The Room On The Roof was his first novel, written when he was 
seventeen and it recieved the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial prize in 1957. Vagrants In The Valley was also written in his teens and picked up from where The Room On TheRoof leaves off. These two novellas were published in one volume by Penguin India in 1993 as was a much-acclaimed collection of his non-fiction writing, Rain In The Mountain, Delhi Is Not Far : The Best Of Ruskin Bond was published by Penguin India the following year.
Rushkin Bond recieved the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India for 1992, for Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra. Summing up his last essay in The Lamp Is Lit, Ruskin writes: 'And there are many brave and good Indian writers, who work in their own language -- be it Bengali or Oriya or Telugu or Marathi or fifteen to twenty others -- and plough their lonely furrow without benefit of agent or media blitz or Booker prize. Some of them may despair. But even so, they work on in despair. Their rewards may be small, their readers few, but it is enough to keep them from turning off the light. For they know that the pen, in honest and gifted hands, is mightier than the grave.' Ruskin then goes on to write: 'And these are my parting words to you, dear Reader: May you have the wisdom to be simple, and the humour to be happy.'
To know Ruskin better, let us read this poem that he wrote:
RAINDROP
This leaf, so complete in itself,
Is only part of the tree.
And this tree, so complete in itself,
Is only part of the forest.
And the forest runs down from the hill to the sea,
And the sea, so complete in itself,
Rests like a raindrop
In the hand of God.
As you browse through this site, you'll be reading Ruskin's quotes from his works. There is a page devoted to his poetry. There is yet another page listing his published works....but then you already know all this is there on the site.
If you notice any flaw, or if you have a suggestion, please contact Pushkin Passey at passey@vsnl.com
