Ruskin Bond

Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli , Himachal Pradesh, in 1934, and grew up in Jamnagar (Gujrat), Dehradun, and Shimla.

Biography

In course of a writing career spanning forty years, he has written over a hundred short stories, essays, novels, and more than thirty books of children.

Three collections of short stories, The Night Train at Deoli, Time Stops At Shamli, and Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra have been published by Penguin India .

He has also edited two anthologies, The Penguin Book Of Indian Ghost Stories, and The Penguin Book Of Indian Railway Stories.

The Room On The Roof was his first novel, written when he was seventeen and it received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial prize in 1957. Vagrants In The Valley was also written in his teens and picked up from where The Room On The Roof left off. These two novellas were published in one volume by Penguin India in 1993 as was a much-acclaimed collection of his non-fiction writing, Rain In The Mountain, Delhi Is Not Far : The Best Of Ruskin Bond was published by Penguin India the following year.

Ruskin Bond received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India for 1992, for Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra.

Summing up his last essay in The Lamp Is Lit, Ruskin writes: 'And there are many brave and good Indian writers, who work in their own language -- be it Bengali or Oriya or Telugu or Marathi or fifteen to twenty others -- and plough their lonely furrow without benefit of agent or media blitz or Booker prize. Some of them may despair. But even so, they work on in despair. Their rewards may be small, their readers few, but it is enough to keep them from turning off the light. For they know that the pen, in honest and gifted hands, is mightier than the grave.' Ruskin then goes on to write: 'And these are my parting words to you, dear Reader: May you have the wisdom to be simple, and the humour to be happy.'

To know Ruskin better, let us read this poem that he wrote: RAINDROP

This leaf, so complete in itself,

Is only part of the tree.

And this tree, so complete in itself,

Is only part of the forest.

And the forest runs down from the hill to the sea,

And the sea, so complete in itself,

Rests like a raindrop

In the hand of God.

List of Works

Novels/Novellas

• The room on the roof
• Vagrants in the valley
• Delhi is not far
• A flight of pigeons
• The senualist

Short Stories

• The woman on platform no. 8
• A guardian angel
• The photograph
• Death of a familiar
• The coral tree
• The kite maker
• The Window
• The monkeys
• Chachi's funeral
• The prospect of flowers
• The man who was Kipling
• A case for Inspector Lal

The eyes have it The story of Madhu The thief A job well done The boy who broke the bank The cherry tree His neighbour's wife My father's trees in Dehra The night train at Deoli Panther's moon The garlands on his brow The leopard Sita and the river Love is a sad song When you can't climb trees anymore A love of long ago The funeral The room of many colours Time stops at Shamli Most beautiful Dust on the mountain The fight The tunnel Going home Masterji Listen to the wind The haunted bicycle Dead man's gift Whispering in the dark He said it with arsenic The most potent medicine of all Hanging at the Mango-Tope Eyes of the cat A crow for all seasons A tiger in the house Tiger, tiger, burning bright Escape from Java Untouchabe All creatures great and small Coming home to Dehra What's your dream? The last tonga ride Calypso Christmas The good old days The last time I saw Delhi Binya passes by As time goes by From small beginnings Death of the trees Would Astley return? The girl from Copenhagen The trouble with Jinns Tribute to a dead friend My first love Miss Bun and others The daffodil case

Essays and Vignettes

Life at my own pace The old gramaphone A little world of mud Adventures of a book lover Upon an old wall dreaming A golden voice remmebered At home in India Getting the juices flowing Bird life in the city Home is under the big top Pedestrian in peril Escape to nowhere In the garden of my dreams Owls in the family Adventures in a banyan tree From my notebook Thus spoke crow

Travel Writings Ganga descends Beautiful Mandakini The magic of Tungnath On the road to Badrinath Flowers on the Ganga Mathura's hallowed haunts Footloose in Agra Street of the red well

Songs and Love Poems Lost Love lyric for Binya Devi It isn't time thats passing Kites Cherry tree Lovers observed Lone fox dancing Secondhand shop in hillstation A frog screams A song for lost friends Raindrop

Concluding Lines

THE WOMAN ON PLATFORM NO. 8

... I DIDN'T WAVE OR SHOUT, but sat still in front of the window, gazing at the woman on the platform. Satish's mother was talking to her, but she didn't appear to be listening; she was looking at me, as the train took me away. She stood there on the busy platform, a pale sweet woman in white, and I watched her until she was lost in the milling crowd.

CHACHI'S FUNERAL

... 'PERHAPS HE DOES CARE FOR me, at all,' she thought and patting him gently on the head. She took him by the hand and led him back into the kitchen.

THE CORAL TREE

... THE RIBBON HAD COME LOOSE from her pigtail and lay on the ground with the coral blossoms.'I am going everywhere,' I said to myself, 'and no one can stop me.'And she was fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth.

THE ROOM ON THE ROOF

... KISHEN LAUGHED. 'One day you'll be great, Rusty. A writer or an actor or a prime minister or something. Maybe a poet! Why not a poet, Rusty?' Rusty smiled. He knew he was smiling, because he was smiling at himself. 'Yes,' he said, 'why not a poet?' So they began to walk. Ahead of them lay forest of silence- what was left of time . . . .

THE PHOTOGRAPH

... 'I WONDER WHOSE HANDS THEY were,' whispered Grandmother to herself, with her head bowed, and her needles clicking away in the soft warm silence of that summer afternoon.

THE WINDOW

... WHEN THE TONGA WAS OUT of sight I took the spray of bouganvillaea in my hand and pushed it out of the room. Then I closed the window. It would be opened only when the spring and Koki came again.

THE MAN WHO WAS KIPLING

... I LEFT THE MUSEUM AND wandered about the streets for a long time but I couldn't find Kipling anywhere. Was it the boom of London's traffic that I heard or the boom of the Sutluj river racing through the valleys?

THE EYES HAVE IT

... 'I DON'T REMEMBER HER,' HE said sounding puzzled. 'It was her eyes I noticed, not her hair. She had beautiful eyes but they were of no use to her. She was completely blind. Didn't you notice?'

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

... BUT INSPITE OF A BROKEN wing and a smile it was a very ordinary stone angel and could not hold a candle to my Aunt Mariam the very special guardian angel of my childhood.

A CASE FOR INSPECTOR LAL

... THE BEER BOTTLES WERE ALL empty, and Inspector Keemat Lal got up to leave. His final words to me were, 'I should never have been a policeman.'