Ruskin Bond has been writing for over sixty years and has now over 120 titles in print novels, collections of stories, poetry, essays, anthologies and books for children. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, received the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys award in 1957. He has also received the Padma Shri (1999), the Padma Bhushan (2014) and two awards from the Sahitya Akademi one for his short stories and another for his writings for children. In 2012, the Delhi government gave him its Lifetime Achievement award.
When I came to live in Mussoorie just over fifty years ago, I lived in Maplewood Lodge, a cottage below Wynberg-Allen School. Its windows opened on to a well-forested hillside. So naturally I wrote about the trees, wild flowers and birds and other creatures who lived among them. Then circumstances forced me to move higher up the mountain and for the last thirty-five years I have lived on the top floor of Ivy Cottage, in Landour Cantonment. Here there are windows too and they open on to the sky, clouds, the Doon valley and range upon range of mountains. And from this perch on the hillside I feel that I am part of the greater world, mother India as well as the natural world of planet Earth.?
