Issue 55 Vol III, January 15, 2008

L I T E R A T U R E

Unbounding of Ruskin Bond
Jaspal Singh

Ruskin Bond is a celebrated Anglo Indian writer from Mussoorie. He has written hundreds of short stories and half a dozen of novellas such as Landour Days, A Handful of Nuts, Scenes from Writers Life, The Room on The Roof and so on. A number of critics and researchers have commented upon him. Now Som P. Ranchan from Shimla has written a book, ‘Bonding with Bond: A psychoanalytic Study of The Man and The Writer published by Graphit India Chandigarh. Ranchan himself is a well-known poet and about two dozens collections of his poems have already appeared on the book stalls that include popular anthologies like Loose Ends, America with Love, Nigamas, Anteros, Love Poems and Pan. He has also written epic poems on Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghose, Mother Sharda and Krishna. In addition, Ranchan has also written on spiritualism, mythology, folklore and psychoanalysis.

In Bonding with Bond, Ruskin Bond has been psychoanalysed by Ranchan, using analytical tool taken from Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank and Erich Fromm. The book also carries a longish chapter on Ruskin’s childhood and youth. Very few people know much about his life. He was born at Kasauli in 1934. His father Aubrey Bond soon moved to Jamnagar as a tutor of the Maharaja’s children. So the first five years were spent there before Aubrey moved to Dehra Dun. But he did not stay there for long. He joined the Royal Air Force and was posted at Air Headquarters in Delhi.

Ruskin at that time was put to Jesus and Mary Convent School at Mussoorie. His mother Edith was very fond of trekking and hunting in the Doon jungles and hills. When Aubrey was away to Delhi, she got separated from him and married an Indian car dealer of Dehra Dun, who himself was very fond of going on hunting expeditions. This was the time when Ruskin was withdrawn from the Convent and sent to Delhi to stay with his father. Now the father had to play roles of both the parents. When Ruskin was ten years old his father died and the boy was sent to Bishop Cotton School, Shimla to do his Senior Cambridge. As soon as he passed out of the school in 1951, he was sent to England, his native country by his maternal grand mother who still lived at Dehra Dun to permanently settle there. He stayed in England for three years but could not relate to the place. Doon Valley would constantly haunt him. The forests, rivers, rills, creeks, mountains, simple rural people, fauna and flora – everything would captivate him. Moreover, he had a number of Indian intimate friends in the Valley including Somi, Ranbir and kishen. He could not find this kind of relatedness in England. Utterly disappointed he sailed back to India at the first opportunity and settled down in his beloved Dehra. As a freelance writer, his columns, short stories and articles started appearing in the well known Indian newspapers and journals. He worked in Delhi for sometime in the sixties before permanently settling down at Mussoorie with the family of Prem, their former servant. This Garhwali family adopted him and he adopted the family. They gave him a couple of rooms on the roof which now is his sweet home. In course of time several of his collections of short stories were published by reputed publishers. He was decorated with Sahitya Akademy award and  Padma Shri by Government of India.

Now as a veteran writer he is visited by many people from media, academia and even by school children who want to interact with the celebrated author. Ruskin as a humanist and a writer of the common people does not disappoint anybody. His tales and novellas are peopled by the genuine folks from the hills and the Doon Valley. Beckoning hills, rivers, creeks, plants, bushes, trees, birds, animals and even insects are humanized in his stories which are replete with beautiful descriptions and vivid portrayals of life and nature in the Doon Valley and Mussoorie hills.

Writing about his father he says: “Dehra suited him. He was always happy when he was among trees, and this happiness communicated itself to me. I felt like drawing close to him. I remember sitting beside him on the veranda steps when I noticed the tendril of a creeping vine that was trailing near my feet. As we sat there, doing nothing in particular – in the best gardens, time has no meaning – I found that the tendril was moving almost imperceptibly away from me and towards my father. Twenty minutes later it had crossed the veranda steps and was touching his feet. This, in India, is the sweetest of salutations… I like to think its movements were motivated simply by an affection for my father.” He fondly remembers the trees planted by his father. He writes, “My father went away soon after that tree planting. Three months later, in Culcutta, he died. But the trees seem to know me. They whisper among themselves and beckon me nearer. And looking around, I find that other trees and wild plants and grasses have sprung up under the protection of the trees we planted. They have multiplied. They are moving. In this small forgotten corner of the world, my father’s dreams are coming true, and the trees are moving again.”

