Spotted stones, striped stones, flat stones, round stones. One in particular caught my attention, and I picked it up and held it to the sunlight. It was about twice the size of a hen’s egg; and it looked like an egg although it was hard rock, a deep purple, with thin red streaks on one side.

I held it in the palm of my hand. It seemed comfortable there. My fingers closed round its smooth surface. The stone was mine!

I had no illusions about its worth. It was no precious gem, destined to hang round a beautiful neck. Nature had fashioned it, as it lay beneath the bed of the stream for a million planetary years. There were other stones, but I did not want them. They were all pretty, like film stars, but this one was the real princess in her purple robe.

So I took it home.

The stone nestled in my jacket pocket as I climbed the steep hill to our cottage. Clusters of dog-rose gave way to pines, and pines to oaks, as I ascended the slope. Granny was in our small garden, trying to persuade a floppy dahlia to hold its head up.

“These dahlias are all the same,” she complained. “They get top-heavy and topple over, almost as though they are ashamed to display their beautiful colours.”

“Well, how’s this for colour?” I said, and showed her the beautiful stone.

Her first reaction was to step back from it. She was startled, surprised.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “Oh, it’s beautiful, but – what a strange shape – where did you find it?”

“In the stream at the bottom of the hill. There are lots of pretty stones there, but this one was different, so I thought I’d keep it. Here, hold it, Granny, see how round and smooth it feels.”

But Granny did not take the stone in her hands. She looked at it as though it were a strange living thing – a large colourful beetle or rock lizard! But she did not object to my keeping it, and I placed it on the mantelpiece in the sitting room. There, in the shifting afternoon light, it gave a glow of its own.

Excerpted with permission from The Wonderful Stone, Ruskin Bond, Aleph Book Company.