Ruskin Bond cancels his public birthday celebrations in solidarity with Pahalgam victims
Mussoorie: Celebrated author
Ruskin Bond
, who traditionally celebrates his birthday with fans at the
Cambridge Book Store
in Mussoorie, has called off this year's public celebration as a mark of respect for the victims of the
Pahalgam terror attack
.Speaking to TOI, Bond, who turns 91 on May 19, said, "I was hoping to celebrate my birthday with my readers at Cambridge Book Store.
But I have decided not to have a public celebration this year.
" He added, "Pahalgam tragedy is still fresh in our minds which was murder in cold blood followed by an unpleasant conflict. We must stand firmly with the victims and their families as they endure this trauma." He assured his readers that he plans to visit the bookstore in June and meet them in person.Meanwhile, the author's new book, 'Life's Magic Moments', was scheduled to be released on his birthday. He said that the book draws from his life's experiences. "It comprises quiet thoughts from a quiet fellow," he said.Addressing his young readers, Bond offered words of encouragement and said, "If you follow your passion and make a career around things that interest you, you shall be happy."
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The Hindu
11 hours ago
- The Hindu
Ruskin Bond turns 91, and releases his latest book
'I am a very lazy writer,' declares Ruskin Bond, with a Duchenne smile that extends to his eyes, twinkling behind thick, black-framed spectacles. A couple of pages a day is all that he is committed to writing because 'I think if I worked too hard, I wouldn't write well. I've got to enjoy it'. Bond's daily routine certainly sounds rather idyllic. 'I like to write for an hour or two, usually before breakfast, because there is not much disturbance,' says Bond, whose reputation as a highly accessible writer often leads to random strangers ringing his doorbell at frequent intervals. 'Young people sleep very late now and are not getting up till noon, so I am safe till then,' he laughs. 'I give up some time every day to writing and a lot of time to reading, apart from sleeping and eating.' Writing leisurely also seems to have been the secret to his long career — the prolific author has written over 500 short stories and more than 70 books for children, besides several essays, and novellas since he began his writing journey in 1956, with The Room on the Roof, penned when he was all of 17. 'Writing has got to be a pleasant job. That is how I have managed to keep going for so long,' he insists. Even when he had his doubts, it was 'sheer stubbornness' that kept him going, choosing the writerly life over and over again, remarks Bond. 'You know, in those early years, paying the bills could be a problem. I could send an article or a story, but it took time, sometimes, to get paid.' But he took it in his stride, approaching it like an adventure, he says. 'When you are young and single and healthy, you can do these things. You can take this risk and put up with certain hardships or difficulties or shortage of funds.' Ultimately, of course, his persistence, coupled with his confidence in the ability to write, paid off. 'It is a matter of establishing one's name,' he says, referring to it as an ongoing process. 'I've never stopped writing… sitting back and saying that I've done enough and that I've got nothing more to say,' says Bond, whose latest book, Life's Magic Moments (Penguin India, ₹ 399), was launched on May 19, coinciding with his 91st birthday. It also helps that he keeps a journal, 'not very regularly, but I've had many periods where I've put down my feelings, thoughts and observations,' he says, adding, 'There is always something to say if you are observant. A writer shouldn't run out of materials or ideas.' Real life clearly inspires Bond, the creator of some of literature's most memorable characters, including Rusty, a young Anglo-Indian boy, clearly based on Bond himself, eccentric relatives like Uncle Ken and Aunt Mabel and a vast menagerie of animals, like Toto the monkey, Harold the hornbill and Timothy the tiger. 'I'm not very good at making up characters who are purely fictional,' confesses Bond, who relies on his excellent memory, instead, basing his stories on people he has actually encountered. 'Basically, they start off as real people. While putting them in a story, they might acquire different characteristics and change into different people,' he says. 'By and large, I change characters a bit so they don't always recognise themselves.' Exploring life's magic moments Life's Magic Moments, too, is culled from his own life, an amalgamation of observations, reflections, musings, and memories about it. 