inshodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/86395/9/09chapter 3.pdfrather long stories - 'love...
TRANSCRIPT
Chapter: 3 Short Stories
In this chapter I propose to deal with Bond's short stories
where the characters are adolescents or which deal with Bond's own
adolescence. In the second part, his love stories are discussed. These are
rather long stories - 'Love is a Sad Song' and 'Time Stops at Shamli'.
In the last two decades of this century, the Indian short story in
English has acquired remarkable amplitude. With the lively innovations
and free creativity of the modem masters, it is no longer a hothouse plant
but manifests, a striking similitude in its genius to the story written in any
Indian language. Notable practitioners of this high profile budding genre
have captured a wide spectrum of Indian experience. With their felicity
and ease of expression comparable to native command of the medium and
technical fineness, some of these contemporary writers have excelled in
probing and rendering varied facets ofIndian life and society. What
makes the short stories authentic and vibrant is the bold and sincere
transmission of the manifold nuances of the author's experience and
remorseless comment on human condition. In the hands ofMulk Raj
Anand, R.K.Narayan, Raja Rao, Nayantara Sahgal, Khushwant Singh,
Manoj Das, Ruskin Bond, Manohar Malgonkar, and Upmanyu Chatterjee
the short story in English has come into its own. Madhusudan Prasad in
the preface to Contemporary Indian English Stories sums up its current
status: "The Indian English short story is a successfully established art by
now which is fast developing with justifiable confidence and
pride".(Prasad Mix)
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Today India figures significantly in the writings of both Anglo
Indian and Indo-English writers. The image ofindia varies with different
authors according to their psychology and the necessities of their art and
craft. Some focus on the poverty in India and feel appalled, while others
like Mulk Raj Anand, Bhabani Bhattacharya and Kamala Markandayan,
expose the mayrid Social problems and promote change for better.
R.K.Narayan chooses to be neither edifying, nor harsh at India he sees;
instead, he adopts a comic stance and laughs at the idiosyncrasies of man.
Raja Rao is stirred by the vedantic India, and Manohar Malgonkar and
Nayantara Sahgal review her history and politics, respectively. To
Jhabvala, India's heat and dust are disconcerting; Arun Joshi and Anita
Desai explore her inner landscape.
Ruskin Bond has gained fame more for his short stories than for
his novels and memoir. His stories fulfill all the conditions of a short
story - one aspect of life, a few characters, a good beginning, a perfect
end and neat plot construction. We easily finish one story in a single
sitting. Bond's stories, reprinted in school texts throughout India, are
always of discovery: adventures exploring train tunnels, climbing guava
trees, making a zoo of rabbits and lizards, learning to get along. Yet there
is a combination of sagacity and innocence in Bond's stories, say his
~ -~-----~---------
127
publishers. Just as one thinks the story is too sentimental, Bond injects a
dose ofrealism, says one. Bond's stories on children may be clearly
divided into five categories. The animal stories describe the havoc created
round the house by grandfather's pets; 'The portrait' stories deal with the
people- the author has met; A large number of stories center around
children stories about children, Bond's personal experiences with
children, and Bond as a child, screening the world of adults with puzzled
amusement.
I
Adolescents in the short stories of Bond
Ruskin Bond's stories for young children are generally located in a
small, inaccessible Himalayan town or a village which still retains its
innate values of basic honesty, faith and love for the family and
neighbours. Parents are not concerned about the security of their children
who ramble freely without fear of violence or crime because the people
from the hills are quick to smile, friendly and trusting. Against such a
benevolent atmosphere, Bond envisions his own and his protagonists'
childhood as a long summer afternoon of joviality, play and carefree
abandon. His characters swim in the forest pools, take naps under shady
trees with butterflies and beetles humming languidly overhead, climb
mango and lichi trees, ride bicycles down the hills and explore river and
-- ,
mountain paths. The timeless, magical atmosphere of the hill station in
summer or during vacation quickly envelops his stories.
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The innocent and mischievous fun of childhood and freedom from
rigid daily routine and adult restrictions are best captured in The Road to
the Bazaar, a collection of short stories. The stories portray the simple
joys and sorrows of the childhood, where only fears are associated with
the desire to be in a cricket team, early morning beetle races while parents
are fast asleep, and fear of parental anger at bad report card.
In 'The Adventures of Rusty' , Rusty and his friend Daljit abscond
from the strict regimen of their British Boarding school in Simla to
explore the mysterious world beneath the mountains. They take short cuts
through Himalayan jungles, move through mountain streams and come
face to face with a tiger. Their young lives are captivated as they travel
800 miles from Simla to the port city of Jamnagar to catch a ship sailing
to romantic far off places. However, the ship has already sailed before
their arrival. A telegram to a relative gets them safely back to the school,
and the escape from authority has no serious consequences. On the
contrary, the dream of running away serves as a heroic mission that leads
to development and a search for identity.
