Ruskin Bond
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A brief biography
by Nongthombam Neebendra Singh
A light shining bright: The life of Ruskin Bond
The well-known Anglo-Indian literary wizard, the much loved writer, Mr. Ruskin Bond was born in the year 1934 in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, erstwhile British India. The early years of his life were a mixture of joy and sorrow, at different intervals, in varying degrees. Even a slight glance at the pages of his personal history, serves as an evidence enough that his highway to fame and success, have never been the bed of roses sort. By age ten, through his father’s recommendations, Bond was already well-versed in a good collection of the Children’s Classics. As an adolescent, he had already decided that he wanted to be a writer, like the writer-protagonists of Dickens’ David Copperfield and Hugh Walpole’s Fortitude. At some point in his schooldays he had happily read John Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River, and many years later, his mother told that he was indeed named after the great Victorian, by his late father.
Born eldest son to Aubrey Alexander Bond, a Royal Air Force pilot serving the Queen in India, Bond grew up a shy and lonely boy. His was a boarding-school life, a shifting life, growing up in more than one place including Shimla, Jamnagar, Dehra Dun and Delhi. As a child, he hated to see his parents quarrel, time and again, until they separated. His father looked after him in extremely trying circumstances: in rents, Air Force tents and Shimla boarding houses, until he died of cerebral malaria in 1944. Bond later said that it was a cruel blow of fate, his father was only forty-six, he had just completed ten.
A seriously lonely aspect began to develop in his personality since then, the traumatic experience left an indelible mark upon him, in his later development as a writer. To him, it was so because Aubrey Alexander had been closest to his son; during the last two or three years of his life. And his untimely death sent the future writer much more deeper into his “cocoon of loneliness”. Ruskin Bond was slow to make friends and was to remain so for the first thirty years of his life. Throughout his life he has been accustomed to solitary walks and periods of spiritual withdrawal. Even so, he may be said to be the kind of introvert, who believes that he would not have been half the writer he is today if he had not learnt to live with, and for, others.
Readers can experience a touching account of the father-son relationship, of happier days and otherwise, in the beautifully portrayed, and memorable short-stories such as The Room of Many Colours, My Father’s Trees in Dehra and The Funeral et cetera. Bond began writing very early in life, his earliest attempt being that of Nine Months, while still in school. He said that it filled two school exercise books and had laid in his desk for a couple of months, before it disappeared altogether. It had nothing to do with a pregnancy; it merely referred to the length of the school term from March to November, detailing his friendships, escapades, ambitions and the foibles of some of his masters. His first short story, Untouchable, was written at the age of sixteen in 1950, then came the novellas, The Room on the Roof and Vagrants in the Valley, both written in his teens. The famous Ruskin Bond character, almost synonymous with himself on certain quarters, is Rusty, which we find in a plethora of his stories; first came with The Room on the Roof in 1956, and makes his way through Vagrants in the Valley; and several decades later, in The Adventures of Rusty, most recently published. Rusty, a sixteen-year old Anglo-Indian boy, is dissatisfied with life in the declining European community at Dehra Dun, he runs away from home to live with Indian friends, plunging for the first time into the dream-bright world of the bazaar, Hindu festivals and aspects of Indian life. He is enthralled and is lost to the proprieties of the European community.
The Room on the Roof won the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, for the best children’s writing, in 1957. Vagrants... picks up from where The Room... leaves off. Both books have been treasured for over half a century by now, and are still read by youngsters and adults alike, and with taste. Delhi Is Not Far, A Flight of Pigeons, The Sensualist, The Blue Umbrella, and A Handful of Nuts are other good and readable novellas that cannot go without mention.
