RUSKIN BOND

Ruskin Bond: ‘Life Gets Funnier As You Get Older’

* Ruskin Bond’s A Song of India (Puffin) marks 70 years of his literary career

* The celebrated author is midway through the fifth book in his memoir series and is simultaneously working on a ghost story set in the cottage he lives in

It takes seven calls — on the landline and a mobile phone — to have a conversation with Ruskin Bond. The sound is faint, but I can hear the laughter after the third phone call. “I can’t hear you. I think with all the heavy rain, water has got into the phone lines,” he says from his mountain-side home in Landour, Uttarakhand.

Bond, 86, is ready with a new book. Called ASong of India (Puffin), it marks 70 years of his literary career. He wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof, when he was 16, but has lost count of the number of short stories or children’s and adults books he has written since then — close to 200, he guesses.

A Song of India Ruskin Bond Puffin Books Non-fiction ₹250

 

“But then I have been writing for 70 years,” he says, characteristically dismissing the feat as procedural.

The celebrated and much-loved author is midway through the fifth book in his memoir series and is simultaneously working on a ghost story set in the cottage he lives in. Has the lockdown affected him? “To tell you the truth it doesn’t bother me in the least. In fact, in some ways I am lucky because now I don’t have tourists banging on the door,” he tells BLink. Excerpts from the interview:

Fans galore: Bond, who has authored close to 200 books, especially enjoys writing for children   -  K MURALI KUMAR

 

How do you remember 70-year-old details so vividly?

I do have a good memory. Haven’t gone totally gaga yet (laughs). A dialogue will obviously be a rough estimate of what was said at the time, but I have a good visual memory for people, faces, events and incidents. In fact, I remember childhood and boyhood more vividly than I do later years. I think our childhood memories are more distinct in a way: We are seeing things for the first time then. So maybe they register in the mind more vividly.

In ASong of India, I deal with 1951 and it’s a year in which I kept a diary and a lot of that material went into my first novel, The Room on the Roof. So, also having written about that period, more than once, I would perhaps remember it more clearly than other times.

Are you especially nostalgic about those days?

I do like writing about the past. I think about the past quite a bit. Especially about my parents, about friends, and sometimes things that didn’t happen the way I would have liked them to have happened, and I ponder about them and say, well if it happened differently what would have the outcome been. And I think as we get older we are inclined to dwell a good deal more on our early days. I am sitting here on a sofa, dozing off and on, and reminiscing about those days. So it’s not exactly nostalgia, but it’s a sort of habit of looking back.

How has the lockdown affected you? Are you able to read, write and be yourself — just like before?

Well, being a writer most of my work is done from home anyway. So there have been fairly long periods throughout my life when I have been at home and not gone out a great deal. I am quite happy being at home and surrounded by books. I am well looked after by my adopted family. I have got writing to do and, to tell you the truth, it [the lockdown] doesn’t bother me in the least. In fact, in some ways I am lucky because now I don’t have tourists banging on the door.

When you started out you were paid ₹2-5 for a story. Were you able to strike better deals later?

Those days, of course, we had a lot of magazines and newspapers that published short stories, literary work, which is no longer the case. But at the same time we had very few book publishers. So, in a way, since I was trying to make a living from writing, I had to write a lot of short stories and I would really bombard all the papers and magazines in the land, with the result that, over the years, I built up quite a backlog of short stories. And these, in the last 20 years or so, are coming out in book form since publishers have come to the fore.

Maybe I have been lucky with the changing times too. But my output hasn’t varied. I write as much today. In fact, sometimes more than when I was younger... (then) I would spend a lot of time may be going on hikes, wandering off into the hills... As one gets older you are sort of confined more to the house so you naturally spend more time at your desk.

You have never cared for fame, success or money...

As a boy I was ambitious. By the time I finished school I was determined that I wanted to be a writer and nothing else. I remember my mother asking me, “What would you like to do now, Ruskin?”, and I said, “I want to be a writer, mum”. She said, “Don’t be silly; go and join the Army”. In those days the Army was the first choice with most boys when they finished school. My grandfather had been in the Army, my father in the Air Force, so I thought it was time that changed.

I was never a material person. I needed the money in order to continue writing and live the way I wanted to live, which was, you know perhaps, as far away from the madding crowds as possible. So, when I actually came to live in the hills in the mid-’60s, I threw up a good job in Delhi because I just wanted to write and live a life away from the material side of things.

The success actually came pretty late because, although I did start off with the novel being published when I was very young, there was a long hiatus when nothing much happened... And then I started writing for children and that took off. So it was sort of a second writing career, a second chance that came along, so now I write more for children than adults. I enjoy it more.

Your characters are often drawn from your life...

Sometimes I take the past and events that were true but then I fictionalise them, may be with ghosts or animals. So a lot of my stories are semi-autobiographical and personal in a way, but they do get changed quite a lot in the process of writing.

When you are not reading or writing, how do you spend your time?

I watch TV. I keep up-to-date. I am not a political person and I don’t get involved in politics but I do follow quite closely what’s happening in India and all over the world. I keep my ear to the ground. I do follow sports too. I follow football, cricket. I was a hockey goalkeeper and we didn’t wear protective masks in those days (laughs). Nowadays we have to wear masks for everything — from hockey to coronavirus.

