Writing for My Life , livre ebook
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207
pages
English
Ebook
2021
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Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
18 octobre 2021
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789354922794
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Publié par
Date de parution
18 octobre 2021
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789354922794
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
RUSKIN BOND
Writing for My Life
The Very Best of Ruskin Bond
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Introduction
DREAMS OF CHILDHOOD
Faraway Places
The Woman on Platform No. 8
So Well-Remembered: Miss Kellner and the Magic Biscuit Tin
The Canal
Chachi s Funeral
The Boy Who Broke the Bank
RUSTY AND FRIENDS
Rusty Plays Holi
The Crooked Tree
As Time Goes By
The Playing Fields of Simla
Rusty and Kishen Return to Dehra
Reunion at the Regal
LIFE WITH MY FATHER
Life with My Father
Simla and Delhi, 1943
My Father s Last Letter
DEHRA IN MY TEENS
The Skeleton in the Cupboard
At Green s Hotel
The Late Night Show
His Neighbour s Wife
The Window
JERSEY AND LONDON
A Far Cry from India
Three Jobs in Jersey
And Another in London
Return to Dehra
RETURN TO INDIA
A Handful of Nuts
Sita and the River
The Tunnel
Susanna s Seven Husbands
Bhabiji s House
TO THE HILLS
Binya Passes By
Wilson s Bridge
The Monkeys
The Prospect of Flowers
When Darkness Falls
Dust on the Mountain
THE RIPLEY-BEAN MYSTERIES
Born Evil
Strychnine in the Cognac
The Black Dog
ENVOI
The Joy of Water
Rain
Sounds I Like to Hear
Some Night Thoughts
Footnotes
So Well-Remembered: Miss Kellner and the Magic Biscuit Tin
Life with My Father
And Another in London
Bhabiji s House
Some Night Thoughts
Follow Penguin
Copyright
Introduction
I t has been over twenty-five years since Penguin Random House India brought out The Best of Ruskin Bond , and I am grateful to see (from my royalty statements) that it is still one of the most popular titles. But there were many good things that couldn t get into it; and there have been many stories, essays, poems and memories written in recent years, from which a selection of the best can easily be made. And with the help of Premanka Goswami, my editor, I have made a selection of some of my own favourites and some that have elicited a favourable response from my readers.
My grandson Gautam wants to know if I m going to give a title to this collection, apart from the rather staid Volume 2
What would you suggest? I ask.
Rocky Two, he replies.
Obviously, he s a fan of Sylvester Stallone.
The memories of the school boxing-ring are not as inspiring. A black eye and a broken tooth were my rewards for putting on the gloves. I was better at football and had a good left-footed kick. Had kick-boxing been an approved sport, I might have fared better.
Games and other physical and Spartan activities were compulsory in my dear old school, and when I wanted to escape P.T. or the marathon run, I d slip away and take refuge in the school library. I would enter by the French windows, which I could open without a key. Reading was almost a secret activity.
That s how I became a writer. Hundreds of books at my disposal! Classics, modern novels, plays, biographies, story collections, crime fiction, I had my pick-and I picked freely. Hardly anyone used the library.
There were even those early Penguins, and it was through them that I discovered many contemporary authors. There was Somerset Maugham s The Moon and Sixpence ; Graham Greene s Brighton Rock ; Compton Mackenzie s Carnival ; Arthur Machen s Holy Terrors ; Maurice Collis s Trials in Burma ; and a host of others.
I resolved that I, too, would be a Penguin author one day, and this dream was realized when, in the early 1970s, my children s story Angry River appeared in the Puffin list. Then, in 1986, Penguin came to India, and I adopted that floppy literary bird and persuaded it to publish no less than seventy of my titles, in the Penguin, Puffin and Penguin Random House format.
The first story was published in the Illustrated Weekly of India in 1951, the year after I finished school. My first novel was published in 1956 by Andre Deutsch, in London, and later reprinted by Penguin India. I have been writing for seventy years, and for most of that time I ve made a living from it. Is that a boast? Well then, as Walt Whitman wrote: Do I celebrate myself? Very well then, I celebrate myself!
After a lifetime of sitting at a sunny desk, putting words to paper, I think I m allowed a small boast. And if no one else will pat me on the back, I shall stand against the wall with my back to it, and rub myself like a cat.
Speaking of cats, a lot of my stories have been about big cats-leopards and tigers-and other wild creatures, and the hills and forests in which they survive. I have also written a lot about childhood-my own and others -and stories about lonely people and their dreams. And I like going back in time and recreating scenes from the past.