An avid reader from the start, Ruskin Bond owed a lot to his school library and to that librarian, who left him in complete charge of it, for he had the keys and went there, ostensibly to catalogue the books but in reality to pore through them and get acquainted with both the famous and the less. Thus, in stolen moments over three years, he read all the works of Dickens, Stevenson, Jack london, Hugh Walpole, J.B. Priestley, the Bronte sisters, the complete plays of J.M. Barrie, Bernard Shaw, A.A. Milne, Somerset Maugham and Ben Travers, and the essays of A.G. Gardiner, Robert lynd, Priestley, H. Belloc, Chesterton and many others including the humorous writers, namely, Mark Twain, Thurber, Wodehouse, Stephen leacock, Jerome K. Jerome, W.W. Jacobs, Barry Pain, H.G. Wells, and Damon Runyon. later in his twenties, he made forays into the worlds of R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Rabindranath Tagore, Sudhin Ghose, William Saroyan, Andre Gide, and the poetry of Walter de la Mare.
With such a massive literary culture accumulated as early as his twenties, Bond became naturally inclined to literary ambitions himself, and he never looked back. At school, he was not a particularly brilliant student, even though he became gifted with a penchant for writing. His greatest teacher, undoubtedly, had been his father, who taught him the art of reading and writing, early in life. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and london, working as a clerk in a firm. He returned to India in 1955 and has never left his adopted family of Prem, Rakesh and their children, and precisely, his beloved India, the land of his source of inspiration for writing: The Himalayan foothills - his Malgudi, his Wessex!
He is one of the charismatic and celebrated personalities in India, who have remained bachelors throughout their lives. As previously mentioned, he, later in life, has been living with his adopted family in landour, Mussoorie. He was infatuated, once in london, with lIa very sweet and Vietnamese girl”, Vu-Phuong, who promised him her hand until she met a rich American and” found his signature more attractive than” his own. We can find a heart-rending love story in Bond’s classic short story, A Love of Long Ago, even though it is not based on his Vu-Phuong memoir. Besides his type writer that has served him for more than fifty years, Ruskin Bond has no calling for material wealth and other worldly finesses. Ever since his return from England, he started freelancing in order to sustain the sort of life he liked to lead “...unhurried, even paced, sensual, in step with the natural world, most at home with humble people...”. He have never aspired to cars, houses, and even furniture. Property is for the superstitious, he once claimed. He have no assets except the books he had authored, and the few that might still be lurking in the innermost recesses of his mind, they should outlast the furniture, he wrote.
His bibliography is immense, touching on the realms of novels, short-stories, essays, poems and children’s books. In a writing career spanning over six decades, Ruskin Bond has written more than 500 short-stories, several articles have appeared in newspapers, international journals, magazines and anthologies. Many of his books find publications in Penguin. Some of his tales have already been termed as ‘Classicsll including the likes of A Face in the Dark, The Room of Many Colours, The Kite maker, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra, The Tunnel, Time Stops at ShamJi, Dust on the Mountain, The Garlands on His Brow, Panther’s Moon, The Playing Fields of Shimla, When Darkness Falls, Wilson’s Bridge, Susanna’s Seven Husbands, A Love of Long Ago, From Small Beginnings, and The Night Train at DeoJi. Besides Ruskin Bond’s Book of Verse, Landour Days, Notes From a Small Room, The Little Book of Comfort and Rain in the Mountains ( all non-fiction), two well-received volumes of autobiographies, Scenes from a Writer’s Life and The Lamp is Lit were published in the late 90s, among others.
Ruskin Bond received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India for 1992, for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra. The Government of India awarded him with the Padma Shri in 1999. Considered as one of the Nation’s most important contemporary writers, and one of the best loved, Ruskin Bond is a living legend today, a sublime exponent of great human values and simplicity in living life. How could so famous a person be so full of simplicity? The answer lies within the man’s humanity and greatness. Every Ruskin Bond fan will get the general gist of what this little essay tries to purport. From small beginnings, he struggled hard to make a flame, defeating unfavourable circumstances, and the lamp has been lit. It will keep on shining bright and long. Ruskin Bond is someone from whom to learn and emulate about life in the big picture. Glory to the old gentleman. Kudos to all his admirers.
