The Name’s Bond

The author,still enthusiastic about his calling after five decades of writing stories,has an anecdote to illustrate almost everything he says. Like when he’s talking about how children sometimes make the most honest critics. “I visited a school once and a little girl was asked by her teacher whether she liked my books. The girl thought about it very seriously,before saying,‘Sir,you’re not a bad writer.’”

Two new books,Mr Oliver’s Diary and Escape from Java,(Penguin) have hit the shelves. “The latter is a collection of adventure stories,some old ones. Mr Oliver’s Diary,on the other hand,is a humourous account of a school teacher who starts out as a figure of fun. He writes a diary in which he complains about the wretched children who bother him at school. He finally falls in love with a teacher from the girls’ school next door.”

Bond recommends keeping a diary. “You can always mine it for material,” he says. He himself just keeps rough notes of anything that catches his attention. “I’ve tried keeping a diary twice,with unfortunate results,” he reveals,“The first time was when I was in school and I filled it with unflattering things about my teachers,which were read by them. The second was while living with relatives in England.”

A lot of the appeal in Bond’s writing comes from how visual it is. “I always see a book before I actually write it,” says the 76-year-old,“I watched a lot of movies as I was growing up,so that influenced my style a great deal.” It is no wonder that many of his stories have been translated onto the big screen,the latest being Vishal Bharadwaj’s Saat Khoon Maaf,based on Bond’s short story,Susanna’s Seven Husbands. Bharadwaj,who has also filmed the writer’s The Blue Umbrella,even convinced Bond to make an appearance in the movie as a bishop. “Acting is very hard work,one has to keep repeating the same action until it is just right,” Bond says. “There was a scene which required me to kiss Priyanka Chopra on the cheek and I needed 20 takes. Everyone thought I was doing it deliberately.”