The Magic that is India

The well-known and much-loved author, Ruskin Bond, was born in India of English parents. In 1952, he went to England at the age of 18 to find his feet as a writer. For a couple of years, he struggled in Jersey and London, working as a clerk by day and toiling to become a novelist in his free hours. A publisher accepted his first novel The Room on the Roof for consideration, but took ages to decide. Nothing seemed working. That, together with a failed relationship with a Vietnamese girl Vu Phuong convinced young Ruskin Bond he was a failure.  

He describes the situation in his autobiography, Lone Fox Dancing:

For some time I had almost resigned myself to a lifetime of clerical servitude–it  would have been bearable had there been someone, a Vu Phuong, to take my hand occasionally–but now, once more, I began to think seriously of returning to India; although, when I mentioned this  to  anyone–Indian  students, my mother, or friends back in India, they expressed alarm at the thought and did their best to dissuade me. What was the point in coming all the way to England if I was going to return home because I felt lonely and because I thought I was a failure?  

'Home'–that was the magnet. Not the 'home' of my mother and stepfather, but the larger home that was India, where I could even feel free to be a failure. The Land of Regrets, someone had called India; but for me it was a land of acceptances. For hadn't I, a mixed-up colonial castaway, an accident of history, found acceptance on the streets and in the tea-shops and the wayside haunts of Dehra? I wasn't looking for a palace or a hilltop retreat. All I really wanted was my little room back again.

The magic of the larger home that is India! The land of acceptances where you are free to be a failure. A country that shelters people irrespective of the colour of their skin, irrespective of the god they pray to, irrespective of their station in life. It’s a unique country where bazaars, wayside tea shops, and people’s hearts are open for everyone.

That is the essence of India.

Let’s keep it alive.

26 February 2019