Five Ruskin Bond books that you should be reading

Five of Ruskin Bond’s best books

“Memory is a writer’s best friend,” Ruskin Bond writes in his latest book, a charming collection of vignettes and ruminations drawn from a life lived quietly, gracefully and always on his own terms. While the book, which hit the bookstores on May 19th, Bond’s 91st birthday, is a definite must-buy, there are others by this beloved writer that you shouldn’t miss.

Here are some of them

Written when Bond was just 17, this charming bildungsroman chronicles the adventures of a 16-year-old orphaned Anglo-Indian boy, Rusty, who runs away from home. Along the way, he makes deep, abiding friendships, experiences love and heartbreak, and garners life-enriching experiences, with his coming-of-age journey spilling into Bond’s next book, Vagrants In The Valley.

The Room on the Roof, which went on to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957, is also a portrait of post-independence Dehradun, taking you straight into the heart of the markets, bylanes, food and culture of this town, located on the foothills of the Himalayas.

Set in Shajahanpur, around the time of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, A Flight of Pigeons tells the story of a young girl, Ruth Labadoor, who witnesses her father being murdered in front of her in a church by the mutineers and is forced to go into hiding with her family. The book, which was made into a film, Junoon, by Shyam Benegal, details how the family survives this turbulent period.

“It is always the same with mountains. Once you have lived with them for any length of time, you belong to them. There is no escape,” writes Bond in his 1993 book Rain In The Mountains: Notes From The Himalayas, a semi-autobiographical selection of musings, essays, poems and stories, chosen from writing created over a twenty-five-year period, between the seventies and the nineties.

A personal favourite that always leaves me chortling and wanting more, In Grandfather’s Garden has a vast selection of unforgettable characters, both human and non-human. These include the rather high-strung Aunt Mabel, an incredibly annoying Uncle Ken, an extremely cool Grandfather with a penchant for snakes and crocodiles and a long-suffering, though fairly level-headed, grandmother.