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    Ruskin Bond occupies a unique place in Indian English fiction. It appears strange that in spite of the instantaneous success of his first novella,

The Room on the Roof and also in spite of  his continuous versatile writings for more than five decades, he has not been able to get due recognition in the academic world.

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        A close look at the works of Bond, reveals that he is not merely an absorbing story teller but also an artist with a vision. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he is an Indian Fakeer or a hermit living on the foothills of the Himalayas in deep and reverent love with the supreme power. To consider him as a great lover of nature is only half the truth. His close association with nature goes much beyond his love for the hills and valleys, the flowers and the trees, the streams and the rivers. As a matter of fact, though almost an agnostic, Bond is a lover of the Supreme Creator and His Creation as a whole. 

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        Throughout his writings, fiction as well as memoirs and poems one discovers a unique serenity which comes out of his consciousness of deep underlying universal harmony. One of the major factors behind this lies the deep impact of Indian culture and Indian beliefs. To be precise, despite being an Englishman and a Christian by birth, Bond is deeply influenced  by the age-old Hindu beliefs in general and in particular in re-incarnation. In the eyes of Bond, all creatures great and small, animals and birds, even plants and trees, are parts of the same underlying harmony which encompass the universe. A man of the past life might turn out to be a bird or a tree in the present life. It is this belief which gives new meaning to the fiction of Bond.Consequently, at times, certain creatures like a bird or a snake or certain trees and flowers become living characters in his fiction.

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       Secondly on account of the all-pervasive harmony and the close invisible bond among all creations of God, the superficial distinctions of age, colour and sex invariably get obliterated in various writings of Bond. Consequently his stories and novellas, though not devoid of  the depiction of man-woman relationship, definitely go much beyond. Thus the prototype hero or the first person singular narrator, as Rusty, the lonely repeatedly falls in love with a motherly woman like Meena Kapoor of The Room on the Roof or the ayah of My First Love even with a grandmotherly person like the Rani of The Room of Many Colours. At the same time, the first person singular narrator when grown up as Bond, the middle-aged man or even an old man quite often naturally falls in love with young women like Sushila, Kamla, Leela but also with little nymphets like Binya,Koki, Madhu and a host of such unnamed, under-teenage girls.From a close analysis of such episodes, it becomes evident that the wide differences of age as also status make no difference in the eyes of Bond. What is more, with the same sensitivity and intensity, Bond goes on even to explore boy-boy relationships. The intimate physical relationship between Rusty and Kishen  or that between Rusty and Sudheer are clear examples of this. Such boy-boy relationships which keep recurring in the fiction of Bond are clearly homosexual.

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    What is more, this kind of abnormality occurs in Bond’s fiction not for the sake of boldness or uniqueness, but as quite normal and natural. In order to comprehend this in the right perspective one has to remember the fact that what lies at the core of all human relationships in the world of Ruskin Bond is not the physical but the spiritual cum-emotional kinship. And at the bottom is the same  underlying belief mentioned above in all pervasive universal harmony. Hence a close study of the man-nature interaction in the works of Bond, not only provides a deeper understanding of the men, women and their surroundings in his world, but also unravels the very essence of Bond’s vision of life.

Bond’s style is unique and rare among the Indo-Anglian writers. So is his childhood. Born of English father and Anglo-Indian mother, it was unfortunate to have undergone a lonesome and insecure childhood. It was not only on the parental side that the little boy Ruskin Owen Bond missed the very essence of love and affection. Neither was he fortunate enough to be blessed with the love and compassion of the grandpas and grannies.

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Thus he sought love through surrogates who were elder to him. Some of them were Miss Killner, the tenant at his grannie's house in Dehra, Dukhi the gardener and so on. His mother’s strange relationship and thence desertion, his father’s untimely demise- all these conditions could easily have made any child a cynic and would have pushed him into depression. The acute sense of loneliness however strengthened Ruskin’s will to love all creatures great and small, all objects animate and inanimate. All of these become almost living and central characters in Bond’s varied forms of art. In fact they serve as archetypes forming the entire inspiration for the writer.

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The fact that the presence of autobiographical elements abound in almost all of Ruskin Bond’s works cannot be denied. The chapter attempts at tracing the autobiographical elements in the various creative writings of Bond and analysing the treatment meted out to them. In one of the introduction of his popular story collections, 

The Night Train at Deoli, he himself declares-

“Perhaps there is too much of me in my stories and at times this book may read like an autobiography. It is a weakness, I know. It can’t be helped; I am that kind of a writer, that kind of person.”

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Similarly, while introducing the autobiographical journal, The Lamp is Lit, he says that the essays and episodes of the collection may provide a picture of his life both as a writer and person, candidly confessing, “In my case they are one and the same thing I live through my writing, just as my writing lives through me.” However it is not the presence of autobiographical elements or personal experiences in his writings that matter but the underlying beauty and the universal truth that they unfold.

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 It is a well known fact  that Ruskin Bond was drawn to nature in a rather mysterious way. The death of his father  and earlier desertion of his mother had caused a deep vacuum in his soul. And he was in search of something or someone to fill his lonely life. The non-demanding nature, with its open arm, gave him strength, meaning  and sustenance. Gradually he was drawn deeper and closer to the very unique world where there was no sorrow, no rejection, only love, understanding and sharing.

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In the prologue to his Scenes From A Writer’s Life A Memoir, Bond truthfully records his deep feelings and his sense of gratitude towards India in general, and its mountainous region in particular:

“And as  I grew out of my teens I began to love the country that I had, till then, taken for granted-to love it through the friends I made and through the mountains, valleys, fields and forests which had made an indelible impression on my mind(for India is an atmosphere as much as it is a land) - with the result that, no sooner had I set foot in the West, than I wanted to return to India and to all that I had known and loved.

…….. This was where I belonged and this was where I would stay, come flood or fury.”

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The relationship of Ruskin Bond with Indian  life and its people are both wide and deep.The Indian tradition of Vasudhaiva Kutumbkum and an understanding of an ancient race gave Bond a unique stature.Bond gained, on a mental and intuitive plain,a glimpse of the wisdom of Indian Rishies and Saints. He, on the other hand, gave  to India love and understanding which enlarged the scope of Indian-English relationship.   

Ruskin Bond is known for his prose writings,short stories, novels, essays, memoirs and travelogues. Very few of us know that he writes poetry occasionally too.Some of his poems are indeed worthy of serious scrutiny and in-depth analysis. The chapter examines critically in brief  a few  important poems like A Song for Lost Friends, Lone Fox Dancing.   

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 What makes Ruskin Bond unique is not the fact that being an Englishman he made India his home or  that he fell in love with the  mountains, but the fact that he truly experienced ancient Indian wisdom on the foothills of the Himalayas. An exploration of the autobiographical elements, the love for nature and understanding of the hill- people and even animals in Dehra forests makes it clear that Bond succeeded in establishing an intimate relation with life in its various forms. The magic of intuitive human understanding permeates the little world carved out in his fiction. Here, there are no barriers  natural or created but simply an overflow of feelings, of celebration of life in all its purity and beauty. 

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