Till date, I’m advised to avoid chocolate, but I cannot give it up. The extra inches around my waist says it all…” Ruskin Bond’s response to my recollection of our previous meeting in Mumbai had ended our delightful telephonic interview on a warm, familiar note. In 2004-05, at an author session, while being attached to the same publisher, I had the good fortune to share dinner space with ‘Mr Bond’. Our conversation coasted along from Mumbai’s muggy weather to his love for this calorific indulgence, even as we helped ourselves to scoops of chocolate chip ice cream. “I’m not supposed to eat it; but we live just once, no?”

Ruskin Bond’s new book, Maharani, is set in Mussoorie of the ‘60s and ‘70s, when “there were few cars on our roads.” According to Bond, today’s Mussoorie is a weekend favourite, an impermanent place, with fewer full-time residents, making it tough to spot too many ‘characters’. His story is about a Maharani of yesteryear. File Photo