Ruskin Bond
Ruskin Bond is regarded as one of the best Indian English-language authors. For the past six decades, his extensive range of short stories, novels, essays, poetry, travelogues, and articles in newspapers and journals has inspired many young writers. Ruskin Bond is most known as a children’s storey writer, but he has dabbled in a number of genres, including ghost stories, ‘odes to nature,’ and unrequited love stories. His writing career gained him acclaim, honours, and several awards, including the Sahitya Academy Award (1992), the Padma Shri (1991), and the Padma Bhushan (2014).
The Life and Time of Ruskin Bond
Ruskin Bond, born on 19 May 1934 in Kasauli to Anglo-Indian parents Aubrey Alexander Bond and Edith Dorothy Clerke, had a less than normal childhood, as did other Anglo-Indian children his age. By the age of 10, Bond had lived among princes and princesses in Jamnagar (Gujarat), studied in a boarding school in Dehradun, saw his parents’ separation and divorce, and learned of his father’s death while still in school. All of these experiences shaped his storytelling for the rest of his life. His favourite childhood memories were his father’s loving devotion, his motherly ayah, his gardener named Dukhi, and the thousands of books he read. Alice in Wonderland was his first novel, and it is still his favourite. Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Graham Greene, and Agatha Christie were other favourites. All of the events left a lasting imprint on Bond’s impressionable mind.
Ruskin Bond was well-known as a remarkable debater, athlete, and writer at his school, Bishop Cotton School in Shimla. Despite being an ordinary academic student, his literary aptitude was recognised as early as 1948, when he won the Anderson Essay Prize. He was the only student in the school’s history to win the same prize three years in a row. In fact, his name is inscribed in the school’s literary and intellectual Hall of Fame. Bond, in addition to writing, was a member of the school’s football team and won several prizes for his goalkeeping abilities.
Bond moved to England for additional education after finishing his schooling. There he finished and published his first novel, The Room on the Roof. He was awarded the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize as a result of this (1957).
Bond had spent four years in England, but his heart was in India, where he had been born and had spent some of his most precious days. He made the decision to return. He felt more at ease around “peepal trees” on the slopes than “apple orchards” in the countryside, and he preferred a life with the Indian people than the refinement of British citizens. In his article On Being an Indian, he frames his bond with India as one of “history,” rather than “race” or “religion.”
Influences on the Author’s Writing
Ruskin Bond has almost 500 published works under his name throughout the last six decades of his writing career. Many of his pieces first appeared in newspapers and journals. He is also one of the few Indian authors whose stories have been collected and re-collected in anthologies and collections. Many of his stories are taught in schools. When asked how he reacted when youngsters approached him and informed him they had read his stories in their textbooks, he joked that he would apologise to them!
Among his most well-known works are the following:
