My meeting with Bond took place on one fine morning when our teacher made our read through, "Sounds I like to hear,"..a few years back I had learnt to imagine and now came the next step-"close your eyes and hear, listen and recognize sounds around you". It felt grand and the whole year was a gift in itself, for the trick helped me to understand the world around me from a different perspective. Sadly, my text book got sold off with a bunch of old newspapers and I missed my "sounds I like to hear" the most...all I knew was it was written by Ruskin Bond. And, down the years I looked for that piece in all the Bond books I came across-but for one.
Bond came into life again. A teacher again taught me about him-this time it was "the eyes are not here". I learnt to see the world with a different light yet again. But yes I missed the "sounds...". And few more years of searching and waiting followed.
A friend told me about Bond's autobiographical book-"rain in the mountains". And I could not stop myself from buying it in two day's time. It was a tough day- I snailed through the world and reached my house pretty late, tired and weak all through out, I looked and found a parcel waiting for me on the table- with tired fingers I ripped the casting and "rain in the mountains" glowed back at me...Was it apprehension, a distant rumbling of the clouds or the sudden cold wind, that touched my face softly, I flipped through the pages and studied the index closely. Buy the book, turn to page 108 of the penguin edition and read through.
