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Unit 8: A Flight of Pigeons by Ruskin Bond-Detailed Study

“When I was a boy in Dehra in 1940, the place looked like a fairy land. It has been the Notes
inspiration for all my stories and my love for it will make me alive here and keep writing
about the town.”When Ruskin Bond started writing, it was quite difficult to find a publisher
who could encourage a new writer, so Ruskin Bond took interest in journalism. He recollects
the following effect:
“From my small flat in Dehradoon, I began bombarding every newspaper and magazine
editor in the land with articles, stories, essays and even poems”.

There were many magazines at that time like Statesman, The Tribune, The Telegraph, The
Pioneer, The Leader, The Times of India, The Illustrated Weekly, which published his fictions.
His children books began to get published in different parts of the world. His essays and
articles, which covered a variety of topics such as animals, nature, plants, ghosts, and movies,
were published in the literary sections of The Sunday Statesman (Calcutta), The Hindu (Madras),
The Tribune (Ambala), The Pioneer (Lucknow), and The Leader (Allahabad). Some even appeared
in non-mainstream publications like Sainik Samachar (New Delhi), which paid him Rs 25 for
1,000 words. For a couple of months, he also contributed a regular column, “Letter from
Hollywood,” about American movies and new stars, to The Leader, for which he was paid Rs
30.
Ruskin Bond writes that his autobiographical work The Lamp Is Lit: Leaves from a Journal, a
collection of essays, episodes, and journal entries, is a celebration of his survival as a freelance—
this survival being as much the result of his stubbornness. He explains:
“At twenty I was a published author, although not many people had heard of me! And although I
wasn’t making much money then, and probably never would, it was the general consensus among my
friends that I was an impractical sort of fellow and that I would be wise to stick to the only thing that
I could do fairly well—putting pen to paper”.
Ruskin Bond wrote in the light of his own experience of life and he found impressions about
thing and people which had an ordinary effect on him and it was reflected in his work. He
was sober by temperament that has an effect on his life style. He was polite and highly
adjustable personality like his father. The sadness and love of solitude that was part of his
existence and also lack of resources did not allow him to get married and lead a happy life.
Ruskin Bond was a voracious reader, because his father introduced him to the wondrous
world through books and thus he made reading his religion. He read fifteen thousand books
during his school days and then he started his career as a writer. He says:
“The school library, The Anderson Library was fairly well stocked and it was something of a heaven
for me over the next three years. There were always writers past or present, to discover and I still have
a tendency to ferret out writers, who have been ignored or forgotten.”

His first novel entitled “Nine Months” was written in the Boarding of Shimla. It was an
account of his childhood “eulogies to my friends” he calls it but unfortunately it was confiscated
by a teacher and never come into light. Ruskin’s love for his maid is also retold in the short
story “My First Love,” where a maid is the mother figure who takes care of his physical needs,
and comforts him when he is afraid at night, entertains him with fairy tales of princes, gardens,
and palaces. His parents’ marital troubles and his father’s pain and loneliness had a lasting
effect on the shy and sensitive Ruskin Bond, an effect that has influenced his attitude toward
life and his writing.
He takes up serious themes for his stories but they are not dull, because he makes them
interesting to attract the common reader. His focus of attention is the poor middle class men
and women who follow their own way of life. He writes about beggers, villagers and yet they
have their point of honour which he generally reveals through his works. Ruskin Bond thinks

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