Bond looks at the childhood as timeless phenomena. Time does not
matter for Bond's children. If they have to pass the day without doing
anything special, they have abundant resources as Suraj finds in 'The
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Long Day'. Here Suraj, a 13-year-old boy remembers that his report card
is due to come that day. He knows that he would fail, and so, he does not
want to remain present when the report card comes. He slips out of the
house and joins his friends playing football in the maidan. He runs all
over the maid an passes through a canal, chases a whistling train. He
fancies himself to be an engine driver away from books, teachers, and
report cards. He steals lichies, eats spicy snacks in the bazaar. Finally, he
comes back late in the evening, unwillingly, only to know that his report
card is due next day. In this story, we find that sentiments of the boy
swing from fear to joy, from enthusiasm to frustration, and from
immediate relief to a fear of tomorrow.
In 'The Big Race', ten-year-old Koki plays beetle race with Ranji
and Bhim, a 14-year-old boy. The race is set between Rajkumari- a rhino
beetle ofKoki and Moocha (a beetle with whiskers) ofRanji. Brim's
beetle is called 2001.In the excitement and confusions, Koki's Rajkumari
wins the race from out of nowhere. The game finishes with Ranji thinking
about trimming the whiskers of Mooch a, Bhim thinking that 2001 is in
need of a special diet and Koki thinking that beetle - racing would
become a national sport.
In 'Ranji's Wonderful Bat' Ranji is given confidence and is
boosted by Mr. Kumar, an owner of sports- shop. Ranji, who is frustrated
at having scored no runs in last three matches, is given a boost by Mr.
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Kumar's advice and an old bat with which Mr. Kumar said he had scored
a century. Ranji's luck changes and he scores freely giving his team a
victory. In one accident, he forgets the bat on the maidan. When he goes
to Mr. Kumar, with lowered head, Mr. Kumar tells him about a formula
of success: "I mean it's the batsman and not the bat that matters. Shall I
tell you something? That old bat I gave you was no different from any
other bats I've used ... A bat has magic only when the batsman has
magic! What you needed was confidence, not the bat". (Bond 39-40)
Bond's 'Big Business' is also dedicated to children. Like
Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame, Mulk Raj Anand, Agyeya, Dickens,
and Mark Twain, he gives us the archetype of the child in 'Big Business'.
It is the simple story of a simple boy living in a simple country. Ranji
becomes sad when he tries to buy some sweets at the bazaar. He is told
that his rupee coin is an old coin and is not in use any more. Ranji who is
a clever optimist bargains throughout the day and buys much more than
one rupee could buy at the end of the day. Here immense enjoyment is
mingled with tragic joy. Experienced through struggle, Ranji does a big
business.
The world of children is the world of innocence, simplicity, and
splendor. The world of elders is the world of profit and loss. The two
worlds are opposed to each other. This contrast is obvious in 'Big
Business'. Ranji is playful, sensitive, thoughtful, and full oflove for
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others. The elderly people are cunning and shrewd. Ranji goes to the
Jamuna Sweet Shop and asks for a nlpee's worth of Jalebis. The
shopkeeper looks at the coin and throws it back at the counter. His
behaviour is insensitive. "That is no good", he says, "It is an old coin. It
isn't in use any more". Ranji asks him, "Are you sure?" the shopkeeper's
answer throws light on the contrast of the child's world and an adult
world: "It's got England's king George on one side. These coins went out
of use long ago. If it was one of the older ones like Queen Victoria's,
made of silver- it would be worth something for the silver much more
than a rupee. But this is not a silver rupee. So you see, it is not old enough
to be a valuable coin, and it isn't new enough to buy anything." The
shopkeeper is guided by the principle of profits and loss - a point of view
that is murdering our civilization and culture. The shopkeeper has no
sense of kindness towards hungry Ranji - nor does he show love for an
antique coin. Ranji represents the human, democratic, and aristocratic
tradition where as the shopkeeper represents an ugly tradition whose
principles come from profit mongering. The shopkeeper shows utter
disregard for childhood desires and happiness. The elderly people are
busy in profit mongering where as the children remain hungry, deserted,
poor, and isolated. We feel happy when we see him winning over cruelty,
confusion, seclusion and evil. 'Big Business' shows distrust for the
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elderly people who have failed to be the inspiration and guiding forces of
the children. The child image is dominant in 'Big Business'.
Ruskin Bond's child characters are joyous and optimist. They
look at the positive side oflife. Nagendra Prasad thinks this aspect of
Bond's creative process has lot to do with his unsettled child hood:
In the chemistry of his creation, one may discover his deep
love for children who are unadulterated specimen of Ii ving
and kind nature. He celebrates innocence and pranks and
their insatiable curiosity to know things and grow rapidly.
This love for children seems to emerge partly from his own
tormented child hood and partly from his state of mind that
perceives the glow of the divine in universal love. Famous
psychologist Adler suggests that a person seeks
compensation in dream or art for what he misses in real life.
