“It is always the same with mountains. Once you have lived with them for any length of time, you belong to them. There is no escape.”
He lives in a house atop the hills in Mussoorie. His window opens out on the sky and the clouds. It’s interesting, he says, to see the clouds and hear the birds chirping.
He has lived in the hills for so long that most of his stories are set in the hills. Nature makes him feel at peace.
On May 19, 2019, Ruskin Bond turned 85 years old.
Six Decades Of Writing
“I have been writing for as long as I can remember,” he tells The Logical Indian.
In May of this year, he released his new book ‘Coming Round the Mountain’, which is the third in his memoir series and details various episodes from his childhood.
“I have been writing for 65 years or more now and I wouldn’t say I need inspiration all the time,” he smiles. “It’s just that I enjoy writing and sometimes I like looking back and writing about my boyhood days. The longer you live, the more you have to write about.”
At a recent event, Bond said that there may soon be more writers than readers in India.
“Well, I did say that at an event, but I still hope there are a lot of readers, a lot of people who find pleasure in books. But writers are catching up. If regular publishers do not want to publish them, they often self-publish their books. But let people write, it’s a good practice, although it does not mean that their books will be widely read,” Bond says.
“More Writers Than Readers”
“Going back to my boyhood, as I often love to do, even then very few of us were genuine readers. We did not have televisions or the internet, all those things that we consider diversions today, but in a class of about 30 boys, only two or three of us were book lovers. The trend continues,” Bond says.
If one loves to read, he believes, nothing can really be a distraction. The love for books comes from within. It develops over the years.
“Reading has always been a minority pastime, I think. Only a chosen few become readers for life, and let’s say we are the lucky ones.”
“But reading is extremely important for me. If I was locked up in a prison cell and not allowed any books, I would certainly go crazy within a few days,” he smiles. “I read a little every day, I write a little every day.”
Although scores of people of this generation are into e-books, Bond believes that printed books are here to stay.
“I believe only a few people use e-books today. The convenience of a printed book cannot be overlooked. It is something book lovers like to possess as their own. It gives us a sense of belonging,” he says.
“Not Easy Selling Books”
Bond had a lot of publishers in his earlier time, a few of who seem to have ‘vanished’.
“You know, it’s not easy selling books. After all they are not eatables or absolute necessities,” he says. “It may be a necessity for you and me, but not for everybody. The best publishers are those who themselves like books.”
When Bond started writing professionally, there weren’t many publishers. Most of them were academic publishers who publish school and college books. He would write short stories and sell them to magazines, mostly.
“There are very good, successful publishers like Rupa Publications, which have published a lot of my books. Penguin and HarperCollins too are doing very well. Although we say that there aren’t many readers, but there must be quite a few. Otherwise, how are so many books selling each day?”
Bond’s Most Loved: ‘The Night Train At Deoli’
The mountains, hills and nature as a whole play a crucial role in developing the nostalgia that wraps most of Bond’s stories.
One of his earliest stories, Bond wrote ‘The Night Train at Deoli’ when he was just 21. In the book, the young narrator tells us that every summer, he would go to Dehra to spend the vacation with his grandmother. On the way, the train would always stop at a small, lonely station, Deoli, amidst the jungle.
No one would ever get on or off the train on this platform. On one such journey, he meets a girl selling baskets on the station. Her dark, troubled eyes attract him. On all of his journeys, he would wait to see the girl.
One summer, he does not see the girl anymore and is overcome with a sense of foreboding. He learns that the girl had stopped coming to the station.
“I used to travel a lot in trains in those days, as did everybody. I remember always looking out the windows on my journeys. I must have seen this girl a couple of times, and I was always falling in love. So I wrote a story about her. The story had no ending and neither did the incident, but I believe that is what has appealed to my readers the most, just as it appealed to me,” he says.
Bond’s Little Secret – The ‘Grandfather’
A lot of Bond’s stories revolve around his happy, eccentric grandfather, who loves animals. Grandfather is one of Bond’s most intriguing and exciting characters.
Stories like A Tiger in the House and Grandfather’s Private Z…
