The Playing Fields of Shimla

t had been a lonely winter for a twelve-year-old boy. I hadn’t really got over my father’s untimely death two years previously; nor had I as yet reconciled myself to my mother’s marriage to the Punjabi gentleman who dealt in second-hand cars. The three-month winter break over, I was almost happy to return to my boarding school in Shimla— that elegant hill station once celebrated by Kipling and soon to lose its status as the summer capital of the Raj in India.

It wasn’t as though I had many friends at school. I had always been a bit of a loner, shy and reserved, looking out only for my father’s rare visits—on his brief leaves from RAF duties—and to my sharing his tent or air force hutment outside Delhi or Karachi. Those unsettled but happy days would not come again. I needed a friend but it was not easy to find one among a horde of rowdy, pea-shooting fourth formers, who carved their names on desks and stuck chewing gum on the class teacher’s chair. Had I grown up with other children, I might have developed a taste for schoolboy anarchy; but, in sharing my father’s loneliness after his separation from my mother, I had turned into a premature adult. The mixed nature of my reading—Dickens, Richmal Crompton, Tagore and Champion and Film Fun comics—probably reflected the confused state of my life. A book reader was rare even in those pre-electronic times. On rainy days most boys played cards or Monopoly, or listened to Artie Shaw on the wind-up gramophone in the common room.

After a month in the fourth form I began to notice a new boy, Omar, and then only because he was a quiet, almost taciturn person who took no part in the form’s feverish attempts to imitate the Marx Brothers at the circus. He showed no resentment at the prevailing anarchy, nor did he make a move to participate in it. Once he caught me looking at him, and he smiled ruefully, tolerantly. Did I sense another adult in the class? Someone who was a little older than his years?

Even before we began talking to each other, Omar and I developed an understanding of sorts, and we’d nod almost respectfully to each other when we met in the classroom corridors or the environs of dining hall or dormitory. We were not in the same house. The house system practised its own form of apartheid, whereby a member of, say, Curzon House was not expected to fraternize with someone belonging to Rivaz or Lefroy! Those public schools certainly knew how to clamp you into compartments. However, these barriers vanished when Omar and I found ourselves selected for the School Colts’ hockey team—Omar as a fullback, I as goalkeeper. I think a defensive position suited me by nature. In all modesty I have to say that I made a good goalkeeper, both at hockey and football. And fifty years on, I am still keeping goal. Then I did it between goalposts, now I do it off the field—protecting a family, protecting my independence as a writer…

The taciturn Omar now spoke to me occasionally, and we combined well on the field of play. A good understanding is needed between goalkeeper and fullback. We were on the same wavelength. I anticipated his moves, he was familiar with mine. Years later, when I read Conrad’s The Secret Sharer, I thought of Omar.

It wasn’t until we were away from the confines of school, classroom and dining hall that our friendship flourished. The hockey team travelled to Sanawar on the next mountain range, where we were to play a couple of matches against our old rivals, the Lawrence Royal Military School. This had been my father’s old school, but I did not know that in his time it had also been a military orphanage. Grandfather, who had been a private foot soldier—of the likes of Kipling’s Mulvaney, Otheris and Learoyd—had joined the Scottish Rifles after leaving home at the age of seventeen. He had died while his children were still very young, but my father’s more rounded education had enabled him to become an officer.

Omar and I were thrown together a good deal during the visit to Sanawar, and in our more leisurely moments, strolling undisturbed around a school where we were guests and not pupils, we exchanged life histories and other confidences. Omar, too, had lost his father—had I sensed that before?— shot in some tribal encounter on the Frontier, for he hailed from the lawless lands beyond Peshawar. A wealthy uncle was seeing to Omar’s education. The RAF was now seeing to mine.

We wandered into the school chapel, and there I found my father’s name—A.A. Bond—on the school’s roll of honour board: old boys who had lost their lives while serving during the two World Wars.

‘What did his initials stand for?’ asked Omar.

‘Aubrey Alexander.’

‘Unusual names, like yours. Why did your parents call you Ruskin?’

