Bond with the Best: Exploring India's Ruskin Bond as a Writer of Children's Literature

Ruskin Bond (b. 1934) is a highly acclaimed author of children's literature. He is well known as an Indian author who writes in English and has also won commendation abroad. He has written novels, short stories, and essays. Bond has produced books both for children and adults. His stories are marked with simplicity, directness of style, and authenticity of the persons and experiences they portray. His children's stories make for such a delightful reading experience that they are equally enjoyed both by children and adults.

Ruskin Bond's works project the Anglo-Indian community to "refer to the shaping of Indian identity and the construction of an Indian nation which is mostly a mixture of so many communities" (Laskar 79). For instance, Bond's first work, Room on the Roof (not addressed to a specific age group), which won him the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957, focuses on the crisis of one's own identity in the post-Independence era, as it explores a British child's desire to blend with the niceties of the common people of the Indian society. He wrote this in 1953 when he was only seventeen years old. Most of his stories are set in the small towns of India, crowded with common people and everyday incidents of humdrum existence. Through the lucidity of his style and directness of his language, he has seamlessly formed a definite bonding with his young readers.

Bond has achieved great popularity through his short stories. In his short story "The Thief," he shows in his characteristically convincing way that the reformation of a habitual criminal is best achieved through love and understanding, rather than sermons or punishments. It is a first-person narration by a young boy and, hence, adds immense credibility to its plot. The young protagonist, who is the thief in the title, makes sincere reflections upon the nature of human beings:

It's easy to rob a greedy man because he deserves to be robbed. It's easy to rob a rich man because he deserves to be robbed. But it's difficult to rob a poor man, even one who really doesn't care if he's robbed.

(Bond, Complete 31)

Bond's keen observation is also reflected through his protagonists. The thief in the above-mentioned story confesses, "I have made a study of men's faces when they have lost something of material value. The greedy man shows panic, the rich man shows anger, the poor man shows fear" (32). He meditates upon how the person who had trusted him would be saddened at the betrayal of his trust.

Similarly, "The Boy Who Broke the Bank" offers some deep insights about human values. Both "The Thief" and "The Boy Who Broke the Bank" are commonly anthologized in collections of children's short stories due to the important lessons they teach about life. Though Bond's stories appear to most children as delightful narratives, they successfully rouse the interest of adult readers through their social perspectives. From a darker perspective, "The Boy Who Broke the Bank" also illustrates the bleak picture of child labor in our country. The child character Nathu is a sweeper and a second child, Sitaram, is a launderer's son who delivers the wash from door to door. The trafficking of girls has also been subtly dealt with in "A Case for Inspector Lal." "He Said It with Arsenic" probes into the intuitive nature of human beings. Many of Bond's stories have been adapted to films, including Junoon, The Blue Umbrella, and Saat Khoon Maaf.

"In the Garden of My Dreams," "Owls in the Family," "Adventures in a Banyan Tree," "Thus Spoke Crow," and "Bird Life in the City" are some of his essays and vignettes that demonstrate not only his proximity to nature but also his sensitivity toward it. Bond's profound bonding with the flora and fauna of his immediate serene environs of Dehra is evident even in the titles of his stories: "The Cherry Tree," "My Father's Trees in...