Generations of Indians owe much of their childhood reading to this man. Ruskin Bond is perhaps the most loved English-language author in the country, and has been for decades together. His 500-plus short stories, essays and novellas, and not to forget more than 40 books for children, are perfect repositories for anyone and everyone who?s willing to be a child at heart. With his latest work, a collection of poems, Hip-Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems, the 78-year-old Bond has yet again written for his most ardent fans?children. Diana Ningthoujam chats with the man whose pen has worked its way through many a heart for more than six decades. Excerpts:
A lot of Indians grew up reading your stories; and you have written so many more for their children. In more than six decades of writing, what kind of changes have you seen in the reading habits of children and how has your style of writing evolved?
Reading habits have changed over the years in India and the number of readers has gone up. About 40-50 years ago, when I started writing, the number of young people who were familiar with the English language were far too few. There were just a handful of English schools then. But particularly in the last two to three decades, education has spread in a big way and the English language readership has swollen. I have been fortunate that I am probably into a third generation of readers now and the present generation is certainly larger than the previous ones.
There hasn?t been much significant change in my style of writing, but I have noticed that in the older years it has become more cynical and tongue-in-cheek. Occasionally I see the funny side of life more now than when I was younger. When we are young we take ourselves more seriously and now I don?t. That gets reflected in one?s writing. So some of my works in recent years had that tendency to laugh at oneself.
You started your writing career with The Room on the Roof, a novel with an underlying theme of loneliness and isolation. When you wrote the book as a 17-year-old, would you say that it was a sort of purgation since you encountered a lot of misfortunes in your childhood and youth? Do you think this book helped you in establishing your identity?
It is really a novel about adolescence, written by an adolescent. Perhaps that was what made it different and since I was so young back then, it was naturally autobiographical. I haven?t changed anything or revised it as it sort of reflects me as I was as a boy. Although in parts it?s quite na?ve and has a few imperfections, I never tried to improve on it. I left as it was.
It is quite an emotional book and, in fact, it started as a journal. When I got to England I was very homesick for India. And that is when I started turning the journal into a novel and it reflects my longing to come back. In those days you used to get a standard advance of ?50 when a book was accepted for publishing. The passage to India by sea was ?40, so I landed in Bombay with ?10 in my pocket and made way back to Dehra Dun, my then home town. Then I started freelancing, I bombarded every magazine and newspaper in India with stories and articles. You didn?t get paid very much in those days but I somehow managed to make between R300-R500 a month, which back in 1955-56 was sort of fine. A lot of newspapers and magazines did publish fiction and literary work, which is rare now.
The Room on the Roof did help me in establishing my identity. While it wasn?t by any means a best seller, it became fairly well known in India; it was a launching pad for me.
You said you are blessed with ?double inheritance? of British descent yet inherently Indian. How do you negotiate between these two aspects in shaping your literary self? Do you make a conscious attempt to reflect this hybridity?
I think it has evolved gradually over the years. I just try always to be myself and I have always adapted fairly well to my surroundings, the places I have lived in and the people I have known. I haven?t had any difficulty identifying with, especially, the young people and the young people the world over are very much the same.
Though I do not make a conscious attempt, the hybridity comes through in my stories, especially those dealing with my childhood and growing years, the 1940s and ?50s, when so much was changing in India. They also reflect having grown up in an Anglo-Indian home, adapting or becoming part of a greater India, which up till then was perhaps a bit remote. So that is reflected in The Room on the Roof. Yes, Rusty discovers India for himself.
Indian writing in English is born of a colonial past though we have reclaimed much of it in the past few decades with fresh perspectives from authors. Do you even think it is right that we must forget where we started from? As someone born in colonial India, how do you react to this?
Well, of course, now many of our new young writers have no experience of colonial India. After the British left, their language somehow took root and has even grown and multiplied. The English language maybe suits the Indian temperament. So I think a lot of young people writing nowadays in English are doing so naturally because they are growing up with the language. Also maybe by choice because very often they feel the chances of success and becoming well known are more likely if they are writing in English. And, of course, it varies a good deal from those who write in a fairly traditional way, to others who experiment and use even Indianisms and local dialect. It is in a formative stage I think. The past, of course, always does influence the present, which is a theme in many of my writings. So one can?t entirely break from the colonial past; perhaps it is a gradual weaning away from it, you might say.
You started writing children?s books because you were besieged by professional and personal problems?as a means to get away from yourself. How important was that phase in your life? Did the stories help you in recreating your childhood?