‘I am not sure. I think my father liked the works of John Ruskin, who wrote on serious subjects like art and architecture. I don’t think anyone reads him now. They’ll read me, though!’ I had already started writing my first book. It was called Nine Months (the length of the school term, not a pregnancy), and it described some of the happenings at school and lampooned a few of our teachers. I had filled three slim exercise books with this premature literary project, and I allowed Omar to go through them. He must have been my first reader and critic. ‘They’re very interesting,’ he said, ‘but you’ll get into trouble if someone finds them. Especially Mr Oliver.’ And he read out an offending verse—

Oily, Oily, Oily, with his balls on a trolley,

And his arse all painted green!

I have to admit it wasn’t great literature. I was better at hockey and football. I made some spectacular saves, and we won our matches against Sanawar. When we returned to Shimla, we were school heroes for a couple of days and lost some of our reticence; we were even a little more forthcoming with other boys. And then Mr Fisher, my housemaster, discovered my literary opus, Nine Months, under my mattress, and took it away and read it (as he told me later) from cover to cover. Corporal punishment then being in vogue, I was given six of the best with a springy malacca cane, and my manuscript was torn up and deposited in Fisher’s waste-paper basket. All I had to show for my efforts were some purple welts on my bottom. These were proudly displayed to all who were interested, and I was a hero for another two days.

‘Will you go away too when the British leave India?’ Omar asked me one day.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘My stepfather is Indian.’

‘Everyone is saying that our leaders and the British are going to divide the country. Shimla will be in India, Peshawar in Pakistan!’

‘Oh, it won’t happen,’ I said glibly. ‘How can they cut up such a big country?’ But even as we chatted about the possibility, Nehru and Jinnah and Mountbatten and all those who mattered were preparing their instruments for major surgery.

Before their decision impinged on our lives and everyone else’s, we found a little freedom of our own—in an underground tunnel that we discovered below the third flat.

It was really part of an old, disused drainage system, and when Omar and I began exploring it, we had no idea just how far it extended. After crawling along on our bellies for some twenty feet, we found ourselves in complete darkness. Omar had brought along a small pencil torch, and with its help we continued writhing forward (moving backwards would have been quite impossible) until we saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Dusty, musty, very scruffy, we emerged at last on to a grassy knoll, a little way outside the school boundary.

It’s always a great thrill to escape beyond the boundaries that adults have devised. Here we were in unknown territory. To travel without passports—that would be the ultimate in freedom!

But more passports were on their way and more boundaries.

Lord Mountbatten, Viceroy and Governor-General-to-be, came for our Founder’s Day and gave away the prizes. I had won a prize for something or the other, and mounted the rostrum to receive my book from this towering, handsome man in his pinstripe suit. Bishop Cotton’s was then the premier school of India, often referred to as the ‘Eton of the East.’ Viceroys and Governors had graced its functions. Many of its boys had gone on to eminence in the civil services and armed forces. There was one ‘old boy’ about whom they maintained a stolid silence—General Dyer, who had ordered the massacre at Amritsar and destroyed the trust that had been building up between Britain and India.

Now Mountbatten spoke of the momentous events that were happening all around us—the War had just come to an end, the United Nations held out the promise of a world living in peace and harmony, and India, an equal partner with Britain, would be among the great nations…

A few weeks later, Bengal and Punjab provinces were bisected. Riots flared up across northern India, and there was a great exodus of people crossing the newly drawn frontiers of Pakistan and India. Homes were destroyed, thousands lost their lives.

The common-room radio and the occasional newspaper kept us abreast of events, but in our tunnel, Omar and I felt immune from all that was happening, worlds away from all the pillage, murder and revenge. And outside the tunnel, on the pine knoll below the school, there was fresh untrodden grass, sprinkled with clover and daisies, the only sounds the hammering of a woodpecker, the distant insistent call of the Himalayan barbet. Who could touch us there?

‘And when all the wars are done,’ I said, ‘a butterfly will still be beautiful.’

‘Did you read that somewhere?’

‘No, it just came into my head.’

‘Already you’re a writer.’

‘No, I want to play hockey for India or football for Arsenal. Only winning teams!’

‘You can’t win forever. Better to be a writer.’

When the monsoon rains arrived, the tunnel was flooded, the drain choked with rubble. We were allowed out to the cinema to see Lawrence Olivier’s Hamlet, a film that did nothing to raise our spirits on a wet and gloomy afternoon— but it was our last picture that year, because communal riots suddenly broke out in Shimla’s Lower Bazaar, an area that was still much as Kipling had described it—‘a man who knows his way there can defy all the police of India’s summer capital’— and we were confined to school indefinitely.

