Dear Mr Aubrey Alexander Bond
It is Father's Day today and I thought of you. Most of the readers of Ruskin Bond often think of you fondly. We are told all about you; the joyful Jamnagar days, your stamp collection and life in barracks with him. Forgive us as we have even read some of the letters you wrote to your son. I relate more to you because I'm a parent and think that you must know all about your son as you left him too early
The shock and pain of your demise was huge for little Ruskin. His headmaster made it worse by stealing all the letters you sent him that he gave him to keep safely. When he went back to Dehra for vacation, no one came to receive him.You must have imagined his plight during your illness as you knew your relatives well. He did not get the love and care he deserved as a child, but the habit of reading you had inculcated helped him ignore the harsh world. You will be delighted to know that he was the library in-charge of his school, so found solace in the world of books. As you kept showering blessing upon him from somewhere, he kept meeting people who gave him good times, books and cookies; Vu, a young girl from Vietnam, Bibiji, Miss Kellner and Mrs Chill, not so young girls in Dehra, to name a few. He has been a loyal friend to young and old with equal ease.
No little boy likes the boarding school, but as they grow up they get habitual, so did Ruskin. He made good friends in school. Some of them had to leave the school overnight during the partition of India in 1947, as they came from the other side of the border which was mindlessly drawn by a certain Cyril Radcliffe. I did not see much by him on the Partition of India, though he wrote a book called
Flight of Pigeons with the background of the revolt of 1857. Revolts, partition of a country, politics, economy are not the topics he chose to write, but beautiful things of nature; i, e. about ladybirds, leopards, dewdrops, rivers, flowers, and small towns of India. His simple and charming prose is alluring to all age groups. I am his avid fan, so is my student in class 2. No wonder he won three Padma Awards highest civilian honours of India.
Did he marry? You must be eager to know. He didn't, but he does have a lovely family.
Prem worked for him when he came to settle down in Mussoorie, more than four decades back. Prem's children and grandchildren were born and grew up in your son's care. Now all of them make a great family that he adores. He is one of us now. He could easily be a Ramesh Baduni or any other Garhwali grandpa, if we just ignore the colour of his skin. Adorable, isn't it?
Mr Bond is an octogenarian now, but for his readers, he is an eight year old in a boarding school, a teenager in a dingy room in London saving money for a typewriter, winner of a high flying prize at 18.
We readers can never replace the love you would have showered upon him, but we love him a lot, as we know him so thoroughly. His books are the gems we revere. He is in our textbooks, in our bookshelves, in the columns of national daily newspapers, and in our hearts. A role model for the authors, who want to live like him, but you need courage to find happiness in little things in life.
I can go on and on about your favourite child and his ever loving daddy. There is so much to share. Someday we all will sit together and talk about your Shimla rickshaw ride, stamp collection and many more things.
With regards,
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