Many of Dickens' child heroes, for instance, in rags earlier
part of work, become suddenly rich towards the end. This
consciousness perhaps richly guides Bond's Aesthetic.
(Prasad N 39-40)
In 'The Funeral' the boy whose father is dead is very sad. He
wonders why people have not made it easier for the dead to rise. It
appears to him that no one real1y wants them to get out. When he watches
his father's coffin, which is lowered in earth, he sadly thinks how can any
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one, even a Samson push his way back to the surface. Superman does it in
comics, but his father is a gentle soul who will not fight hard against the
earth and the grass and the roots of the tiny trees. Then optimism and
innocence of childhood again reconciles him to the nature that his father
will grow into a tree and escape that way.
Social distinctions among children themselves are irrelevant in the
world of children. Differences of being British and Indian, Rich and Poor,
Christian and Hindu, Brahmin and Low caste are forgotten and all the
children meet as equal. Perhaps Ruskin Bond has this message to convey.
The world today is in dire need of this. If the grownups become like the
children most of the problems will be settled. Bond's children be they
from the aristocratic class do not hesitate in building friendship with
cooks or gardeners, washer men or chaatwallah. In 'Untouchable' the boy
is taught by the elders not to talk with the sweeper boy forgets the custom
when the rains come and lightning makes him afraid. He feels safe and
happy in the company of the untouchable.
Thus, we find that in his short stories, Bond has depicted the
workings of a child's mind. The activities and behaviour of children, their
tendencies, various emotions and impressions and their lovely
sensitiveness have been portrayed by Bond wonderfully. It is an amazing
experience to read Bond's fiction about children and teenagers. It tells us
that goodness will be victorious. Violence, enemity and cruelty will one
day end from this good earth and all people will live like friends and
brothers. He always tries to protect children because they need tobe
protected by all means.
II
Adolescents in the Love Stories of Bond
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Most of Bond's longer stories are love stories. They tell about
unrequited love. They have autobiographical elements in them. Ruskin
Bond writes in the epilogue of Rain in the Mountains: "There were only
two occasions in my life when I came really to getting married. Once in
London, when I was twenty-one and infatuated with a very sweet and
pretty Vietnamese girl, who promised me her hand until she met a rich
American and found his signature more attractive than mine". (240)
Bond writes about this Vietnamese girl in a different way in Scenes
from a Writer's Life: "It was Thanh who introduced me to a Vietnamese
girl call (Sic) Vu-Phuong and I promptly fell in love with her. At that age
(of twenty) it did not take long for me to fall in love with anyone, and Vu
was the sort of girl- pretty, soft spoken, demure - who could enslave me
without any apparent effort" .(151-52)
The pages 152-53 in the book are devoted to his days with Vu and
her picture is printed with other pictures between pages 80 and 81. The
way their relation ends is quite different from what Bond has described in
Rain in the Mountains. The paragraph runs as follows:
•
135
Two or three weeks later I asked Vu if she'd marry me. She
didn't say yes and she didn't say no. Nor did she ask me if I
had any prospects, because it was obvious I had none. But
she did say she would have to talk to her parents about it and
they were in Haiphong, in North Vietnam, and she hadn't
heard from them for several months. The war in Vietnam
had just started and it was to last a long time.
I had to be patient, it seemed, very patient.
Because the next I heard from Vu was through a postcard
from Paris saying she was staying with her sister for a time
and they would be returning to Vietnam together to see their
parents. (153)
Bond's narrations of his broken love are contradictory. The long
Vietnamese war made every Vietnamese a great hater of America. In that
case it was impossible for Vu to marry an American and go to America.
She could be suspected as a spy. Therefore, we can accept Bond's
narration in Scenes as true and in Rain in Mountains a kind of a white lie.
His second love was Miss. Bun about whom he writes: "And the
second time, when I met a nurse from Ferozepur, who made it her
business to take charge of me for several months. She was a fine
strapping girl, but I think I would have felt Sat upon (literally too) if! had
been yoked to her for life". (Bond, RIM 240-41)
136
The memoir entitled Miss Bun and Others printed in Rain in
Mountains sketches Miss Bun as a baker's young daughter with whom
the author makes love. By the language of memoir we can not say that he
is in love with her. The age difference is vast: "If you were ten years
older, and I was ten years younger, we'd make a good pair". (Bond, RIM
241) Later on he comments: "The journal entries date back some twenty
years. What happened to Miss Bun? Well, she finally opened a beauty
parlour in New Delhi, but still I can't tell you where it is, or give you her
name". (Bond, RIM 257)
We find that the author again has mixed two persons and given one
name - Miss Bun. The nurse is Miss Bun, and here the baker's daughter
is Miss Bun. They merge at the end in the beauty parlour. It is said that
authors are seldom true in telling about their lives and evaluating their
contemporaries.
