RECOLLECTING THE MIGRATION MEMORIES OF RUSKIN BOND

Abstract

There are reminiscences of British Imperial history when white man migrated to new lands. Life in India gave Britishers a challenge due to extreme weather condition. As a result, they made hills as their luxury homes. After ‘the order of the day’, when British Raj came to an end, the white man lost their shikar, fashionable teas, polo and horse riding. After enjoying from diamonds to grain, poor whites migrated back to England. Living lavish lives of sahibs, they naturally looked back in anger at what they had lost. This time they struggled to make their identity in their own homeland. British Raj gave birth to another community called Anglo Indians, people who were racially mixed and people of British descent who chose to stay in India. Ruskin Bond’s family was one of them. He was in his teens when his father died serving the Raj as a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force. In the cohesive era of doubts and political unrest, Bond got solace in the lap of nature. When he left for England, he realized that he is rooted in the soil of India. Not only did he reject to settle in England, but also to earn money by writing about India’s poverty and politics. His ‘self’ is visible in his works where he declared India as his home. He confesses ‘Race did not make me an Indian. But history did. And in the long run, it’s history that counts’. (qut.in Bhatt 103) Ruskin Bond is one of those rare people who dare to go back to their homeland and settle.