Mr Bond, You’re No ‘Lone Fox’: The Ruskin I Knew (and Didn’t)

As I read Lone Fox Dancing, I realise that it’s telling me, I already know him – if I’d just think a little harder.

Lone Fox Dancing… It’s curiously appropriate that this is the name Mr Ruskin Bond chose for his book – and the moniker that he conferred on himself – because if you’ve ever met/read the 83-year-old author, you’d be hard pressed to find a better one.

‘Lone’? Sure, for someone who’s conscientiously selected a life away from urban vagaries. Foxes too abound in the mountains of Shimla, Mussoorie, Landour – all part of Bond’s terrain – perhaps one that he personifies as.

And, as reading his autobiography (and the many hundreds of ‘semi-autobiographical’ books he’s published) will tell you, there is little loneliness and much rejoicing in the life of solitude he picked.

As I settle down to read Mr Bond’s book (mailed to me a few days before I am supposed to interview him), I feel a sudden, sharp twinge of nostalgia. There are going to be hills, I remember – and the quiet stillness of a night in the mountains, broken only by the calls of cicadas and crickets.

Perhaps, if I’m lucky, there shall be a friendly ghost and a cyclist in a cemetery, and the luxurious imagery of hot, rich, scrumptious plates of food. These images are triggered by memories that go back to an early childhood – memories that I realise have endured well into my late twenties – and they are memories that Mr Bond seems to have understood and honoured.

Because, that is exactly what Lone Fox Dancing is. A book to remind the reader that really, you know him, most of him, if you will just think a little harder.

The Bond You (Almost) Knew

Much of Ruskin Bond’s first autobiography – although you could argue he’s always been autobiographical – is the stitching together of things you’ve read in bits and pieces.

You know the story of the boy Azhar who’d accompany Rusty (Ruskin’s literary alias) to a secret passageway behind the school – the boy who was eventually shipped off to Pakistan during the bloody Partition, and was (presumably) shot down years later while serving the Pakistan Army? All true.

Ruskin’s pathos, that you read in a shorter novella years ago? All real. The grandfather who lived with an assortment of unlikely pets, ranging from a young crow to a dog-like tiger? He lived once, yes – but never in Ruskin Bond’s lifetime. In fact, as Bond reveals through the autobiography, all the delightful stories he’d written his grandfather into were imagined, “making him up” as a part of a lonely boy’s life.

Days after I’d finished the book and met Ruskin Bond, I asked him why he’d done this. “Much of what I’ve written all my life has been autobiographical… but I also imagined a lot of it. I wanted my grandfather to be a part of my life, and so I made him a part of my books.”

The Bond You Never Knew

There are parts, also, that are so searingly honest, that you’re almost scared of venturing further – wondering if you’re entering some sacred territory you weren’t supposed to be a part of. Ruskin Bond’s romances, for instance.

His one-sided affair with a Vietnamese girl while living in England, his attraction to a friend’s sister ‘Sushila’ (whose name he sensitively conceals)… all of these are dealt with exhibiting utmost honesty.

When I ask Mr Bond about the affairs, he tells me, “It happens to us all, right? In fact, the way I pined for Vu (the Vietnamese girl) was something I thought most of us could relate to – isn’t that how we feel after a heartbreak?” We do, except that in Mr Bond’s world, we’ve never gotten this far ahead.

There are also names – so many dozens of names – that are dropped ever-so-casually. There is a Virbhadra Singh (current Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister) who was “my junior at BCS (Bishop Cotton School)” – a man Ruskin and his friends would “pressure for free passes to his family’s cinema”.

There are tete-a-tetes strewn across the book with dignitaries such as Khushwant Singh and Padmaja Naidu (Sarojini Naidu’s daughter), as also, on one occasion, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who laughs at Bond’s idea that she eats caviar for breakfast every day! Naseeruddin Shah features as the former husband of one of his friends, and Geeta Bali is spoken of heartwarmingly, who Bond meets a few months before she passes away.

None of these names seem out of place in an autobiography that obviously spanned cultures, countries and people.

The Bond I Knew

The first time I visited Ivy Cottage – the simple red and white cottage in Landour where Ruskin Bond now lives, – I was recovering from a breakup. I had gone up to the hills for a long weekend alone, and I had found myself standing in front of his cottage, happy to have found it.

I had had difficulty writing for a while after the heartbreak, and the sojourn to the hills helped. Which is why nothing warmed me more than when I read of Ruskin Bond’s own dilemma in his book… At one part, after he’s lost ‘Sushila’ forever, my favourite childhood writer talks about a writer’s block he could not surmount.

It came to an end when he found a young bear in a plum tree, whose antics made him laugh. “How to mend a broken heart and get past the dreaded writer’s block? Find a young bear in a plum tree”.

Perhaps Mr Bond’s books have been my “bear in a plum tree”. I am not sure. When I told him the story, he seemed to understand and he made sure I knew I’d be welcome if I ever decided to step across the cottage threshold. All I know is, that Mr Bond – beloved by a million minds and hearts – is far from being a lone fox.

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