Ruskin Bond: Children’s Author celebrates his 82nd B’day

Ruskin Bond, a wonderful Indian author, who has won the hearts of many with his intriguing words. He is best known as a children's' story writer and is considered as one of the greatest Indian authors of the English language.

Few things about the author that will give you a glimpse of his life:

• Ruskin Bond was born on May 19, 1934, in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh.
• He spent his childhood in Jamnagar (Gujarat), Dehradun, and Shimla.
• In 1950, he wrote his first short story titled "Untouchables" when he was just 16.
• After completing his schooling, he moved to England for further education. It was there that he completed his first novel "The Room On The Roof" when he was seventeen and it got published when he was 21. This novel received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial prize in 1957.
• Initially, many of his stories were also published in newspapers and magazines.

Related Article: Writing for children not easy: Ruskin Bond

• His stories have also been adapted by many film makers. The Hindi movie Junoon was based on his novel "A Flight of Pigeons" which was produced by Shashi Kapoor and directed by Shyam Benegal.

• Saath Khoon Maaf (based on Susanna's Seven Husbands) and The Blue Umbrella (based on a book with the same title) both directed by Vishal Bhardwaj. Ruskin Bond, in fact collaborated with Bhardwaj in the making of The Blue Umbrella which won the National Award for Best Children's film.
• He has been writing since 40 years and within this span of his writing career, he has written more than three hundred short stories, essays, novels, over thirty books of children and two volumes of autobiographies.
• His writing career has brought him a number of awards. He received the Sahitya Academy Award (1992) for English writing in India for Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra. Other awards include Padma Shri (1991) and Padma Bhushan (2014).

Here is a short poem by Ruskin Bond:

RAINDROP

This leaf, so complete in itself,

Is only part of the tree.

And this tree, so complete in itself,

Is only part of the forest.

And the forest runs down from the hill to the sea,

And the sea, so complete in itself,

Rests like a raindrop

In the hand of God.

-By Pashchiema Bhatia