One morning after chapel, the headmaster announced that the Muslim boys—those who had their homes in what was now Pakistan—would have to be evacuated, sent to their homes across the border with an armed convoy.

The tunnel no longer provided an escape for us. The bazaar was out of bounds. The flooded playing field was deserted. Omar and I sat on a damp wooden bench and talked about the future in vaguely hopeful terms; but we didn’t solve any problems. Mountbatten and Nehru and Jinnah were doing all the solving.

It was soon time for Omar to leave—he along with some fifty other boys from Lahore, Pindi and Peshawar. The rest of us—Hindus, Christians, Parsis—helped them load their luggage into the waiting trucks. A couple of boys broke down and wept. So did our departing school captain, a Pathan who had been known for his stoic and unemotional demeanour. Omar waved cheerfully to me and I waved back. We had vowed to meet again some day,

The convoy got through safely enough. There was only one casualty—the school cook, who had strayed into an off-limits area in the foothill town of Kalka and been set upon by a mob. He wasn’t s

een again.

Towards the end of the school year, just as we were all getting ready to leave for the school holidays, I received a letter from Omar. He told me something about his new school and how he missed my company and our games and our tunnel to freedom. I replied and gave him my home address, but I did not hear from him again. The land, though divided, was still a big one, and we were very small.

Some seventeen or eighteen years later I did get news of Omar, but in an entirely different context. India and Pakistan were at war and in a bombing raid over Ambala, not far from Shimla, a Pakistani plane was shot down. Its crew died in the crash. One of them, I learnt later, was Omar.

Did he, I wonder, get a glimpse of the playing fields we knew so well as boys?

Perhaps memories of his schooldays flooded back as he flew over the foothills. Perhaps he remembered the tunnel through which we were able to make our little escape to freedom.

But there are no tunnels in the sky.

Photo from “The Indian Express”

It was good to read the History of BCS, written up in so much detail. I was able to recall the part written up from 1936 to 1946, the accuracy of which was so precise. In 1937 Allan Fennell was the School Captain. To me at aged 9, I would mistake him for one of the staff, I was in awe of all the school prefects. Fred Brown was a senior student in my time. He was an excellent hockey player and an all round cricketer, and although I was a few years years his junior, I came to know him quite well. He left school in 1939, with his fellow hockey friend Malcolm Petters. Fred then returned as a member of the school staff while I was in Fifth Form. He was first a master at the Prep school for a while, but then, Cannon Sinker transferred him to the senior school. He became my House Master of Curzon when I was a House Prefect. In his single days he became engaged to our Bursa’s daughter Pat Murphy. His living quarters was one end of the Curzon C dormitory. One of his duties was to have the House boys over to his quarters on a Saturday evening. He would often trust me the key to his quarters on Saturday so as I could lock up after the boys left at 9.00pm, while he was out taking his fiancee Pat to the pictures in town. I left school before he married. For a few years while I was in the RAAF in Australia I kept contact with him, but regrettably lost touch when I was with the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces in Japan. Many years later while retired in Perth Western Australia, I met up with Malcolm Petters. He used to ring up his old friend Freddy Brown quite often. I used to go over to Malcolm’s home and chat with Fred also for a while. It was sad when Alzheimer’s got the better of Fred and he could not remember me.

I also recall all the school operas that we sang in under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Priestley …In the opera Trial by Jury, as mentioned in the BCS History the boys took the part of girls in the opera. I was pleased I sang as a Tenor so did not qualify to be a girl. The singing of Handel’s Messiah in Simla in 1943 was a highlight. The photo of the choir is included.

Old man Karam had the tuck shop on the first playing field. His son we called Silly Billy ran the tea shop next door. Rs 2.00 was the maximum pocket money we were allowed each week, in those days it would buy quite a few things. At the end of each term we would have 10 days holiday, for this my parents would allow me Rs 50.00. We would think we were rich.

Mr. Fisher was a senior master that taught us Physics. I think he was also a House Master. When we used to quite often play up in his lab, he would call us out by name and say “Take your books and leave the class..you are only wasting your parents money…all you people realize is the stick… ” He was also in charge of the little photo lab and darkroom where we could go and do our own developing and printing of films. I had a Box Brownie camera of which I took the photo of Simla in 1937.

