A BOOK OF SIMPLE LIVING: BRIEF NOTES FROM THE HILLS
Author: Ruskin Bond
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Pages: 150
Price: Rs 350
He finds pleasure in simple things - a marigold growing out of a crack in a balcony, the sight of a ginger cat that curls up on his terrace every afternoon, the sound of the wind in the trees, the mellow whistle of the pygmy owlet, pellets of rain water flung in his face by the swaying branches of a cherry tree. Happiness, for him, is a mysterious thing, as elusive as a butterfly - which, if not pursued, may come and settle on one's hand.
The book lives up to its sub-title too. The chapters are brief, the longest of them no more than two pages. Some are just half a page. Some are in prose, others in verse, and Bond writes in a simple conversational style. There are no chapter headings, and no sequence, and the chapters can be read in any order.
In one chapter, Bond, sick of the bitter January cold, wonders during a howling blizzard why he continues to live in Mussoorie. A paragraph later, he provides the answer: spring comes in March and with it peach, plum and apricot trees burst into blossoms and the birds celebrate with a cacophony of sounds, making it all worthwhile. The trees (and flowers) are Bond's particular friends, and while out on his walks he acknowledges their presence with a gentle pat on their trunks - the walnut (smooth and polished), the pine (patterned and whorled) and the oak (rough and gnarled).
Very early on, Bond chose to live life on his own terms and at his own pace. Homesick in England, where he had gone at age 17 after having finished school, he returned to India in 1955, just before his first novel - the semi-autobiographical The Room on the Roof - was published, using the publisher's advance to pay for his passage to what was then Bombay. (He had already had his first short story published by the now-defunct The Illustrated Weekly of India when he was 16.) By 1963 he began living on the outskirts of Mussoorie, on the edge of a forest, deriving inspiration from his nature-rich surroundings.
He rejected full-time employment, which he tried twice - first with a relief organisation and then as literary editor with Imprint - to become a full-time writer. Recognition was slow in coming, but did so eventually, though the material rewards weren't too many. Life hasn't been a bed of roses, he concedes, but then there have been compensations: he has had "roses out of season" and a perfectly-positioned cottage with a bedroom window that "opens on to blue skies, mountains striding away into the far distance, winding rivers in the valley below…"
Nature - and Bond's relationship with it - is a recurring theme in the book; it has both sustained and inspired him over the years. Nature, Bond tells us, teaches humans patience and resilience. Of course, it does not promise us the conventionally desirable things. And yet, Nature is there to be understood and appreciated, and if looked at in this way, it is a reward in itself. Contemplating Nature, he believes, gives hope that there is more to life than interest rates, dividends, market forces and technology.
Unlike most residents of hill towns, Bond has nothing against the rich and famous who buy houses there, or those who descend en masse on them for short holidays, their cars clogging the narrow, winding roads. He doesn't grudge them their parties and their laughter, because the thought of happy people in the neighbourhood puts him in a good mood.
Bond is a master of simple home-spun wisdom: the adventure is not in arriving, it's in the on-the-way experience; more is achieved by knowing one's limitations and doing good work within them, rather than by over-reaching oneself, and so on, which in his words doesn't sound trite. Watching two stonemasons who had been at work restoring Shah Jahan's Hall of Mirrors in the Agra Fort, Bond has an epiphany: he has "yet to meet a neurotic carpenter or stonemason or clay-worker or master craftsman", because working with the hands is in itself a therapy.
Bond devotes a chapter to solitude, of which he says most people are scared. However, he finds serenity in it despite his own lonely childhood, and it helps him contemplate. He describes himself as a "contemplative type", and is grateful that he has been spared the "affliction of acquisitiveness".
Bond, who owns little that is new (his favourite cane chair has been with him for thirty years) turned 80 last summer, but still considers himself young. Since he is able to see beauty in small things, old age holds no terrors for him. He loves life passionately and will continue to find time to sit on walls and let ideas germinate in his mind, converting them into stories.
