Owen Ruskin Bond

Owen Ruskin Bond is a Mussorie haiku. Lone Fox Dancing, My Autobiography is a prose haiku bearing the flavour of the famed Basho haiku: At the ancient pond, a frog plunges into, the sound of water. Bond has helped me up, when down and out, many times. Followers of Bond, may not find much novelty. Quite a bit of what he says is there in old renderings. Yet, me did not know he was not near to his maternal grandmother; that he did like his mother, though father is always with the writer. 'For better or worse, we are all shaped by our parents. My mother's sensuality, I think, was stronger than her intelligence; in me, sensuality and intelligence have always been at war with each other. ....I like to believe I had mended my relationship with my mother before she died...' Bond perhaps liked his maternal grandfather as much as his father, though the writer may deny it. ' .... from the stories I heard about him, he appeared to be a gently, eccentric man -- he would disguise himself as a vegetable vendor or a juggler and wander around in the bazaars. He was also in the habit of bringing home unusual pets -- owls, frogs, chameleons and, on one occasion, a hyena, which chewed up the boots in the house and had to be released back into the forest very quickly.'  Every writer to be a writer has to have a quirk in the family, inherit the quirkness. Guess Bond got it all from his grandfather. Through the heat of May in Borivili, me went page after page, haltingly sometimes swiftly. These days cant do a book at one read; go back and forth; a break for sometimes a week, before back to Bond. Gandhi moment. January 1948. His afflicted sister Ellen spent hours 'drawing pictures of Gandhi......but we could recognize Gandhi's round rimmed glasses, sandals and walking stick..' Will Bond be read 50 years hence? Will Shreya and Chiyu hug Bond when they turn Ladies. Will Vidya, Ganesh and Dakhi read Bond in their old age? Last para of the book: ' This is the evening of a long and fairly fulfilling life. And it is late evening in Landour. A misty, apricot light suffuses the horizon. Down in the villages the apricots are ripening. A small boy brought me the fresh fruit this morning -- still very sour, very tangy, but full of promise. And if apricots could take precedence over missiles, the world would be full of promise too. I'm afraid science and politics have let us down. But the cricket still sings on the window-sill.'  He is not an intellectual, thanks be. Even if he is lost 50 years hence, no bother, as Bond has given me some of the finest hours. Lone Fox Dancing in me heart.