I would like to also make mention of the end of year House Chews each House would indulge in. Our parents would contribute to a fund which would go towards buying tasty curries and Indian sweets for everyone to enjoy. This feast would take place in the main dormitories of each House. Sometimes I wish I could wind back the clock 70 odd years to those memorable school days.

My best wishes…Dick D’Abreu.

From Ruskin with love
By Karen Ann Monsy

Sixty years on and with pen firmly in hand, Ruskin Bond proves he’s still as capable of enchanting readers as he was when he first began.

Hundreds 
of screaming fans in a tent packed beyond seating capacity. That an audience could 
be just as captivated today by the man whose storytelling first fired up their imaginations as little children decades ago was a testament to just how popular an Indian author by the name of Bond — Ruskin Bond — could be.

With over 300 short stories, essays and novels to his name, it has been his irresistible signature of unassuming wit and simplicity more than anything else that has forged much of the bond between the Mussoorie-based novelist and his readers. Considered an icon in literary circles, the 77-year-old of British descent was recently declared due to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Delhi Government. To his cheering fans at the Sharjah International Book Fair last month, he stated simply: “Without readers, there cannot be writers. If I’m famous, it’s because of you.”

Bond, who was one of 10 eminent authors brought down by leading Indian publisher DC Books for the event, chatted with wknd. about going from a no-name teenager with big dreams to a much-loved children’s writer today — and everything in between. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

How does it feel to be getting the Lifetime Achievement Award?

It means I’m getting very old because when you get to a certain age, everyone gives you a pat on the back to say, “Well done — now go home and don’t bother us anymore!’ Seriously though, I’m very happy and honoured to be thought of in this regard.

Sixty years is a long time — almost a generation. You started out writing for kids and now you’re probably writing for their kids. What do you think has changed in this time?

I’ll tell you what has changed. Fifty, forty, even thirty years ago when I started writing, there wouldn’t have been a crowd like this, attending a book fair either in India or in Sharjah, because writing and publishing then was not really something that happened in the public domain. It wasn’t ‘fashionable’ in those days. When I set out to write, nobody encouraged me. My mother even said, “Why are you wasting your time? Why don’t you join the army?”

But today you have 
book fairs, readings and launches — none of this existed then. Writing was a very lonely art form. If you were lucky, you’d find a publisher and get published, and if you were very lucky, you might turn out to be a well-read author.

Writers were not celebrities but now thanks to visual media, they’re recognisable and therefore, the promotion of books and of writers takes place in the public today.

In all these years of writing, have you found reading habits to have changed?

I think the type of reader has changed. There are more young readers than there used to be. That’s because we now have more educated young people who’re attending schools and are literate. Although readers are a very small minority, that minority has grown over the years. And it’s a very large number in a country like India.

I look back on my 
own boyhood, and though I went to a good school that had a good library, 
in a class of 30 boys, there were just 2-3 of us who were fond of reading. There was no television, no Internet, no video games — none of these things that we blame for poor reading habits today.

So I think reading has always been a minority pastime; only a chosen few enjoy it as a hobby.

So you don’t blame technology then?

Not really, no. Technology might take away a certain amount of time [from reading] … but I think if one becomes a reader, then you don’t stop or give it up. You’re a reader for life.

Reading as a habit must be cultivated from a young age. Do you agree or disagree?

I agree. In fact, I think the younger the better. A lot depends on the parents, teachers and schools. I think many of them are aware of the importance of encouraging the reading habit — though not all … I once saw a mother discouraging her boy from buying a book saying, “We can’t waste Rs150 like that.”

On the other hand, there are many who insist on buying their kids books, even if those children aren’t interested. I guess you get all kinds.

Almost everyone today is writing a book. In your experience, what does it take to become a good writer?

I think you need to be sincere about wanting to write. I know many people who write books because they think it will bring them instant fame and success, but that’s not the case.

You must also have a good command of the language you’re trying to write in and then be able to express your thoughts in good words. That is just the beginning. Respect the language in which you write. Do your best to express yourself in such a way that will attract readers to you … and that will make people want to read you.

What’s your average day like? Do you have a set writing routine?

I get up fairly early and write a few pages. After breakfast, the kids in the house go off to school (I have a large adopted family) and there is a hush then, so I sit down to do some real work … feel drowsy and go to sleep again. I come to life about an hour later and do some correspondence or routine work. Perhaps when evening comes around, I’ll be in a creative mood and get down to some actual writing. So that’s the kind of lazy writer I am!

