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

~ -~-----~---------

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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

---------- --------- -- -----

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

------.."

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

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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)

146

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.