Landour Days

‘Our very own resident Wordsworth in prose’ —India Today

‘The habit of keeping a diary has led me into trouble more than once,’ writes Ruskin Bond in the introduction to this journal of a year in his hometown of Landour, Mussoorie. Bond is an inveterate diarist, but over the years he finds that the nature of what he wants to record has changed, for ‘In the autumn of my life, I grow reflective.’

The events are small in themselves: the daily happenings in Landour, the birds and flowers that each season brings, and the eccentricities of friends and family. Landour itself is a magical world—where every month has its own flower, every walker his own style, and the countryside is filled with a beauty all its own—though uninvited guests will intrude and evenings at the Savoy Bar are not as peaceful as they might be . . . But in his mind Bond ranges further afield. He ponders on the experience of being a writer, on writers he has known and those that he loves reading, and on critics, handwriting and typewriters.

Filled with warmth and gentle humour, this book captures the timeless rhythm of life in the mountains, and the serene wisdom of one of India’s best-loved writers.

‘‘ ‘In this slim volume of jottings … Ruskin Bond does what he’s best at – making you smile at the simple pleasures of life, and laughing at all its inanities. Light and breezy, full of delicious wit and humour. Just the kind of wonderfully refreshing stuff that one craves for…’—First City