I write in spurts but I like to do something every day. That’s important. It’s not the amount of time you spend but the amount of writing that you get done.

Do you enjoy writing novels more or poetry?

I enjoy writing poetry but no one wants to publish poetry today because it’s so hard to sell. So that’s just something I do for my own pleasure. Otherwise publishers would rather have me write novels, a collection of stories or non-fiction books.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? How do you deal with it?

We all get writer’s block. When you’re in school and have to write an essay, sometimes you’re going to get stuck halfway through. It’s easier for me because my solution for writer’s block is to keep a waste paper basket next to me so that all my unfinished stories or essays can go straight into that.

Seriously though, I think the way to combat a block is to go on to something else. If you’re stuck with a particular piece of writing, leave it for some time, write something else and come back to it later. Of course, that doesn’t apply in an exam hall…

You’re not a big fan 
of large cities and prefer the quiet of the hills 
instead. Is it because you find them less 
inspiring?

I grew up in small towns. It’s true I’m not a fan of large cities but not necessarily because they’re ‘less inspiring’. As a writer, one should be able to write anywhere. Perhaps smaller towns are just easier to live in. They’re not always as quiet as they used to be though — there’s a lot more traffic, people, congestion and noise. It’s not easy to find a quiet corner.

You left for London soon after your schooling but were quite homesick for India during your stay there. What made you leave in the first place?

When I finished school in 1950 — a long time ago — my mother packed me off to England. Right from the start, I was homesick for India. I took a job in London because I couldn’t really afford college. During the day, I did various jobs (working at a travel agency and photo shop) and did my writing at night.

I wrote my first book, Room on the Roof, there when I was about 17. It took me a year to find a publisher and when I did, I got an advance of 50 pounds. Now in those days, 50 pounds was enough to get back to India. And that’s exactly what I did. I went back as soon as I could because I missed my friends and the place I’d grown up in, and a part of me was from India.

How difficult was it becoming a published author?

It was about 1960 and I’d just had one or two books published. Like any author, I wanted to see my book in stores. I went into a small shop and hunted around but couldn’t any of my books anywhere.

I finally spotted one — right underneath a pile of books by popular authors like Khushwant Singh. So I quietly took it out from under the pile when I thought no one was looking and put it on top. But the shopkeeper saw me. He looked at the book and put it back underneath the pile, saying, “Nobody wants this one.” So just to teach him a lesson, I bought it!

Do you have a book 
that hasn’t been published yet?

Everything of mine has been published except one that I wrote in school. I was in Class 8 or 9 when I set out to write what I thought would be a great novel. But I made the great mistake of putting my teachers into it. I wrote a funny story in my exercise book about the principal’s wife who fell down the stairs (among other things).

Unfortunately, my class teacher found it in my desk and I got punished (in those days, you got flogged with a cane). Not only that, but he also tore the book up and threw it into the waste paper bin. That was the end of my first book. So if you’re a young reader thinking of writing a book, just make sure you don’t put your teachers in it.

7 Khoon Maaf saw your debut in Bollywood. What was it like being on the big screen?

Three of my stories 
were turned into films. The most recent was 7 Khoon Maaf, adapted from Susanna’s Seven Husbands and directed by my friend, Vishal Bhardwaj, who 
gave me a small guest 
role in the film. I had to play an elderly gentleman who gives advice to the heroine, played by Priyanka Chopra.

There was this one scene in a café where I was to give her an affectionate kiss on the cheek. The first time I attempted it, I was so clumsy I knocked her glasses off. The second take was a little better but it wasn’t perfect. In the end, we did 12 takes, meaning, on 12 occasions I had to kiss her on the cheek, after which the director said, “Mr Bond, you’re doing this on purpose!” It was a very short role and I haven’t had any more offers from the film industry since.

What can fans expect in the near future?

More stories and books! The Kashmiri Storyteller is a children’s book that has just been published by Penguin. I’ve also just completed another novel called Maharani — let’s see who publishes it. I write for multiple publishers because over the years in India you couldn’t do with writing for just one publisher, especially if you were trying to make a living out of it. Of course, nowadays things are better. Publishing is having a bit of a boom in India… Maybe now would be a good time to ask for better terms and rights…

Have you had any memorable responses from readers so far?

