Ruskin Bond | 19 May

Ruskin Bond | 19 May 

Ruskin Bond  is a Indian Writer, Actor, Poet, Author, Songwriter who born on 19 May 1934 at Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, India. He got the Sahitya Academy Award in 1992 for "Our Still Grow in Dehra" for his published work in English.

He also got Padma Shri Award in 1999 and Pardma Bhushan in 2014. 

About His Life and Career :

Ruskin Bond was born on 19 May,1934 in a military hospital, to Edith Clarke and Aubrey Alexender Bond, in Kasauli, Punjab States Agency, British India. His siblings are Ellen and William. Ruskin's father was with the Royal Air Force from 1939 till 1944. When Bond was eight years old, his mother separated from his father and married Punjabi, Hari. Ellen lived in Ludhiana with his step sister until she died in 2014.

Bond spent his early childhood in Jamnagar (Gujarat) and Shimla. He was extremely close to his father.At the age of ten, after his father's death that year from jaundice,Ruskin was raised by his mother and stepfather who lived in Dehradun. He did his schooling from Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, from where he graduated in 1950 after winning several writing competitions in the school including the Irwin Divinity Prize and the Hailey Literature Prize. He wrote one of his first short stories, "Untouchable", at the age of sixteen in 1951.

Following his high school education he went to his aunt's place in the Channel Islands (U.K.) in 1951 for better prospects and stayed there for two years. In London, he started writing his first novel, The Room on the Roof, the semi-autobiographical story of the orphaned Anglo-Indian boy named Rusty; he did various jobs for a living. It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, (1957) awarded to a British Commonwealth writer under 30. He moved to London and worked in a photo studio while searching for a publisher. After getting it published, Bond used the advance money to pay the sea passage to Bombay and settle in Dehradun.

He worked for a few years freelancing from Delhi and Dehradun. He sustained himself financially by writing short stories and poems for newspapers and magazines. On his youth, he said, "Sometimes I got lucky and some (work) got selected and I earned a few hundred rupees. Since I was in my 20s and didn’t have any responsibilities I was just happy to be doing what I loved doing best." In 1963, he went to live in Mussoorie because besides liking the place, it was close to the editors and publishers in Delhi. He edited a magazine for four years. In the 1980s, Penguin set up in India and approached him for writing a few books. He had written Vagrants in the Valley in 1956, as a sequel to The Room on the Roof. These two novels were published in one volume by Penguin India in 1993. The following year a collection of his non-fiction writings, The Best Of Ruskin Bond was published by Penguin India. His interest in supernatural fiction led him to write popular titles such as Ghost Stories from the Raj, A Season of Ghosts, and A Face in the Dark and other Haunting. Since then he has written over five hundred short stories, essays and novels, including (The Blue Umbrella), Funny Side Up, A Flight of Pigeons and more than 50 books for children. He has also published his autobiography. Scenes from a Writer's Life describes his formative years growing up in Anglo-India and very recently " Lone wolf dancing" .The Lamp is Lit is a collection of essays and episodes from his journal.

All Awards he achieved in his Life :

• John Llewellyn Rhys Prize  in 1957
• Sahitya Academy Award  in 1992
• Padma Shri   in 1999
• Padma Bhushan  in 2014
• Lifetime Achievement Award  in 2017

Films His did : 

• Junnon  (1978)
• 7 Khoon maaf (2011)