Thank you Mr. Bond

Penning your thoughts down erratically and to write a best seller are two poles apart aspects of writing. I have never been a good reader at all. Little interest I’ve developed in reading, was few years back, when I read some Satyajeet Ray’s work. It was a short “Detective Novel” and then I read “Anne Frank’s Diary”. Both were different. Former was interesting and a fiction novel whereas the other was just the pages from the diary of a young girl. The later changed my view towards the books, thou after that I’ve scarcely read anything in that category.

Afterwards I read few more. Then I got the collection of short stories of Ruskin Bond, which one of the kids from my family gave me. It was almost for 3 months unread with me, kept safe on my bedside table. One day I decided to return the book, without a single page turned. I don’t know why but I placed it back, where it was.

Next day I started reading it. Since, it was divided into chapters and the stories were not related to each other directly, I started reading the chapters arbitrarily. The size of the chapters and the time available were the factors to determine, which chapter I should read.

The author has written about almost everything that happened around him, sometimes openly, sometimes keeping himself disguised, just letting the imagination of reader to find or relate with the characters. He wrote about his friend, friends, love, relatives, trees, plants, journey etc. The writer comes from few generations away from ours, may be 50s and 60s but still we can relate ourselves to his stories. I loved his story about a train journey and the one in which he explains his affection for a girl with basket at Deoli Railway Station.

Then, I read “The Funeral”, awesome it was. Astory about a 9 year old boy and his emotional or rather unemotional feelings during the funeral ceremony of his father. Today I read a new chapter “The Room of Many Colours” (colours instead of colors? Yes the author has English connections). This chapter explained about the father of the writer and his propinquity with the writer. The boy in the chapter “The Funeral” was none other than the writer himself, I concluded.

We often fail to see the happenings around us. There is story or two or rather many stories running concurrently around us. Most of them are beautiful, emotional and silent. A daily labourer, a taxi driver, a obnoxious colleague, a silent friend, who never speaks and a chirpy one, who never stops, an old aged person selling pens and diaries at crossroads, a peanut seller who sells peanuts in hostel rooms of your college, everyone is a story running around us. What separates the artists like R.K. Narayanan, R.K. Laxman or Ruskin Bond from us, their ability to see the stories around them. And luckily, they don't keep it to themselves, instead share with us as piece of writing, drawing or poems.

Ruskin, an Anglo-Indian, has shown lots of love for India, his childhood place Dehra (doon), The Himalayas, The forests, Trees, People of India and many more. I sometimes wonder that how he has been in love with this place, with all its shortcomings, whereas many of us fail to acknowledge even good things about India. He insisted many times in the book that he is an Indian, thou his parents were from England and Norway. I developed some respect for this writer. Many authors, from inside India and outside, in past and in present, have portrayed only the dark side of India and won several awards.

Thank you Mr. Bond, you’ve portrayed India in such a beautiful manner, through your books. And thank you, for invigorating the love for my country inside me. Thank you, for letting us know, that every person or living being around us, is a story, just need a storyteller.

“Akhil”