Ruskin Bond

The Indian Bond – Ruskin Bond

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                                                               Indian Bond turns 80

“As a writer, I have difficulty in doing justice to momentous events, the wars of the nations, the politics of power; I am more at ease with the dew of the morning, the sensuous delights of the day, the silent blessings of the night, the joys and sorrows of children, the strivings of ordinary folk, and of course, the ridiculous situations in which we sometimes find ourselves.”  That’s our Indian Bond – Ruskin Bond, who turned eighty on 19^th May.  He is in the pink of health and continues to write simple stories imparting wisdom to his readers to be simple and cultivate humor to be happy.

His first book Nine Months went unpublished, but then at seventeen years, he won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a literary prize awarded annually for the best work written in English and published in UK. The Room on the Roof was published in England shortly after he left for India for good.  “I am as Indian as the dust of the plains or the grass of the mountain meadow” – a feeling that has solidly anchored him in the Indian milieu for decades.  Best known for his short stories and poems, he has written a few novels and novellas, too.

“To be happy, be like a flower, this attracts butterflies, bees, lady birds and gentle people.

A flower doesn't have to rush about in order to make friends.  It remains quietly where it has grown and sweetens the air with its fragrance.

God gave this power to flowers and gentle people.” -  Ruskin Bond, To Live in Magic

The poem ‘A Flower’ is an apt summation of his own qualities of gentleness and sweetness.  He has had a following of the whole Indian continent and abroad, too. Film makers have flocked to him to adapt his stories into films, and he has readily obliged by reworking his novellas into screen scripts. The foremost example is that of A Flight of Pigeons, based on the 1857 mutiny made into film by Shyam Benegal.  Thereafter,  Vishal Bhardwaj worked on the book Biniya’s Blue Umbrella, and the short story  Sunnana’s Seven Husbands – and made them into films titled The Blue Umbrella and Saat Khoon Maaf.  His first published work Room on the Roof was adapted into a BBC TV series  - The Dehra kids.  In 1990, there used to be a TV show Ek Tha Rusty, based on his Rusty series, with many an autobiographical reflections in it. Several stories have been incorporated in the school curriculum in India, including "The Night Train at Deoli", "Time Stops at Shamli" and Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra. Scenes from a Writer’s Life and A lamp is Lit are leaves from a journal about his life as a growing child and later years as a writer.   So much for being a gentle flower!

What classifies Bond as a unique writer and segregates him from others is that in spite of his British descent, his writing is not Eurocentric. After a four year sojourn in England, he chose to settle in India permanently.  He writes like a man completely and absorbedly immersed in the vast landscape called INDIA. The stories are an authentication of his deep appreciation and love for India and its people. And yet because of his background,  he is able to distance himself and render an overview of all that is not right in his adopted country. The personal travails of his protagonist are juxtaposed with the social, political, cultural, religious and communal fabric of the geographical area around him - a subject of much critical acclaim in his works.  Women on Platform 8 and The Eyes Are Not Here, are must read stories.

The poem, Cherry Tree is about  the  poet’s ecstasy over a tree of his own which took eight

years to grow.  He is expressing his wonder at the ways of nature and how the cherry

blossoms are fragile and quick to fall. The tree gives him immense joy when he can see

the stars and the blue sky through dappled green tree.

Eight year have passed

Since I placed my cherry seed in the grass.

“Must have a tree of my own,” I said,

And watered it once and went to bed

And forgot; but cherries have a way of growing,

Though no one's caring very much or knowing.

And suddenly that summer near the end of May,

I found a tree had come to stay.

It was very small, five months child,

Lost in the tall grass running wild.

Goats ate the leaves, the grass cutter’s scythe

split it apart and a monsoon blight

Shrivelled the slender stem...... Even so,

next spring I watched three new shoots grow,

The young tree struggle, upward thrust

Its arms in a fresh fierce lust

For light and air and sun.

I could only wait, as one

Who watched, wandering, while Time and the rain

Made a miracle from green growing pain.......

I went away next year-

Looking up through leaves at the blue

Blind sky, at the finches as they flew

And flitted through the dappled green.

While bees in an ecstasy drank

Of nectar from each bloom and the sun sank

Swiftly, and the stars turned in the sky,

And moon-moths and singing crickets and I—

Yes, I!— praised Night and Stars and tree:

That small, the cherry, grown by me.

If you love the ‘Blue Mountains’, are awed by the spectacular and mystical creations on earth, and enthralled by the petty foibles and exchanges of human beings – read his literature; a truly spiritual quest.