Indian Bond turns 83

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/NewsDetail.aspx?storyid=19820&date=2017-06-04&pageid=1

                                                               Indian Bond turns 83

“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 three 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 ever memoir ‘Looking for the Rainbow: My years with Daddy’ was launched on his birthday this year at the Cambridge book shop in Landour, Mussorie. The book weaves a story around the two precious years he spent with his father in old Delhi. Intimate conversations, long walks, cinema and books form the core of his interaction with his father. He says, "This little book is a tribute to my father who, over a short period of time, did so much to make my life meaningful for me. I wish all the children could have a father like him," He further adds, "I have written about him before, but never at length, and I thought it was time to thank him in the best possible way through a story woven around the events of those two memorable years. Once upon a time, in old New Delhi..."

It has taken him more than seven decades to write about this period in his life. A wound which took a long – long time to heal – and now maybe he acquired the distance and objectivity to write about it. Love you, Bond.  

His first book ‘Nine Months’ went unpublished, but then at seventeen years, he won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a literary prize awarded annually for the best work written in English and published in UK.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 years 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.

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 meditative quest.

Ruskin Bond 2016

Ruskin Bond

Many Small Moments to Savour! 

"Book readers are special people, and they will always turn to books as the ultimate pleasure.” -  Ruskin Bond

Come May and the reading fraternity awaits the release of a new book of short stories by the Indian Bond – Ruskin Bond. Excerpts from “The charm of elephants and other wild tales” Stories about his lifelong companions - animals, insects, flowers and trees at Dehra, Mussourie and Landour.   

                                                      Harold, Our Hornbill

Here he delineates how birds herald the coming of rains after the scorching summer heat:  

Although Harold the Hornbill never seemed to drink any water, he loved the rain. We always knew when it was going to rain because Harold would start chuckling to himself about an hour before the first raindrops fell.

This used to irritate Aunt Ruby. She was always being caught in the rain. Harold would be chuckling when she left the house. And when she returned, drenched to the skin, he would be in fits of laughter.

As storm clouds would gather, and gusts of wind would shake the banana trees, Harold would get very excited, and his chuckle would change to an eerie whistle. “Wheee…..wheee,’ he would scream and with the first drops of rain, he would start roaring with pleasure. The wind would carry the rain into the veranda, and Harold would spread his wings and dance, tumbling about like a circus clown.

                                                            The Python

Maybe vanity isn’t just a supercilious human trait after all:

Next we saw the python curled up on the dressing table, gazing at his reflection in the mirror. I went for Grandfather, but by the time we returned, the python had moved elsewhere. A little later he was seen in the garden. Then he was back on the dressing table, admiring himself in the mirror. Evidently, he had become enamoured of his own reflection. Grandfather observed that perhaps the attention he was receiving from everyone had made him a little conceited.

“He’s trying to look better for Aunt Mabel,” I said, a remark that I instantly regretted, because Grandmother heard it, and she brought the flat of her hand down on my head.  “Well, now we know his weakness,” said Grandfather. “Are you trying to be funny, too?” demanded Grandmother, looking her most threatening. “I only meant he was becoming very vain,’ said Grandfather hastily. “It should be easier to catch him now.”

He set about preparing a large cage with a mirror on one end. One morning, I saw the python curled up in the cage. He had eaten all the food, and was relaxing in front of the mirror with something resembling a smile on his face - if you can imagine a python smiling. I lowered the trapdoor gently, but the python took no notice; he was in raptures over his handsome reflection. We left the cage in the jungle, with the trapdoor open.

“He made no attempt to get out,” said Grandfather later. “And I didn’t have the heart to take the mirror away. It’s the first time I have seen a snake fall in love.”

                                                The charm of elephants

Everyone likes elephants. Go where you will, you won’t hear a harsh word against these outsize animals, who combine power with gentleness, a childish sulkiness with good humour and great girth with a ballet dancer’s poise:

Elephants are noted for their nimbleness, and in parts of Assam, there is a belief that wild elephants sometimes assemble together to dance. A mahout once told me that he had come upon a large forest clearing, the floor beaten smooth and hard.  “It was an elephant nautch-khana,” he said.  A ballroom! I am quite happy to go along with the quaint belief that elephants meet by moonlight in their forest ballrooms to dance their reels and quadrilles. The music of their trunks is no better or worse than the music of bagpipes.

                                                                      The world of music

Bond hears symphonic classical melodies in the natural sounds of the jungle:

At the height of the monsoon, the banyan tree was like an orchestra pit with the musicians constantly tuning up. Then, from the stream came the chanting of hundreds of frogs. There were tenors and baritones, sopranos and contraltos, and occasionally a bass deep enough to have pleased the great Chaliapin. They sang duets and quartets from La Boheme and other Italian operas, drowning out other jungle sounds except for the occasional cry of a jackal doing his best to join in. 

“We might as well sing,” said Uncle Ken, and began singing the ‘Indian love call’ in his best Nelson Eddy manner. I too tried adding my shrill piping to theirs, with a toy flute in my hands. But they thought poorly of our musical ability. Whenever I piped, the birds and the insects fell into a pained and puzzled silence.  Uncle Ken was answered by strident jackal calls, not one but several- with the result that all self-respecting denizens of the forest fled from the vicinity, and we saw no wildlife that night.

                                                            The friendship of flowers

"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."

I like to take other people’s sick or discarded plants and cajole them back to health. This has given me a bit of a reputation as a plant doctor. Actually, all I do is give an ailing plant a quiet corner where it can rest and recuperate from whatever ails it- they have usually been ill-treated in some way.

