Ruskin Bond, one of the most loved authors by adults and children alike, turned 85 today. On his birthday, Ruskin Bond released a memoir titled 'Coming Round the Mountain'.
Coming Round the Mountain is the third installment of Bond’s award-winning memoir series for children that includes Looking for the Rainbow and Till the Clouds Roll By. In Looking for the Rainbow, Bond described the two years he had spent with his father when he was just nine years old, and in Till the Clouds Roll By he talked about the sudden change in his circumstances, the efforts he had to make to adjust to a new and very different life with his mother and stepfather.
Now, the third part of the series will deal with Bond’s story as a boy of thirteen during the crucial year of India’s partition.
On his birthday, here are few quotes by him that capture the beauty of life...
All glory comes from daring to begin.
All things beautiful are easily destroyed.
The past is always with us, for it feeds the present.
Happiness is a mysterious thing, to be found somewhere between too little and too much.
A story never really ends and happiness is something that comes and goes. It is as rare as a rainbow.
In our imperfect world, there is far too much talk and not enough thought.
One sure way to lose the world and everything in it, is to try grasping it.
And when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.
Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.
At the age of eight, Bond escaped his jail-like boarding school in the hills and went on to live with his father in Delhi. His time in the capital is filled with books, visits to the cinema, music, and walks and conversations with his father - a dream life for a curious and wildly imaginative boy, which turns tragic all too soon.
His first novel "The Room on the Roof", written when he was 17, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then, Bond has written a number of novellas, essays, poems and children's books. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.
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 "Ruskin Bond Illustration: Gajanan Nirphale")
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