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Landour Days: A Writer's Journal QUOTES

Landour Days: A Writer's Journal QUOTES

1 " The other day a young Internet surfer asked me why I preferred using a pencil instead of a computer. The principal reason, I told him, was that I liked chewing on the end of my pencil. A nasty habit, but it helps me concentrate. And I find it extremely difficult to chew on a computer. "

― Ruskin Bond , Landour Days: A Writer's Journal

2 " I feel drawn to little temples on lonely hilltops. With the mist swirling round them, and the wind humming in the stunted pines, they absorb some of the magic and mystery of their surroundings and transmit it to the questing pilgrim. "

― Ruskin Bond , Landour Days: A Writer's Journal

3 " Death moves about at random, without discriminating between the innocent and the evil, the poor and the rich. The only difference is that the poor usually handle it better. "

― Ruskin Bond , Landour Days: A Writer's Journal

4 " Our insect musicians are roused to their greatest activity during the monsoons. At dusk the air seems to tinkle and murmur to their music. To the shrilling of the grasshoppers is added the staccato notes of the crickets, while in the grass and on the trees myriads of lesser artistes are producing a variety of sounds. As musicians, the cicadas are in a class of their own. Throughout the monsoons their screaming chorus rings through the forest. A shower, far from dampening their ardour, only rouses them to a deafening crescendo of effort. As with most insect musicians, the males do the performing, the females remain silent. This moved one chauvinistic Greek poet to exclaim: ‘Happy the cicadas, for they have voiceless wives!’ To which I would respond by saying, ‘Pity the female cicadas, for they have singing husbands!’ Probably the most familiar and homely of insect singers are the crickets. I won’t attempt to go into detail on how the cricket produces its music, except to say that its louder notes are produced by a rapid vibration of the wings, the right wing usually working over the left, the edge of one acting on the file of the other to produce a shrill, long-sustained note, like a violinist gone mad. Cicadas, on the other hand, use their abdominal muscles to produce their sound. "

― Ruskin Bond , Landour Days: A Writer's Journal

5 " Typewriters and computers were not designed with steep mountain slopes in mind. On one occasion last autumn I did carry my typewriter into the garden, and I am still trying to extricate a couple of acorns from under the keys, while the roller seems permanently stained from some fine yellow pollen dust from the deodar trees. But armed with pencils and paper, I can lie on the grass and write for hours. Provided there are a couple of cheese-and-tomato sandwiches within easy reach. "

― Ruskin Bond , Landour Days: A Writer's Journal

6 " We cannot foresee when a bolt from the blue will put an end to the best-laid plans of mice and men. "

― Ruskin Bond , Landour Days: A Writer's Journal

7 " shall have to write some raunchy stuff if I’m going to make much money. "

― Ruskin Bond , Landour Days: A Writer's Journal

8 " Winter turns my mind to journeys those taken and those never done. Especially to a fantasy one I have always wanted to make: along the Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Peshawar. For the Road is a river. It may not be as sacred as the Ganga, which it greets at Kanpur and Varanasi, but it is just as permanent. It’s a river of life, an unending stream of humanity going places, intent on arriving and getting there most of the time. A long day’s journey into night that’s how I would describe the saga of the truck driver, that knight errant, or rather errant knight, of India’s Via Appia. Undervalued, underpaid and often disparaged, he drives all day and sometimes all night, carrying the country’s goods and produce for hundreds of miles, across state borders, through lawless tracts, at all seasons and in all weathers. We blame him for hogging the middle of the road, but he is usually overloaded and if he veers too much to the left or right he is quite likely to topple over, burying himself and crew under bricks or gas cylinders, sugarcane or TV sets. More than the railwayman, the truck driver is modern India’s lifeline, and yet his life is held cheap. He drinks, he swears, occasionally he picks up HIV, and frequently he is killed or badly injured. And we hate him for hogging the road. But we cannot do without him. "

― Ruskin Bond , Landour Days: A Writer's Journal