Ruskin Bond

Ruskin Bond
Ruskin Bond at a book release function in Bangalore (June 6, 2012)
Born	(1934-05-19) 19 May 1934 (age 82) Kasauli, Punjab States Agency, British India
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Indian
Period	1951–

Ruskin Bond (born 19 May 1934) is an Indian author of British descent. He lives with his adopted family in Landour, in Mussoorie, India. The Indian Council for Child Education has recognised his role in the growth of children's literature in India. He got the Sahitya Academy Award in 1992 for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra, for his published work in English. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2014.

Ruskin Bond was born on 19 May 1934 in a military hospital, to Edith Clarke and Aubrey Bond, in Kasauli, Punjab States Agency, British India. His siblings were Ellen and William. Ruskin's father was with the Royal Air Force from 1939 till 1944. When Bond was eight years old, his mother separated from his father and married a Punjabi Hindu, Hari. Ellen lived in Ludhiana until she died in 2014.

Bond spent his early childhood in Jamnagar (Gujarat) and Shimla. At the age of ten, Ruskin went to live at his grandmother's house in Dehradun after his father's death that year from jaundice. Ruskin was raised by his mother and stepfather. He did his schooling from Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, from where he graduated in 1950 after winning several writing competitions in the school including the Irwin Divinity Prize and the Hailey Literature Prize. He wrote one of his first short stories, "Untouchable", at the age of sixteen in 1951.

Following his high school education he went to his aunt's house in Channel Islands in the U.K. in 1951 for better prospects and stayed there for two years. In London, he started writing his first novel, The Room on the Roof, the semi-autobiographical story of the orphaned Anglo-Indian boy named Rusty; he did various jobs for a living. It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, (1957) awarded to a British Commonwealth writer under 30. He moved to London and worked in a photo studio while searching for a publisher. After getting it published, Bond used the advance money to pay the sea passage to Bombay and settle in Dehradun.