Biographical details from: Rain in the Mountains
2024: Bond, age 90, looks back
May 19, 2024: The Times of India
My dear friends, as I enter my 90th year, I must ask myself: Have I lived a happy and fulfilling life? And I answer: Yes, sometimes! And if you can be happy some of the time you will probably lead a fulfilling life the rest of the time! As babies in arms we do a lot of crying. Then there’s that first laugh, the sweetest sound in the world — a baby’s chuckle as he or she discovers a funny world awaiting exploration.
We’ll need that laughter for the rest of our lives, it’s a gift, especially if we can learn to laugh at ourselves as well as at the crazy world outside. A cheerful disposition has seen me through difficult times. It is doing so even now, as my writing wanders about this sheet of paper.
Happiness will come your way if you don’t run after it. Chase a butterfly and it will fly away. Stay still, and it may settle on your hand. And if you can summon up the laughter in your soul, you’ll be fine, friend of mine. We can’t be happy all the time, but we can certainly be happy some of the time. And here are some of the ways in which we can discover the joys of being alive.
A new day is the greatest gift of all — a new day, a new beginning, a new phase of life spanning out before us. Don’t miss out on the miracle of each dawn. Be up with the lark or the rooster, open your window or step out on your balcony and watch the sun rise in all its glory. The horizon is bright red, then orange, then apricot. The dawn wind greets us. The early morning light spreads over the mountains, over rooftops, over the fields and forests. Then the sun takes over. Here it comes, spreading its golden beams over your home, over the land, over the planet — giving life to the earth, to plants, trees, birds, beasts, people! Without that sun, there would be no life in the planet. Greet it, salute it, for it signals a new day, a new beginning.
Some simple pleasures…
■ That early morning cup of tea. (As long as I don’t have to get up to make it.)
■ The rising sun slanting through the window and spreading across my bed. Sensual delight as it caresses me.
■ A hot buttered toast for breakfast. (And don’t forget the boiled egg). Pen in hand, I sit down to write. The white, lined writing pad looks beautiful. Must I deface it? Just a few words and sentences…
■ Rummaging through a second-hand bookshop and coming up with a couple of elusive, almost forgotten authors, whose works I still enjoy.
■ The afternoon siesta. On a cold, rainy day, it lasts until evening.
■ In late October, sitting around the heater with family. In November, sitting around the stove with family. Drinking beetroot soup and listening to the day’s gossip.
Savour the moment, make it count. Soak up the sunshine; and if it’s cloudy, admire the cloud patterns; if it rains, take a deep breath and take in the cool clean air, the scent of the earth — for it too must breathe. Read a little, write a little. Listen to music. Take a short walk. And if walking is difficult, go for a drive. And if you can’t do that, open the window and look at the birds, the trees, the cats, dogs, mules, monkeys… look at the people, no two of them are the same.
Will we see them again? Will we come this way again? Who knows?
Learn to laugh
Laugh at yourself. Laugh at life. People who don’t laugh are seldom happy. Don’t laugh at others. Seek out your own inconsistencies and laugh at yourself. A sense of humour gives you just the right balance in your journey through life. Laugh at the ducks in the pond. Laugh at Binya running after one of her cows. Laugh at Bisnu in the branches of the walnut tree. Laugh at the bulbul splashing about in the bird-bath. Laugh at the sum that’s giving you so much trouble in maths class. Better than crying over it! Look at yourself in the mirror and have a good laugh.
And dance and dream too…
My friend Pitamber was found dancing in the middle of the road one night. “Why are you dancing on the road,” I asked. “Because I am happy,” he said. “And why are you so happy?” He laughed. “Because I am dancing on the road!”
And so I ask myself: Do I dance because I am happy, or does dancing make me happy? Do I sing because I am happy, or does singing make me happy? Do I write because I am happy, or does writing make me happy? I am never quite sure.
Above all, hold on to your dreams. If you have a dream, pursue it, hang on to it, don’t let it slip away when times are bad. A dream will sustain you, keep you going, give you a destination, something to live for. And if you hold on to it long enough, you might find that it leads to many good things. Bond’s latest book is ‘How to be Happy’
