Instead of becoming a great shikari, as my mother and stepfather might have wished, I had become an incurable bookworm and was to remain one for the rest of my life.
Interpretation
Pursuing knowledge and reading can shape one's identity more profoundly than following conventional expectations.
In this quote, Ruskin Bond reflects on the divergence between his family's expectations for him to become a successful hunter and his own passion for reading and literature. He embraces the identity of a 'bookworm,' highlighting the importance of personal interests and intellectual pursuits over societal or familial pressures, suggesting that true fulfillment comes from following one's own path.
In practice
This quote can inspire discussions at a book club about the impact of reading on personal growth.
But the trees seemed to know me. They whispered among themselves and beckoned me nearer. And looking around, I noticed the other small trees and wild plants and grasses had sprung up under the protection of the trees we had placed there. The trees had multiplied! They were moving. In one small corner of the world, Grandfather's dream was coming true and the trees were moving again.
My mother wanted me to join the Indian army, as the army was seen as a decent and respectable career to have. I shocked my mother by telling her that I wanted to be a writer.
But the trees seemed to know me. They whispered among themselves and beckoned me nearer.
How evanescent those loves and friendships seem at this distance in timeβ¦We move on, make new attachments. We grow old. But sometimes, we hanker for old friendships, the old loves. Sometimes I wish I was young again. Or that I could travel back in time and pick up the threads. Absent so long, I may have stopped loving you, friends; but I will never stop loving the Day I loved you.
You may not enjoy loneliness, because loneliness is sad. But solitude is something else; solitude is what you look forward to when you want to be alone, when you want to be with yourself. So, solitude is something we all need from time to time.
People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.
The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty - not marble floors and foundations.
I learned to read a little in my primer, to write my own name, and to cypher some in the three first rules in figures. And this was all the schooling I ever had in my life, up to this day. I should have continued longer if it hadn't been that I concluded I couldn't do any longer without a wife, and so I cut out to hunt me one.
I loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie.
When school district officials literally laughed at the notion that the Me Generation β this was the label for my generation β would jump at the chance to teach in urban and rural communities, their concerns, too, went unheard. My very greatest asset was that I simply did not understand what was impossible.
Denial of childhood and denial of freedom are the biggest sins which humankind has been committing and perpetuating for ages.
It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society.
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