What if your writing career hadn’t taken off?

When I was a boy I wanted to be a tap dancer. I don’t have the figure for it now (laughs). Then I wanted to be a football player, in a way all the things that you cannot make a good living out of! Well, I guess I would have been the happiest amongst books. If I hadn’t been a writer maybe I could have been a librarian, a bookseller or worked in publishing. To be close to books, in a way, not just as a bookworm but interested in books as objects.

Where is Raj (his boyhood infatuation in ASong of India) now?

We lost touch when I went to England. And then I heard she got married. She was a supergirl. Of course, she used to beat me at badminton!

And made parathas for you?

Yes.

Do you still like parathas?

Yes, of course. Stuffed parathas, particularly. Aloo paratha, onion paratha. I like puris too. Chhole bhature, tikkis and golgappas. I used to get nice golgappas in [Delhi’s] Bengali Market (laughs). We had chhole bhature just the other day. I like pickles too. I don’t have a sweet tooth. I don’t like chocolates and sweets. I like spices.

Do you eat golgappas when you experience writer’s block?

I don’t often get it [a writer’s block] as I don’t sit down to write a story till I have written it in my head. So, I have sort of seen it happening already visually, like a film. If I do encounter [a block], I put the story aside and come back to it later. If I get very irritated I tear it out and throw it in the wastepaper basket. That’s the final solution.

What’s been the happiest moment in your life?

So many happy moments. When I beat Raj at badminton (laughs) — that was my happiest! It happened only once.

Any regrets?

Regrets I don’t know. There are not too many — I could have been a better writer though.

What is that one thing you absolutely detest about the new world?

I think the way many of the world’s leaders and politicians behave, at least what I see of them on the television. It’s hard to find — I am not talking about our country, but in general, across the world — a world leader that you can respect. They all seem to be pretty much second-rate.

Are you pleased with the way India has shaped — socially, economically and politically?

Change has happened gradually, certain things have got better; people earn more than they used to, in general; disparity between the rich and poor is not as wide as it used to be. In India you still have certain freedoms that you don’t have in other countries. And, well, we still get chhole bhature (laughs).

You like to laugh at yourself...

Life does get funnier as you get older and I do laugh at myself. If you laugh at other people they don’t appreciate it (laughs) and if you laugh at yourself they are quite happy with you. It’s best to direct one’s humour at oneself. That will make you more popular.

Lamat R Hasan is an independent writer based in New Delhi

Ruskin Bond’s Mom Laughed When She Heard Of His Ambition To Be A Writer

Bond’s aim was to write stories and become an author, but no one else seemed to think it was a good idea.(File Photo)

When Ruskin Bond told his mother that he wanted to be a writer, she laughed saying with his good handwriting he could only be a clerk in a lawyer’s office.

This was early in 1951 when Bond was waiting for his school board results. He knew he would do well in English literature, history and geography, but wasn’t too sure about maths and physics.

Bond’s aim was to write stories and become an author, but no one else seemed to think it was a good idea.

His stepfather wanted him to attend college, his mother advised him to join the Army, while his school headmaster wished he became a teacher.

These very thoughts would terrify Bond. “A teacher! That was the last thing I wanted to be; I’d had enough of school rules, homework and early morning PT. And I had no wish to inflict it on others. The Army? More rules, more PT, heavy boots, routine marching...” he would think.

ALSO READ: Ruskin Bond 86th Birthday: Of simplicity, life in the mountains and solitude

So finally he told his mother that he is going to be a writer.

She laughed and told him: “Well, you have a good handwriting. You could be a clerk in a lawyer’s office.” After that, Bond says, he stopped talking about what he was going to do.

Bond could not afford to buy books, but thanks to a lending library, he could borrow as many books he liked for two rupees. Thus he was able to read quite a few popular fiction writers - P G Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Dornford Yates, W Somerset Maugham, James Hilton and others.

“Sometimes, my stepfather would also give me a rupee or two, but I was anxious to supplement my income on my own, and the only way I could do this was by putting my literary talents to practical use,” he recalls.

So he began to use his stepfather’s old typewriter and would send stories and skits to magazines and newspapers all over the country.

“Then, finally, a little magazine in Madras called ‘My Magazine of India’, accepted one of them and paid me by money order the princely sum of five rupees! After that, I bombarded the magazine with everything I wrote, and, to my delight, the five-rupee money orders kept coming in,” he writes in his latest book A Song of India: The Year I Went Away.

A Song of India is the fourth book in the memoir series by Bond and is published by Puffin. Set in 1951, it is the story of the beginning of Bond’s writing journey.

In this book, Bond takes the reader back to his last days in Dehradun, before he set sail for England, the year that later became the basis for his first novel, The Room on the Roof.

The illustrated book also marks the 70th year of Bond’s writings.

“In these seven decades, I have written hundreds of stories for children and just as many for adults too, and I am still continuing to do so. I am very fortunate to have lived in a beautiful part of the country, in the mountains,” says Bond.

