Ruskin Bond can't see himself retiring—ever. In a 2023 interview to Moneycontrol, he said, "Writers don't retire, do they? They say old soldiers never die, they only fade away. (Similarly) old writers never die, they simply go out of print!"
Indeed, new books by Ruskin Bond hit bookstores with remarkable regularity—there's usually one around his birthday each year now. His latest, a memoir titled 'The Hill of Enchantment: The Story of My Life As a Writer', released on May 5.
As Ruskin Bond turns 90, here is a quick look at some interesting, less-known facts about him:
1. What happened to Ruskin Bond's earliest writing?
Ruskin Bond's earliest "literary effort" was achieved at age 12. Bond writes in 'The Hill of Enchantment', "It wasn't a story so much as a day-to-day account of the school's activities, with sidelights on friends, classmates and teachers..." This early work, written in a couple of school exercise books, "disappeared from my desk—taken and probably flung away by a prankster, or even confiscated by a teacher." Ever the finisher, Bond goes on to write that the disappearance of the notebooks was no great loss to literature and back then, before plastic bags became ubiquitous, school notebooks provided excellent material for paper bags!
2. What was Ruskin Bond reading, watching, listening to while growing up?
Charles Dickens, of course (Bond read 'David Copperfield' aged 12, and the massive tome convinced him he wanted to be a writer like Dickens). But also J.B. Priestley ('The Good Companions'), Somerset Maugham ('The Moon and Sixpence'), Hugh Walpole ('Fortitude') and J.M. Barrie ('Peter Pan', 'Mary Rose', 'Dear Brutus', and 'A Kiss for Cinderella').
Bond remembers reading a book a week, "sometimes two or three" books a week, even at that age. R.L. Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, the Ellery Queen books... all that his school library offered, he read. In his 2023 book 'The Golden Years', Bond cops to being "more a reader than a writer". He adds: "But I will not read anything that I thrust upon myself; I like to make my own discoveries."
In his 2023 interview to Moneycontrol, Ruskin Bond said he is a "terrific reader" still, going through two-three books a week.
He wrote in 'The Hill of Enchantment': "The love of books, of reading, of writing, was a rare gift indeed" and that "those who think there aren't many book readers around today would be surprised to know that there were even fewer in circa 1950..."
3. What about music and movies? What did Ruskin Bond like?
'The Hill of Enchantment' offers answers to these as well. His father's rented home on Atul Grove Lane in New Delhi had boxes full of vinyl records. He remembers hearing a song by comedian Arthur Askey that went thus:
"Adolf (meaning Hitler)
You've bitten off
Much more than you can chew...
And we're going to hang up your washing
On the Siegfried line
To remind you of the red, white and blue."
Yet another song from his childhood that he remembers still: "Just like a sunflower / After a sun shower, / My inspiration is you!/ Just like the joy after/ Hearing a child’s laughter, / My inspiration is you!"
In terms of films, he remembers frequenting the cinemas of Connaught Place - The Odeon, Regal, Rivoli, the Plaza - and then Dehradun, to watch movies starring Gene Kelly, Gary Cooper, Oliver Hardy and Judy Garland, among others.
4. Did Ruskin Bond ever marry?
No, Ruskin Bond never got married. But he has written about love in some of his stories. Case in point, 'The Night Has a Thousand Eyes', a short story Bond shared with the world in 2023. As with Bond's other stories, this one draws on his life experiences. It's about voyage he took from England, back to India. On board the ship, he met a young woman, a diplomat's daughter. It's a dreamy story about a short-lived romance that ended with the journey.
Ruskin Bond's parents separated when he was eight years old. He first went to live with his father in Delhi. After his father's untimely death, Bond split his time between boarding school at Bishop Cotton in Simla and his mother's new family home in Dehradun (she had remarried and had more children from this second marriage). Bond also spent a short while in England with his aunt to try and build a life there, but he returned home to India within a couple years. The voyage back to India from England was the setting for 'The Night Has A Thousand Eyes'.
5. What was Ruskin Bond's school life like?
Ruskin Bond has described himself as a rebellious spirit, sneaking off to the library at every opportunity. He also liked to play football.
