Did you hear about the time Jim Corbett missed a crocodile and shot a cot instead? Or when his khansama stunned a tiger by hitting the animal on the head with a frying pan? Ah but you wouldn’t, since you never had the good fortune of hiring the services of the man who cooked for the Corbett family for years. But one man did, and he answers to the name of Bond…Ruskin Bond.

One of India’s best-known writers of story books for children (he writes for us adults too), this Sahitya Akademi winner and Padma Shri has been writing for well over six decades now, sitting in his quaint bungalow in Mussouri. But while Delhi is Not Far and Rusty Runs Away are two of my favourites along with collections such as Crazy times with Uncle Ken, I knew I had a good thing on my hands when I chanced upon Tigers for Dinner — Tall Tales by Jim Corbett’s Khansama.