This volume brings together Ruskin Bond’s autobiographical writings—memoirs, essays, journals, philosophical musings—of over five decades. As Bond writes about the experiences of his formative years that came to shape his art, of life’s little joys and fleeting regrets, of the eccentricities of friends and family, of the birds and flowers that each season brings, he transports us to a more elegant world where time moves at a gentler pace. Brimming over with his trademark wisdom, warmth and candour, this collection shows why Ruskin Bond is one of India’s most treasured writers. Born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Simla. As a young man he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. He has written over five hundred short stories, essays and novellas (some included in the collections Dust on the Mountain and Classic Ruskin Bond) and more than forty books for children. He has lived in Mussoorie for over forty years, writing from the small cottage which he shares with his growing adopted family.