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Indo-Anglian writer Ruskin Bond’s lovable
character "Rusty" is set for a comeback after 15 years with Ek
Tha Rusty-2 ready to hit the small screen. Rusty, the fictional avatar
created by the Mussoorie-based writer to impersonate himself in his stories,
will come to Doordarshan in a 52-episode serial, Ek Tha Rusty-2, after
its successful run in the mid-1990s. The 26-episode Ek Tha Rusty-1 had
captured Rusty as a youthful writer at 22, struggling to find a toe-hold in
1940s Indo-Anglian literary firmament. The new serial, based on 10 of Ruskin
Bond’s short stories, follows writer Rusty’s life at 33 when he has
established himself as a "writer of repute". It tries to bring out
the adventurer in Rusty through the stories he encounters on his turf.
Script-writer, director and producer Subhdarshini Singh, who had made Ek
Tha Rusty-1 in 1990s, wrapped up shooting in Mussoorie recently after
almost a month of rigorous filming for the first 20 episodes. "Rusty is
the central character in all the episodes. The stories are not exactly Ruskin
Bond, not the usual children’s stories, but are more romantic and thrilling,
full of mysteries, murders, intrigues, revenge, passion and the strange
characters which inhabit the hills," said Subhdarshini Singh. Rusty will
be played by the popular face on the small screen Bipul Gupta, Singh said.
"He is very good looking - has an Anglo Indian air about him. When Ruskin
Bond heard about Bipul, the writer said he was not as tall as Bipul in his
youth," Singh said. The cast includes Ayub Khan (The Sensualist), Suhashini
Mulay (Ms Bean), Gaurav Sharma and six Sikh actors from Delhi and
Chandigarh to play the sardarjis in Rusty’s adventures. However, the star of
the show is Shristi Bond, the great grand-daughter of Ruskin Bond, whom Singh
describes as a "dark beauty with high cheekbones and an exotic
face". Shristi plays the 12-year-old mysterious Kamala, who captures
Rusty’s heart. "But Rusty’s muse is Sushila (Priyanka Joshi), the
niece of Rusty’s friend in Love is a Sad Song. When he comes to know
that Rusty is in love with Sushila, he is aghast... The love affair
ends," Singh said. The stories (and novellas) that Singh has chosen
include Love is a Sad Song, Who Killed the Rani, The Sensualist, Dead Man’s
Gift, Binya Passes By, Last Time I Saw Delhi, Time Stops at Shamli, Hanging at
Mango Tope, From Small Beginnings and At Green’s Hotel. Singh
has recreated the lifestyle, music and fashion of the 1960s, in which the
stories are set. "Ruskin Bond helped me a lot with the whole atmosphere
of the 1960s. He remembers everything of the 1960s - even the popular songs in
English and Hindi and the Anglo-Indian culture," said the
director. Singh, who made subtle changes in adapting the stories into
screenplays, was helped by her oncologist son Nikhilesh Pratap Singh. Singh
said the serial is interspersed with "sweet romantic details - complete
with an old-world rickshaw" which was commissioned all the way from
Meerut. Rusty pulls the rickshaw with his lady love on it. And she swaps
places with Rusty to pull it in a spirit of romance. "It is a sequence
from the 1960 movie, Love in Shimla (Joy Mukherjee and Sadhna),"
she said. According to her, creating the old Mussorie was difficult because
the landscape has changed. She said, "The whole city is in a mess. At
every location, I had to clear the trash lying around. But I had some good
friends who gave me their homes." Singh, who worked for her last serial
out of the Savoy Hotel 15 years ago, had to settle for lesser-known
locales. "The city has wonderful heritage properties but one has to see
to believe what they have done to the old buildings in the name of restoring
them. The government should take over some abandoned buildings and convert
them into a film city complex... It is a good location for shooting,"
Singh said. Ruskin Bond, 77, born in Kasauli, is one of India’s best short
story and novella writers who has carried the hills of Uttarakhand to the
world with nearly two dozen books. Bond was honoured with the Padma Shri in
1999. — IANS
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