An Introduction to Ruskin Bond :my favourite author

Ruskin Bond (born 19 May 1934) is an Indian author of British descent. He was born in Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) and has lived in Landour since the 1960s, having previously also lived, as a child and young man, in Shimla, Jamnagar, Mussoorie, Dehradun, and London. Most of his writings show a strong influence from the social life in the hill stations at foothills of the Himalayas, where he spent his childhood.His writings reflect a genuine simplicity devoid of all elderly prejudices which can crop up as humans grow in their native surroundings.It will not be difficult to really classify him as a saint among writers.Through his writings Ruskin cleaverly opens his readers eyes to a more mature and a moralistic perspective of the world.It was said of Coleridge that he demystified and made simple and understandable the use of blank verse in poetry. Ruskin Bond truly epitomises the message set forth by the poet wordsworth in his preface to the lyrical ballads.His writings are poetic,yet simple,easily coprehensible and flow like a silvery stream over the vast expense of the desert like literature that seems to have grown all around us.   He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children’s authors. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for contributions to children’s literature. Ruskin Bond was born  towards the endof the British Raj. a somewhat lonely childhood, marked by his parents’ divorce and his mother’s remarriage. His father had died in 1944 during World War II, when Ruskin was 10, and he was raised by his mother, step-father (an Indian businessman) and other relatives. For a while, he attended Hampton Court School. He completed his schooling at Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, Given his childhood in various hill stations, most of his writings revolve around the foothills of the Himalayas, especially the greater Doon Valley, including Landour, Mussoorie, Dehradun and points nearby in southwestern Uttarakhand. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He has lived in Mussoorie-Landour since 1962. Among blood relatives, Bond has two sisters, one living in England and one in India (the latter with her step-father’s daughter by his first marriage). His brother first left India for England, then England for Canada, where he has resided since 1967. He also has two half-brothers from his mother’s remarriage after his father’s death.

Today,Ruskin is more Indian that most of us in his gentle understanding of Indian realities in all bits and pieces and grasping of the myrid beauty which engulfs the country.It is a blessing that he writes in English,a beautiful language which has sucessfully survived Indian environment for more than 350 years and which helped us a lot in acheving our struggle for independence. One must never forget that many of our noble patriots including Gandhi,Nehru, Subhas Bose, Bhagat Singh  and Tilak did have a beautiful expression in english and it was through English language that their vopice was heard across the seven continents. Again this voice did revrberate across the atlantic and helped us gain the friendship and admiration of America ,which preasurised the British to grant us our freedom.