The most adorable and the most adored author Ruskin Bond has come out with his much-awaited definitive memoir, titled, The Beauty of All My Days. While with his earlier autobiographical work, Lone Fox Dancing—My Autobiography, he took us on a wonderful journey of his childhood, the touching memories of his father, his insecurities, failures, then success and finally settling in the idyllic hill town ofMussoorie, this edition explores his relationships, his parents’difficult marriage, his voyage from Bombay to England, his meeting with the legendary Diana Athill and more personal accounts of his stupendous life. What’s more, the book, which we are sure, will be replete with Ruskin Bond’s inimitable storytelling, mesmerizing the reader with its simplicity and honesty, it also promises to get you closer to the author with the 32 exclusive and rare photographs from his personal collection that it has!
Here’s what Ruskin Bond himself says about the book we can’t wait to hold in our hands and float away to Ruskin Bond land…
‘So here I am, delving into the past . . . to try to understand some of the events that have helped define the sort of person I have become. Some of it, naturally, is in the genes; but much of it is in the environment, in the circumstances in which we grow up, in the people who come into our lives, even in the air we breathe.
Had I grown up in London or Timbuktu, I would have been a different sort of person, I’m sure. My parents (and those before them) made me. But India made me too. The soil, the air, the wind, the rain, the trees, the grass, the proximity of people— all these things made me . . .
Different things at different times helped to make the individual that is me, just as different things at different times helped to make you, just as they went into making your brothers and sisters, who are very different from you.
‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself,’ said Walt Whitman.
Each chapter of this memoir is a remembrance of times past, an attempt to resurrect a person or a period or an episode, a reflection on the unpredictability of life. Some paths lead nowhere; others lead to a spring of pure water. Take any path and hope for the best. At least it will lead you out of the shadows.
About the Author
Ruskin Bondhas written over 500 short stories, essays and novellas, and more than forty books for children. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.
