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Roads to Mussoorie
Indeed, Bond’s Mussoorie teems with activity. He, thus, is a virtual fund of stories about the locals but globalises these experiences by linking them with a life lived in England and other cities in India. Add to that, some facts garnered from historical books, some myths and some local history, a poem or two thrown in for good measure, and voila! We have a vintage Bond here. Bond starts his book with a ‘backward’ "because that’s the kind of person I’ve always been … backwards" he ends it with a ‘forward’, "for forward we must march…..life has always got something new to offer." And with equal whimsy, he ends his forward leaving readers to go back to their chores while he walks the Himalayan slopes along with butterflies which came to ‘invite’ him. Reading Bond has now become synonymous with ‘comfort.’ No hurry there, no hurly - burly bumpy rides into the fortune of people inadvertently tossed about by the crashing waves of life. But, yes, you may certainly come across ‘bhoot aunty’ who would, in a ghoulish fashion, cause serious accidents to the unfortunate people who offer her a lift on the slopes of Mussoorie. The ghost section is certainly one of the more hair raising ones in the book. Other segments find Bond in different moods — nostalgic and whimsical, rambunctious and poetic. A particularly amusing section is ‘The year of the kissing and other good times,’ where he talks of Mussoorie’s easy-going morality before the advent of the missionaries. And, of course, there’s lots being said about the roads to Mussoorie. On the way the roads may bifurcate to episodes about breakfasts (good, bad, middling) which could even include a leopard breakfasting on a lady housekeeper or the description of the various drivers he’s been driven by or even a stopover for a ‘Cold Beer at Chutmalpur.’ In between his forays on the roads, he may pause to give a lesson on how Cautley’s Canal came about or pay a little obeisance to the ‘Sacred Shrines along the Way’. At the end of the road lies his destination, Mussoorie, populated by his good old friends, his adoptive family, people who pester him by landing up at siesta time and who would ask him to go over their books or manuscripts. For Bond its been a long road stretch, some of it rocky, some pleasant but at the end of the day, he is content, saying that he may have failed to reach the top of the mountain because of his own gentle pace "but the long walk has brought its own rewards, buttercups and butterflies along the way." |
ANOTHER delightful little gem from the pen of the
storyteller of the hills — Ruskin Bond. The choices that Bond made in
life and the experiences that have ensued thereof have resulted in a
series of books, Roads to Mussoorie being the latest.