However, the female characters in Bond's love stories have their
origin in Mrs.Lal, Vu and the Ferozepur nurse and may be some other
young girl whose name Bond has never disclosed. His focus is generally
a girl of thirteen . .t
~he basket selling girl in 'The Night Train at Deoli', Madhu in 'The Story ofMadhu', Sushila and Ruth all are thirteen years old.
137
The first love story discussed here is 'The Night Train at Deoli'. It
is about one sided platonic love of an adolescent for a basket seller at
Deoli railway station.
Deoli is a small station thirty miles away from Dehradun and night
train arrives at its platform early in the morning at five 0' clock. Although
the writer describes the station and the surroundings in detail, the
Northern railway time table does not mention this station. We can assume
that it is a fictitious station or it may have existed when Ruskin Bond was
young. For the protagonist, who goes to Dehradun often to his
grandmother, the whole place is surrounded in mystery. First he does not
understand the reason why the train stops at the station at all. He never
sees a passenger boarding the train or getting down from it there. He also
wonders what happens behind the station walls. He sometimes has the
feeling to get down at Deoli, go beyond the railway station walls and stay
in the town for a day.
But one day as he was on board the train, he sees a girl at the
station. She is selling baskets. She has a shawl thrown around her
shoulder. She is without any footwear. In spite of her poverty, she is
walking gracefully and with dignity. When she comes to the window of
the protagonist's coach, she stops. She does so because the protagonist
has been watching her intently. Her pale skin, shiny black hair and dark
troubled eyes fascinate him. When she starts moving away, the
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protagonist can not resist the temptation of leaving his seat. He goes to
the tea stall and waits there for some time. In the mean time, the girl
comes to him and asks him ifhe would buy a basket. His answer is
negative, but when the girl repeats, he buys one. As she is about to speak,
the guard blows the whistle. She says something but it is lost in the
clanging of the bell and hissing of the train. He runs back to his
compartment, but the girl's face haunts his memory for a long time.
After two months when he is returning form his grandmother, he
remembers the girl as the train reaches Deoli. He sees her walking up the
platform. He is thrilled. She too smiles when she sees him.
She was pleased that I remembered her. I was pleased that
she remembered me. We were both pleased and it was
almost meeting of old friends.
She did not go down the length of the train selling the
baskets but came straight to the tea stall. Her dark eyes were
suddenly filled with light. We said nothing for some time but
we couldn't have been more eloquent. (Bond, NTD 46)
He invites in his adolescent and romantic way, to go with him to
Delhi but the girl replies that she can not leave her place. The train
whistles. He, this time cherishes her for a long time. When after his
examinations, he returns to his grandmother, he looks for that girl at
Deoli. She is not there. He inquires of the tea vendor and the station
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139
master but their replies are meaningless. He becomes apprehensive about
her. The train starts and he runs back to his compartment. As Deoli
recedes, he decides that one day he: "Would break his journey there,
spend a day in the town, make inquires and find the girl who had stolen
my heart with nothing but a look from her dark, impatient eyes". (Bond,
NTD47)
However, he wants to continue this teenage dream, so he does not
drop down there to make a search for the girl whom he loves. He fears
that his dream will be shattered by reality. He fears a prolonged illness,
marriage or permanent departure. "Somehow, I couldn't bring myself to
break journey at Deoli and spend a day there. (If it was all fiction or film,
I reflected, I would have got down and cleaned up the mystery and
reached a suitable ending for the whole thing.)I was afraid to do this. I
was afraid of discovering what really happened to the girl. Perhaps, she
was no longer in Deoli, perhaps she was married, perhaps she had fallen
ill" (Bond, NTD 48)
The story as we see it is about an adolescent of eighteen years
studying in a college. An adolescent falls in love very easily. In fact every
adolescent is dreamy and dreams of beautiful and noble things. Desire to
love and be loved is strongest at this age. Bond has put his own
perception of adolescent life in the following passage which also contains
his poem 'Passing By':
As a youth, loneliness always went hand in hand with a
powerful pull or attraction towards another person, be it a
boy or girl- and very often without that individual being
aware of it. I think I expressed this feeling in a short poem
'Passing By', which I wrote many years ago:
Enough for me that you are beautiful:
Beauty possessed diminishes.
Better a dream of love
Then love's dream broken;
Better a look exchanged
Then love's word spoken.
Enoughfor me that you walk past
A firefly flashing in the dark. (245)
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The story 'Night Train at Deoli' is a dream of love. A youth does
not want his dream of perfect companionship to be broken and so the
narrator does not drop at the Deoli station and go to the town to find out
about the girl. laishankar Kalla calls the love of the protagonist, "an
obsession which is so sad, innocent, na'ive and boyishly saintly. It lacks
clamorous content. This gives a haunting elegance to the story". (102)
'Love is a Sad Song' is a long short story. Apparently, this story is
on the pattern of Vladimir Nabokov's in famous novel Lolita where the
protagonist, an aged man, marries the minor girl's mother in order to have
J
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Lolita when she grows to maturity. The age difference is there and will
remain so even if Lolita reaches the age of eighteen but uneven marriages
are permitted in amoral American society.
