Excerpts
Bonding with the hills

If you go back to the dying years of the 1930s, the dark clouds of war had begun to gather over Europe and when in 1939, World War II broke out, Ruskin’s father in his early forties, joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer, in the cipher section at the Air headquarters in New Delhi. Ruskin’s mother moved to Dehra to live with Grandmother Clerke and he was sent to boarding school at Hampton Court, Convent of Jesus and Mary, in the hill-resort of Mussoorie.

"What was the first day in school like?"

"Oh! It had nothing to do with reading or writing!" Bond remembers. "It was terrible. I kicked and screamed. My mother had come to drop me off as my father was away with the RAF. I didn’t like the idea at all. I think I even kicked the reverend Mother on her shins! Perhaps one of the reasons I was never very popular with her."

True! He never really settled down in Hampton Court, hated the place from day one to the last, to a year and a half later when he left. It wasn’t a cruel place but it lacked character of any kind; it really was a conduit for boys and girls going on to bigger schools in the hill-station. You took nothing away and you left nothing behind. In those days, the nuns was strict and unsympathetic; the food was awful (stringy meat boiled with pumpkins); the boys were for the most part dull and unfriendly, and the girls too subdued. He was taking piano lessons (probably at his father’s behest). The nun who was teaching him would in exasperation strike him over the knuckles whenever he hit the wrong note! Not surprisingly, he soon abandoned the piano. However, Ruskin still remembers a boy he liked who used to share his desk. They used to plan to run away together. So they’d save their tuck: bits of bread, rusks , and other nibbles. All got hard and mouldy. They never did get the opportunity to run away. But still the plan was there, in place, like planning to escape from a prisoner-of-war camp — a sort of "hope springs eternal in the human breast’.

Yet there was no escape. He had to put up with the place for over a year because his father was being moved from Calcutta to Delhi to Karachi. His mother was taken up with her affair with his future stepfather. One day in the middle to the term his mother turned up unexpectedly. Withdrew him from school and he was to find himself not at his grandmother’s place in Dehradun but at the railway station to catch the night train to Delhi.

"Was there anyone with you, escort or chaperone?" I ask.

"No! No one! I was off aboard the train, hurtling into the dark night on my own," he remembers, adding: "It was very soon after that I learnt of my parent’s separation. My father had my custody, Ellen would stay with Calcutta Granny and William would be with my mother."

Looking back sixty years later, Viila Bye, (nee Melville) an old family friend, now settled in New Zealand recalls:

"I think Ruskin was rather a lonely, private person and maybe that is why he found his outlet in writing and maybe his life was sad too. But I think he is also a very caring dedicated human being... His grandparents were of my grandparents’ generation and I met them through my parent’s visits in Dehradun where I was and lived all my childhood, expect when I was in school in Simla. Mrs Sims, Ruskin’s great-grandmother was a tiny, very active, white haired lady bright blue eyes, always up at 6 a.m. to take in and boil the milk before her daughter Mrs Clarke was up! Ruskin’s grandmother, a much larger lady than her mother, who was married to Mr Clarke, who was retired. He had a brother, Major Clarke who wore a full beard and moustache and lived with his wife, a tall white-haired lady, who always smelt of lavender and kept miniatures in a glass case. Their house was just off Rajpur Road leading down to the Rispana, before Dilaram Bazaar. Ruskin’s grandparents had two daughters, Emily, who married Dr Heppolette and eventually was my gynaecologist. They had three sons and relocated to Jersey, Channel Islands where John the eldest son became a bank manager. Edith married Mr Bond and were Ruskin’s parents. They also had a daughter, Ellen who must have had a birth defect. I remember Ruskin as a small boy when he visited his grandparents but as my siblings and I were older, he was just that, a SMALL BOY! I next saw Ruskin when he was staying with his Aunt Emily and Dr Heppolette in Jersey, Channel Islands — I think maybe when his father had died and his mother had gone to live with Mr H.L.? the photographer above his shop in Ashley Hall, Dehra Dun. I don’t think he was happy in Jersey and returned to India at some time, I met Ruskin again, when I returned to Barlowganj. I got to know Ruskin better when we visited Ruskin in Landour. So ones path has crossed many times. I have read some of his books, which deal with parts of his life and some of his children’s books and saw that movie Junoon based on his story A Flight of Pigeons when I was in Delhi. Major Clarke always smoked a cigar and we always knew when he visited as he would leave the end in the drawing room, which left a rather pleasant aroma. Mrs Sims always had a large jar of strong mints that she brought out when we visited and we each got ONE!"

Gradually, Ruskin learnt that his mother was involved with a Punjabi businessman, Mr H.L., a dealer in second-hand cars, who owned an auto repair shop and had left his wife because of the affair.

Arriving at the Delhi railway-station, he remembers meeting his father all dressed up in his Khaki’s and Blue RAF cap. It was only during the meal that he surmised that his parents had separated. When he looks back today, those brief years with his father were probably the happiest days of his childhood. From 1942 to 1943, Ruskin lived with his father in the temporary wartime hutments, possibly without official clearance. With his own health failing, he gave his father his time, his companionship, his complete attention. So, though he saw no schooling during this period, he never complained about it. He could read books, go to pictures, go to Davicos, Wengers, and read books, listen to records, examine his father’s stamp and postcard collection while waiting for him to come back from his duty and take him wherever he wanted to go.

He remembers changing houses four times — from a tent on a bald plain outside Delhi, to a hutment near Humanyun’s tomb; to a couple of rooms on Atul Grove Road, to Hailey’s Road and then to Scindia House, facing Connaught Place. He’d watch his father rustle up breakfast for him, he’d watch him go through his valuable stamp collection and accompany him to the movies. Aubrey Bond encouraged Ruskin to keep a journal, which at first was just lists of singers, movies and records but later it was to give him the discipline of writing regularly by recording all he saw and observed. It was the best of times. Those days were never to come back again.

Of the years spent in Simla, only pleasant memories remain. And the place will always have a special place in his affections. For it was there that he went to school, and it was here that his father and he spent their happiest times together. They stayed on Elysium Hill; took long walks to Kasumpti and around Jakko Hill; sipped milk-shakes at Davico’s; saw plays at the Gaiety Theatre (happily still in existence); fed the monkeys at the temple on Jakko; picnicked in Chhota Simla. All these during the short summer break when his father (on leave from the Air Force) came up to see him. He told him stories of phantom-rickshaws and enchanted forests and planted in him the seeds of his writing career. Ruskin was only ten when his father died. But Aubrey Bond had already passed on to his son his love for the hills. And even after Ruskin had finished school and grown to manhood, he was to return to the hills again and again — to Simla and Mussoorie, Himachal and Garhwal — because, as he put it: ‘Once the mountains are in one’s blood, there is no escape.’

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