'I send you these little confidences — quiet thoughts of a quiet fellow — telling you something about my life, my writing, the world around me and the passage of time,' he writes in the book's foreword. 'Allow me to share some of my golden days with you.' From the sudden blooming of a tiny yellow flower in an abandoned flowerpot to the joy of knowing that he can still read, despite his fading eyesight, and the delight of discovering a mountain spring on a hot day, the book is chock-full of what the world of trauma therapy would likely describe as 'glimmers', those tiny moments of positivity, gratitude and beauty that help us feel calm and connected to the world we live in. 'There is joy in small things, too,' he further states in the foreword. 'Look for the ladybird, the firefly in the night.' There is more to the book, including the secret pleasures offered by tin roofs and windows, Bond's deep, if somewhat perilous, affinity towards pickles, the close relationship between cheerfulness and corpulence and, my personal favourite — the appearance of a rather ornery three-legged, semi-Persian cat named Mimi, who constantly tussles with Bond 'for the occupancy of the easy chair,' he writes, pointing out that if she loses, she takes her revenge by sitting down on the leafiest geranium. 'She is very arrogant and aristocratic, not the type of cat who'll sit on your lap,' he says, with a guffaw. 'She is the boss here… rules the roost… is the managing director of the household.' Long before Indian ecofiction became mainstream, Bond has been writing about animals and trees and revelling in Nature, gently hinting at larger themes like climate crisis, human-animal conflict, and shrinking wild spaces, without ever sounding pedantic, preachy or grimly prophetic. This deep, abiding love for the natural world finds its way into every page of the book, which is packed with ruminations about flowers, trees, earthworms, butterflies, birds and more. 'My relationship with Nature is deep, but it has grown over the years,' he agrees, adding that it was not so deep or so passionate when he was younger. 'When we are young, we take everything for granted: the trees, the forests, the animals,' he explains. Only later does worry set in as one begins to wonder what is going wrong with the planet since these wonderful creations are not there anymore, he says. 'I am in my dressing gown and sweater, and having to use a heater in the middle of summer. It is pretty obvious that it is climate change, and I don't know how some world leaders can deny it.' Despite his vast body of work and the many accolades he has received for it over the years, including a John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957, the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992, the Padma Shri in 1999, and the Padma Bhushan in 2014, Bond insists that reading has always been his first love. 'Even though I have got a couple of hundred titles in print, I am a reader first and a writer second,' he says. So much so that if he is halfway through writing a story and a book he has been wanting to read arrives in the mail, 'I'll immediately put my work aside and start reading, which means that I am really a reader,' he says. 'I often feel that people who don't read are missing out on something in life.' So, does it bother Bond that, in an age with so many distractions, the world has fewer readers? 'No, not really,' he responds. 'There never were many readers. It has always been a minority pastime.' According to him, in the 1940s and 50s, before television, laptops, mobiles and apps, there were only two boys in his class of 35 at school who read books for pleasure. 'We had a good library, and everyone had to take a book out of the library every week, but most people did not read them. They put them back unread,' he says. 'Actual book lovers have always been few, the exception rather than the rule.' He believes that, in fact, thanks to better access to education and with more people simply being able to read, there are actually more readers today. 'Today, I make a living out of my books, which I could not have done in the 1950s and 60s,' feels Bond, who says that he has already written two successors to Life's Magic Moments as well as some children's stories, 'enough to keep my publishers busy for the next year or so,' he says. He is also 5,000-odd words into his next project, a short book on the small towns of India, and is also working on a few stories for children. 'I've quite a busy work schedule. But, who knows, it is not in my hands,' he says, with a laugh. 'The great librarian above decides these things.'