“I am blessed to have received inspiration from the natural world around me, from children and animals, and all of this is reflected in my works,” he says.

Born in Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) in 1934, Bond grew up in Jamnagar (Gujarat), Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. He now lives in Mussoorie’s Landour with his extended family.

His first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was 17, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written over 500 short stories, essays and novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley and A Flight of Pigeons) and more than 40 books for children.

He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999, and the Delhi government’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)

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Ruskin Bond Talks About His New Book A Song Of India And The First Love That Is Never Quite Forgotten

Ruskin Bond is rather saddened that he won’t be able to spend this winter in Calcutta at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet in association with The Telegraph because of the pandemic. “Maybe things will go back to normal, who knows?” he hopes as he gets on a call with t2oS on an evening where it is raining in Calcutta as well as Mussoorie, which he has called home for the longest time.

His new book, A Song of India: The Year I Went Away (Puffin; 128 pp; Rs 250), has just been published, beautifully illustrated by Mihir Joglekar, and the author has been writing a series of stories during this lockdown.

It didn’t affect him much, the lockdown, he tells us. “There are fewer tourists and that’s why I have written so much I think! I have no disturbances or no one banging on the door, wanting to take up my time! I haven’t been anywhere in the last three-four months but I am quite happy because I am surrounded by books,” he adds.

A Song of India talks about the year that Bond spent with his family in Dehra before taking off for England to begin his journey as a writer. Badminton, running away from home and falling in love happens to Bond in that one year that he encapsulates true Bond-style, in this book for children.

A lot of people are now keen to use this sort of downtime to hone their writing skills and become a writer. We may not know how many of those novellas, stories and novels would see the light of the day but we thought of asking Bond for some advice. “There have been writers coming up in the last few years and I know because I so often meet young people telling me how keen they are to write and get published. That wasn’t the case 50-60 years back. This is exactly why I have done a book called How To Be A Writer! I get so many enquires from young, would-be writers that I thought let me put it all down. It is meant for young people and I finished it right before the lockdown happened.”

News consumption on TV forms a major part of the day for the author, who turned 86 this May. Is the current political situation around the world a cause of stress or has the world seen worse, we ask. “World has gone through so much, even in my lifetime, we have gone through a couple of wars. Now they are afraid to go to war because that could be the war to end all wars. Nations have got to try and get on with each other. There are some very strange leaders in strange countries,” he laughs and says without wanting to name anyone.

The eternal optimist that he is, he is not daunted by the concept of death that seems to have been a recurring thought in most people’s minds at the face of this pandemic. “Being in my 80s, I have been thinking about death for a while now.” However, youngsters shouldn’t think too much about it, he advises, as he chooses to focus on the fact that the death rate of the disease is quite low. It is perhaps this resilience of spirit and mind fuelled with positivity that helped make Bond the legend that he is.

The humble author, however, hardly wonders about his legacy. “I can’t really look into the future and I can’t even be certain that I would even have a legacy. So many writers are forgotten. Sometimes even good writers. And sometimes, writers we don’t expect to be remembered, continue to have a sense of existence. I have mostly written to please myself and the few who enjoy my writing. If people continue to read my books in the years to come, that’s fine. And if they don’t, that’s fine too. It’s not really in our hands!”

In A Song of India, Bond writes about his first love, a girl named Raj, his friend’s sister who soon became his badminton opponent and they played plenty of matches, none of the heart! “She was a supergirl. I don’t think I ever managed to beat her at badminton. After I left for England, we lost touch. She got married. Certainly in that year, before I went away, she brightened up my life. She was always a bright spark,” the author reminisces about his first love. The relationship shared between the two is so poignant, even in a children’s book, that a child is bound to feel and resonate with the emotions in their entirety.

However, the author never sets out to write a story for a particular audience. It is only later that the story shapes into something that might interest children. “Writing for children means you got to tell a good story and get their attention right away. Not too much padding and descriptions and also keep off the sex and all that. I don’t feel the need to get into such details honestly, as post-modernists do. The main thing is to tell a good story with real people. At the end of the day, I think I am just a storyteller.”

One can’t help but be reminded of Bond’s poem A Story of Lost Friends when he recounts the tales from his childhood, filled with bright people who add colour to his imagination and life. He is a famous man now, and the world knows of Ruskin Bond but how many of these old friendships still remain in his life, we wonder.

“One or two, yes! I mean it’s 1951, a lot of people in the story who were my age or older, would have passed on. Bhim is still around, the boy I went and stayed with when I ran away from home. He lives in Delhi and went into business. He did quite well and he came up here a few years back and I met him. But Raj and her family left Dehradun and got lost in the multitude of India. In those days you couldn’t stay in touch as easily as you do now. There were no mobile phones and social media. In those days you couldn’t be found and now you can’t escape actually!”

His dedication and love for writing shine through every day as he dedicatedly sits and pens a few pages religiously. Does our grand old man never have a lazy day, even at 86? “As a writer, I don’t want to retire or stop writing. As long as the old cerebellum is still working!” Well, whether he agrees or not, for us, he and his cerebellum are immortal.