The Golden Years by Ruskin Bond

During my Dehradun trip, one fine evening, I went on a 3 km walk where I passed by Haridwar Road, East Canal Road, Parade ground and reached Book World. Bought a couple of books. Such a Ruskin Bond thing! His readers would know.

Book World, Dehradun

The title of the book The Golden Years could have been 'How Not To Be Repetitive While Writing on the Same Topics for Six Decades'. The 60 topics in the contents looked like a big buffet to devour. Short and amusing articles on the topics we relate to. Flipping through the pages I stopped  at my favourite topic, The Afternoon Siesta. It took me to the cozy and cool bedroom in which mom used to retire after her day's chores. God forbid, if we entered that room to take a toy or a storybook and made a sound by mistake, we were sure to get a lesson for life.Mom was friendly and polite, but we knew our limits when she used to take her power naps in the long  afternoons.

Parade Ground, Dehradun

I flip further to find wise words on loneliness, solitude,laugh, joy, and woes of old age and  how the great men handled it. He also writes about morning, evening, night, midnight, twilight, hate, love self love and trees. Although he never ever wants to preach, but who can stop me from taking lessons from his wise words.

This book had to be in my bookshelf as whenever in doubt I go to my books,  contemporary and classics, to get solace and tips. 

I'm in no hurry to finish reading it, rather I'm delaying to enjoy it for some more time.

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Letter to a Father

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,

Appeared in the newsletter, 'Bonding over Bond' 5th October '21

With Love from the Hills

Answering the doorbell on a hot afternoon can be pleasant only if it is rung by a Flipcart/Amazon boy. He delivered two books written by the boy whose birthday is being celebrated by his innumerable fans today. 

'With Love from the Hills' by Ruskin Bond looks like a picture book for three year olds. The moment I pulled the red thread attached to it, a window opened to a beautiful scenery straight from a kid's scrap book. I tried to hide it from my daughter who will be English Major soon but couldn't. Unable to supress her laughter she enquired, "What have you ordered ?" I guessed that the book was meant for very little ones. The book is written in a diary form in longhand font. It is as enjoyable as any book by him. 

I never desired to meet the writers I love to read as  he has already shared the best and worst moments of his life with me through his books. I feel closer to Bond sahib because he lives in a Garhwali household. He must be  familiar with the language  my parents and I speak. We grew up in the same city, Dehradun. As a kid he might have rubbed shoulders with my father in Paltan Bazar. 

Whenever I alight at the Dehra railway station I think of the ten year old Ruskin sitting on a tin trunk all alone. Nobody came to receive him. He was back from his boarding school. He hired a tonga and reached his grandma's house where he was not welcomed. Immediately he was diverted to his mother and stepfather's house. How badly he would have missed his dear father whom he had lost only a few months back. Can there be anything more haunting?

I wonder why Ruskin Bond is called children's author. Would a ten year old relate to his writings, humour and little details the way I do?  My children who are avid readers could never relate to his writings. They would ask, 'Would you accept jalebis from a stranger?" Like he does in one of his stories. And why he has to describe even the hedge of his house? How I love when he "describes the hedge of the house", because I have seen those hedges which are no longer seen in Dehra now. How would the kids living in multi-storeyed buildings know that a wind-storm sometimes blows the tin-roofs away and so many little things.

The books specially written for kids are gems. I gave my students, ' A long Walk for Bina' and they loved it. It talks about problems of migration, displacement and making of big dams and their ill effects on the wildlife of the surrounding area which they are studying in EVS.

Thank you Ruskin Bond for all the moments when while reading your books I'd smiled or was moved or had blurted 'Good", "Ha ha","Great", "Exactly","Right" "Sahi", and "he writes so well"! 

Happy birthday.

Under the Writer's Spell

My Dehra visits are incomplete without a trip to Mussoorie. Not that I like going there but it just happens. A friend or relative persuades me and I usually comply. While I drive up the steep road to Mussoorie, I hope to have a glimpse of Ruskin Bond, one of my favourite writers.
 He wrote 'The room on The Roof" when he was eighteen, I read it when I was the same age. And  the bond never withered. I read most of his non fiction , where I knew about his life as a  bachelor, his foster family, the way he writes, his likes and dislikes, Dehra of his childhood and mine too. I see Mussoorie from his eyes. I look for the Tehri Road where he could see an ocean in a small stream.

Do I want to meet him personally? Do I want to hug the child in him who had lost his father at the age of 10 and who chose India,the land of his and his father's birth and not England? No, not because I know that he doesn't like to meet the curious visitors who knock at his door now and then, but because what would I talk to him about? That I know someone exactly like uncle Ken. I'm his fan? Would I share with him the moments when while reading his books I'd smiled or was moved and had blurted 'Good", "Ha ha"."Great", "exactly","right" "sahi","he writes so well! "

A writer pours his innermost feelings and sometimes his secrets in his writings. Most of the times we relate to what we read. Then does physical presence matter at all ?

Back from Mussoorie, I woke up early  at a guest house in Delhi and stood at the terrace and could see the lovely view of  tree tops. Later I visited the hundred year old building of IP College and saw lots of hornbills and scampering squirrels there. I could almost hear Khushwant Singh whispering to me, 'Do you know Delhi is one of the most green captital cities in the world.? Khushwant Singh's coulmns and books I find interesting, informative and full of humour.
I thought of Gulzar also who directed a wonderful TV sereal on Mirza Ghalib, the great urdu poet who lived and died in Delhi.

Last month I was in Uttarkashi. I was sitting on the steps, by the Ganges. Ganga aarti was being sung.Ganga was flowing like a good piece of writing. I thought of a blog I follow.

Then there is the great Tulsidas who wrote Ramcharit Manas. He is always with me since my childhood.Thanks to my father who always preached and sometimes consoled me by quoting some couplet or other from this great epic. Some day, lazy me would finish reading it, though I started it many a times.