Ruskin Bond 

(born 19 May 1934) is an Indian author of British descent. He

was born in Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) and has lived in Landour since the
1960s, having previously also lived, as a child and young man,
in Shimla, Jamnagar, Mussoorie, Dehradun, andLondon. Most of his writings
show a strong influence from the social life in the hill stations at foothills of
theHimalayas, where he spent his childhood. He is considered to be an icon
among Indian writers and children's authors and a top novelist earlier. He was
awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for contributions to children's literature.

Life History
Ruskin Bond was born on the dying days of the British Raj. a somewhat lonely
childhood, marked by his parents' divorce and his mother's remarriage. His
father had died in 1944 during World War II, when Ruskin was 10, and he was
raised by his mother, stepfather (an Indian businessman) and other relatives.
For a while, he attended Hampton Court School. He completed his schooling at
Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, Given his childhood in various hill stations,
most of his writings revolve around the foothills of the Himalayas, especially the
greater Doon Valley, including Landour, Mussoorie, Dehradun and points nearby
in southwestern Uttarakhand. As a young man, he spent four years in the
Channel Islands and London. He has lived in Mussoorie-Landour since 1962.
Among blood relatives, Bond has two sisters, one living in England and one in
India (the latter with her stepfather's daughter by his first marriage). His
brother first left India for England, then England for Canada, where he has
resided since 1967. He also has two half-brothers from his mother's remarriage
after his father's death.

An icon of Indian literature

As a writer, he is as productive as ever in his early seventies, and gets many of
his ideas by reminiscing while gazing out of the windows of his apartment
towards the Lower WesternHimalaya, the Pauri Hills and the Doon Valley from
his perch atop Mullingar Hill in Landour Cantonment. He can always reach into
his rich life experience, especially his childhood and early adulthood, for yet
another story line or another evocative character. Over the course of a writing
career spanning forty years, he has written over a hundred short stories,
essays, novels, and more than thirty books for children. The Room On The
Roof was his first novel, written when he was seventeen and it received
the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial prize in 1957. Vagrants In The
Valley was also written in his teens and picked up from where The Room On
The Roof left off. These two novellas were published in one volume by Penguin
India in 1993 as was a much-acclaimed collection of his non-fiction writing, Rain
In The Mountains,Delhi Is Not Far : The Best Of Ruskin Bond was published by
Penguin India the following year. Ruskin Bond received the Sahitya
Akademi Award for English writing in India for 1992, for Our Trees Still Grow In
Dehra. Of his autobiography, Scenes from a Writer's Life, published in 1997,V.S.
Naipaul said: "I have read nothing like that from India or anywhere else. It's
very simple. Everything is underplayed, and the truths of the book come rather
slowly at you. He is writing about solitude, tremendous solitude. He himself
doesn't say it. He leaves it all to you to pick up. I haven't read another book
about solitude from India. In a way, from this great Subcontinent so full of
people, to write a book about solitude is quite an achievement." His interest in
the paranormal led him to write popular titles like 'Ghost Stories from the Raj',
'A Season of Ghosts', 'A Face in the dark and other hauntings' and more...5
novels, 73 short stories, 10 essays, 6 travel writings, 10 songs and poems. A tv
series based on his stories was adapted into a popular serial "ek tha rusty"
(once there was rusty )on doordarshan . Recently one of Ruskin Bond’s short
stories has been adapted by Vishal Bharadwaj into a Bollywood movie called
The Blue Umbrella (2005) (also credited as Chatri Chor) directed by Vishal
Bharadwaj. Bond’s story, A Flight of Pigeons, set in pre-independence India was
also made into a movie, Junoon (1978) by director Shyam Benegal.

List of works
Novels

 The Room on the Roof

 Vagrants in the Valley
 Delhi is not Far
 A Flight of Pigeons
 The Sensualist
 The India I Love
 Rain in the Mountains
 The Lamp is Lit
 Funny Side Up
 Strangers in the Night

Short stories

 The Woman on Platform 8

 Cricket for the Crocodile
 The Blue Umbrella
 Ghost Trouble
 Angry River
 Dust on the Mountain
 A Guardian Angel
 The Photograph
 Death of a Familiar
 The Coral Tree
 The Kite Maker
 The Window
 The Monkeys
  The Girl on the Train
 Chachi's Funeral
 The Prospect of Flowers
 The Man who was Kipling
 A Case for Inspector Lal
 The Eyes Have It
 The Story of Madhu
 A Job Well Done
 The Boy who Broke the Bank
 The Cherry Tree
 *The umbrella man
 The blue umbrella
 The wish
 His Neighbour's Wife
 My Father's Trees in Dehra
 Panther's Moon
 The Garlands on his Brow
 The Tunnel
 Sita and the River
 Love is a Sad Song
 When You Can't Climb Trees Anymore
 A Love of Long Ago
 The Funeral
 The Night Train at Deoli
 Time Stops at Shamli
 Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra
 Pret in the House
 My Grandfather's Private Zoo
 A Life in the Dark
 The Girl from Copenhagen
 Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright
 Tiger in the House
 My Father's Trees in Dehra
 The Thief

Essays and Vignettes

 Life at my own pace

 The old gramophone
 A little world of mud
 Adventures of a book lover
 Upon an old wall dreaming
 Landour days
 Funny Side Up
Travel Writings

 Tales of the open road

 Ganga descends
 Beautiful Mandakini
 On the road to Badrinath
 Flowers on the Ganga
 Roads to Mussoorie
 Anmol is the best
 The Road To Bazaar

Songs and Love Poems

 Lost Love lyric for Binya Devi

 It isn't time thats passing
 Kites

Film Credits

 Junoon (1978 film) Flight of Pigeons - Writer 156

 Cherry tree
 Lovers observed
 Lone fox dancing
 Secondhand shop in a hill station
 A frog screams
 A song for lost friends
 Raindrop
 Granny's tree climbing
 Abhishek's life
 The blue umbrella

External links

 Let's Meet Ruskin

 Bond Reminisces
 Ruskin Bond weblog
 Ruskin Bond in a Video reciting 2 of his Poems