My father made my life meaningful: Ruskin Bond

Veteran author Ruskin Bond's new book is a memoir in which he extensively reminisces about the time he spent with his father. Looking for The Rainbow: My Years with Daddy is scheduled to release on his birthday, May 19, and this is the first time he has dedicated a book to his father.

“This little book is a tribute to my father who, over a short period of time, did so much to make my life meaningful for me. I wish all the children could have a father like him,” says Bond.

At the age of eight, Bond escaped his jail-like boarding school in the hills and went on to live with his father in Delhi. His time in the capital was filled with books, visits to the cinema, music, and walks and conversations with his father – a dream life for a curious and wildly imaginative boy, which turned tragic all too soon.

“I have written about him (father) before, but never at length, and I thought it was time to thank him in the best possible way through a story woven around the events of those two memorable years,” he said.

According to publisher Puffin India “For years, Bond has regaled and mesmerised readers with his tales. In Looking for the Rainbow, he travels to his past, recalling his favourite adventures (and misadventures) with extraordinary charm, sprinklings of wit, a pinch of poignance and not a trace of bitterness,”.

Bond's first novel The Room on the Roof, written when he was 17, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then, he has written a number of novellas, essays, poems and children's books.

He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie.