"As you get older life can get quite ridiculous." After six decades as a writer, Ruskin Bond spoke to Brut about his lonely childhood, difficult years, and love for jalebis. He turns 88 today.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00I'm adept at writing something about nothing.
00:07It's like riding a bike, true it is, but then I'm careful, I make sure that I can still
00:26ride a bike.
00:44I had a Calcutta granny and a Dehradun granny and Dehradun granny was very strict, she said
00:53little boys should speak only when they're spoken to.
01:04My mother said I was a very wicked, a wicked child and gave a lot of trouble, but I don't
01:09remember at all giving any trouble.
01:19I had a quite a very happy childhood till things went wrong, you know, parent wise.
01:27My father and mother broke up when I was about eight.
01:34I wasn't lonely to begin with, I was lonely really after my father passed away and then
01:41I had to adjust to a different home.
01:56So I'd take lonely walks and prowl around Dehradun, David Cofferfield certainly influenced
02:03me as a boy.
02:05Young David runs away from home and then he grows up and becomes a writer.
02:11So I ran away from home for a few days.
02:18I wanted to avoid horrible things like morning PT and extra homework and, you know, and the
02:25boring things that you have in schools.
02:33My mother said, well Ruskin, now what are you going to do with yourself?
02:37And I said, mum, I think I'm going to be a writer.
02:41And she said, don't be silly, go and join the army.
03:03And of course, I had a, we had a party, my friends insisted on a party, samosas and pakoras
03:12and lots of pastries and fizzy drinks.
03:24I took a job first in a grocery store, which was horrible, and I got a job with the travel
03:31agents, Thomas Cook, that was a farce, because the lady who was the rep, she was having a
03:40love affair, you see, with someone and she left me in charge of the office all the time
03:44and would book people into the wrong hotels and, you know, and I never did know the difference
03:50between a double bed and a single bed or twin beds.
03:55So people who maybe slept together all their lives were separated and people who wanted
04:03to be in separate beds were put in the same bed.
04:10So I got fired and so did the lady rep.
04:15I don't know what happened to her love affair.
04:25Homesick, I wanted to live where I was home, where I had friends, never really felt that
04:40I belonged there in Britain.
04:51I put a lot of myself into it, it was very intense, because at that age of 16, 17, you are very intense.
05:12They didn't pay much.
05:13I rented a room for 30 rupees a month.
05:17I could eat in a dhaba for another 30 rupees.
05:21It was tough making a living because the room on the roof wasn't commercially successful.
05:31Not then, it's selling better now.
05:37So in my life, I've thrown up half a dozen jobs.
05:39I was in Delhi for four or five years, then I got fed up of living in a big city.
05:50The hills have become a character ever since I came to live here.
06:01I took a cottage on the outskirts.
06:03It was near the forest, actually, it was almost in the forest.
06:20I'm reading now just for relaxation, crime fiction, thrillers, things like that.
06:45I'm very naughty.
06:50Not every story that I've sold for filming, film rights, has been filmed.
07:05They'd engage this circus tiger to play a man-eater or something, and the tiger wouldn't act.
07:14Every now and then, it would run back to its cage, hoping it was mealtime.
07:27I'm still trying to write better.
07:29I like the number 88 because they're like jalebis.
07:32Two jalebis, eight, eight.
07:34And I'm very fond of jalebis.
07:36So I shall have jalebis on my birthday.
07:44As you get older, life can get quite ridiculous at times.
07:48Yes, just this morning, do you know what I did?
07:52I had to shave almost every day.
07:57I was happily shaving away.
07:59Then I discovered I was shaving with my toothpaste instead of the shaving cream.
08:04But it was quite pleasant, actually, and it worked.
08:13So I walked home last night.
08:20I saw a lone fox dancing in the bright moonlight.
08:26I stood and watched, then took the low road, knowing the night was his by right.
08:33And now, when words ring true, I'm like a lone fox dancing in the morning dew.