If you are not interested in books or reading books, then also this man will attract all towards him and his books. I didn’t like reading but I read this man’s two novels which are namely, ‘The Whistling Schoolboy’ and ‘The Blue Umbrella’. Yes! This man is none other than the legendary author ‘Ruskin Bond’.

Ruskin Bond was born on 19 May 1934 to Edith Clarke and Aubrey Bond at Kasauli (a town in Himachal Pradesh), British India. He saw many ups and downs at a very young age but he didn’t give up. At the age of eight, his mother separated from his father and married a Punjabi-Hindu. When he was ten, his father passed away due to Jaundice so he went to live with his grandmother in Dehradun. He did his schooling in ‘Bishop Cotton School’ and graduated from there in 1950. He wrote his first novel ‘Untouchable’ in 1951 when he was only 16 years old! Bond loved reading and was influenced by Lawrence, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and Rudyard Kipling. He went to the Channel Islands, U.K for high schooling and stayed there for two years. He then moved to London and worked in a photo studio while searching for a publisher and he wrote his first novel ‘The Room on the Roof’ here in 1956. He sustained himself financially by writing short stories and poems for newspapers and magazines. Such a great author with such a great struggle! In the 1980’s, Penguin was introduced to India and it approached Bond to write a few books. He won numerous awards for his writings.

Many movies were also influenced by his writings. His most popular novel ‘The Blue Umbrella’ was made into a Hindi film with the same name in 2007. The 1978’s Hindi film ‘Junoon’ was also based on his novel ‘The Flight of Pigeons’. Then ‘7 Khoon Maaf’,2011 film was based on one of his short stories ‘Susanna’s Seven Husbands’.  As I told that he won many awards for his skills, some of the awards are listed below.
He received the Sahitya Academy Award in 1992 for ‘Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra’, then he was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2004.
     

At present, he is living in Landour, a British India-era cantonment town just above Mussoorie, with his adopted family since 1964.
    

He once in an interview said a very beautiful saying which will surely make your day. He said,  ” Happiness is a mysterious thing to be found somewhere between too little and too much.” And in one of his essays he explained his Indian identity- “On being an Indian, Race did not make me one. Religion did not make me one. But history did. And in this long run, it’s history that counts.”
       

So if you also, dream or wish to meet Ruskin Bond like me than special information for you. ‘Great collection of Books’ is a bookstall situated in Mall Road, Shimla. Mr Bond visits this stall every Saturday from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

Bond is My favourite author. I wish one day I could meet and interview him. 

(Urshita Goswami is a student of Class VII, Shrimanta Shankar Academy, Dispur)