In the 2023 interview to Moneycontrol, he shared an interesting anecdote about learning Hindi at Bishop Cotton where the medium of the instruction was English. Now, Ruskin Bond was born in India, as was his father, Aubrey Alexander Bond. But he hadn't sat for any exams in Hindi till his senior year in the late 1940s when Hindi became a compulsory subject. The way he tells it, the first year his entire class failed the Hindi exam. They later discovered that the teacher who had been hired to teach them Hindi was actually teaching them Punjabi!
After this fiasco, though, the school hired a teacher who would go on to become a household name: Mohan Rakesh taught Ruskin Bond! "Of course, he wasn't famous then," Bond had told Moneycontrol in the interview.
6. Has Ruskin Bond ever taken up a regular job?
He's done several freelance jobs. He briefly contemplated life as desk worker while serving as an accounts clerk in the health department in the Channel Islands, UK. A few years later, back in India, he also worked with an aid organization, CARE India, when he was 23. This second job presented some fantastic opportunities for travel and unique experiences, like having butter tea with the Dalai Lama's sister, seeing the shooting of Satyajit Ray's 'Kanchenjungha' (1962) and being mistaken as an American spy in Dalhousie!
7. When and how did Ruskin Bond's stories get into Indian school curricula?
Ruskin Bond talks about this too in 'The Hill of Enchantment'. A publisher, Devendra Sharma, convinced A.E.T. Barrow who then ran the ISCE (India School Certificate Examinations) to include 'The Room on the Roof' in school curricula in the 1980s.
Later, Ruskin Bond's 'The Blue Umbrella' and 'The Woman on Platform 8' were included in CBSE syllabus.
8. Which books does Ruskin Bond recommend reading?
By his own admission, Ruskin Bond has read over 10,000 books. If at school he read Charles Dickens's novels and JM Barrie's plays with relish, in the Channel Islands in UK, he turned to the writings of Rabindranath Tagore and Mulk Raj Anand, among others, to quell his homesickness for India.
Ruskin Bond's recommended reading list, offered at the end of 'The Hill of Enchantment', is distilled into two categories over two pages: "Some books about writing and the writing life", and "Some enchanting books on nature, wildlife and the great outdoors".
Here are the entry in each segment, respectively: 'It's Me, O Lord! An Abstract and Brief Chronicle of Some of the Life with Some of the Opinions of A.E. Coppard, by A.E. Coppard, and 'The Valley of Flowers by Frank Smyhte'.
9. Where does Ruskin Bond live now?
Ruskin Bond lives in Ivy Cottage, Landour, with his adopted family of Rakesh and Beena and their children: Siddharth, Srishti and Gautam.
10. Is Ruskin Bond a morning person or a night owl?
Ruskin Bond is very much a morning person. He wrote in 'The Golden Years: The Many Joys of Living A Good Long Life': "If I'm up at 6 am, it isn't in order to rush off to work but to stand at my window and watch the sky change.
11. Does Ruskin Bond ever get lonely up in the hills? What does he do about it?
Ruskin Bond has written about his love of solitude in recent memoirs. Not only did he enjoy the alone time he spent in his father's flat in Delhi as a young boy discovering books and vinyl records, but he also craved solitude while living with his mother, stepfather and siblings (including half siblings) in Dehradun.
In 'The Golden Years', Bond writes he learnt what it is to "be lonely when, at the age of six, my mother put me in a residential convent school". Fortunately, his father soon took him out of that school. Bond would feel that sense of loneliness again in the Channel Islands when he missed India and feared he may never become a writer on the career path he had chosen. Bond writes it was "writing that kept me going" through these times. That, and walking. "Wherever you are," he writes in 'The Golden Years', "try walking your blues away".
In Ruskin Bond's case, walking often provides him with inputs, including sights and observations, for his stories - he has written over 500 already.
12. Where did Ruskin Bond grow up?
Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli on May 19, 1934. He has lived in India for most of his life, except for the two-year sojourn in the Channel Islands in the UK. In India, he has lived in Jamnagar where his father tutored princes and princesses; in Delhi where his father lived while working with the Royal Air Force, and then again many years later; in Dehradun with his mother's family; in Simla at boarding school and for the last many years, in Landour in Uttarakhand.
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