Lone Fox in the twilight

For readers and non-readers alike, Ruskin Bond has been a beacon of Indian literature for children, especially in the short-story genre.

- NANDINI BHATIA

His literary alter-ego, Rusty, stands within the ranks of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five or RK Narayan's Malgudi. But the man behind the stories is equally appealing.

Ruskin Bond, over the years, has revealed himself, honestly and with fair judgement, in his memoirs and autobiographies, from Scenes from a Writer's Life (1997) to Lone Fox Dancing (2017). At 90, after having written hundreds of stories, a handful of novels, and a significant amount of nonfiction in terms of letters and essays to his readers, he brings another delightful treat, The Hill of Enchantment: The Story of My Life as a Writer.

"If a writer wishes to create a little magic with his pen, he must find a little magic in his life. Magic is there if we look for it," so begins the latest Ruskin Bond memoir, where he talks about the mystical wind that moves a writer.

As a writer who penned his first poem as a schoolboy to now at age 90, he keeps seeking the sacred wind and it keeps finding him. The Hill of Enchantment is a lifeaffirming recollection of his journey as a young reader and a youthful writer, his travels between hills and cities and beyond the ocean, the wins and the rejections in between, and of his twilight years, as he welcomes the change in and the evolution of the literary landscape, with the advent of the internet and large-scale literary festivals celebrating the spirit of literature.