Face to Face with Ruskin Bond
By Arvindar Singh
A few years ago, I was commissioned by the “India International Centre Quarterly” to do an article on Ruskin Bond. I had met the famed author from the mountains at various places and at the Natraj Bookshop a couple of times over the years and had come to know him a bit. With some help from the late Surjit Das, former Chief Secretary of Uttarakhand, I had an interesting morning with Bond over a hot cup of coffee at his Landour house. I used the interview as background material for my article in the magazine. Below are excerpts of that interview with the writer, who has just turned ninety:
What drew you to writing, when the “Room on the Roof” was published you were barely twenty- two in 1956?
Yes, the “Room on the Roof” was published when I was twenty-two, but I had actually written it when I was eighteen, it took a couple of years to find a publisher. I was young and inexperienced as a writer, and it went through about three drafts. It was based on the last year I had spent in India. In 1951, my mother sent me off to England after I had finished school and before I left, I had maintained a journal while in Dehradun. Diana Athill, who later became a famous editor, suggested I convert the journal into a novel to make it more readable, so I turned it around a bit and fictionalised a lot of things, brought in some new characters, left out some characters and so on. It has somehow been around and is still in print after all these years. Actually, it was published in England a year after I had come to India in 1955. It had a modest reception in the literary world, not making any great sensation. It was serialized in “The Illustrated Weekly of India” which made me better known in India, as it was a popular magazine. The editor was CR Mandy, an Irishman, who published a lot of my short stories through the fifties. The later editors also published some of my short stories in this magazine.
You have kept out of politics and current issues in your writings except some environment related ones. Was it a conscious choice?
Yes, that is right, I have never been much interested in politics and the like. I have accepted whichever government has been there in the country or whichever party is in power. Like a soldier I would salute the government and get on with my job. Another reason is that I am on my own and who will speak out for me if I take political sides. But I have expressed myself on environmental issues as you point out. You see it is hard to avoid politics in India because it is a very political country. I keep my ear to the ground and stay informed with what is happening on the political front, domestically, and internationally, also. I try to see the best in everyone in this field.
Of the films made on your novels “Junoon” (A Flight of Pigeons), “The Blue Umbrella”, and “Saat Khoon Maaf” (Sussana`s Seven Husbands) which do you think was most successful in capturing the essence of your work?
I should say perhaps “The Blue Umbrella”, because it was a children’s story, and the director was able to authentically get the lyrical quality of the story. It was filmed in the hills where the story is depicted in the book. It was an appealing film. Also, Shyam Benegal`s “Junoon”, which was based on real events. The film was true to the story on the Uprising of 1857. It had some performances which were worthy of note, by Shashi Kapoor, Jennifer Kendal, Naseeruddin Shah and Nafisa Ali to mention a few. “Saat Khoon Maaf” was the picturisation of “Sussana`s Seven Husbands” which was based on a legendary character who lived in Sura, a Dutch Colony in the Hooghly. Vishal Bhardwaj liked it, so I turned it around a bit, and he made it a Hindi Film, which instead of being a black comedy became just black. So, I have mixed feelings about it. However, it had some good performances.
Your autobiography mentions interesting interactions with Indira Gandhi (when you asked her if she had caviar for breakfast) and Padmaja Naidu. Any other celebrities you remember meeting which stuck in your mind?
At that time the Nehru Memorial Fund had commissioned me to write a short biography of Nehru for children. Padmaja Naidu was the person who asked me to do it. I met her a couple of times and found her a very well-read person who liked reading all the authors I also liked reading. She had me over for tea a couple of times and corresponded with me also. Indira Gandhi, I met only once in conjunction with the book. I do not know how the subject of caviar came up, but she did say that she did not have caviar for breakfast as some people said, but she had been to the USSR recently and was given caviar for breakfast there. Among other celebrities, I remember Dr Karan Singh who was interested in poetry as well as meeting young writers and poets, I met Morarji Desai at a press conference. I don`t remember how I was there, Morarji liked delivering homilies whenever he got a chance, when the soft drinks appeared at the press meeting he asked us to stick to them and not go in for anything stronger! Among writers, a memorable meeting was with Mulk Raj Anand, who came to my house a few years before he passed on. He was a small man but with great intellect. Khushwant Singh, I met in Delhi in the early sixties when I was young and still struggling. He was very kind and got me to write for “Yojna”, the magazine he was then editing, the Five Year Plan magazine. I very naughtily gave him a love story and very sportingly he published it.
