After 70, every year feels like a victory: Ruskin Bond
After 70, every year feels like a victory: Ruskin Bond
New Delhi, As he approaches his 91st birthday next month, Ruskin Bond, one of India’s most beloved authors across generations, says he feels a sense of victory with each passing year since entering his seventies.
In his latest book, "Another Day in Landour: Looking Out from my Window", released on Saturday, Bond asserts that after turning 70, one should let go of any sense of entitlement.
"Every time I complete a year of my life. I feel as though it's been a victory. This has been the case ever since I got into the seventies. Before that I didn't pay as much attention to the passing of the years; they were something to which I feel entitled. But after seventy you are not entitled to anything," Bond writes in the book.
Born on May 19, 1934, in Kasauli, Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Shimla, New Delhi, and Dehradun. Apart from three years in the UK, he has spent all his life in India.
The ace raconteur has authored more than 500 titles — including short stories, essays and novellas — since his debut novel "The Room on the Roof" in 1956.
An endearing compilation of his daily musings from his picturesque home Ivy Cottage in Landour, his latest "Another Day in Landour" blends Bond’s signature wit with gentle wisdom, offering readers a peek into his reflective world.
It captures everything from his deep love for nature especially birds and blossoms and his bond with his adopted family, to his craving for authentic meatballs and his disdain for blaring horns and traffic snarls.
In his inimitable style, Bond also offers candid reflections on weightier issues like overpopulation, war, and the noisy theatrics of world leaders.
For instance, he amusingly named a pair of quarrelling laughing thrushes after world leaders Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden. A quintessentially Bond way of weighing in on global affairs with playfulness and humour.
But grappling with dwindling eyesight and gout both of which take a toll on his beloved craft of writing his philosophical, and often whimsical, take on old age runs through the book.
Bond reflects in the book that women manage old age better than men.
"My grandmother lived on her own for a number of years after my grandfather died... It's the single men, or widowers, who are often quite helpless when the knees begin to give way and the eyesight dims. We weren't really built to live too long, But life is precious, wonderful at times, and we cling to it like limpets," he adds.
In his last entry in the book, the celebrated writer shares that "after 80, every day is a bonus" and advises his readers to savour the moment and make it count.
"Read a little, write a little. Listen to music. Take a short walk. And if walking is difficult, go for a drive. If you can't do that, open the window and look at the birds, the trees, the cats, the dogs, the mules, the monkeys ... look at the people, no two of them the same," he concludes.
The book, published by HarperCollins India, is priced at ₹399.
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