Renowned author Ruskin Bond celebrated his 80th birthday in Mussoorie on Monday unlike last year when he had celebrations in the Doon valley as well as Mussoorie. Hundreds of tourists celebrated his birthday at the Cambridge Book Depot on the Mall Road.
A grand cake cutting ceremony was held and two of the author's latest books were launched on the occasion. These were Jungle Omnibus (Rupa Books) and love among the Bookshelves (Penguin Books). Snacks and cold drinks were served for all those who gathered at the lively book shop.
Some friends and other visitors came to Ivy Cottage in the morning with bouquets of flowers to wish the well-loved author whose birthday has always been no less than a festival for people in Mussoorie and Dehradun.
Sunil Arora, proprietor of the Cambridge Book Depot located on The Mall Road, visited the author with his family. He took a cake for him which was shared by both families after Ruskin cut it. They all sang for him and prayed for many happy returns of the day.
For the past few years, Ruskin has been insisting that his birthday should not be celebrated with fanfare. "I always want to keep it low profile. But it doesn't work out like that. I have been taking phone calls of fans and admirers every two minutes," Bond told The Pioneer.
In the evening, Bond's grandson Rakesh is hosting a dinner for the family and close friends at Hotel Imperial Square at Gandhi Chowk to celebrate the great occasion.
Remembering his first birthday (in 1964) after having settled in Mussoorie, Bond says that he hardly knew anyone at that time and there was no celebration.
Born in Kasauli in 1934, Ruskin joined his father at Jamnagar when he was a year old. Ruskin spent many holidays at the Doon valley residence of his maternal grandfather, William Dudley Clerke, who was one of the early pioneers who helped bring the railways to Dehradun.
The first school which Ruskin attended was the Convent of Jesus and Mary at Hampton Court in Mussoorie where he was placed in the boarding. He was not happy in the school and soon left it to go to Delhi and live with his father, Aubrey Bond, in temporary wartime hutments as his father had joined the RAF. Ruskin lost his father when he was just ten. He then went to Bishop Cotton School in Shimla. He passed out of school in 1951 and began submitting stories to magazines. Not many Ruskin readers know that the author's first story was published in The Illustrated Weekly of India in 1951 when he was just 17. It was called 'My Calling', a light humourous piece on one of his masters.
That same year he went, from Dehradun, to live with relatives who had moved to Jersey and his first major work, The Room on the Roof (1956), was written because he longed for the familiar images and atmosphere of India. It took him two years to save up enough money to return to India. After staying in Dehra, he also spent some years in Delhi but returned here in 1963 to settle in Mussoorie.
Asked how he felt being 80, he said, "I consider myself very fortunate and blessed by the gods to have had a life without too much distress and disappointment. I have followed my instinct more than intelligence. I am still the impractical dreamer that I was 63 years ago when I decided that writing would be my vocation. I have never written a story or essay unless I have really wanted to write it. little things make me happy -- the sunshine, the birdsong, the bedside book, the potted geranium."
"Books bring me joy. And living up here where the air is sharp and clean and I can look out of my window and see the mountains marching away into the sunset or sunrise. The plants in my room are like my friends."