4
Directions (206-214): Read the passage given below and answer the questions by selecting the correct/ most appropriate options. 1. Ruskin Bond, the famous Anglo-Indian writer worked for a while in a photo studio in England while trying to find a publisher for his works. Once he started earning money from his writing, he moved back to India and settled in Dehradun. 2. He spent the next few years earning his living as a freelance writer, penning short stories and poems for newspapers and magazines. In 1963, he went to live in Mussoorie where he furthered his writing career. 3. By this time he was a popular writer and his essays and articles were published in numerous magazines and newspapers, such as ‘The Pioneer’, ‘The leader’, ‘The Tribune’, and ‘The Telegraph’. He also edited a magazine for four years. 4. In 1980, one of his most popular novels, ‘The Blue Umbrella’ was published. His increasing fame as a writer caught the attention of Penguin Books. The publishers approached Bond in the 1980s and asked him to write a few books. Two of his previous novels, ‘The Room on the Roof’ and its sequel “Vagrants in the valley’ were published in one volume by Penguin India in 1993. 5. Over the ensuing years several of his works including a collection of his non-fiction writings, ‘The Best of Ruskin Bond’, and collections of short stories ‘The night Train at Deoli’, ‘Time stops At Shamli’, ‘Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra’ were published. Some of his popular titles in the supernatural genre are ‘Ghost Stories from the Raj’, ‘A Season of Ghosts’, and ‘A face in the Dark and other Hauntings’. 6. Ruskin Bond has experimented with different genres including fiction, essays. Autobiographical, non-fiction, romance, and books for children. He has authored over 500 short stories, essays and novels, more than 50 books for children, and two volumes fo autobiography,’ Scenes from a writer’s Life’ and ‘The Lamp is Lit’. Apart from writing, Ruskin spent four years as a/an
