Understanding Ruskin Bond’s Book of Nature: An Ecosystem Approach

Nature writing is emerging as a promising field as its scope and range are expanding. Beginning as solitary enjoyment of wilderness to the anthropocentric view of nature, it has come a long way. The rich existing body of nature writing has explored many generic forms — memoir, travelogue, natural history and literary essay, not to mention bibliographies, endnotes, glossaries, and maps. The present paper analyses the nature of nature writing in Ruskin Bond’s Book of Nature using an ecosystem approach. It contends that Bond’s writing is free from the confines of genre and assumes as varied shapes as the nature does. It narrates, documents, contemplates, reminisces, breaks into poetry, moves as a travelogue, philosophises on various aspects of nature. It is hybrid in nature and contains some bit of every genre thus simulating the unplanned nature. Citing limitations of the existing taxonomy, the paper attempts to place Bond’s The Book of Nature using Barnhill’s approach. It tries to locate his work vis a vis the fresh ways of looking at the landscape. It is a theoretical take on his work focussing on the structure and subject of his work and its significance in achieving the desired effect.