Governor honours Ruskin Bond

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, December 19

Governor KK Paul felicitated renowned author Ruskin Bond here on Sunday. He spoke about the author’s works and appreciated the love for nature and people that had been expressed by Bond in his vast body of writing.

The Governor said he was introduced to the author’s writing through Junoon, the film made by Shyam Benegal on Bond’s novella “A Flight of Pigeons” and had then read the novella. The Governor said Bond’s love for mountains, his deep attachment to Dehradun and Mussoorie and his belief in the goodness of human nature made his works so popular among readers.

He said Bond’s love for the Doon valley was known to all and it was this emotion that had lent a deeper beauty to his writing about the valley.

The Governor congratulated the author for his having been recently honoured with the lifetime achievement award by the Times of India.

Ruskin Bond, while speaking on the occasion, spoke about his love for Dehradun and said when he had gone to the UK while he was a teenager, he had greatly missed his friends in Dehra, the mountains, the trees and the environment of the valley .This had made him return within two years. “Since 1963, I have been living in Mussoorie. Writing gives me a lot of freedom. Nature is my inspiration. I wrote many a story in the 1960s and 1970s when I was living in a cottage next to the forest near Barlowganj in Mussoorie,” Bond said.

The author shared with the audience his way of conceiving a plot, lifestyle, visualisation of a story and his sense of humour. He said though it was good that people were reading e-books these days, there was nothing like reading a real book.

The audience consisted of writers, academicians, publishers, journalists and several other eminent persons of Dehradun where Ruskin Bond also shared some personal anecdotes and had several enthralling lighter moments.