In your Autobiography you mention a romance with a Vietnamese girl, Vu Phunog and, later, an Indian girl Sushila (an assumed name) both of which did not fructify. Any other romantic adventure or misadventure you remember?
Yes, Sushila would be somewhere in Delhi, a grandmother now. I`ve changed her name in my writings. Vu Phunog I lost touch with a long time ago. There are not many romantic encounters to report, I`m afraid! I am not much of a Don Juan!
Your books have evolved over the years. How have your readers evolved? Over the years have you found a discernible change in those who read your books?
You see I started out as a twenty year old rather sure of myself, typically. Till I was forty, I was writing general books for adults. But even then a lot of my stories would go into anthologies for children or school readers and the like. When I was in my forties, I turned a book into a children`s book quite by chance. It was called “Angry River”. Actually, I had written it as a novella, but my publisher felt it was too short to be a novella and too long to be published as a children`s story. On the advice of my publisher, I cut it down a bit and it was published as a children`s story. This became my first children`s story published abroad, followed by “The Blue Umbrella” and a host of others. You see, in the fifties and sixties, there was very little general publishing in India, most of our writers had to get published abroad. Publishing came of age in India in the eighties when Penguin set up its publishing house here and our own publishers like Rupa expanded, and others came in. This has also helped my readership to grow. This helped many of my short stories, which were written for magazines in the fifties and sixties, come out in book form. I also edited the magazine “Imprint” for some time as its editor RV Pandit had got into trouble during the Emergency and was living in Hong Kong. He appointed me as the Literary Editor of “Imprint”. My job was primarily to get people to write for the magazine. I did this for 3 to 4 years and then they wanted me to come and live in Mumbai and work from there. I did not want to leave Mussoorie or my adopted family over here so I did not continue with the job. (Like Mussoorie, Dehradun was also my favourite town, but now with all the construction and deforestation I don`t know if it still is!)
In a poem of yours I came across the line “The past is always with us, for it feeds the present…” Don`t you think the future is also important to take an optimistic view of things?
It is true I write a lot about the past but of course the future is important. Otherwise, I would not be alive! I plan for the future. I`m never behind in assignments, I think about what to write and publish in the coming year from a practical point of view. It`s just that in my writing I tend to look backwards, sometimes nostalgically or otherwise, as you get older one has so much to remember. So many stories are there, so many things the younger generation may not know about. When I write children`s stories and I write about how as a young boy I got stranded at the railway station at Ambala, a child today would say, “Why didn’t you contact your parents on the mobile phone?” So, one has to explain to them that there were no mobile phones in those days. They don’t realize that things they take for granted at one time did not exist. I still do not have a mobile phone but the others in my adopted family do.
Do you think Literary Festivals which are now being held every now and then are a positive development? Or has it injected a crass and ultra-commercial element in the world of literature?
I think they are things to be said for as well as against them. It makes writers’ works known and they meet and are able to convey to the reading public details about their literary endeavours. However, some turn quite political at times and I`ve been to festivals which have more of song and dance then books. At least two I remember had magicians as well! I suppose that brings in the crowds. I suppose one gets to know which ones are genuinely promoting literature and which are not. At the airports, also, I browse through books – somebody recognises me and says “Sir, please sign some books, and I say “sure” and then they can’t find my books sometimes, as the airport bookshops are not very well stocked, at times!
Looking back at a fulfilling life as a very well- known author, do you have any disappointments in the literary field about something you could not achieve in the world of letters?
Well, not disappointments as such, but I think sometimes I could have been a better writer or a more successful one or could have been better known internationally. I am well known in India, but not so much abroad basically because I am writing for an Indian audience, and I do not have to give an explanation on this score. If I am writing a story of kids enjoying “tikkis” and “golgappas”, for example, it would hardly interest anyone abroad. So, basically, I am writing for an English reading Indian audience, though a lot of my work has been translated into Hindi and various Indian languages like Marathi, Bengali, Kannada and Malayalam to name a few. I feel fortunate and lucky that over the years my readership has grown. You could say that I am a writer without regrets. You see, when I decided as a young man that writing was the thing I could do best and made it my vocation, I had my ups and downs, happiness and disappointments along the way, like in any field of life, so I did what I wanted to do. I made a living from it and continue to do so.
(A well-known writer, Arvindar Singh is a biographer of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai)
