The short stories I have read of Ruskin Bond in the last month, are the precious gems in the world of Indian-English short stories and they are in the list of “The Very Best of Ruskin Bond“. The famous magazine India Today has written:- ” Bond’s sentences are moist with dew and the mountain air, with charm, nostalgia and underplayed humour…[ he is ] our resident Wordsworth in prose”. The reason why I am a fan of Ruskin Bond and find liking to his writings is lied in the above quotation. As a big mountain lover, I become fascinated whenever I read him and it is the plot of his writings that drives me to read him more & more. Now, I am going to discuss the five short stories that have stolen my heart.

The Night Train at Deoli:-

This is the incomplete love story of the narrator and an unknown girl who sells cane basket at Deoli station which has only one platform & a tea-stall & where the train stops only for 10 minutes. The station is enroute Dehra & this is the station where the two protagonists meet twice & spends some time just staring at each other. The narrator has found love in the dark eloquent eyes of the girl and touched her fingers when he has been taking a basket from her. At the third time, he decides to propose her & when the train is entering the station, he starts searching for her in the lonely platform & meets the station master but all his endeavours are in vain. They never meet again & their meetings are inverted into memory for the poet. We don’t get any news about the girl anymore & the narrator too doesn’t dare to find her because he has the fear of any unwanted accidental news.

Time Stops at Shamli:-

It is also an incomplete love story of the narrator himself & his ex-girlfriend Sushila who is now married to the hotel owner of Shamli on the way to Saharanpur. The narrator used to go to Saharanpur & in the midst of the journey he witnessed the lonely station Shamli which he described like the station of Deoli in “ The Night Train at Deoli”. Here, the narrator has shown his dare to descend from the train to spend a day behind the station wall of Shamli. He met the only tonga-driver of Shamli, reached the only old hotel of Shamli & came in the vicinity of several people such as Mr. Dayal, Daya Ram( the hotel manager ), Miss Deeds, Mr. Lin, Kiran & at last his lover Sushila. Besides this, he has described the natural beauty of Shamli, his imagination in the natural beauty & the physical form of love with his ex-girlfriend who is not in a happy marital relationship with Mr. Dayal but is bound to stay with him just considering her old parents. The narrator proposed her to come with him but there was no positive result at last. The narrator did not feel dejected; rather he vowed to come back again in Shamli in search of an imaginary character Major Roberts.

My Father’s Trees in Dehra:-

Here, the narrator shares his beautiful childhood memories when he visits Dehra after a long time. After his father’s death, he was sent to a boarding school & then he went to abroad for his career. His grandfather made a house in Dehra & the narrator spent many joyous afternoons with his cousins in his childhood; even he went to the jungle & river-bed with his father who used to come home on leave. Then the war was started, refugees came in Dehra in search of a safe shelter, brutal murder & the flood of blood were daily issues & his grandfather sold their house to a foreigner. Everything was messed, spoiled & destroyed. Now, standing on the opposite of that nostalgic house, the narrator thinks all those sweet & devastating incidents one after another; even he also thinks whether he will enter the house to bring back his childhood properties that he used to keep in the hole of the jackfruit tree’s bole, or not.
The description of the beauty of Dehra is so artistically done by the narrator that the reader must be fascinated for a while & I again get the reason why I find charm in his writings.

The Blue Umbrella:-

This is the story of a ten years old mountain girl Binya & her favourite bright blue umbrella that she got from an young woman among the picnickers who came their village Garhwal in Summer. She exchanged her lucky pendent of leopard claw to get the beautiful fancy umbrella that she hadn’t seen before. All the villagers, including the teacher of the school & the shopkeeper Ram Bharosa,was envious of her new umbrella except the children. The girl took many risks to keep the umbrella in her possession. Neither the enticement of 15 rupees of Ram Bharosa nor the allurement of selling porcupine–quills in a high rate could stop her to keep the umbrella in her own possession. Rajaram, the school boy who wished to steal Binya’s pretty blue umbrella for the shopkeeper, was caught red handed by Bijju, Binya’s brother but gave all the blames on the shoulder of the shopkeeper & this incident made the shopkeeper’s condition tragic as all the villagers used to avoid him for his dishonesty. Seeing his poor condition, Binya felt sad & gave the umbrella to him permanently. She received the lucky pendent of bear’s claw instead of that umbrella as a gift from the shopkeeper. Ultimately, Binya can understand that one umbrella is not greater issue than any relationship. Thus, the story comes to a happy end.

The Hidden Pool:-

Here, the narrator shares his beautiful childhood memories with his two friends Anil & Kamal when he came to the mountain due to his father’s transferrable job from England. The narrator met his two close friends accidentally; even at first he was angry with Anil but eventually became intimate friends. They witnessed the beautiful moments of discovering a hidden pool in the mountain, the glacier trek & numerous incidents amidst the journey, gossips at the chatt shop, hearing ghost stories from Anil’s mother, celebration of colours & many more. At last, their strong friendship was broken as the narrator had to go back England due to some unavoidable issues. He promised his friends to come back again one day when he would complete his studies permanently. Reaching England, he wrote letters to his friends and Kamal replied him mentioning that the hidden pool that the narrator discovered first, was vanished suspiciously. They suspected that as he left the place, the pool too had been lost. The readers can’t know whether the three meet again or not but the heart breaking negative connotation of broken friendship was weighed in the minds of the readers.

These are the five short stories that have enriched my knapsack last month. I wish heartily to read his stories more & more & his travel writings & experiences where he has drawn the surreal images of mountain, cascades, streams, pools, ravine, nature & human life. I have no doubt to say that his writings are obviously a treat to the mountain lovers’ thirsty hearts.