As the writer turned 80 last week, suchayan mandal reminisces on an evening spent in the hills with the “blue-eyed boy”. Two books narrate the saga of his growing up and becoming a writer
Ruskin Bond's preference for tranquility and hatred for buzzing urbanity made him choose Mussoorie, a popular hill station in Uttarakhand to practise his meditation with the ink. Last year when I went to the hills a day after his birthday to chat up with Ruskin, he had said, "Earlier it was my motto to ‘Eat More’ now the resolution is to ‘eat less’. Nowadays, on my birthdays, I generally visit bookstores at Mussoorie and Dehradun. This time I visited a bookstore at Dehradun to launch my forthcoming title A Garland of Memories, which is a collection of nearly lost stories of my early years.
"But my birthday has changed a lot as compared to my childhood. When my parents separated, I used to stay with my father at Jamnagar in Gujarat and then the birthday used to be a grand affair with gifts and chocolates. Then suddenly my father died and I had to stay with my mother and stepfather. They used to observe my birthday as well but it was no more a celebration. And in England I had to remind people that ‘tomorrow is my birthday’."
Sitting in a heavy wooden chair, the birthday boy smiled. Wisdom, sense of humour and a never vanishing smile defines his elegance. Born in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Shimla, New Delhi and Dehradun. His first novel, Room on the Roof, received the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957. He has also recieved Padmashree and two awards from Sahitya Akademi. In 2012, the Delhi government awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Recently, I was lucky to come across a few unique books by Bond. Love Among the Bookshelves published by Penguin Viking is a collection of stories like Wodehouse' Love Among Chickens, Bates' Great Uncle Crow and three more. Here, each story is accompanied by a narrative by Ruskin, where he briefs about his childhood days. His habit of reading didn’t develop from great aunt's hoard of romantic novels or a bookshop. Rather, "it was the week I spent in a forest rest house, in what is now the Rajaji sanctuary, between Hardwar and Dehradun".
When his step father and mother would go out hunting deer and leopard, Ruskin didn’t feel the need to accompany them as he was not only scared of gunshots but also hated killing innocent animals. In 1944-45, when he was eight, he found a handful of books ~ RM Ballantyne's The Coral Island, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and abridged versions of Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels in the bookshelves of the rest house at Rajaji. He would read and read till his parents returned. His liking for ghost stories was concretised by MR James' Ghost Stories of an Antiquity, which was targetted at the adult readers with good academic background but Bond didn’t have much problem.
Talking about his holiday readings, Ruskin, during his schooling in Simla would return to Dehradun during holidays. "'Home' was never in the same place. Problems with the rent and unrelenting landlords were constantly plaguing them (his step father and mother)."Sitting on the attic with a leaking roof and rain seeping down, Ruskin would breathlessly read Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Having received a copy of Complete Works of Shakespeare as a gift in school, he would read all the plays, sonnets and appreciate them rightly.
In his signature narrative, he has described the essential child in Ruskin Bond. Aimed at readers from all age groups, the book is not only a happy reading but also an exclusive addition to that ebony brown bookshelf!
He mentions in the introduction, "Now as I enter my eighties, I still read when the light is good and my easy chair well cushioned."
Recently, his poor eyesight led to a funny incident, when he mistook a Chritmas tree for his adopted son Rakesh and kept on talking to it. Its only when it didn’t reply for some time, he realized it was a tree. But the wise octogenarian must have been smiling when he wrote, "Never mind... Trees are good listeners."
Love among Bookshelves; Penguin Viking; pp: 185; Price: Rs 299
The best part is that the place of writing is mentioned, like Dehra or Maplewood Lodge in Mussoorie or the present home of the author, Ivy Cottage. There is non-fiction as well and is a must to possess if one is bonded to Ruskin's writings.
The Very best of Ruskin Bond ~ The writer on the Hill; Rupa;. Pp: 395;
Price: Rs 295
The Very Best of Ruskin Bond ~ The writer on the Hill, published by Rupa Publications, is a collection of selected fictions written between 1950 to the present.
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