Lone Fox in the twilight

The Hill of Enchantment: The Story of My Life as a Writer

Author: Ruskin Bond

Publisher: Aleph

Price: Rs 399   

Pages: 128

For readers and non-readers alike, Ruskin Bond has been a beacon of Indian literature for children, especially in the short-story genre. His literary alter-ego, Rusty, stands within the ranks of Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five or RK Narayan’s Malgudi. But the man behind the stories is equally appealing. 
 

Ruskin Bond, over the years, has revealed himself, honestly and with fair judgement, in his memoirs and autobiographies, from Scenes from a Writer’s Life (1997) to Lone Fox Dancing  (2017). At 90, after having written hundreds of stories, a handful of novels, and a significant amount of nonfiction in terms of letters and essays to his readers, he brings another delightful treat, The Hill of Enchantment: The Story of My Life as a Writer.
 

“If a writer wishes to create a little magic with his pen, he must find a little magic in his life. Magic is there if we look for it,” so begins the latest Ruskin Bond memoir, where he talks about the mystical wind that moves a writer. 
 

As a writer who penned his first poem as a schoolboy to now at age 90, he keeps seeking the sacred wind and it keeps finding him. The Hill of Enchantment  is a life- affirming recollection of his journey as a young reader and a youthful writer, his travels between hills and cities and beyond the ocean, the wins and the rejections in between, and of his twilight years, as he welcomes the change in and the evolution of the literary landscape, with the advent of the internet and large-scale literary festivals celebrating the spirit of literature.
 

This memoir is a tribute to the lifelong connections he made at the start of his writing career, as he wrote for magazines (many, now out of print) – “anyone who would publish me!” he writes. It also records his tryst with a long line of editors and publishers, including the Irish editor of Illustrated Weekly of India,  CR Mandy, who was succeeded by Khushwant Singh (founder of  Yojana  magazine, for which Ruskin Bond also wrote); Britain’s oldest magazine,  Blackwood’s ; David Davidar from Penguin and later, Aleph Book Company, and Rajen Mehra of Rupa Publications.
 

Once scared of going out of print and running out of stories, Bond now cherishes his readership with gratitude, and has lived the life the narrator in Tales of Fosterganj (2013) dreamt of: “All I wanted was a quiet life, a writing pad, books to read, flowers to gaze upon, and sometimes a little love, a little kiss….” 
 

In the Ruskin Bond universe, there is a very thin line between life and literature – the people he has met, the places he has been to, the birds that visit him and the animals he encountered, all make it to his stories. Gifted with a robust imagination, he also invents some of his characters, especially those in his ghost stories, or the comforting, warm accounts of his grandparents, which are far from the reality of his time with them (as he has revealed in  Lone Fox Dancing ). His writing is anchored in nature; he preserves the imparting wisdom of the trees, rivers, birds, monkeys and tigers of the natural world. He sees magic in the world and it reflects in his work. Reading him is like talking to an old friend or listening to the tales of a grandfather; slightly repetitious, a feature of his later books, but always charming.
 

Ruskin Bond has had his fair share of desolation in life: from his father’s death when he was barely 10 years old, to the lonesome years with his mother and hunting-enthusiast stepfather that followed, to the years he spent doing odd jobs in Jersey and London, or the reluctant city-years in Delhi after he returned to India. 
 

Of the years he spent abroad, he writes, “it was an existence not a life”. To add to it, the bias against his Anglo-Indian descent has kept him humbled— from being a lonely young boy in the mountains as an “Angrez”, to being unfairly tried for what he calls a “mildly erotic story”,  The Sensualist  (2009), in a Bombay court, (he was acquitted in the case), to being confused for an American spy by a PWD engineer in his CARE (Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere) years, to recently being asked to pay extra for a ticket at the Konark Sun Temple because he didn’t look Indian. That is not to say the Indian establishment ignored him. He has been awarded the third- and the fourth-highest civilian awards in India, Padma Bhushan (2014) and Padma Shri (1999), respectively, as well as a Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 2021.
 

These are details one can find across his memoirs, but not all of them feature in The Hill of Enchantment ; the latter is a much more optimistic undertaking, leaning towards the brighter side of life, like his stories. “I don't suppose I would have written so much about childhood or even about other children if my own childhood had been all happiness and delight,” he confesses in  Scenes from a Writer’s Life. Nonetheless, Ruskin Bond has created a treasury of a lifetime’s worth of experiences and wisdom with his writing, carving out a space in children’s literature that cannot be filled by any other writer, not for a long time at least.

The reviewer is a freelance feature writer. Instagram: @read.dream.repeat