Oh yes, I get some very interesting responses, especially from young readers, because young people are frank and they don’t try to flatter you unnecessarily. There was a young girl of about 10 who I once met. Her teacher asked her (in front of me), “So what do you think of Ruskin Bond as a writer?” She thought about it hard, looked me up and down and said, “Sir, you’re not a bad writer.” I thought that was a very good assessment of me.

…is the imaginary story of Ruskin’s years in Shimla’s Bishop Cotton School in a diary format supposed to have been written by the school head master.

We wish to bring out a souvenir on the occasion of the sesquicentennial celebrations. We would like to print memoirs of OC’s giving reflection of their years in BCS. We request OC’s to write articles not more than one page and send it to us.

We enclose herewith article titled “Thank you BCS” by Ruskin Bond. We solicit this kind of article which can be printed.

Please send article to the undersigned latest by 10th August 2009.

Best Regards,

Jaspal S. Sawhney

Introduction

THANK YOU – BCS

There were some who became legends ——— Freddie Brown , T.M. Whitmarsh Knight, Bob Murray, Frank Fisher ———– dedicated teachers through whose hands several thousand school boys passed during their years at BCS. Through the critical years, just before and after independence, these and other stalwarts made certain B.C.S. standards and traditions remained high.

To a school boy, a non –teaching headmaster may seem rather remote. But all of us can look back on our school days and recall at least one, sometimes two or three teachers, whose influence on us was strong and permanent. “Tubby” Whitmarch Knight lent me his own books, encouraged me to write. Freddie Brown taught me to hold a straight bat, both on and off the cricket field. “Taffy” Jones, a man of high principles, taught me integrity. Others left their mark in different ways. Mrs. Knight tried her best to teach me to sing but failed hopelessly; I was tone deaf. So she did the next best thing. Insisting that I looked just right in a cassock and surplice, she had me stand in the choir and open and shut my mouth with the rest of them; but I was not allowed to sing a single note. For two years a silent member of the school choir, I grew into a frustrated opera singer.

A few years earlier, a more accomplished B.C.S. choir had given a memorable performance of Handel’s Messiah, which was also broadcast over All India Radio. The School’s musical reputation was also enhanced by performances of Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas – The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, Iolanthe, and Trial by Jury. G.L. Papworth, our music teacher in the 1940’s, was the inspiration behind many of these efforts. School plays were also popular and were occasionally performed at Shimla’s famous Gaiety Theatre. Although, naturally, I did not get any singing roles, I made a hit playing a tipsy waiter in a one-act farce.

The Sixth Form of 1950 was not a brilliant class, with the exception of the Kirschners, Kasper and Andreas, who went on to become leading lights in their chosen scientific fields. The rest of us were average students, and some were more taken up with sports, the cinema, current jazz, and the tuck-shop. In my own case, the tuck-shop took precedence. Those hot fresh Samosas and Jalebis made up for the rigours of early morning P.T., occasional canings, and having to write “a hundred lines” ( the same line repeated over an over again) as punishment for some misdemeanor or the other. I’m not sure if this rather pointless task still exists. If it does, today’s boys will no doubt be doing their “hundred lines” on computers.

The B.C.S. was a great place for tradition, and canings (usually by headmaster or housemaster) were common enough right up to the 1960’s. This tradition came down to B.C.S from Tom Brown’s School days and English Public School such as Rugby, where our Founder was once one of the junior masters. We took there canings fairly phlegmatically and without fuss. In my time, young tata held the record for being caned the largest number of times, and he went on to a successful career in the hotel business. Some of us would thrust exercise books down the seats of our trousers to mitigate the effects of the swishing cane, but these were usually detected and resulted in an even more vigorous whacking. Three strokes was the average; six the maximum. Not every boy was equally compliant. My small brother William (Bond II), on being caned for the first time, leapt up and struck his housemaster, Mr. Fisher, on the chin. Mr. Fisher was greatly amused and took it sportingly, young bond being only eight or nine years old.

