Author Ruskin Bond joins Twitter!

Beloved author Ruskin Bond joined Twitter on Friday evening.  His first tweet read- 

Hello, world. Delighted to be on Twitter.

— Ruskin Bond (@RealRuskinBond) January 22, 2016

Bond is currently attending the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival.  At a session on Thursday, Bond was in conversation with Ravi Singh, Founder, Speaking Tiger, an independent publishing house where he spoke about his literary career.

"A lot of my earlier stories are actual experiences, characters, experiences and situations, which I then turned into fictional narratives. In order to tell a good story, you have to manipulate, and this is how learning continues in order to be a good writer," the 81-year-old writer said.

Many of Ruskin Bond's stories have a running trope of a lonely child, something which is a reflection of the author's own young life. "If you have a lonely childhood, it makes you more sensitive to the problems of other children. When I see such a child, I see something of myself in them and my sympathy and empathy goes out to them," he said.

The author recently brought out a brand new Rusty adventure after more than a decade in which the orphaned Anglo-Indian boy sets out with his friends to explore a mysterious mountain. For several decades now, Bond's inimitable stories about Rusty have enthralled and entertained children.

Bond recalled his brief time with his father, who influenced a lot of his writing, describing the period when the two of them were living in Delhi. "He was my first friend, he would often take me to monuments, Humayun's tomb, Red Fort, Chandni Chowk and he would tell me the history behind them. That was the genesis of my writing," Bond said.

With agency inputs.