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Licence to thrill

Ruskin Bond continues to enthral with his anecdotes and tales from the hills, writes SYEDA FARIDA

SPOOLING STORIES Ruskin Bond speaks of his penchant for sports, travelling and writing. Photo:K_Gajendran

His life is much like David Copperfield's — a book he grew up reading. A holiday with his father during holidays between war, who read to him from books on travel and geography, his stay with his grandfather and pets, and living with his uncle and aunt at Channel Island where he penned his first novel The Room on the Roof that went on to win John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

"My mother packed me off to Jersey. It's when I started writing the novel. I took it to a London publisher. He asked me to revise. I worked on it quite a bit," Ruskin Bond recollects between signing autographs, posing for photographs and answering questions from eager children. "They are familiar with my name," he says of his little interrogators. "They have read my stories or poems. The best part is answering questions like `what made you want to be a writer,' `was the character based on a real story or was in fiction,' and `why do I live in the hills," he says.

About being based in the North, he says, "I wish I had spent more time in the South, but then I was not in a position to pick and choose. Now when I get a chance, I move around, discovering places." Yet, his heart still belongs to the hills. "Dehra has grown from being a small to a large town. It is cluttered up. Mussoorie too," he muses.

Mussoorie was where he stumbled upon George Lang. Ruskin is credited with the discovery of the Australian-born novelist. "I heard about him in my early years in Mussoorie. After several visits I found his grave. His books have not been in print for hundred years and it was hard to know much about him. He was best known as the newspaper owner-editor of The Moffussilite. He was a successful barrister — he briefly represented Rani of Jhansi in a litigation with East India Company," he says. The Love Lyrics for Bunya Devi brings a faint smile on his his face. "It was based on a girl I knew, I wrote love songs for her."

Currently working on Funny Side Up, which Ruskin says contains "anecdotes and funny things that happened to me over the years. I am a subjective writer and have always written on my own childhood. And then I wrote about other children," he says.

On Harry Potter, the legendary writer says, "it is very English, very professional and well written. It appeals to escapist tendencies in the reader. There are better books. Potter entices the young to take to reading. They can start with bestsellers and go into books that may not be well known," he says.

A remarkable storyteller and a doting grandfather, does he tell bedside stories? "Sometimes I do, the other times they take off somewhere," says the master of the famous Ivy Cottage where he lives with his extended family of adopted children and grand children. "I am the twelfth man in the house. That's what I call myself. I gave up cricket because they always made me the 12th man. I switched over to football." He played at halfback.

If he weren't a writer, "I would never be good at anything else. I took up odd jobs when I was in Jersey. I was looking for chances to quit," he says.

Talking about his typewriter collection, Ruskin says, "I have a real German type writer. Here the z comes in the place of y in the English typewriters with zellow fever in yanyibar. My bank borrowed the typewriter when the auditor was visiting and returned it the next day never to borrow again," he signs off.

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