This Bond's first kiss was a missed one; both he and the girl had their eyes closed. He likes cricket but he hates running between the wickets. He did have an unemployed and eccentric uncle called Ken. He didn't have one who tried to poison him.

Meet Bond, Ruskin Bond (though the line just doesn't work for him; see box).

Sitting through the conversation between Ruskin Bond and Jayant Kripalani, at the session titled 'Reading and a Child's Imagination' at Tata Steel Kalam, held in association with Victoria Memorial Hall and The Telegraph, was like being in one of Ruskin Bond's books. Full of wonder and discovery - not just for the fans, who discovered interesting nuggets about their favourite author, but also for the 81-year-old author, who rediscovered his forgotten characters, incidents and even a forgotten poem, ironically titled Lost.

"This is not in my collected works, so thank you for reminding me of it, I'll look it up and maybe include it somewhere," said Bond, prompting Kripalani to ask for a commission. "You can have your 10 per cent," responded the author, without missing a beat.

Kripalani had a treat for the fans - "children below 16 and above 17" in the audience were given a chance to show off just how well acquainted they were with their hero's work. He shot off some questions, which included - "Which Bollywood movie did Ruskin Bond appear in a cameo role playing a bishop?" (Answer: 7 Khoon Maaf) and "In which novel does Ruskin Bond's popular adolescent hero Rusty appear for the first time?" (Answer: The Room on the Roof).

Almost every hand in the 700-strong audience, mostly belonging to the "below 16 age group", shot up. They knew every answer, even those that Ruskin Bond himself did not. The writer drew a blank on the identity of Nakoo in spite of Kripalani providing the hint: "Nakoo is an unusual spectator in a cricket match who, when repeatedly hit by a ball, turns violent and all hell is let loose on the pitch."

A crocodile, the audience answered correctly. The one that neither the audience nor Bond himself could answer was a question from The Book of Nature. "If red roses are for young lovers then what is for long-standing relationships?" The author took a shot in the dark and asked if it was a "stinging nettle". It was not, it was French Beans. Ruskin Bond remembered that it was because one needed to be looked after well. "I love this; I'm telling him what he's written," said a gleeful Kripalani.

But the writer did have a string of humorous anecdotes about himself, something that made this interaction even more special. "I was so bad in 7 Khoon Maaf that they never offered me another role," he confessed. Amidst the ripples of laughter on Nakoo's forgotten identity, he explained that as far as cricket is concerned, his sympathies lay with the bowler. "I have this theory no one takes seriously that the wickets should be taller and broader; it gives the bowlers a better chance. And nobody ever keeps me in their cricket team for long because I don't understand this business of running up and down between the wickets. So if I tap the ball somewhere and the other batsman comes running towards me, I just stay where I am. The last time I played in a team, they had four run outs and they never asked me to play again."

The audience was delighted to get pieces of the author that he hadn't divulged in his books. "Getting to know him personally was wonderful... all those tales about himself and discovering that Uncle Ken had actually existed!" exclaimed Sayati Das, first year sociology student of Presidency University.

What was evident on Sunday was that adults and children alike adored this delightfully droll writer with more than 150 titles under his rather ample belt. "The transition from children's books to adult books is sometimes a very thin one. If you look back at the world's classics, some were written for adults and have become children's books - Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Treasure Island. Only when you're writing specifically for very young children would you adopt a different style of writing," he said.

When the Memorial floor was thrown open for questions, the adults asked for advice for aspiring writers. "You have to persevere. You can't go plunging into it, though. You have to be familiar with the basics of writing and the way to attain that is through reading books. The more you read, the better you'll write."

Of course, the question most frequently posed to him resurfaced. Does he ever face writer's block? He assumes the question is popular because this is a common phenomenon during exams. "I crumple up the page and throw it in the dustbin. Or put it aside and do something else and come back to it later."

When it came to the children, it was all about trying to find out what was real and what was not in the world that Ruskin Bond has created. Was Uncle Ken real? Did one of his uncles really try to poison him? Did his grandfather really have a zoo? Uncle Ken is real, but Bond didn't dream he was going to become so popular. He wasn't however, poisoned by any uncle of his. His grandfather did, in fact, have some interesting pets in his garden but he advised children against keeping a python or a mongoose since most people live in apartments these days! Starry-eyed, dreaming of Rusty and clutching their copies of various Ruskin Bond books the children, and some adults, formed a serpentine queue to get their books signed long after the session was over.

Ankita Tripathy made a mad dash towards the bookstore set up by Story to buy a Ruskin Bond book. "I didn't know there would be a book signing. I haven't carried any of my books with me," said the flustered first-year student of Maulana Azad College, who picked up Potpourri and ran back to the author's lounge.

For Virajita Todi, a Class XI student of Modern High School for Girls, in line to get her book signed, the biggest takeaway from the session was Ruskin Bond's comment about how, when he writes for children, he often thinks of himself as a child. "It made me realise that adults are children who've grown up."