In this story too, there is the age difference; the protagonist is thirty
and the girl with whom he establishes physical relations is sixteen and
like the protagonist of 'Lolita' has to wait for two years when the girl
Sushila will be eighteen. The story according to Dr. Naikar,
... is a lyrical novella or long short story depicting the ups and
downs of uneven love between the protagonist and a young
girl called Sushila ... viewed against the Indian context, the
protagonist is too old to be a lover and Sushila too young to
be a beloved. But yet (sic) the contingencies (sic) of their life
awaken in them emotional attraction for each other. (96)
It is difficult to agree with Dr. Naikar when he says that the
protagonist is too old to be a lover. Here he has mixed the words lover
and husband. The protagonist and Sushila are already in love, age is bar
in their nuptial union. Besides, he should have used the word 'exigencies'
- not 'contingency'. In the same way, 'but' and 'yet' never come
together.
The story as said earlier is a love story which does not end in a
marriage between the protagonist and Sushila. As Sushila is only sixteen
years old, the protagonist has to wait for two years with apprehension that
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142
she might change her mind for a rich husband. Her fickleness has already
been known to him by her previous boy friend's letter. The narrator feels
jealousy when Sushila informs him that a boy was very fond of him.
Earlier the boy was in love with some one else, but then he switched his
affections to Sushila. The narrator tries desperately to convince Sushila
that her feelings for that boy are not love but sympathy because the boy
had been disappointed in his love before. A dialogue follows in which the
writer indirectly asks Sushila if she is in love with him or not:
'If you feel sorry for everyone who has been disappointed in
love,' I said, 'you will soon be receiving the affections of
every young man over ten.'
'Let them give me their affections', you said, 'and I will give
them my chappal over their heads.'
'But spare my head,' I said.
'Have you been in love before?'
'Many times. But this is the first time.'
'And who is your love?'
'Haven't you guessed?' (Bond, LSS 190)
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Her constancy in love is doubted more when Pramod - her earlier lover
comes to visit her. She changes friends often and may desert him for a
lover who owns a car.~
Troubled by these problems, the narrator or protagonist addresses
Sushila expressing his emotions and nostalgically remembering the days
he spent with her. The first three pages are charged with emotion. The
opening paragraphs are highly poetic and remind us of Goethe's Meister
Wilhelm and Lott in Mar. I quote the first two paragraphs:
I sit against this grey rock beneath a sky of pristine blueness
and think of you Sushila. It is November and the grass is
turning brown and yellow. Crushed, it still smells sweet. The
afternoon sun shimmers on the oak leaves and turns them
glittering silver. A cricket sizzles its way through the long
grass. The streams murmur at the bottom of the hill- that
stream where you and I lingered on a golden afternoon in
May.
I sit here and think of you and try to see your slim
brown hand resting against this rock, feeling its warmth. I
am aware again of the texture of your skin, the coolness of
your feet, and the sharp tingle of your fingertips. And in the
~ Sushiia marries Dayal, a hotel owner (vide 'Time stops at ShamJi'). Bond's cOlllment on Vu already quoted earlier is relevant here.
144
pastures of my mind [ run my hand over your quivering
mouth and crush your tender breasts. Remembered passion
grows sweeter with the passing of time. (Bond, LSS 187)
The paragraphs describe the autumnal beauty in the mountains of
North India. The whole scene is picturesque: the grey rock, the clear blue
sky, the brown and yellow grass, the glittering oak leaves in the afternoon
sun, the sizzling cricket and the murmuring streams in the golden
afternoon hypnotize the reader. Against this backdrop, the narrator sits
and thinks of his beloved Sushila.
It is through the narrator's recollection of the past that the story of
his love is revealed to us. He imagines her to be away in her home in the
city doing her household duties like cooking or sewing or may be,
studying for her examinations. She must be busy with the members of her
family but he hopes that she would be thinking of him in her private
moments when she is all alone.
We come to know that he was acquainted with Sushila when she
was ten years only. At that time she was an innocent girl and he had
fatherly affection for her. He had seen her naked, playing in rain; but he
never thought ofloving her, but once she reaches sixteen, his feelings
change:
A year ago my feelings about you were almost paternal! Or
so I thought...But you are no longer a child and I am a little
145
older too. For when, the night after the picnic, you took my
hand and held it against your soft warm cheek, it was for the
first time that a girl had responded to me so readily, so
tenderly. Perhaps, it was just innocence but that one action
of yours, that acceptance of me, immediately devastated my
heart. (Bond, LSS 190)
His mention of picnic reminds us of the picnic in The Room on the
Roof and Rusty's kissing of Me en a Kapoor and her responses. Here we
find the same scene replicated in a slightly different way, the sixteen
years old girl almost passive.
