A once-in-a-lifetime day!

Met Ruskin Bond yesterday. The great man had come to Landmark, Bangalore for celebrating the joint 25th anniversary of Penguin India and Landmark, by launching his book on poems. It was an opportunity not to be missed after our failed attempt to meet him at his hometown of Mussoorie a while back. Re-posting this from that post of mine:


Last year, we had been to Mussoorie during the Christmas vacation, and A had looked forward to meeting one of her favourite (OK, one of my favourite too) writers Ruskin Bond. She had made a booklet of a few of her own stories. We wanted to meet him and present him with this booklet, and get our favourite books ( The Blue Umbrella for A and A Flight of Pigeons for me) signed. Unfortunately, he was out of town, and was to return only after we left Mussoorie. So we requested Mr Arora, who owns a bookstore where Ruskin Bond regularly signed books for his readers, to hand over the booklet to him to sign, and gave him our address. We were extremely disappointed on not being able to meet him in person, but there was nothing we could do about that!


Imagine our delight when, after a few weeks, an envelope arrived at our home, containing the booklet, duly signed by Mr Bond, with a few encouraging words from him. Her book, (never mind that it was an unpublished, handwritten one) signed by Ruskin Bond!

So when I got the mailer announcing the event, I marked it on my calendar. School day or not.

So yesterday we proceeded to Landmark, armed with our copies of The Blue Umbrella and A Flight of Pigeons.

As expected, there was quite a crowd. What was not expected, was the utterly inane comments by the MC, who was also quite rude in the way he kept saying- "OK, now that the cake is cut, kids get off the stage!" He also kept making cliched comments like "Mr Bond is here- not James Bond!" and kept nudging us to clap every few minutes, when all of us were hanging on to every word uttered by Mr Bond. And he kept calling him Ruksin Bond! Couldn't Landmark and Penguin get someone better between them? The photographers were also quite rude, pushing and shoving the kids around. Choxbox has described what happened, in this post of hers.

OK, now that I've got that off my chest, let me say that it was lovely hearing him speak. He first launched his new book, and with the kids present, cut the cake for the occasion, then read a poem from his new book. He was a gentle giant with the kids, most of who asked him questions, and he answered them without talking down to them. The hallmark of a great person. He was also very gracious with questions and comments from the rest of the crowd. To A's question as to what the inspiration for her favourite book-The Blue Umbrella was, he replied that he had once seen a local girl walking with a similar umbrella, and had wondered about what her story was. So now we have a little girl mulling on the many interesting things around her, and wondering what the story of that incident might be. Had quite an interesting discussion on that on the way back home.

When we all lined up to get our books signed, they called for the children first. I went with A as then we could get away- school night and all. She took her book and went up to him, and said,
"Do you remember the story 'The Rainbow Bird' that I had written and sent to you?"
And he looked at her and said,"Oh, yes, I remember. Was it you who had written it?"
"Yes," she said, as he signed first her book and then mine.
I thanked him for taking the effort to send it back to us by post, and then we had to move away to make way for the next person who wanted to have his copy signed. I wish we could have interacted with him for more than those few moments, but A was ecstatic. "He remembered my story!"

It will be an encounter that we'll remember always. Hoping to be able to meet him some time again.

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Yesterday was also once-in-a-lifetime because of the Venus Transit. A rare celestial incident that occurs just twice in a century, at a gap of 8 years. It happened in 2004, and yesterday. It will now occur again in 2117, 105 years from now- probably in the lifetime of our great-great grandchildren. So we got up early and went out to an empty ground near our home, armed with solar protection glasses, to try and catch it at 7am, before the school bus arrived.

Unfortunately, it was overcast for most of the morning, the sun peeping out from behind the clouds for just fleeting moments. The kid saw the sun, but not venus, as there wasn't enough time to focus. However, later in the morning, around 9.45, the clouds shifted for long enough for me to see it from my balcony, where I had parked myself for most of the morning.