Author: Ruskin Bond
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Pages: 150
Price: Rs 350
Also Read
Ruskin Bond's latest book, A Book of Simple Living, as he says in the introduction, is about all the things that have brought him joy and contentment - books, companionship, laughter and a sense of humour, mist in the Himalayan valleys, monsoon rain sweeping across the hills, a whistling thrush in full-throated song, and his relationship with the natural world.
He finds pleasure in simple things - a marigold growing out of a crack in a balcony, the sight of a ginger cat that curls up on his terrace every afternoon, the sound of the wind in the trees, the mellow whistle of the pygmy owlet, pellets of rain water flung in his face by the swaying branches of a cherry tree. Happiness, for him, is a mysterious thing, as elusive as a butterfly - which, if not pursued, may come and settle on one's hand.
The book lives up to its sub-title too. The chapters are brief, the longest of them no more than two pages. Some are just half a page. Some are in prose, others in verse, and Bond writes in a simple conversational style. There are no chapter headings, and no sequence, and the chapters can be read in any order.
In one chapter, Bond, sick of the bitter January cold, wonders during a howling blizzard why he continues to live in Mussoorie. A paragraph later, he provides the answer: spring comes in March and with it peach, plum and apricot trees burst into blossoms and the birds celebrate with a cacophony of sounds, making it all worthwhile. The trees (and flowers) are Bond's particular friends, and while out on his walks he acknowledges their presence with a gentle pat on their trunks - the walnut (smooth and polished), the pine (patterned and whorled) and the oak (rough and gnarled).
Very early on, Bond chose to live life on his own terms and at his own pace. Homesick in England, where he had gone at age 17 after having finished school, he returned to India in 1955, just before his first novel - the semi-autobiographical The Room on the Roof - was published, using the publisher's advance to pay for his passage to what was then Bombay. (He had already had his first short story published by the now-defunct The Illustrated Weekly of India when he was 16.) By 1963 he began living on the outskirts of Mussoorie, on the edge of a forest, deriving inspiration from his nature-rich surroundings.
He rejected full-time employment, which he tried twice - first with a relief organisation and then as literary editor with Imprint - to become a full-time writer. Recognition was slow in coming, but did so eventually, though the material rewards weren't too many. Life hasn't been a bed of roses, he concedes, but then there have been compensations: he has had "roses out of season" and a perfectly-positioned cottage with a bedroom window that "opens on to blue skies, mountains striding away into the far distance, winding rivers in the valley below…"
Nature - and Bond's relationship with it - is a recurring theme in the book; it has both sustained and inspired him over the years. Nature, Bond tells us, teaches humans patience and resilience. Of course, it does not promise us the conventionally desirable things. And yet, Nature is there to be understood and appreciated, and if looked at in this way, it is a reward in itself. Contemplating Nature, he believes, gives hope that there is more to life than interest rates, dividends, market forces and technology.
Unlike most residents of hill towns, Bond has nothing against the rich and famous who buy houses there, or those who descend en masse on them for short holidays, their cars clogging the narrow, winding roads. He doesn't grudge them their parties and their laughter, because the thought of happy people in the neighbourhood puts him in a good mood.
Bond is a master of simple home-spun wisdom: the adventure is not in arriving, it's in the on-the-way experience; more is achieved by knowing one's limitations and doing good work within them, rather than by over-reaching oneself, and so on, which in his words doesn't sound trite. Watching two stonemasons who had been at work restoring Shah Jahan's Hall of Mirrors in the Agra Fort, Bond has an epiphany: he has "yet to meet a neurotic carpenter or stonemason or clay-worker or master craftsman", because working with the hands is in itself a therapy.
Bond devotes a chapter to solitude, of which he says most people are scared. However, he finds serenity in it despite his own lonely childhood, and it helps him contemplate. He describes himself as a "contemplative type", and is grateful that he has been spared the "affliction of acquisitiveness".
Bond, who owns little that is new (his favourite cane chair has been with him for thirty years) turned 80 last summer, but still considers himself young. Since he is able to see beauty in small things, old age holds no terrors for him. He loves life passionately and will continue to find time to sit on walls and let ideas germinate in his mind, converting them into stories.