Writing has become fashionable: Ruskin Bond

“It’s a lonely profession,” admits renowned author Ruskin Bond as he talks about living the life of a writer. At 77, the Sahitya Akademi Award winning author maintains his sense of humour alright. “My mother used to say that I was simply wasting my time. Well, 30-40 years back, you didn’t become a celebrity when you became a writer,” Bond laughs. His take on writing as a job is frank. “Writing has become fashionable now. But I always felt that a writer should be read, not seen or heard too much. You shut yourself in a room and just put your personality on the paper,” he opines.

An Indian author of British descent, Bond has written numerous short stories, novellas, essays, and poems. But the author is indeed most known for his books for children. Bond’s latest book,

The Kashmiri Storyteller, brings to life folktales from the land of Kashmir: “It was written about 20 years back, and I discovered it in one of my boxes while searching for something else. I got the book in the form that I wanted — with colourful illustrations. So they’re a sort of prairies; some stories emanated from Kashmir and sound familiar even, maybe because folklores know no boundaries. Folklores are like that. In fact, a lot originated here in India. Remember Panchatantra?”

He confesses that it’s tough to hold a kid’s attention. “You have to catch their attention on page 1. With adults you can waffle about, but with a kid you have to get on with the story and the characters have to be identifiable,” Bond explains, reiterating that the best compliments he gets are those that come from kids. He cites, “A kid once said, ‘I like your ghost stories but they’re not scary enough’. Another girl, when her teacher asked what she liked about my works, said, ‘Well, he’s not a bad writer!’” he says with a hearty laugh.

Ask him how he tackles ‘writer’s block’ and once again Bond’s pokerfaced humour seeps in, as he says, “Yesterday I tore up a paper after writing 20-30 lines of a poem… that’s one cure. I don’t hesitate to tear things up and always keep a paper basket close!”