Ruskin Bond is one of India’s best known English writers, who has written hundreds of novels and other works. He is humble, down-to-earth, has a sense of humility in him. During my meeting with him, I did not get the impression that he is greedy for money or fame or out to hog limelight. Some people that I have come across (and who have met him), have confirmed this.
I am told that one day in a week he goes down to Mussorie, a hill station close to Landour and sits in a book store and the tourists rush there, buy books and get them autographed by Ruskin Bond.
If my memory serves me right, it was somewhere on a wintry day in 1993 – although I cannot recollect whether it was in January, February or November, December. I had come to my quarters during the two hour lunch break and was reading the Gulf News, published from Dubai, U.A.E. My attention was drawn to a two full page article about a personality that I was hearing for the first time, namely RUSKIN BOND. My curiosity was aroused about this white man with an English name residing in India, answering the interviewer’s query regarding his name something on these lines, “I am not James Bond, but Ruskin Bond, the original Bond. James Bond is not original.”
Being a voracious reader of news, current affairs, quiz and mostly non-fictions, frankly speaking, I had not heard of Mr. Ruskin Bond till reading this article. I do not say that he was not famous at that time, but for inexplicable reasons I had not caught up with his name. It did not amaze me when a man, born in India, of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, blood and parentage, decided to leave India for good in 1951 to settle down in England. However, I was surprised to learn that he decided to return to the land of his birth, i.e. India in 1955, as he hated the English weather, environments and yearned for the hill stations of India. On landing in India, Mr. Bond had just Rs. 600/- in his pocket, but he was bent upon pursuing writing as a career, come what may and live by its earnings. On his return, he stayed in two to three places and finally sometime in the 1960s, he made Landour, near Mussorie his permanent home. This made me curious to know more about Mr. Bond – an amazing personality.
Mr. Bond is a tird generation British, born on 19/05/1934 in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh and lived in other places, namely Simla, Jamnagar, London, Delhi, Dehra Dun and presently lives since 1960s in Landour (altitude: 7,000’) near Mussorie.
His father, Mr. Aubrey Alexander Bond, had served in the RAF during the World War II. When Mr. Bond was eight years old, his mother separated from his father and at the age of 10, his father died of illness and he had to go and live with his grandmother in Dehra Dun.
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