Source : The Pioneer
BHUBANESWAR : Padma Bhushan writer and poet Ruskin Bond on Tuesday said despite the advancement of technology and advent of digital literature, the printed book would continue to be in demand.
Asked whether the printed book has a future in the backdrop of the rapid growth in technology, Bond said the printed book is still relevant and he did not see its popularity on wane.
Bond, presently in the city to inaugurate a literary meet, was having a free-wheeling chat with the faculty, particularly from the department of English and Humanities, and officers of the Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan University.
Quoting a recent survey, the author said it shows that the printed books are way ahead of any other despite the digital advancement.
“The individual preference is the printed word, not e-books. The printed book has not been yet replaced,” he said, adding that books have influenced generations. “People are reading books in lakhs,” he observed.
Replying to questions, he said most of his books are on people, some of which were real, some fictional and some of them a mixture of the two. “When I run out of people, I go to ghosts, most of it invented,” he said referring to the ghost stories written by him. “I have, however, never seen a ghost nor am I in touch with the other world, not yet,” the 83-year-old author laughed.
Bond said he had started writing when he was barely 17 or 18 which led to the publishing of his first book, ‘The Room on the Roof’’ in 1956. “I still go back to my childhood, boyhood, my schooldays in Shimla,” he said.
Recalling India’s independence in 1947, the author said he was in a boarding school at that time. “I heard many things without experiencing it. They were about the communal violence in the wake of the country’s partition though things quietened down within a few months. But it was traumatic,” he said.
Asked as to how he conceptualises his stories, he said he visualises the beginning, middle and end of the story in his mind before he sits down to write. “Many of my stories are invented, but many characters are real people. I write usually in the morning; the earlier the better as visitors drop in as the day progresses,” Bond said.