Gently, fervently, I kissed your eyes and forehead, your
small round mouth, and the lobes of your ears, and your long
smooth throat; and I whispered, 'Sushila, I love you, I love
you, I love you', in the same way that millions and millions
of love smitten young men have whispered since time
immemorial. What else can one say? I love you, I love you.
There is nothing simpler; nothing that can be made to mean
any more than that. And what else did I say? That Is would
look after you and work for you and make you happy; and
that too had been said before, and I was in no way different
from anyone. I was a man, and yet I was a boy again.
(Bond, LSS 190)
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The intensity of passion is deep and we admire it. But what makes
us suspect Bond's sincerity is the reversal of the scene in The Room on
the Roof. In that novel there is Kishen and his mother Meena Kapoor.
Kishen partly knows the love relationship between his mother and Rusty,
but surprisingly he accepts it. For the Indian society of nineteen fifties it
was blasphemous. Here too, the role is changed. There was Meena
Kapoor, almost twice older than Rusty and here the narrator is twice older
than Sushila. Sunil like Kishen is twelve years old. Love, we find, is
purely physical: a man of thirty exploiting a teenager. Dr. Naikar explains
this entire relation and the paradox of it:
The protagonist develops a deep attachment to Sushila and
wants to marry her, because being an Anglo-Indian, he
believes in the idea of love resulting in marriage. But he
seems to be quite ignorant about the Indian, especially Hindu
situation. The Hindu tradition does not attach much
importance to love before marriage. The primary condition
required for alliances happen to be caste, social acceptance,
financial security etc. The character of the bridegroom is
simply taken for granted (or at the worst ignored). There is a
bicultural encounter in the present situation. The narrator,
who belongs to the Anglo- Indian i.e. Western and Christian
tradition believes in the sanctity of love, whereas the girl
belongs to the Indian, Hindu background where several
factors other than love are taken into consideration. The
Hindus believe in the sanctity of marriage and not of mere
love or momentary infatuation. (97)
Sushila's passive responses soon tum into passionate demands:
147
We sat together at the foot of your bed. I kept my arm about
you, while you rested your head against my chest. Your feet
lay in response upon mine. I kept kissing you. And when we
lay down together, I loosened your blouse and kissed your
small firm breasts, and put my lips to your nipples and felt
them grow hard against my mouth. The shy responsiveness
of your kisses soon turned to passion. You clung to me. We
had forgotten time and place and circumstance. The light of
your eyes had been drowned in that lost look of a woman
who desires. For a space we both struggled against desire.
Suddenly, I had become afraid of myself - afraid for you. I
tried to free myself from your clasping arms. But you cried
in a low voice, "Love me! Love me! I want you to love me.
(Bond, LSS 193)
This transformation of a girl to womanhood at the age of sixteen is
rather Indian. The whole ofIndian amorous and erotic literature is about
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the Shodashi Naika3 (Sixteen year old heroine). Here also the simple
school girl becomes an object oflove of a thirty year old man and acts as
a full-fledged young woman of twenty one or twenty two. The
protagonist recollects Sushila's early years:
I tried to remember what you looked like as a child Even
then, I had always been aware of your presence. You must
have been nine or ten when I first saw you - thin, dark, plain
faced, always wearing the faded green skirt that was your
school uniform. You went about barefoot. Once when the
monsoon arrived, you ran out into the rain with other
children, naked, exulting in the swish of the cool rain. I
remembered your beautiful straight legs and thighs, your
swift smile, your dark eyes. You say you do not remember
playing naked in the rain but that is because you did not see
yourself.
I did not see you growing. Your face did not change
very much. You must have been thirteen when you gave up
skirts and started wearing sal war Kameez. You had few
clothes but the plainness of your dress only seemed to bring
out your own radiance. And as you grew older, your eyes
became more graceful. And then, when you came to me in
:3 Also Bala meaning young woman. Balika means a girl.
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the hills, I found that you had been transformed into a fairy
princess of devastating charm. (Bond, LSS 194)
The physical changes that come to a child while crossing the
threshold of adolescence are marked by adult people. Though the child is
not fully aware of these changes, comments and looks of the grown up
people make the child realize that he or she is a child no more. The
protagonist notices the change in Sushila of which she is hardly aware.
However, the narrator's love is purely sexual. He is concerned with
the body of Sushila only. Other qualities of Sushila are not discussed.
This marks the difference between the German poet Goethe and Ruskin
Bond. Bond does not even reach the height of Tennyson in 'Maud'. Love
is far above flesh or sex, but Bond has not realized this.
Once when the narrator and Sushila were lying in bed, in each
other's arms, Dinesh, the twenty three years old uncle of Sushila enters
the room. He is surprised but does not say any harsh words. Realizing his
guilt, the narrator goes to Dinesh and tells that he wants to marry her.
