A Little Book of Serenity

By Ruskin Bond

• Why you must pause, look up and out of the window.

• Why a geranium flowering on the windowsill and wind soughing in the pines is serenity

• How rain drumming on the roof can still the mind as effectively as a night of meditation

• How to recognize serenity once you hav

• Language: English
• Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
• Release date: Jul 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9789386050335

Ruskin Bond

Ruskin Bond is one of India's most well-known writers. Born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, in 1934, he grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun and Shimla. In the course of a writing career spanning over seventy years, he has published over a hundred books, including short-story collections, poetry, novels, essays, memoirs and journals, edited anthologies and books for children. The Room on the Roof was his first novel, written when he was seventeen. It received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. He has also received many other awards, including the Sahitya Akademi award in 1992, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014. Many of his stories and novellas including The Blue Umbrella, A Flight of Pigeons and Susanna's Seven Husbands have been adapted into films. Ruskin lives in Landour, Mussoorie. His other books with HarperCollins include These are a Few of My Favourite Things, Koki's Song, How to Be a Writer, The Enchanted Cottage and How to Live Your Life.

Book preview

Some years ago, on a busy road outside a railway station, I saw a yogi lying on a bed of nails. He was taking a quiet nap, and when he got up he looked very rested, very serene.

I suppose that’s one form of serenity—looking comfortable where others would find discomfort.

My Uncle Ken, the laziest man in the world, proclaimed that he could do the same thing. He got a thick mattress, placed it over the bed of nails, spread himself out upon it, and gave us a self-satisfied grin. I suppose that too was a serenity of a sort. Or was it serendipity?

In this workaday, competitive, computerized world I find it very hard to find people who are truly serene. As people rush around in their cars, or on their bikes, they are usually snarling at each other, anxious to overtake, to get ahead. Nervous tension oozes from their pores. Serenity is just a word they have heard of somewhere.

Or sit in front of your TV set any evening. Tune in to the news channels. And what will you find? Angry citizens, agitated politicians, excitable TV anchors, sermonizing holy men, opinionated celebrities… Serenity is rarely to be seen.

Perhaps you will find it only in the cradle. I remember an African mother crooning a lullaby to her sleeping infant: ‘How can there be a baby with no crying? How can there be a story with no ending?’ And she answers her own questions: ‘A baby when it’s sleeping has no crying. A story of "I love