Bonding with Ruskin

By Hugh and Colleen Gantzer

Ruskin has reached the Biblical age of fourscore years and ten. That makes us nostalgic. We were all, much, much younger when we came back home to Mussoorie on annual leave from the Indian Navy. Our mother said: “There’s a nice young writer who is staying in Barlowganj. You’d like to meet him.”   So we strapped on our infant backpack, strapped our son into it and set off to meet the young writer. Today, our son has a daughter of his own who has graduated from university in the United States and is on a career of her own.  So you can imagine how many years our bond with Ruskin covers.

Ruskin welcomed us in his usual soft-spoken manner. He had a frame as a young writer for his book “ROOM ON THE ROOF’.  But fame for a writer does not, necessarily, mean fortune.  Ruskin added to his income by teaming with a young friend to create beautiful cards entitled ‘A WILD FLOWER FROM THE HIMALAYAS’. They brought out the exquisite appeal of the tiny blossom covering our hillsides, but generally ignored as we crushed them underfoot. The beauty of the generally ignored impressed us so much that we focused on them, many years later, in one of our CD travel episodes.

But that was not all we learnt from Ruskin at that time. He also brewed for us a rich, green soup. It had a delightful sharp after taste not at all like spinach. We were delighted to learn that it was made from nettle and after that encounter we had that soup created by the Welcome Group.

Over the years we have learnt to have a deeper and deeper regard for Ruskin’s openness with us and his generosity. Because of him we were able to break into the international market starting with “The Christian Science Monitor” and “Blackwoods Magazine” of London. We also got many insights into the man behind the mystique. For instance, Ruskin is a writer. He is not just a writer of children’s stories. His poems are as evocative as Haikus without sticking to the Japanese format. His “Lone Fox Dancing” captures the rhythm of a cavorting Reynard. In fact, Ruskin based this poem on a pair of foxes dancing under the street lamps when he returned after dining in Mussoorie. It also became the title of his autobiography.

Ruskin still sends his manuscripts handwritten.  His handwriting is as beautiful as calligraphy. It was developed by his father, who was a teacher before he joined Britain’s Royal Air Force as an officer. Ruskin still has a letter from his father advising him to write clearly and not in a cramped manner. His father trained as a teacher in the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Ooty. We came across Aubrey Bond’s name when we were researching our book “Never Give In” for the Lawrence School where both our son and granddaughter studied.

Ruskin’s paternal line came to India from Scotland, as did Colleen’s grandfather.  Similarly, one of Ruskin’s grandfathers worked in the Indian Railways as a Loco-Foreman. He specialised in building carriages. He settled in Dehradun and sent his two daughters to Oak Grove School in Mussoorie. One of them became a nurse in St Mary’s Cottage Hospital on Gun Hill. She met and married Ruskin’s father. Ruskin’s Dehradun grandfather lived in a sprawling Raj Era bungalow with enormous grounds.

Ruskin immortalised him in his story for the Reader’s Digest entitled ‘THE DAY MY GRANDFATHER TICKLED THE TIGER’.

Ruskin’s British roots go back to about three generations, which accounts for his appearance. He once played the role of an English Pastor in a film! His Euro-Indian

(now referred to as Anglo-Indian according to our Constitution) roots go back even further, and deeper, into the history of our sub-continent. One of his ancestors was born in

Dera Ismail Khan and was associated with the famous Durand Line. The Durand Line, which separates Afghanistan from Pakistan, or Afghanistan from undivided India.

Coming to think of it, when we bonded with Bond we assessed the granite foundations of a past that cannot be damaged by the divisive hail storms of the transient present.

(Hugh & Colleen Gantzer hold the National Lifetime Achievement Award for Tourism among other National and International awards. Their credits include over 52 halfhour documentaries on national TV under their joint names, 26 published books in 6 genres, and over 1,500 first-person articles, about every Indian state, UT and 34 other countries. Hugh was a Commander in the Indian Navy and the Judge Advocate, Southern Naval Command. Colleen is the only travel writer who was a member of the Travel Agents Association of India.)