Dinesh at first disbelieves him but later on relents and then speaks of the
problems that are there as hurdles in such a marriage:
I t has happened too soon, he said.' She is too young for all
this. Have you told her that you love her? '
'Of course. Many times. '
'You're a fool, then. Have you told her that you want to
marry her?'
'Yes. '
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'Fool again. That's not the way it is done. Haven't you lived
in India long enough to know that? '
'But I love her. '
'Does she love you? '
'I think so. '
'You think so. Desire isn't love you must know that. Still, I
suppose she does love you, otherwise she would not be
holding hands with you all day. But you are quite mad,
falling in love with a girl half your age. (Bond, LSS 195)
Before this matter is settled, Sushila's ex-lover Pramod meets
him. He is twenty three and nearer to Sushila's age. At first, he becomes
jealous ofPramod but later on recognizing his simplicity and innocence,
feels sympathy for him. In spite of the negative response given by
Dinesh, the narrator does not become disappointed. Even when things go
wrong, he finds the assurance from Sushila that she continues to love
him. When he passes a remark on Sushila that she is absent-minded,
Sushila does not talk to him. Even Sunil gets annoyed with him on some
point. The narrator tries to apologize many times, but both of them stay
away from him. When he tums to his typewriter, Sushila comes there and
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starts moving her fingures in his hair. The narrator knows that Sushila is
jealous. He reflects that a woman has to be jealous of something. If it is
not another woman, then it is a man's work, or his hobby, or his best
friend, or his favourite Sweater, or his pet mongoose. The narrator then
imagines an internal triangle - himself, Sushila, and the typewriter.
The narrator receives the final words from the relatives of Sushila
that marriage is not possible as Sushila is underage. The story practically
ends here but the narrator makes a few digressions. The digressions are
unnecessary. The sentence that closes the story should have come earlier:
"I may stop loving you, Sushila but I will never stop loving the days I
loved you". (Bond, LSS 215)
The ending sentence just quoted is vague. What does the narrator
mean by "I will never stop loving the days I loved you"? Ifhe stops
loving Sushila, the days he spent with her will not be loving. In fact,
though the story is titled 'Love is a Sad Song', it is not a love story or
song in true sense of the word. It appears to be a story of a pervert man
who exploited a teenager. It is because of this that the end lacks the
feeling and sincerity of emotion. The way, the story begins, it does not
progress and the language has too many pauses. The story reads like a
potboiler written by a man for teenagers very much like Hindi films. In
no way, can we call the love between the protagonist and Sushila to be
proper. Sushila is volatile and casual in her love. She reminds us of
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Blanche in Tennessee William's Street Car named Desire. Hers is not a
genuine love, but more of a physical attraction, experienced by all
adolescents. However she comes out as more prudent than the protagonist
because she loves many people but settles in a marriage with an officer
who is materially affluent and capable of providing everything to her. The
narration of the story is retrospective and evokes a sense of nostalgia.
'Time Stops at Shamli' may be said to be a sequel of 'Love is a Sad
Song'. Here the female protagonist is Sushila, married to a rich person in
Shamli. Shamli is in fact, a small town on Delhi - Saharanpur railway
route. The story can be said to be among the best of Bond. It is the
longest also. The protagonist in 'Night Train at Deoli' does not get down
at the station to search for the basket selling girl because he has a happy
dream which he does not want to be broken down by visiting Deoli, but
here the protagonist gets down at Shamli and faces the reality of life.
Dr. Murari Prasad quotes Bond's comments on 'Time Stops at
Shamli':
Small town do not change in the way that cities change. It is
still possible to find the old landmarks and sometimes the
old people. There is timelessness about small town and
cantonment India that I have tried to capture in a story like
'Time Stops at Shamli'. It begins like 'The Night Train at
Deoli' in my earlier collection, but this time I step off the
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train, explore the place, discover a boarding house inhabited
by a number of lonely individuals living in a time capsule
like my own, meet an old love, and discover a few things
about myself before continuing my journey. (111)
As said earlier, this story is a sequel to 'Love is a Sad Song' but it
is far superior to its predecessor in technique and treatment of the theme.
The beginning of the story is full of mystery and it increases our
curiosity. Once the narrator hires a tonga and is told there is a sugar
factory and a less frequented hotel owned by Mr. Dayal, we begin to feel
that we are being led to an unknown place, the mystery of which may
surpnse us.
When the narrator gets down at the station, he is taken to the hotel
by a tonga. Dayaram - the caretaker, the bearer and the cook, all in one
shows him the room. During his talk with Dayaram, he learns that Mr.
