Ruskin Bond turns 81

MUSSOORIE: It’s just another day in author Ruskin Bond’s life. Or at least that is how he likes to put it. So even when he turns 81, Bond, the much loved author, wants to continue doing what he does best — tell stories through his pen. “Age is all in the mind,” he says. “I don’t feel any different. So, yes, no grand plans as such.”
And though Bond likes to write across genres, as he grows older, he has preferred to dabble more in humour.“I guess you learn to enjoy seeing humour in a lot of things,” he says.
And he continues to keep busy. So, while Monday night was a dinner with his publishers, Tuesday has been marked for fans, family and books at the Cambridge Book Depot.
The day at Bond's Landour home will begin like any other, only there will be cakes that keep coming in through the day.
“We get all kind of cakes through the day,” Rakesh, Bond’s grandson, says. “From different hotels to his well-wishers and friends and publishers, they all send him cakes. But, yes, dadaji’s (grandfather’s) favourite is chocolate and pineapple. He always likes digging into those.”
In the afternoon, he will visit the Cambridge Book Depot to meet fans. He usually signs books for fans and pose with some of them for photos only on Saturdays. But his birthday is an exception.
“It’s Mr Bond’s gesture to his fans, some of them come all the way from Pune, Mumbai and Delhi to celebrate his birthday,” says Sunil Arora of Cambridge Book Depot.
Dilip Guha, a retired engineer from Delhi, for instance, has been coming to celebrate his favourite author’s birthday religiously for the past six years.
“I remember reading his writing in Illustrated Weekly way back in the ’60s besides his various columns and books,” Guha says. “So when I met him for the first time in 1997 in Mussoorie, it was very special. Now I come here several times a year and take at least 20-25 autographed copies from him that I gift to friends and family.”
The bond between the author and the fan has only grown with Bond dedicating his book, The Jungle Omnibus, to Guha last year.
And considering how Bond likes to connect with fans, the store also gets some of his fans who share their birthday with the author to cut a cake with him.
Tuesday, meanwhile, promises to be a double delight. Two of Bond’s books — Ranji’s Bat and Other Stories and Rusty Series, a set of five short stories by Penguin Books — will be also launched at the bookstore.
And the greetings are pouring in. “I wish him a long and healthy life so that he can continue to tell us stories that are yet unborn in the years to come,” says Ganesh Saili, a friend and co-author for several books.
Once of course Bond is done with the celebrations, he will head home in his bright red car and take a relaxing siesta — a daily must for the man who turns 81.
The evening will be marked by a quiet, home-cooked family dinner. “Tender well-cooked mutton curry for dadaji — and paneer for some of us, since he finds the taste of paneer rather bland,” Rakesh says.
Once the day’s done, he might just look out of his favourite window and find another story in the quiet night sky or the rustling of the trees.