Syed Mustafa Ahmad
When Ruskin Bond was about 12years old, his mother, Edith Clarke and stepfather took him on a hunting trip to a forest near Dehradun in Uttarakhand. For nearly a week, they stayed in a dark bungalow inside the forest. His parents would go out shooting everyday, while Bond, who was not fond of the sport, stayed back at the bungalow.One day while exploring the nooks and crannies of the house, Bond stumbled upon an old bookshelf. It was full of dusty books, which nobody seemed to have touched in years. Dusting off the covers, Bond soon found himself immersed in the old tomes. That his how he discovered his love for books, which in turn led to a writing career spanning over six decades.
Early life: Bind was born in Kasauli In British India on May19, 1934. He was just four when his parents separated. Growing up, Bond and his sister Ellen spent their early childhood in Jamnagar, Gujarat, where his father, Aubrey Alexander Bond, taught the royal princesses. But there were no bookshops in his neighbourhood. Once, his father bought him a book of nursery rhymes from Bombay. And the only other book in the house was a tattered old copy of Alice in Wonderland, which he read two or three times by the time he was six.
A special bond:He shared a special bond with his father. In his memoir, Looking for the Rainbow, he wrote about the short, but impactful two years they spent together in Delhi when he his father was serving in the Royal Air Force in 1942. Bond had just returned from spending a miserable few years in a boarding school in Dehradun. Every morning Bond’s father would cook him a hearty breakfast before going to work. When he returned home in the evenings, they would work together on his father’s stamp collection or watch movies at Connaught Place in Delhi. They took frequent ‘ tonga’ rides and visited cafes and bookshops around the city. Bond has described this as “ the happiest time of his life.” Unfortunately, when Bond turned ten, his father died of malaria while he was posted in Calcutta. Bond was studying in a boarding school in Shimla when he was informed about the tragedy. Bond was heartbroken and moved with his mother and stepfather to Dehradun.
On the literary: It was in Bishop Cotton School, Shimla that Bond got a chance to hone his writing skills. He won several literary prizes including the Irwin Divinity Prize and the Hailey Literature Prize . At 16, he penned his first short story, Untouchables.
After graduating from school, he moved to London for two years. That is when he started writing his first novel, The Room and the Roof, a semi-autobiographical story about an orphaned Anglo- Indian boy Rusty. Bond returned to India after the book was published. He made a humble living by writing short stories and poems for newspapers and magazines. In 1963, he settled down in a small town of Landour, nestled in the hills of Mussoorie, where he continues to live with his adopted family.
Memoir series : Despite his international fame, Bond remains an extremely humble and down-to-earth writer. He is always open to meeting his fans. He makes weekly appearances at a book shop in the bustling Mussoorie market, where he lives catching up with fans, both sound and old. Bond has only one piece of advice for his fans: read whatever you enjoy! If you find it hard to read a classic, put it down and start reading something more interesting.
In a nutshell : Ruskin Bond based the character of Rusky on himself.
When he was 17, Bond won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957.
He has written over 500 essays, short stories and the novellas.
He received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1993 for his book Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra. He was honoured with a Padmashri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2014.
Ruskin Bond is most famous among children. He writes for them in a delightful way, but there are lessons for the adults as well. He is a role model for the young writers. A writer can learn a lot from his simple verses. He loves nature and for this, he lives in the natural environment, Mussoorie. If you get a chance, meet him and see things by yourself.
(The Writer is a teacher by profession. Views are his own [email protected])
