I See Him in My Dreams Often: Ruskin Bond on His ‘Dear Daddy’

In almost all my meetings with him over the last 20 years, Bond has spoken about the time he spent with his father.

Too caught up to read? Listen to the story:

In almost all my meetings with renowned writer Ruskin Bond in Dehra Dun or Mussoorie over the last two decades, he has spoken about the time he spent with his father. Of all the people in his life, he tells me, he has loved his father the most. And as he lost him while he was just a10-year-old, he seems to have loved his memories of his father with equal, if not greater, fervour.

“I see him in my dreams often, leading me lovingly by the hand. I can recall each word, each action of his clearly, even after having lived for more than seven decades after he passed away,” said Bond when I met him at the time when his book devoted to his father was being launched in Mussoorie.

For many years, I had thought of writing a book that would only talk about these precious memories; now, I have written it as a gift to myself.

I could tell; he was, at the moment, thinking only of his father, his ‘dear Daddy’.

“Remember This Day, Ruskin”

Most readers know, through Bond’s stories, that he had not attended his father’s funeral. In almost everything that he wrote, Bond spoke of feeling strange having done so – as though his final goodbyes were never said. Suddenly, there was a terrible vacuum in his life.

Through his book – Looking for the Rainbow: My Year with Daddy, Bond shares what he has shared before: stories of a holiday with his father in Shimla who promises that once posted in Calcutta, he would take his young son to movies, to bookshops and to Chinese restaurants galore. As he leaves little Bond at his boarding school (in Bishop Cotton School), he tells him gently:  “Remember this day, Ruskin.”

Perhaps it was prophetic, for it was the last time father and son ever met. Three months later, his father died at the military hospital in Calcutta. The far-older son tells me in a voice heavy with sadness,

I dream of him sometimes, and in my dreams, he is always the same, caring for me and leading me by the hand along old familiar roads.

The ode that Bond has penned to his father is replete with beautiful memories, making it evident that memory has served him well. As Bond recalls the childhood he spent with his father, Aubrey Bond (who was with the Royal Air Force) in Delhi in the 1940s, he says –

It is about the two years I spent with my father in New Delhi. All those memories have been re-gathered by me with all the feeling I could put in.

Published by Puffin Books, Bond’s latest offering is beautifully illustrated by Mihir Joglekar and captures the essence of the nostalgia that haunts this text. You manage to relive his world with him as he traverses a time with his daddy at the ages of eight, nine and ten. Bond remembers his father with an intensity that can perhaps be understood by anyone who has lost a loved one so early in life, especially a parent.

As I began to write this, I remembered many things which I thought I had forgotten! I consider myself lucky for having been able to recall the 1940s as vividly as I did.

Keeping His Father Alive

We get to know how a completely enchanting year was spent with Bond, away from school, with his father in the air force hutments – first on Humayun Road and later on Atul Grove Road near Connaught Place in Delhi. During this year, he imbibed a lot from his father who, after coming back from office, would give the little Ruskin all the time he had. They went to watch films, buy books and music records and enrich the senior Bond’s stamp collection. Without realising it, Ruskin absorbed his father’s love for reading, walking, visiting historical monuments and loving the mountains.

The great fun the two had together can be felt strongly by the reader. Bond describes their frequent visits to Wenger’s for pastries and patties, to the Milk Bar for chocolate milkshakes, to the cinema halls in CP to watch all the latest Hollywood films and to Humayun’s Tomb and Purana Qila to absorb the history of the city.

Looking for the Rainbow: My Year with Daddy is a book you must pick up and that you must read – if for nothing else, but to understand how a young boy came into his own at the tender age of 10 and how he has managed, so heartwarmingly, to keep his father alive seven decades after he last saw him.

(Dr Jaskiran Chopra is a senior journalist and author based in Dehra Dun. She also teaches university students.)