'Lone Fox Dancing - My Autobiography'
Just finished reading the story of 'Ruksan' in his own words, and it's difficult to come out of the aura created by Bond through his magical pen. Words at par with the gentle stories he weaves, so authentic that the reader just wants to believe that Bond actually lived each story!
From his early life to ripe old age, Bond has laid out his whole life, though he admits towards the end that for some personal anecdotes he has changed the names. One thing that comes through is his deep love for his dear departed dad, whom he lost in his early teens, and the undertones of a strained equation with his mom, with whom he tries to make up on her deathbed.
And the other theme is his deep love for India. He does hop over to England for a couple of years at the beginning of his writing career, also taking up odd jobs to support himself. But he gets restless and comes back to India, to his beloved Doon, to the friends of his younger years and some new. His early struggles as a writer vouch to his abiding love for the art of writing, and he keeps at it for well nigh four decades before starting to get a degree of recognition.
It's amazing that Bond has continued to live in and around Mussoorie almost his whole life, that he continues to delight in and get inspiration from the trees, the birds, the wildlife of the hills, even as life around him has changed beyond recognition over the decades. And he continues to live with and support his adopted family of a man of the hills, his early support, over three generations.
A rewarding story of gentle love and deeply humanist outlook.
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