Waiting to see Mr Oliver’s diary on silver screen: Ruskin Bond

As noted director Vishal Bharadwaj is busy shooting Mr Oliver’s Diary, one of the most prominent and heart touching works of Ruskin Bond, the author is looking forward to seeing it live on the silver screen.

Bharadwaj had earlier adapted Bond’s work — Susanna’s Seven Husbands as Saat Khoon Maaf starring Priyanka Chopra and The Blue Umbrella as Neeli Chhatri featuring Pankaj Kapoor. But, Bond has his reservations.

“I wasn’t happy with the adaptation of Susanna’s Seven Husbands as it was a bit dark, darker than the story. But, The Blue Umbrella was nice,” Bond told HT City on Thursday afternoon.

He was in the capital to attend a four-day Imagine-Fall Book Festival at World Integrity Centre (WIC).

Tagging himself as a nonfiction writer, Bond accepts how JK Rowling’s epic series of Harry Potter brought children books in focus. “The Harry Potter series certainly made a difference. Not only its screen adaptation was successful but also the books became globally popular. Since then the publishers started taking children book authors seriously,” he said.

He also accepted that in India the scope of children storytelling is limited. He mentioned how there’s plenty of opportunities for writers and publishers in this genre but the trend is slowly picking up.

Talking of some of the world recognised writers like JRR Tolkien whose books The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and George RR Martin whose book Game of Thrones (TV series) have become highly popular and even their screen adaptations were appreciated worldwide, he mentioned that the fiction writing needs a ‘strain of imagination and magnitude’.

“For writing such series strain of imagination and a level of magnitude is needed. I personally can’t write that. It needs a lot of effort. This particular style of building a creative picture before the readers, which is obviously not true, needs a resourceful mind and vision,” he said.

The favourite subject of Bond is children. But, he sometimes also likes to give a quirky side to his tales by adding the ingredient of ‘ghost’. “Ghost stories are popular amongst children and they love to hear it. Even if I have to experiment a little, I would only add an ingredient of a ghost which even makes me happy,” he smiled.

Ruskin Bond lives in Mussoorie with his adopted family and has a British descent. But, it’s not frequently that he travels abroad. Watching the changes at his hometown, make him a bit uncomfortable.

“Well, development is good unless people have a sense of it,” he said.

I wasn’t happy with the adaptation of Susanna’s Seven Husbands as it was a bit dark, darker than the story. But, The Blue Umbrella was nice RUSKIN BOND, AUTHOR

HT PHOTO Ruskin Bond