Ruskin bonding

Jyaneswar Laishram *

Ruskin Bond, author of many widely sought after books, was at the Landmark store in Forum Mall, Bangalore, on June 6, 2012, to release his new book of poems "Hip Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems" published by Penguin Books India. :: Pix - Wikipedia/Jim Ankan Deka

A raconteur par excellence, Ruskin Bond is indeed a prolific storyteller. Personally I like the way he tells stories straight from his heart, no hyperbole at all—either in a fiction or a non-fiction. If I'm asked to pick my choice between the two, I will go for his 'non-fictions'. Mostly written in forms of semi or direct autobiographies, his non-fictions contain witty characters who in real are mostly his relatives and some close friends. And his character studies delve into the core. Often in the Introductions of his books, Ruskin Bond mentions that he prefers to write about the people he knows and places he has crossed. Of the people or characters he writes about in his non-fiction books, familiar and interesting ones to me are Uncle Ken, Aunt Mabel, Ranji, just to mention some.

Uncle Ken is my most favourite among all! A thickheaded man who enjoys doing awfully odd things in life, which are extraordinarily far removed from ordinaries, Uncle Ken thinks he is original in the aspects. 'Original' because he indulges in activities people have neither experimented nor accomplished so far. I like people of Uncle Ken's nature and have met many of the type wherever I lived. My leikai-brother Khangembam Devan Singh in Bishenpur is an inevitable one. Once he opened a medical college in the town, without taking much into consideration of infrastructure requirement, in an isolated corner of an open paddy field near Chiningkhun Village at the foothill of Laimaton on the Old Cacchar Road.

Still unfenced, construction works underwent in full swing in the campus of Khangembam Devan's newly unveiled medical college. A makeshift hut made of mud and bamboo with a straw thatch was immediately erected, saying it would serve as practical lab. In a few days, Devan managed to equip the lab with some medical apparatuses, medicines and a 'dead body' preserved in liquid formaldehyde. Ever since the corpse was being installed in the lab, people from the neighbouring Chiningkhun Village and nearby leikais totally refused to roam around the area in sundown hours. The college shut down before its first anniversary. In this (medical college) episode, I think Devan had moved ahead of Uncle Ken.

Among the Uncle Ken stories of Ruskin Bond, one that I like most is The Zigzag Walk. Uncle Ken invented the walk himself, saying, "You will meet new opportunities only when you go off in new directions." So, he had taken up projects nobody in Dehradun ever thought of. One of the projects was of mineral water bottling for which he bought one thousand empty soda-water bottles and filled them with sulphur water fetched from a mountain spring around ten kilometers from the plain. It was good when sipped a little, but found corrosive if goggled up the bottle in one go. Angry buyers demonstrated in front of the gate of Uncle Ken, throwing the bottles over the wall into their garden where he zigzagged here and there to divert himself from the flying mineral water bottles.

In a sense, both Uncle Ken and Devan are good theorists who however lack relative practical pinch. Devan dreamt of making Bishenpur a 'smart town' with all ultra-modern facilities available in a compact and confine manner. His theory can be a guiding path to bona fide strategists. In a similar tone, Ruskin Bond says that Uncle Ken, while zigzagging, wouldn't have succeeded in getting anywhere on time, but his zigzag theory at least delivers a sagacity to him, which he vindicates it as "When you zigzag, you are not choosing what to see in this world but you are giving the world a chance to see you."

An attribute in Ruskin Bond's writings that stands out among others is his ability to look at ordinary situations with wit and acuity. His hilarious short stories and humorous essays simply revolve around day-to-day activities occur in commonplaces or common situations, whether it could be a crazy cricket match or a bicycle ride with Uncle Ken. A handsome bachelor in his early thirties, Uncle Ken (one and only spoilt brother of his mother and four other sisters) was always a sole companion who often took young Ruskin Bond to several bicycle-riding sessions around Dehradun countryside. Ruskin Bond's multi-genre writing covers anything under the sun—humour, horror, romance and mystery—crafted for readers of all age groups from different walks of life.

Though he is generally being labeled as children's writer, what it ticks my boxes are his short stories, essays and novellas meant for young and old adults. Some of his non-children reads, which I had handpicked from different bookstores in various towns and cities of India (including Dehradun), during some official trips, include a collection comprising Maharani, second latest from him and others including The Room on The Roof, Time Stops at Shamli and Other Stories, A Handful of Nuts, The Night Train Stops at Deoli and Other Stories, A Flight of Pigeons, The Sensualist, Susanna's Seven Husbands, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra, to mention some.

For those who are not yet bonded with Ruskin Bond, I like to introduce him as India's most beloved writer of British descendent whose grandparents were as old as the colonial Raj. Born in 1934 at Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh), he grew up in Dehradun, Simla, Jamnagar and New Delhi. He started writing short stories at a tender age during his schooling years in Simla. For his debut novel The Room on The Roof, at the age of 16, Ruskin Bond received John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a British literary award given to commonwealth writers of under thirty. Currently, he lives at Landour in Mussoorie, with his extended family.

Even though I hardly enjoy 'romance' genre, Ruskin Bond's short love stories are something that defy my deterrence; his stories remind me of my romantic younger years. Not so long ago, I met Ruskin Bond at a book launch event in New Delhi. In a brief interaction, I asked him about his unpublished story about a girl with the most beautiful smile in the world whom he met at a bus-shelter somewhere in a semi-hilly corner of north India where she was waiting for a bus to Yamunanagar in Haryana. His answer was short and straight—"Come down to Landour anytime to chat over it."

Now I pull up my naamei to climb up the hill for a chat with the most loved hill-man storyteller.