I rescued a dying asparagus fern from the portals of the Savoy Hotel, and now, six months later, its strong feathery fronds have taken over most of my bedroom window, and I have no need of curtains. Nandu, the owner of Savoy, now wants his fern back.

The simple tales continue and we feel refreshed and reborn every time we read them.   

Ruskin Bond

Booked and How

“I have enjoyed a fairly long life, and in my time I must have read close to ten thousand books. Many were forgettable, and have been forgotten. I have also written a few- some forgettable! Now as I enter my eighties I still read when the light is good and my easy chair well cushioned “ Ruskin Bond

Come May and my attention veers towards the Indian Bond – Ruskin Bond ( He turned 81 on 19^th May, 2015) and his inimitable writing, a testament to his timeless appeal. His prolific writing has kept us engaged year after year (and film adaptations of his books like the utterly absorbing Blue Umbrella). A book cover in sea green strokes lauding a reader’s dream of a comfy chair in a quiet corner surrounded by a leafy plant or two, a pile of favourite reads, a furry canine curled up under the chair, and a title in muted red  -  ‘Love among the Bookshelves’ released last year. It became identifiable in its own right as it straddles the genres of memoir writing and anthology both in one book. An unsurprising feat indeed given the writer’s repertoire.

Right in the beginning, he puts all speculations at rest by disclosing that the book is not about any torrid clandestine love affair among the bookshelves but his lifelong romance with the printed word, a loneliness, depressive-driven engagement  with books and authors which fermented into sparkling wine of flowing words that continues unabated. “As a boy reading was my religion. It helped me to discover my soul. Later writing helped me to record its journey.” He hails the short story saying that when time and changing fads absorb and consume many fine writers of long fiction, short story gets picked up by anthologies and  may get selected again and again and thus have a long life keeping the author alive and vibrant long after he is gone.

A forest officer’s hoard of books in a rest house in the jungle, amidst a hunting party with guns, dense foliage and shadows of lurking animals became his first date with the treasure house, catapulting him on a long road of classics, ghost stories, crime fiction, comics and the short stories. Every chapter in two parts is a peek first into his anecdotal personal story of growing up in a boarding school in Shimla, Dehradun, and later  Channel Islands and London; followed by an interface with an author and an excerpt from one of his books. There are the usual suspects among his favourites - Dickens, Wodehouse and Maugham but also some others not so famous but precious like Bates and Jeffries.

Amongst Wodehouse’ great comic creations (Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, Lord Emsworth, Mr Milliner, the Drones club), Ukridge was one of Wodehouse’s most delightful creations in his earlier works (Wodehouse lived a long  life beginning with Queen Victoria’s reign, through Edward VII, George V, George VI and Queen Elizabeth II). A scamster with endless streams of making a fortune with despairing outcomes, he endeared himself to the growing-up Bond in school who turned to him through a disastrous climate of ‘quarrelling parents, disapproving relatives and censorious schoolmates.’ An excerpt from Love among the Chickens takes the reader through a never-never land of eternal sunshine, eccentric men and supercilious businessmen, to Wodehouse the master of comical refrain in impeccable English prose.

When in a lighter mood, he would browse through his favourite comic collection. Superheroes ruled the roost but his inclination towards British comic publications, like Beano, The Dandy and Champion assuage many a guilty reader’s heart directing him to plain fun for fun‘s sake (the breakthroughs like Maus, and Kari today completely subvert that feeling establishing the comic world as a rare must-visit genre of reading).

H.E. Bates’ short story collections which were then serialized in the The Strand magazine, never failed to amaze him. Bond’s long pursuit of short story (five hundred stories to Bates six hundred) can be attributed in part to his admiration of Bates art. His long story about Alexander and his love for the countryside in some way definitely sowed the seeds for Bond’s passion for nature. An excerpt from Great Uncle Crow authenticates the impression it must have had on a young mind of Bond’s disposition (Bond compares the tenderness and beauty of his writing to a Renoir painting).

“Today, teachers and parents and the world at large complain that the reading habit is dying out, that youngsters don’t read, that no one wants books. Well, all I can say is that they never did. If reading is a minority pastime today, it was even more so sixty years ago. And there was no television, then, no internet, no Facebook, no DVD players, none of the distractions we blame today for the decline in the reading habit.”  Reading the above passage in the book was a revelation to me and food for thought at our next Goa Writers meet.

The compelling writer with an austere, without frills, unsentimental style –  Somerset Maugham introduced Bond to adult fiction. His book Cakes and Ale, a thinly veiled portrait of Thomas Hardy and his effervescent wife Rosie, was a rage with the older boys in the dormitories of his school. He says that it appeals to him still with its freshness and zeal. But the writer to take away the trophy for the umpteenth times is Charles Dickens. “In a wonderful voice he could, by turn be Micawber, or Sam Weller, or Scrooge, or Marley’s ghost. What a face is his to meet in a drawing room! It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings.” Reading David Copperfield, he decided emphatically that he was going to be a writer. “And in a single-minded determined, Dickensian sort of way, I became one, for whom literature was religion.”  

An excerpt chosen by Bond from The Story of My Heart by Richard Jeffries in the end makes the book what it is - Love among the Bookshelves. A book that can help a human being discover his soul, its vastness and unity with all that exists and does not exist – the visible and invisible world. Where time and space is meaningless and stardust, the oceans, sky, earth and a blade of grass coalesce and flow together as one stream. And this well thumbed book copy now 50 years old, held together by Sellotape and adhesives still lives with him talking to him and being a friend forever and ever.