After the age of about 35 or so, I was just writing for the general reader although I often wrote about childhood. I had been writing for a good 15 years before I wrote stories, specifically for children, like The Blue Umbrella and Angry River and others. My stories do help in recreating my childhood. Last year, I wrote a set of stories called Secrets, not children?s stories but they can be read by young adults. These stories go back to a particular year, when I was 15, and as I wrote that particular year and all that happened started coming back to me quite vividly, as though I had almost forgotten it in between. In a way, the whole period was brought back to me so I could share some of it with the reader. After all, there are not many people who would have known that particular year in a small town in India and what it was like to be living then. Not many people around now from that time. At least younger people are not. For them they are curious to know sometimes what it was like to be a boy in that time. Nothing has changed really. Boys are boys, and girls are girls, but the world is different.
Your stories paint a very real and poignant portrait of villages and small towns in India. Why do you prefer to provide a glimpse of life in the small towns rather than big cities?
Living in a smaller place you get to know people better. Someone who lives around the corner or a shopkeeper or the milkman, you see them so often that you get to know them, you talk to them, they become real. It is easier to write about them. Very often in cities it takes a longer time to familiarise yourself with the people you encounter or the people who live around you, it takes much longer because people are busier in cities. In small places, even though life might be difficult you get to know the human side of people more.
You were born in the lap of nature and your writings show a deep connect with the environment and surroundings. Like the Hip-Hop Nature Boy, ?in nature you put your trust?. Do you think that children?s literature can play an important role in addressing issues like deforestation, animal rights or global warming?
Yes, I think so, especially because now that more and more children are reading. And not only that, it has now become part of their curriculum in many schools. They teach them about the environment and how important it is. And perhaps in my case when I grew up I was attracted to books on nature, on wildlife, writers like Theroux and others who went to the woods and lived on their own. I think books go to a limited audience and they are not addressing millions of people but gradually they influence a few and those few influence others.
You have written several novels for the general reader, yet you are recognised as a children?s author. Do you sometimes feel relegated or prefer being portrayed as a children?s author?
Sometimes I have even been asked ?Why don?t you write for adults??, not realising that I have done so. And I have to tell them that I do occasionally and probably 50% of my work is for the general reader. But I don?t mind if people prefer to think of me as a children?s writer. It?s fine by me. And perhaps if God came along and said, ?Ruskin Bond you can only be a children?s author or a general writer. Decide, which would you rather be? ? I?d say children?s author. Well, I think you are doing a little more for humanity if you are writing for children.
Your novels and stories have been turned into movies. What processes go through your mind when you see your work adapted into visual medium?
In general, they have been fairly true to my writing. Without taking the name of one of them, I have to admit that I did fall asleep while watching it. But I have always been a film buff, so I enjoy having the stories filmed. But some writers adapt very well to the screen. If you think of Charles Dickens or Graham Greene, their books were turned into very fine films. It depends a lot, too, on the screen or the script writer. But by and large, yes, I was okay, quite satisfied with the film adaptations. Junoon was one that was based on The Flight of Pigeons, The Blue Umbrella did catch something of the lyrical quality of the story; and the last one Saat Khoon Maaf for which I have mixed feelings. But I have never written with a film in mind. It is just that somebody comes along and tells me that a story would make a good film and I have been quite happy to go along with it.
Hip-Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems
Ruskin Bond
Puffin Books (Penguin India)
Pg 128
Rs. 150
Excerpt
Love?s Sad Songs
There’s a sweet little girl lives down the lane,
And she?s so pretty and I?m so plain,
She?s clever and smart and all things good,
And I?m the bad boy of the neighbourhood.
But I?d be her best friend forever and a day
If only she?d smile and look my way.
Summer Fruit
Summer is here, and mangoes too
And fruit of every taste and hue;
And given a choice of juice or berry,
I’ll settle for the humble cherry.
I know your favourite on this planet
Is the red and rosy pomegranate;
But that’s a winter fruit, my child,
So wait until the weather?s mild.
But if you like a simple khana,
There’s nothing like a good banana.
No? Something more exotic?
Maybe lichis in your pockets.
Or would you like a large tarbuj?
It’s sweeter than a good kharbuj?
Tarbuj. kharbuja?oh, what’s the difference?
Tell me, children, and your preference.
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India from Hip Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems by Ruskin Bond, Imprint : Puffin