April Chronicles...

Dreaming April

For as long as I remember I have spent my birthday on April 26th in the mountains with Ruskin Bond(in my dreams silly!). This started at the sweet age of 8 after I was hijacked into his world on reading the short story called 'Women on Platform No 9'.

The story beautifully transcended the margins of sexuality, geography, age and race. It was so 'ME' that I started thinking of this writer as a 'cooler extension' of me living in the mountains. Slowly the duality of the writer and reader disappeared. He wasn't a separate man writing about his life. He was just another 'me' living in Mussorie with Prem and his children smelling the onions frying in his kitchen. This kind of familiarity was turning really difficult to manage on a practical level. So I took in into my dreams to process all the business that we had together. Him and Me.

I could have met him in real life too but for what? What would I say to him when we met?

Hello Mr. Bond. My name is Ruskin Bond too. Pearl Ruskin Bond Sandhu! 

I think its really cruel that you don't know but you ought to know that I have been in love with you since I was 8 years old.(How come you didn't know? You started this whole business by writing Didn't you?~!) Ah no...So it was going to turn into ugly real life if I ever met him really...So I haven't in all these years.

Mr Bond I fondly remember the times we slept together. The times you were whispering stories of the cold sweet mountain air in my ears. The times you told me about your lost loves, poverty, and your tardy typewriter.Oh and It was such a sad walk that we took together the day you met your mother for the last time in hospital. I wish you had let me hold your hand but you were walking so fast in that Delhi heat. Oh and that Vietnamese girl that you fell in love with? Vu Phong. I became her that night you made love to her and the Jasmine and honeysuckle shook in the wind outside our window.

Thats how the dreaming opened doors to my real life. The life that had brought me in touch with this man who meant so much to me that that dreaming was the only real way of meeting him!So like a well behaved young lady I never told anyone about this great elderly love of my life.( Off course I don't love his old age. I love him for his madness!)

So its become an annual ritual now. I dream of being in Ruskin Bond's company every year on my Birthday. We sit down over cups of tea and Cherry cakes. He looks at me lovingly like he has known me forever.  In my dreams he is a vulnerable lost man who desperately needs to know how much I love him. And I really do. And we discuss writing books together. We tear down our silly publishers(but we never make fun of readers!). He even writes funny forwards to my travelogues.

The mountain wind whispers on our dinner table. The 44* Degress of April (of my not loved reality) outside completely disappears in the drones of crickets playing outside his Ivy Cottage home in Mussorie. Thats when the window closes and I can only see warm lights from a distance. I never know what we do in that house after I sleep in sweaty  April heat of my physical reality. But I swear I get up with a sweet after taste of cherry cake the next mornings.