Ruskin Bond, the Hills and me

Yesterday, after a long time, I bought two books from Blossom’s. A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, a dark, funny, satirical thriller set in Zia’s Pakistan, and two books in one by Ruskin Bond, On the Road to Mussoorie and On the Road to the Ganga, both of them non-fiction about travel, life in the hills and people he has met throughout his life. More about Hanif’s book later, but Bond’s writing to me, sitting in class today inspired some intense nostalgia about the hills, Dehradun and reminded me that despite wanting to live in a big city, I remain at heart a lover of nature. Ruskin Bond is someone whose writing I’ve read a lot of ever since I was a kid. I don’t really remember where I read my first Bond book, but I remember going to the Dehradun army library as an eight or nine year old with my grandfather who had procured a card from an army officer since the long summer vacations were getting boring for me and picking out three books by him. I read stories about Bond’s grandfather in Dehradun, his eccentricity about animals, his garden and the different kinds of trees in it sitting in my grandfather’s carefully tended garden in Dehradun. I read stories about Rusty’s eccentric Uncle Ken, his running away from boarding school with a friend. I was slowly but surely hooked, I read a wide variety even then, but Bond’s writing seemed so close to home, the places he was writing about, Mussoorie the lights of which I could see from my grandparent’s house at night were places I had been to, unlike Enid Blyton whose adventures happened in faraway England, a place where children solved mysteries in villages which were very different from any villages I’d ever seen and people ate exotic delicacies like potted meat and scones. As I moved on from the Rusty stories, his stories of the bazaars of Dehradun and Mussoorie, the villages of that region (cue The Blue Umbrella) and his awesome ghost stories all captivated me.

I think I was 12 years old and in Allahabad when I heard that Bond was visiting a bookshop here and signing books. I, my sister and a friend went to see him and I took along my copy of Rusty Runs Away, the one where he ran away from a drab boarding school to get to Jamnagar where his Uncle who was on a merchant ship was stationed for a few days and then hopefully travel the world. When I reached the bookshop, I gave that book to my sister and the friend, and then decided to buy a new Ruskin Bond book. They got my book signed and I bought myself the cheapest available book, called Strange Men, Strange Places which was just fifty rupees and stood in line. When I finally met him, I told him, my grandparents live in Dehradun too. He said, “Then when you come to Dehradun, come to Mussoorie and visit me.” I loved meeting him, and he looked like the kindly old man I imagined. The next day, however, there was a picture on the second page of Times of India, the Lucknow edition of my sister and my friend getting their book signed by Ruskin Bond and I was very jealous of them. I had taken the effort of buying the book and there they were, with photos with him! Then, when I read the book I bought, I was surprised by what it was about. This wasn’t Bond writing for children, but it was this awesome non-fiction book about European adventurers in eighteenth and nineteenth century India and I read about how many of them married Indians and went totally native. Later, when I was reading the Last Mughal, I knew I had read about some of these white nawabs somewhere else and it was that book!

As I grew up, I read a lot more edgy writing, read a lot of fantasy and generally stopped reading Ruskin Bond. Then I found some of his stories which weren’t really for children, and boy they were brilliant as well. Time stops at Shamli is an example. It is this surreal story about a ghost town, lost love and odd people living in the past. Then, something very weird happened. I was reading the aforementioned Rusty Runs Away after a long time, and I was at the point where Rusty and his friend were talking to a chaiwallah after they had sneaked out of school in the morning. The chaiwallah told them, “Every time somebody runs away from school, I give them tea when they are leaving and then on the way back when they are caught at Dehradun station.” The runaways then decided to go to Raiwala station which is further off but there were less chances of being caught. I think I read till about this point before sleeping. The next day, I found out my father was transferred to Raiwala, of all places! We didn’t move there, but I did go to Raiwala and my dad’s office was right opposite the railway station. It was still exactly the way Bond described it, a small, deserted one platform station with one tea stall.

I love the sea, which is something I saw for the first time after college, and have happy memories associated with it. But it is the hills which have imprinted themselves into my psyche and are part of me. From the Shivalik hills which we travel through every time whenever we have to take a bus from Sahranpur to Dehradun, to Mussoorie in the Garwhal hills, to Nainital, Ranikhet, Pithoragarh and Almora in picturesque Kumaon, to even the hills in Nagaland which I remember travelling in to get to Kohima as a five year old. The memories of these hills will always attract me. The only regret I have is of not going to Kashmir despite my father’s two years in Srinagar when the rest of the family did. I suppose I have the time to recreate my ultimate fantasy now, strenuously trekking in the hills and then curling up in my tent with a torch and a Ruskin Bond book!