Time of India
2 days ago
- Time of India
Exclusive: Driver's injury is self-inflicted. This is a false FIR, filed to extort money, says Manish Gupta
An FIR was filed at the Versova police station on June 6 against filmmaker-writer . He is known for writing films like Sarkar and SECTION 375, while directing Rahasya, The Stoneman Murders, 420 IPC and One Friday Night. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Gupta was booked under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections for allegedly stabbing his driver Mohammed Lashkar with a kitchen knife. According to Versova police, the incident occurred after an argument over the latter's salary at Gupta's Andheri (west) office at 8.30pm on June 5. According to a report in TOI, Lashkar, who served as Gupta's driver for three years until his May 30 termination, said his Rs 23,000 salary remained outstanding. His statement reads: "There has been instances when the film director used to indulge in fight whenever I asked for my salary which was never paid on time. This time he removed me from the job when I asked for my April month's salary which was yet to be paid." Gupta has categorically dismissed the allegations. In an exclusive interview with Bombay Times, he said, 'It's a false FIR, filed with an intent of extorting money, systematically played out under the guidance of a criminal lawyer.' He added, 'We are going to initiate criminal proceedings against Lashkar and put him behind bars. I want to expose these false FIRs racket.' Ahead of narrating the incident, Gupta shared a CCTV footage of the driver leaving the building premises (his back facing the camera) with Bombay Times and documents that reveal his advance salary claim to Lashkar as well as the driver's speeding tickets for rash driving. Gupta explained, 'He has been working for me for three years. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now On June 5, around 8.30 pm in my office, he started this bawaal to provoke me. It was very illogical. He wanted to quit my job. I had paid him an advance (Rs 41,500), which was much more than his monthly salary. This has been acknowledged by him on paper. I told him, if you're quitting, obviously the advance is going to be deducted from your salary. That didn't go down well with him, and this was his way of extorting money from me. I asked him to drop my car keys and leave. He left in a lift and while exiting the lift, held his hand over his stomach as if he was covering a wound, no blood stain is visible in the CCTV footage. The other footage which captures him walking away, shows how normal he seems while walking away. I am sure he went to his people, inflicted a harmless injury to himself and then went to the cops at 2 am. Why didn't he go to the cops directly? He tried to create this chain of events. When the cops came over to my office the next day to investigate, they also called him, he's walking, holding his stomach, taking the support of some other guy, and he's walking half a step at a time. His actions looked staged. The cops didn't find any kitchen knife because I don't have a kitchen in my office. You just get tea, coffee, biscuits. He needed the money badly for his house and daughter's education and on humanitarian grounds, I gave him the advance, and this is how he repays me.' Gupta concludes, 'I have given my statement to the police. The evidence that I showed you, has also been given to the police. In a nutshell, this is a false FIR, filed with an intention of extorting money. It has been systematically played out under guidance of a criminal lawyer. My lawyer is , and we are going to initiate criminal proceedings against this person. The CCTV footage of seconds after the incident clearly shows he is walking very normally, very casually and not at all like a person who has been attacked with a knife as he is claiming. It is very clear evidence of his lying, and he has inflicted this injury later on himself in order to build some sort of circumstance to file a false FIR. I want to expose this false FIRs racket. '
The Hindu
2 days ago
- The Hindu
Microsoft unveils ROG Xbox Ally handheld video game devices
Microsoft on Sunday unveiled its first Xbox-branded handheld gaming devices, touting them as a way to play its vast library of titles anywhere. Two "ROG Xbox Ally" models made in a partnership with Taiwan-based ASUS will be available by the year-end holiday season, Xbox president Sarah Bond said during an online event showcasing games heading for the platform. "The Xbox Ally is an Xbox you can hold in your hands, bringing together the power of Xbox and the freedom of Windows," Bond said. "On this Xbox, you can play games across your entire library, including all the Windows PC game stores from Xbox and to Steam, GOG (Good Old Games platform) and Ubisoft Connect." The peek at Xbox Ally came just days after the release of Nintendo's Switch 2, the handheld console that could score record early sales for the Japanese "Super Mario" creator. The Nintendo device, which features a bigger screen and more processing power, is an upgrade to the Switch that became a global phenomenon with hit games such as "Animal Crossing." Microsoft promised to disclose pricing and release date details for Xbox Ally in the coming months. Both Xbox handhelds appeared similar to Microsoft console controllers in terms of buttons, toggles and grips but looked elongated to provide room for center screens. "When you power on your Xbox Ally, you'll boot directly into the Xbox full screen experience, a new feature optimized specifically for handheld gaming," Microsoft said in a release. "The Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are perfect for players looking to take an approachable gaming experience with you during travels, whether it's between airports, or between the comfiest chairs in the living room."