Dayal is the manager of the hotel. He is not highly educated and is a kind
of unsuccessful businessman. Since he was good for nothing, his father
the owner of the hotel made him the manager. When the narrator goes to
his room, he sees a young girl of about ten from the window. She is
playing on a swing. The narrator goes to her, asks her name and pushes
the swing for her. The girl's name is Kiran. She is open minded and
garrulous. She expresses her opinions frankly about the place and the
people around - Heera is a gardener, very old nearly hundred; Dayaram is
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her bodyguard, her father is the manager of the factory, Mr. Dayal is
mean, Mrs. Dayal is generous. Her frankness surprises the narrator. He
comments: "I was fascinated by Kiran's ruthless summing up" of guests".
(Bond, TSS 256)
The plot progresses with people going on to hunt leopard. The
narrator wants to meet Mrs. Dayal: "Mrs. Dayal... she was the one person
I had yet to meet. It was with some excitement and curiosity that I looked
forward to meeting her; she was about the only mystery left in Shamli
now and perhaps she would be no mystery when I meet her. And yet (sic)
I felt that perhaps she would justify the impulse that made me got down
from the train". (Bond, TSS 265)
The curtain of Mrs. Dayal's mystery rises the next day. The
narrator sleeps in the garden. When he wakes in the morning, he sees the
swing moving slowly. He expects the person on the swing to be Kiran,
but to his surprise he finds that she is a young woman, she is his beloved
Sushila. At first he thinks that he is dreaming, but soon realizes that it is
indeed Sushila. The narrator asks Sushila about her life. She replies: "I
have been here two years and I am already feeling old. I keep
remembering our home - how young I was, how happy - and I am all
alone with memories. But now you are here! It was a bit of magic".
(Bond, TSS 267)
"Italics mine.
They talk on, kiss each other and lie silently on the grass. The
scene of the narrator kissing Kamla is repeated here. He offers to take
Sushila with him, but she replies just like Kamla:
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I am not happy and I do not love him, but neither I am so
unhappy that I should hate him. Sometimes for our own
sakes, we have to think of the happiness of others. What
happiness would we have living in hiding from everyone we
once knew and cared for? Don't be a fool. I am always here
and you can come to see me, and no body will be made
unhappy by it. But take me away and we will have only
regrets. (Bond, TSS 271)
The maturity that Sushila shows now, makes him a prudent adolescent.
The narrator also is not disappointed because he thinks that unattainable
Sushila would be more bewitching and beautiful. Thus, in the story, the
frenzy of eloping is turned away into a calm, level-headed and down to
earth approach. The emotional turbulence is set right with minimum of
fuss. Emotional romance is thrown aside by reality and workaday world.
'Time Stops at Shamli' is superb in technique, treatment of theme
and use of language. Sushila's arrival surprises us. Slowly do we realize
that she is the same Sushila of 'Love is a Sad Song'. References to Sunil,
Delhi and Pramod confirm our anticipation. The question may arise here
as why Kiran - the girl often is introduced in the novel? I believe that she
is Sushila. She reminds us of Sushila of ten. The narrator goes to the
swing, thinking that it must be Kiran, but finds that she is Sushila. In
other words - child Sushila is formed in to an adolescent Sushila.
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Ruskin.Bond's 'Story ofMadhu' is a tragic story. It can be
compared to Tagore's 'Home Coming'. In Tagore's story an adolescent
Phatik finds it impossible to adjust himself in the artificial environment of
Calcutta and longs for going home to his mother. When he is not allowed,
he runs away, gets drenched in rain, suffers from pneumonia and dies
leaving all very sad. Here too Madhu is unable to bear the separation,
suffers from an inexplicable disease and dies.
The narrator met Madhu when she was only nine and he was
twenty. Madhu was an orphan living with her grandmother. The narrator
, feels compassion for her and begins to help Madhu. He wants her to stand
on her feet so he teaches her reading and writing. When Madhu reaches
the age of thirteen, the narrator notices the physical changes in her body:
Three years glided imperceptibly, and at the age of thirteen,
Madhu was on the verge of blossoming into a woman. I
began to feel certain responsibility towards her.
It was dangerous, I knew, to allow a child so pretty to
live almost alone and unprotected, and to run unrestrained
about the grounds. And in a censorious society she would be
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made to suffer ifshe spent too much time in my company.
(Bond, SM 101)
The decision to separate Madhu breaks her heart. She becomes
sick. When the narrator visits her, she knows that she would die. She
takes up the role of mature woman and starts worrying about the narrator.
She fears that no body would look after the narrator. The narrator leaves
the house of Madhu with sad heart.
This short story narrated by an adult about an adolescent is not only
emotional but technically sound as it portrays the emotions of adolescent
heart. Madhu is emotionally tied to the heart of the narrator.
The four stories analysed in this chapter are Bond's best about
adolescents. 'The Night Train at Deoli' is about the hesitant adolescent
girl and hopeful adolescent lover. The second 'Love is a Sad Song' is
about the adolescent who is under the control ofthe conventions. 'Time
Stops at Shamli', decidedly a love story like its predecessor, depicts the
conflict between tradition and love. 'The Story of Madhu' indirectly
touches the same theme of the conflict between conventions of the
society and love.