Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The Ruskin Bond Festival

One Indian writer I always wanted to read but never got down to was Ruskin Bond. I only heard and read stories of this mysterious writer who lived in the hills of Mussoorie and wrote children's stories and other stuff and wrote stories for a living. So the other day I picked up several of his books from the bookstore and started reading them one after another.

The collection included 'The Best of Ruskin Bond' which has many short stories, excerpts from his novels and a novella that made its appearance the frist time, 'A Season of Ghosts' a collection of ghost stories and one detective story, his first novel which he wrote at 17 'The Room On The Roof' and 'Vagrants In The Valley' a two-in-one, 'A Handful of Nuts' a novella on his younger days amid friends, 'Landour Days' and 'Roads to Mussoorie' both short essays and articles about his days in the hills and plains of Dehradun, 'Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra' a collection of stories which includes 'The Flight of Pigeons' which was made into a movie Junoon.

Reading the books is easy, pleasurable and for the first time since my childhood, I got thesame feeling that one gets during the first days of the summer vacation when you have a seemingly endless stretch of vacation before you, a good book to rerad and no one to disturb you in your kingdom. Ruskin Bond's books have that pace, that ambience and flavour and are ideal to curl up with and read. More on them later.

1 comment:

Harimohan said...

Mohit, I did not read that story. Did not figure in the books I got. But I am sure it's an enjoyable read surely. Mr. Bond has a quirky sense of humour when it comes to the macabre.