Mr. Jones, a junior master, has strong views on the subject of corporal punishment, and refused to cane boys. He was a dear man, who smoked a cigar and kept a pet pigeon which perched on his bald head and accompanied him on his rounds, although not to class. He had a soft spot for Tata and Vakharia, the most punished boys in School, and years later, when Vakharia dropped into see me in Dehra Dun, we walked across to a local school where Mr. Jones was working, long past the age of retirement. He was still smoking his cigar and he still kept pigeons. He was a man of character, strong in his principles, and so he remained to the end. The best teachers are not always the most qualified.

No one forgets his school years. Memories of B.C.S. grow stronger with the years. Each of us has his own special memories, but there are many that we have in common. Like that first day at School…………

I remember that day in 1943 when my father brought me to the prep school, then situated at Chott Simla. It was mid-June; and because of the War and my father’s R.A.F Service, I was a lat admission. I remember standing on the retaining wall above the playing – field , watching a horde of some two hundred small boys making a great deal of noise as they ran and tumbled about during what must have been the morning break. I did not think I would survive amongst that rather rough-looking lot, and I remember telling my father; ‘Lets go home!”.

But B.C.S was to be my home for the next three years, and I was soon to become one of the noisier boys on that little playing –field. Mr. Ram advani, who now runs a book business in Lucknow, was then the school bursar, and he remembers me as a small boy, for he helped to facilitate my admission, telling Canon Sinker that I was a deserving case.

Bigger playing fields beckoned, and from 1946 to 1950 I was in the senior school, the sola topee having given way to a school cap as a sign of changing times!

There were many changes during this period. The prep school closed down; and in 1947, when independence was the partition of the country, our Muslim friends about a hundred of them, had to be evacuated to Pakistan. This was a grave bow to B.C.S. At the same time, many good teachers were leaving the school and the country, and quality replacements were hard to find. As students we were unaware of the crisis. In 1950, when I took the senior Cambridge Exam, the Sixth form consisted of barely a dozen candidates. Sanawar, then a school for British Soldier’s children (my father’s old school) was in deeper trouble, and could hardly put together a foot ball team.

However, as we all know, B.C.S. along with other hill schools, survived this difficult period and moved onward and forward with independent India, nurturing talent and providing an English education that was as good as any envisaged by Bishop Cotton and the early pioneers.

As I write this little memoir, memories come flooding back: the great storm of ’45, when a couple of giant deodars came crashing down on the prep school roof; a freak snowfall on the Ist April ; fiercely contested hockey and football matches against Sanawar: getting a black eye in the boxing ring; happy hours in the Library; and Scout camp at Tera Devi, when I rolled out of my tent and down the khud. And of course those excursions to down during the June and September break. First priority was an ice-cream at Kwality’s ; then a comic at one of the book shops; then a film at the Rivoli, Ritz or Regal. No TV in those days. No video games or computers. But plenty of fun all the same, especially those occasional “socials” at Aukland house, where we were permitted to dance the fox-trot or Samba with the girls. Tradition and modernity always went together at B.C.S.

Games of course were compulsory, and that included the marathon, which I detested. I was invariably last although, D.C.Anand would sometimes compete for this position. This was due partly to the fact that I would stop to buy and eat roasted “bhutta” ( corn on the cob) from a wayside vendor just below the Governor’s house.

In spite of these occasional acts or indiscipline, it was probably self-discipline that I really learnt at B.C.S. and this has stood me in good stead for the greater part of my life. It has carried me, and may other cottonians through life’s ups and downs. , triumph and vicissitudes.

It helps even in small ways. Today, aged almost Seventy, I still make my own bed, polish my own shoes ( rather ineffectively), and tidy up my study and bed room: all habits I learnt at School. And if challenged I can still make “French bed”, the sort that will get you entangled in the sheets.

But of course self- discipline is more than just self-help. It means working regularly and with commitment; meeting deadlines, revising, giving of one’s best.

Courtesy is another quality that we acquired at B.C.S. and courtesy is a powerful weapon, especially in business and profession. We learnt to say “Sir” to our teachers and seniors.

A year after leaving B.C.S. , I was being interviewed for a job in Public Health Department in Jersey, in the U.K. called into the Director’s office, I automatically greeted him with a “Good Morning , Sir” he looked up, startled. Apparently none of the other candidates had bothered to call him “Sir” , apparently it had gone out of fashion.

“Where did you to school?” he asked

“ In India”, I Said

“ I didn’t know they had public school in India. It must been a good school”

“ Yes, Sir, it still is.” And I had the Job.

