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Elective English–II

Notes that even a rogue has his point of honour as a virtuous person has his point of dishonor. He
therefore loves mankind. He wrote about every aspect of life.
From childhood to old-age, he wrote about his experience and incidents that he was involved
in various times. Ruskin fictionalizes his childhood experiences in the novella Once upon a
Monsoon Time and the short story “The Room of Many Colours,” which is actually the first half
of the novella, covering the protagonist’s life in Jamnagar. The story reveals an innocent and
a charmed view of childhood in which the protagonist is brought by his father, maid, and by
a gardener, in the same way as Ruskin Bond was brought up by his father in Jamnagar. In
1963 Bond went to live in Mussoorie, where he still resides. Ruskin Bond’s first ten years in
Mussoorie were difficult for he was trying hard to become a writer, but he became unfortunate,
when his mother died of breast cancer in 1969; his half brother Harold died in a car accident
in December 1970. And his second half brother Hansel died in a motor cycle accident in 1971.
His brother William left India around 1965 for the United Kingdom.
Another significant event of his life was his acquaintance and friendship with Prem Singh. In
From Small Beginning included in Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra which is dedicated to Prem
Singh and his family, Bond narrates how Prem Singh at the age of sixteen, asked for help in
finding a job. At that time Prem Singh’s uncle was already employed by Ruskin Bond for his
own domestic chores, but, by Ruskin Bond’s efforts Prem Singh was sent elsewhere, after a
few years Prem Singh took his uncle’s place and began working for Bond. Prem Singh came
from a village near Rudraparyag in Pauri Garhwal on the higher peaks of the Himalayas.
Prem Singh married when he was eighteen, and since then Ruskin Bond did not let them go
away anywhere else. Ruskin Bond lived in Maple wood Lodge until 1975 when the trees were
slaughtered and the mountains were blasted to build a road. Bond and his adopted family
moved further up the mountains to Landour where he still lives with his adopted family.
Today Ruskin Bond leads a conventional family life with Prem Singh, Chandra, and their
three children, two daughters-in-law and three grandchildren. The children call him Dada
giving him a feeling of belonging to a family. Living with the adopted family he still sees
himself as the goalkeeper from his soccer—playing days at Bishop Cotton School.
Ruskin Bond has been living in Mussoorie for nearly forty years now and has made the
Himalayas as a part of his life. Ruskin Bond is inclined towards nature but since writing
poetry is not lucrative, he continues to be a prolific writer of short- stories, essays, travel
pieces, and novellas and he writes about people, places, animals and plants of the Himalayas.
He also acts as a historian of the region, writing a lot about the past of Mussoorie and its
surroundings, recording legends and anecdotes told to him by the hill folk and the old British
residents. It was after coming to Mussorie that nature became the object of his attention, and
his writing reflects the deep kinship and serenity that he experiences in the midst of the
mountains. He admires the natural beauty of the source of the river Ganges as it bursts from
its icy originating place, sounds of birds and mountains and rivers, the towering Deodar trees
and flower strewn valleys.
Ruskin Bond’s early short- stories written in Mussoorie were mainly about those individuals
he had met in the small towns and villages of hilly area of India. Ruskin Bond has always
lived in small towns in India, he always loved the people of hills as he found them innocent
and honest. Many of his stories emerge from his imagination and bear upon his emotional
attachment to Indian society.

Bond’s stories are largely autobiographical, Bond states the fact that there is more fiction than
reality in his stories but he writes in first person to give the authenticity to his stories. Ruskin
Bond’s focus of attention is the issues of everyday life, he does not think much over social
issues like his contemporary writers. The only social issue he writes about is nature. He
believes that others have dealt with issues such as caste and class more effectively than he can.

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