Since Ruskin Bond was so affectionately associated with nature and all kinds of wild life, this perhaps was the reason that he did not think of marrying and raising his own family. Som Ranchan applies Jungian concepts like anima, animus and individuation to understand Bond’s relationship with “female image”, “male image” and the process of one’s "becoming" into a grown up human being, acquiring a distinct identity and personality. Ranchan concludes that “Ruskin’s relationship with the mother is recessive, nearly non-existent.” This mother failure could have traumatized him, had the rich relationship with the father not saved him. But even then his anima that is “female image in the man” did not fail him. That is why he was able to give wholesome characterisation of a gallery of women characters from childhood to old age. Ruskin Bond’s free lancing saved him from the complex of a bloated ego. Therefore, he could affectionately “relate to his friends from childhood to new friends, to nature and to life...” His Antakarna naming his functions like sensation, feeling, intuition and thinking and their working in the service of Bhava that is deep soul flows of emotions shape his ‘self' adding deeply sensitive humanism to his literary vision which is further sanctified with nature mysticism.

Ruskin Bond’s locale invariably remains the Valley and the surrounding hills, like Hardy’s Wessex or D. H. Lawrence’s Mine district or Arnold Bennet's Potteries district. He did not have to travel afar like Hemingway or V.S. Naipaul in search of locales and themes. Therefore, according to Ranchan, his vision is vertical and not horizontal. Now at seventy three, he is fully at peace with himself and with his environs. What else one can expect from life!

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A Bond with a Pastoral Writer
O.P.Sharma

SOM Ranchan is a versatile writer with a mind that is clear, sensitive and penetrating. He has written poems, folklore, critical studies and many other subjects including mysticism and refuses to be confined to a single subject matter because he has the renaissance mind which takes the whole of existence as of interest and concern for him. Aristotelian in one word.

Ranchan, most significant books are Me and Columbia, Enigmas for the Age and Love Poems in poetry and in critical studies The Great Adventure with Self and Bonding with Ruskin Bond and Aurotherapy (based on Aurbindo’s writings) but this is not to disregard his other books which have their own merit. What is most significant is that he effortlessly makes everything he writes about just causal and matter of fact without taking any positions unnecessarily. Till today he has produced as many as sixty books. Yet it is in his poetry that his creativity works at its highest level. His poetry is able to encompass life in all its varied aspects and from the perspectives of the wholeness of life. Concepts and perspectives that he brings to bear on whatever he writes on are strongly something which cannot be in the grasp of one who does not have an encyclopedic mind. In his living, daily thought and action he is a natural and spontaneous human being willing to learn and make others learn and so he believes in relationship howsoever momentary it be really becomes a relationship of mutual education.

His range of thinking is psychological as well as philosophical and a no less measure spiritual. He spreads his net very widely and catches fish of all varieties.  Reading him can be a great not only an intellectual delight but even a delight because he uses his language only in his own inimitable manner.

His book on Ruskin Bond, Bonding with Bond[ Published by Grafits India Chandigarh] makes an eminent use of many Jungian concepts, perspectives of other western psychologists like Eric Fromm and others and philosopher like Schopenhauer to elucidate Ruskin Bond both as a writer and as a person. What the concept he has made use of Bhava outshines all other concepts. Typologically, Ranchan finds Ruskin Bind both extroverted and introverted with no difficulty in making a fine blend of extraversion and introversion with the instant adaptability of shifting from introversion to extroversion and vice versa. But he singles out the praise for him because he is  discovered both his passion and choice for becoming a writer at his 17 and keeping his resolve alive without slackening dedication for the career as a writer.

What makes him an authentic writer is his sense of relatedness that comes out in all his stories and novellas. He really makes us come in contact with the common things in life, the common ordinary situations, the common ordinary characters.  This principle of relatedness is what made Ruskin become a completely evolved and developed human being and also a writer who doesn’t want to impress us with introspective depth or analysis. It is this capacity to relate and infuse that is Ruskin’s forte but he also brings in his ghost stores and some few other stories the pathological human nature as well.

Reading Ranchan’s book on Ruskin Bond not only makes you encounter Ruskin as a writer. Going beyond this task of writing a book on Ruskin Bond as a writer, Ranchan is able to bring into focus the whole of literature and life which seems to show that he is just using Ruskin’s and his writing as a text for the profound for the pretext of performing the task of the dynamic thinking of life as a whole.

As a book of literary criticism one may feel disappointed because Ranchan’s presentation does not satisfy the discipline of objectivity; it is not concerned with a disciplined investigation and evaluation of the literary aspects of Bond’s writings. He falls into the trap of becoming a spokesman for Ruskin Bond. The book might have been a better piece of criticism if Ranchan had taken care to avoid his indulgence in praise.  Herman has in one of his novels made the observation: “A few words of competent judgment and evaluation are far better than thousands of words of praise.”

Ranchan explaining the philosophy behind the book says, “I wanted to restore Bond to academia. Till now, he has been more popular with those in their light green years.

