DELIGHTFUL SATURDAYS WITH MY FAVORITE AUTHORS AND POETs (27)

RUSKIN BOND

( Information and Image : Wikipedia).

Ruskin Bond is one of the greatest authors of all times who has written over 500 short stories, essays, and novels, including 50 books for children. He is an Anglo-Indian author born on 19 May 1934 (age 88) at Kasauli, Punjab States Agency, British India (present day Himachal Pradesh, India). His parents were Edith Clarke and Aubrey Alexander Bond. His father, Aubrey, taught English to the princesses of Jamnagar palace where Ruskin and his sister, Ellen, lived until Ruskin turned 6.

Ruskin moved to his maternal home in Dehradun with his mother and sister after his father joined the Royal Air Force in 1939. He went to a boarding school in Mussoorie. Ruskin’s parents separated when he was eight and his mother, Edith, remarried a Punjabi Hindu, Hari. Ruskin went to live with his father in New Delhi. They shared a special bond. Tragedy struck young Ruskin at the age of 10 when he lost his father in a war. At the time, he was in a boarding school at Shimla because of his father’s posting from Delhi to Calcutta ( Now Kolkata). He was devastated on losing his father. His mother and stepfather took care of him in Dehradun.

Ruskin studied at Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, from where he graduated in 1951. His creative talent came to the fore after he won several writing competitions like the Irwin Divinity Prize and the Hailey Literature Prize when he was still in school. He wrote one of his first short stories, ‘ Untouchable”, at the age of sixteen in 1951.

After graduating from High school, he went to live with his aunt in the Channel Islands (U.K.) in 1951. He published his first novel, The Room on the Roof, in 1956, winning the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957. He went to London and worked in a photo studio. Later, he came back to India and settled in Dehradun. He worked as a freelancer from Delhi and Dehradun. He mostly earned his income by way of submitting short stories and poems for newspapers and magazines. He went to live in Mussoorie in 1963 for two reasons; the proximity to the publishers in New Delhi and he liked the place. He edited a magazine for four years. Penguin publications, set up in India in 1980, approached him to write some books.

Some of his books have been made into movies and TV series. His historical novel,  A Flight of Pigeons, based on an episode of The Indian Rebellion of 1857 inspired Shashi Kapoor to produce a movie called Junoon which was directed by Shyam Benegal. Doordarshan aired a program called EK Tha Rusty based on his Rusty Short stories. Another novel of his, The Blue Umbrella, was made into a movie by Vishal Bharadwaj in 2005 that won the National Film Award for Best Children’s Film. He made a guest appearance as a Bishop in the movie, Saat Khoon Maaf, produced by Vishal Bharadwaj in 2011 which was inspired by his short story, Susanna’s Seven Husbands.

Ruskin Bond also received prestigious awards like the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992 for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehr, the Padma Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2014. Now he’s living with his adopted family in in Landour, Mussoorie. We had some of his stories as a part of our school curriculum ( English textbook). I salute this genius for making India proud with his tremendous contribution in the field of English Literature.

His best work:

Novels

The Room on the Roof

Vagrants in the Valley

Rusty Runs Away

A Flight of Pigeons

The Sensualist

The Panther’s Moon

Once Upon A Monsoon Time

Delhi is Not Far

Angry River

Strangers in the Night

All Roads Lead To Ganga

Tales of Fosterganj

Maharani

Leopard on the Mountain

Grandfather’s Private Zoo

The Blue Umbrella

Too Much Trouble

When The Tiger Was King”

Cherry Tree””

The Great Train Journey”

Children Of India

Owls In The Family

Dust On The Mountain

Adventures of Toto

The House Of Strange Stories

Big Business

When the Night Falls

Children’s fiction

Miracle at Happy Bazaar: My Very Best Stories for Children

Animal Stories

The Cherry Tree

Ranji’s Wonderful Bat

The Blue Umbrella

Dust on the mountain

Getting Granny’s Glasses

Looking For the Rainbow: My years with Daddy

Lone Fox Dancing

Vagrants in the Valley

Time Stops at Shamli

The Boy from the Hills

THE LUCKY BAT

Great Stories For Children

Memories

Landour Days – A writers Journal

Scenes from a Writer’s Life

With Love From The Hills

Roads To Mussoorie

Looking for the Rainbow

Till the Clouds Roll By

Coming Round the Mountain

A Song of India

All the roads lead to Ganga

Non-fiction

It’s a Wonderful Life: Roads to Happiness

A Golf Story: Celebrating 125 Years of the Bangalore Golf Club

Happy Birthday, World!’

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