Thank you Bishop Cotton .

At 75,  popular author Ruskin Bond decides to take a stroll down memory lane and relive a day spent with his father 65 years back. 

If you can get an entire year off from school when you are nine-years-old, and can have a memorable time with a great father, then that year has to be the best time of your life even if it is followed by sorrow and insecurity.

It was the result of my parents’ separation at a time when my father was on active service in the RAF during World War II. He managed to keep me with him for a summer and winter, at various locations in New Delhi – Hailey road, Atul Grove lane, Scindia house – in apartments he had rented, as he was not permitted to keep a child in the quarters assigned to service personnel. This arrangement suited me perfectly, and I had a wonderful year in Delhi, going to the cinema, quaffing milk-shakes, helping my father with the stamp collection; but this idyllic situation could not continue for ever, and when my father was transferred to Karachi he had no option but to put me in a boarding school.

This was the Bishop Cotton preparatory school in Simla – or rather, chota Simla – where boys studied up to class 4, after which they moved on to the senior school.

Although I was a shy boy, I had settled down quite well in the friendly atmosphere of this little school, but I did miss my father’s companionship, and I was overjoyed when he came up to see me during the midsummer break. He had only a couple of days’ leave, and he could only take me out for a day, bringing me back to school in the evening.

I was so proud of him when he turned up in his dark blue RAF uniform, a Flight Lieutenants’ stripes very much in evidence as he had just been promoted. He was already 40, engaged in codes and ciphers and not flying much. He was short and stocky, getting bald, but smart in his uniform. I gave him a salute – I loved giving salutes – and he returned the salutation and followed it up with a hug and a kiss on my forehead. “And what would you like to do today, son?”

“Let’s go to Davico’s” I said. Davico’s was the best restaurant in town, famous for its marzipans, curry-puffs, and pastries. So to Davico’s we went, where of course I gorged myself on confectionery as only a small schoolboy can do.

“Lunch is still a long way off, so let’s take a walk,” suggested my father. And promising ourselves with more pastries, we left the mall and trudged up to the monkey temple at the top of Jakko hill. Here we were relieved of the pastries by the monkeys, who simply snatched them away from my unwilling hand, and we came downhill in a hurry, before I could get hungry again. Small boys and monkeys have much in common.

My father suggested a rickshaw-ride around Elysium Hill, and this we did in style, swept along by two sturdy young rickshaw-pullers. My father took the opportunity of relating the story of Kipling’s Phantom Rickshaw (this was before I discovered it in print), and a couple of other ghost stories designed to build up my appetite for lunch.

We lunched at Wenger’s (or was it Mark’s) and then – “Enough of ghosts, Ruskin. Let’s go to the pictures.”

I loved going to the pictures. I knew the Delhi cinemas intimately, and it hadn’t taken me long to discover the Simla cinemas. There were three of them – the Regal, the Ritz, and the Rivoli.

We went to the Rivoli. It was down near the ice-skating rink and the old Blessington hotel. The film was about an ice-skater and starred Sonja Henie, a pretty young Norwegian Olympic champion who appeared in a number of Hollywood musicals. All she had to do was skate and look pretty, and this she did to perfection. I decided to fall in love with her. But by the time I’d grown up and finished school she’d stopped skating and making films! Whatever happened to Sonja Henie?

After the picture it was time to return to school. We walked all the way to Chota Simla, talking about what we’d do during the winter holidays, and where we would go when the war was over.

“I’ll be in Calcutta now,” said my father. “There are good bookshops there. And cinemas. And Chinese restaurants. And we’ll buy more gramophone records, and add to the stamp collection.”

It was dusk when we walked slowly down the path to the school gate and playing-field. Two of my friends were waiting for me – Bimal and Riaz. My father spoke to them, asked about their homes. A bell started ringing. We said goodbye.

“Remember this day, Ruskin,” said my father. He patted me gently on the head and walked away. I never saw him again. Three months later I heard that he had passed away in the military hospital in Calcutta. I dream of him sometimes, and in my dream he is always the same, caring for me and leading me by the hand along old familiar roads.

And of course I remember that day. Over 65 years have passed, but it’s as fresh as yesterday.

(On the occasion of Ruskin Bond’s 75th birthday on May 19, Penguin Books is celebrating his writing by bringing out his new book Notes From A Small Room which is to be released in July.)