[For more reading in The Tribune and the Hindustan Times
Ruskin Bond unplugged
Aditi Tandon
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2008/20080114/cth1.htm#10
http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/default.aspx?selPg=592&page=14_01_2008_104.jpg&ed=722]

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Whither Went Sovereignty? Debated
Dr. Amrik Singh writes from Sacramento

THE operation Blue Start of June 1984 created turmoil in Sikhs’ relationship with the Indian nation state. If 9/11 attack on twin towers rocked the whole world especially the western, in the same way Indian military raid on Harmandir Sahib(Golden Temple) precipitated an upheaval in Sikhs’ socio-political world.

These were the views expressed by Ajmer Singh author of two books on the twentieth century polity of the Sikhs. While defending his argument in his famous book Whither went Sovereignty?, Ajmer Singh asserts that June, 1984 was a defining chapter in the history of the estranged community.

The Sikh Information Center arranged a discussion on his books in the new conference hall of West Sacramento Sikh Gurudwara on January 12. About a hundred members of the community and dozens of intellectuals debated the position taken by the author.

Dwelling on two Sikh holocausts and four invasions on Harmandir Sahib in eighteenth century, Ajmer Singh distinguished the operation Blue Star relatively as a highly organized incursion to devastate the whole community. According to the author, it has become necessary to analyze the situation after Blue Star as it has been eating into the vitals of the community. The failure to do so by Sikh intelligentsia, he said, created a sense of doubt, confusion and divisiveness. Picking up an analogy from the primaries for the US presidential election, he said that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tear droplets could be both interpreted as her pain for the country or merely a pretext to win the election. Similarly, he welcomed different interpretations of his arguments ruling out the singularity of opinions.

The paradigmatic shift produced by June, 1984 will render conceptual structures of previous knowledge as redundant. The author emphatically asserted that Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale stood by what he preached. His insistence on shaping Sikh identity raised awareness among Sikhs for a life of freedom and dignity. The resounding victory of Congress in parliamentary election in 1985 was predicated on what happened in Amritsar. The Indian nation acquired a new Hindutva identity by making Sikhs as scapegoats. Multi-national character of the Indian state was compromised.

Ajmer Singh upheld that Sikhs are a separate nation. Though it cannot be denied that they mostly came from Hindus, however, they are a generation apart in their beliefs. The strength of Hindu Varna system can never be the backbone of Sikh theological view.  Brahmanical attitude maybe tolerant, yet when challenged, can unleash violence.Sikhs have a right to differ with the mainstream Hindu thought and seek their emancipation from its subjugating structures.

Ajmer Singh said that there is a hidden genocidal impulse in the Hindu belief system and congratulated the Sikh community for rejecting it. He pointed out that even when Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had slightly hinted at direct action, even then the majority of the Sikhs used restraint and did not participate in any civil strife. After the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi while Sikhs were targeted in Delhi and other cities, Sikhs in Punjab did not fight in streets. However, he regretted that Sikhs became instruments of evil design during partition riots. Ajmer Singh expressed his horror had Sikh militancy succeeded in wresting power as disorganized and devoid of Sikh vision it had been.

In the ensuing discussion, Baldev Singh who often writes for www.sikhspectrum.com, applauded Ajmer Singh for holding on to his arguments. Wadhava Singh argued that Sikhs were being attacked indirectly through the agency of people like Gurmeet Ram Rahim.  Gurdial Singh argued that Sikhs would remain a part of Hindus so long they believed in caste system. The curse of the caste would reverse any progress made by them. He pointed out to the deterioration in morals. He was, however, skeptical about any improvement in the near future.

While answering questions raised by the audience, Ajmer Singh asked why no Dalit was ever allowed to contest from a general quota seat?  Sikhs should have created such examples to get rid of the century old caste system. Dr. Amrik Singh referred to some of the questions raised by Dr. Jaspal Singh in his review of Ajmer Singh’s books in www.southasiapost.org. He also commented that Sikhs had not yet fully understood the colonialism that was mainly responsible for their subjugation. In the modern times, they have to grasp the process of globalization and their transnational identity to fully integrate into the postmodern societies. Sarbjit Singh sought clarifications on Sikhs’ observance of caste system and their failure to extricate themselves from its morass. Gurbakshish Singh of “India Spices” also raised interesting questions. Bhajan Singh Bhinder ably conducted the proceedings.

West Sacramanto Gurudwara President Balbir Singh Dhillon, Revered Wadhawa Singh Gill, trustee Dr. Onkar Singh Bindra and Mrs. Bindra, Dr. Pargat Singh Hundal, S. Kuldeep Singh, Er. Jatinder Singh Hundal, Bhai Ranjit Singh and associates were some of the prominent personalities among the audience.

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