Some of these stories are here. And many in which I celebrate the world of Nature, which has meant so much to me. We are fortunate to be living on a green planet, probably the only one in our galaxy. But over the centuries humans have done their best to desecrate it, to strip it of its forests and grasslands and its clean sparkling streams. We must try to reverse this process, so difficult in the face of a proliferation of the human race. Nature has always rewarded us when we have respected its presence. Destroy it, and we destroy ourselves.
DREAMS of CHILDHOOD
FARAWAY PLACES
A nil and his parents lived in a small coastal town on the Kathiawar peninsula, where Anil s father was an engineer in the Public Works Department. The boy attended the local school but as his home was some way out of town, he hadn t the opportunity of making many friends.
Sometimes he went for a walk with his father or mother, but most of the time they were busy, his mother in the house, his father in the office, and as a result he was usually left to his own resources. However, one day Anil s father took him down to the docks, about two miles from the house. They drove down in a car, and took the car right up to the pier.
It was a small port, with a cargo steamer in dock, and a few fishing vessels in the harbour. But the sight of the sea and the ships put a strange longing in Anil s heart.
The fishing vessels plied only up and down the Gulf. But the little steamer, with its black hull and red and white funnel held romance, the romance of great distances and faraway ports of call, with magical names like Yokohama, Valparaiso, San Diego, London
Anil s father knew the captain of the steamer, and took his son aboard. The captain was a Scotsman named Mr MacWhirr, a very jolly person with a thunderous laugh that showed up a set of dirty yellow teeth. Mr MacWhirr liked to chew tobacco and spit it all over the deck, but he offered Anil s father the best of cigarettes and produced a bar of chocolate for Anil.
Well, young man, he said to the boy with a wink, how would you like to join the crew of my ship, and see the world?
I d like to, very much, captain sir, said Anil, looking up uncertainly at his father.
The captain roared with laughter, patted Anil on the shoulder, and spat tobacco on the floor.
You d like to, eh? I wonder what your father has to say to that!
But Anil s father had nothing to say.
Anil visited the ship once again with his father, and got to know the captain a little better; and the captain said, Well, boy, whenever you ve nothing to do, you re welcome aboard my ship. You can have a look at the engines, if you like, or at anything else that takes your fancy.
The next day Anil walked down to the docks alone, and the captain lowered the gangplank especially for him. Anil spent the entire day on board, asking questions of the captain and the crew. He made friends quickly, and the following day, when he came aboard, they greeted him as though he was already one of them.
Can I come with you on your next voyage? he asked the captain. I can scrub the deck and clean the cabins, and you don t have to pay me anything.
Captain MacWhirr was taken aback, but a twinkle came into his eye, and he put his head back and laughed indulgently. You re just the person we want! We sail any day now, my boy, so you d better get yourself ready. A little more cargo, and we ll be steaming into the Arabian Sea. First call Aden, then Suez, and up the Canal!
Will you tell me one or two days before we sail, so that I can get my things ready? asked Anil.
I ll do that, said the captain. But don t you think you should discuss this with your father? Your parents might not like being left alone so suddenly.
Oh, no, sir, I can t tell them; they wouldn t like it at all. You won t tell them, will you, captain sir?
No, of course not, my boy, said Captain MacWhirr, with a huge wink.
During the next two days Anil remained at home, feverishly excited, busily making preparations for the voyage. He filled a pillowcase with some clothes, a penknife and a bar of chocolate, and hid the bundle in an old cupboard.
At dinner, one evening, the conversation came around to the subject of ships, and Anil s mother spoke to her husband, I understand your friend, the captain of the cargo ship, sails tonight.
That s right, said the boy s father. We won t see him again for sometime.
Anil wanted to interrupt and inform them that Captain MacWhirr wouldn t be sailing yet, but he did not want to arouse his parents suspicions. And yet, the more he pondered over his mother s remark, the less certain he felt. Perhaps the ship was sailing that night; perhaps the captain had mentioned the fact to Anil s parents so that the information could be passed on. After all, Anil hadn t been down to the docks for two days, and the captain couldn t have had the opportunity of notifying Anil of the ship s imminent departure.
Anyway, Anil decided there was no time to lose. He went to his room and, collecting the bundle of clothes, slipped out of the house. His parents were sitting out on the verandah and for a while Anil stood outside in the gathering dusk, watching them. He felt a pang of regret at having to leave them alone for so long, perhaps several months; he would have liked to take th
