RUSKIN  BOND

                                                                                                                                                               

Lone Fox Dancing  My Autobiography  by Ruskin Bond ;  Published by Speaking Tiger ; Pages 277 ‘ Price Rs.599/-

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“Bond”, My name is “James Bond” declares the Iconic creation of Ian Fleming. But for us Indians the name is “I am Ruskin Bond” the utterly butterly charming entertainer for over half a century. His 83^rd birthday puts him into a reflective mood and we have a marvellous  autobiography with a quaint title  “ Lone Fox Dancing”. Why a Fox?. He declares, " I got the idea for the title  from a poem that I wrote some years ago. The poem talks about a fox which  through its dance on a moonlit night, is expressing its joy and individuality. I found that apt for my life's description since through my writings, I have been expressing my individuality and joy too."

Much of Bond's work has been autobiographical in nature. What remains? . “I look at it as a record of my writing life -- which might be useful for other young writers -- as well as a record of my personal life -- my childhood in Jamnagar, Dehradun , Shimla , London and the Channel Islands where I spent a few years as a young man, and the 50 years or so that I have spent in Mussoorie."

He is the author of over a hundred novellas, short-story collections, non-fiction books and collections of poetry. Among them are The Room on the Roof, A Flight of Pigeons, The Night Train at Deoli, Time Stops at Shamli,  Rain in the Mountains and A Book of Simple Living. He annexed the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize , the Sahitya Akademi Award , the Padma Shri   and the Padma Bhushan . He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.

 Ruskin Bond reveals us the roots of everything he has written. He begins with a dream and a gentle haunting, before taking us to an idyllic childhood in Jamnagar by the Arabian Sea—where he composed his first poem—and New Delhi in the early 1940s—where he found material for his first short story. It  ended with the separation of his parents  and the demise of his Daddy.  He recalls his boarding school days in Shimla and winter holidays in Dehradun, when he discovered great books and found his true calling. He spent four difficult years in England, from 1951 to 1955, and he writes poignantly of his loneliness there, even as he kept his promise to himself and produced a book—the classic novel of adolescence, The Room on the Roof. In the end  he is eloquent  about  his restlessness and settling down in the hills of Mussoorie, surrounded by generous trees, mist and sunshine, birdsong, elusive big cats, new friends and eccentrics—and a family that grew around him and made him its own. 

 Bond begins with his earliest memories; “of a little boy who ate a lot of kofta curry and was used to having his way.” The reader is introduced first to Osman, the khansama, and via his story to Jamnagar and the Bond family. And to the fact that young Ruskin was the result of a “torrid affair” between a 36-year-old man and an 18-year-old girl who probably got married because the child was on its way.

The senior Bond found a job as tutor to the prince of Jamnagar’s children and, in attending these classes, Bond junior learnt the useful art of reading things upside down. After his father, the most important person in his life during this phase was his ayah who was immortalised in his first “literary effort”. He compares her to a papaya. 

The family moved to Dehradun  where he is far from happy  with  a disapproving grandma, a mother who is out with another man, a strict school... ending with parents’ separation and Bond going away to be with his father. Bond  preferred life with his father and the happiest time was with him.

The  happy era collapsed when he is bundled off to Bishop Cotton school  in Shimla. His father, weakened by repeated bouts of malaria, died of hepatitis in two years. “And so the bottom had fallen out of my world.”. He goes home to his mother for the holidays to find that no one has come to receive him. The 10-year-old makes his way to his grandmother’s house only to find out that his mother has remarried: the same gentleman who led to his parents’ separation.

  Bond candidly admits that he did not try to reach out to his mother and stepfather and probably rebuffed their overtures.

Once he finished school, Bond went to England, “where all the writers I had admired had made their careers.” Bond’s account of his sojourn first in Jersey and later London keeps us mesmerized : whether it is his interactions with the legendary Diana Athill; his chance encounter with Graham Greene,  his one-sided love affair with a Vietnamese girl. “All I really wanted was my little room back again,” wrote Bond.

 Back in Dehra, he begins writing for magazines like The Illustrated Weekly of India and the reader meets a range of characters like Bibiji, his stepfather’s first wife; lawyer Suresh; journalist William Matheson. Here too he has a chance encounter with a literary eccentric G.V. Desani.

A stint in Delhi leads to an enchanting account of the city  sixty years ago. Working for the Council for Tibetan Relief (CARE) coincides with restoration with his mother and her family. Through CARE he lands in  Mussoorie and decides that if his dream of being a writer “was to become a reality, this was the time to do something about it.”

In the summer of 1963, an almost-thirty Bond returns to the hills, never to leave. The last part of the book is familiar territory for Bond’s readers—a combination of nature writing and stories of people—as we learn how he became the Bond that India loves. He talks about the arrival of Prem and then his family, who become his adopted family; of steering a magazine called Imprint through the Emergency; finding himself under arrest for publishing a story in Debonair; and of meeting Indira Gandhi; of storms and squirrels; of Maplewood and Ivy Cottage. And of, finally, becoming popular and being in demand. “I’m like a shopkeeper hoarding bags full of grains, only I hoard words. There are still people who buy words and I hope I can keep bringing a little sunshine and pleasure into their lives to the end of my day.

This is a magnificent book remarkably well written and overflowing with delightful anecdotes. It touches your heart and feel grateful  for the presence of such personalities  in our country. Bond is a “True God’s God Man” spreading joy and cheer.

An important part of the autobiography are the marvelous sheaf of photographs.

P.P.Ramachandran

27/08/2017