Ruskin Bond’s The Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories:An Analysis of the Stories of Relationships, Yearningsand Nature
Dr.SaminaAzhar (Asst. Professor Department of Humanities MaulanaAzad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal)
Ruskin Bond the contemporary English writer and one of the most illustrious figures of Indian English Literature writes in the light of his own experience of life, as his work reflects the autobiographical element. The Night Train at Deoli and Other Storiesis a collection of his stories collected by David Davidar. The collected stories are kaleidoscopic images of exquisite places. They are about overwhelming innocence, compassionate love and longing for something, someone, just out of reach. The bond ofhuman relationships presented in his stories emphasizes Bond’s understanding of the human mind, character, attitude, and behaviour. The exceptional way in which he transforms the mundane, dull things in our everyday life to something really striking and interesting captivates not only the common reader but also the literary world.
Ruskin Bond’s The Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories: An Analysis of the Stories of Relationships, Yearnings and Nature
Dr.SaminaAzhar (Asst. Professor Department of Humanities Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal)
Ruskin Bond, an Indian author of British descent is considered to bean icon among Indian writers.His works have inspired several generations of writers, authors and script writers.
His versatile, original and elegant writing style has placed him among the most successful Indian short story writers. His first novel The Room on the Roof brought him the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written over three hundred short stories, essays and novellas and more than 30 books for children. He has also published two volumes of autobiography. Scenes from a Writer's Life, and The Lamp is Lit. In 1992 he received the SahityaAkademi award for English writing in India and was awarded the Padma Shree in 1999 for his contributions to children's literature.
He had a troubled childhood whenhe was eight years oldhis mother separated from his father and married a Punjabi-Hindu. His father's sudden death compelled him to go to his grandmother's house in Dehra. His parents' marital troubles and his father's pain and loneliness had a lasting effect on Ruskin Bond, an effect that has brought profound sensitivity in his writing.
Literary recognition comes to him in the form of both tremendous critical acclaim and a long list of fans throughout the world. His simple and original style never perplex his readers as he is conscious of his literary responsibilities when he says, “Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves."
He has often been criticized for his ‘extreme simplicity’ which is for sure the essence of his writing skills, like Hemingway, he believes in the tip of iceberg concept where the author practises art of suppression in the garb of simplicity and clarity. .When most of his counterparts are running after grandiose thus, making it difficult for their readers to digesta paragraph, Bond’s lucid and clear style enthral his readers.Once he said “People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity".
The collection The Night Train at Deoli: and other Short Stories comprises thirty stories, it contains motley themes of innocence, love, courage, beauty of nature, compassion and supernaturalism. As mentioned in the preface of the collection Bond has written these stories for “gentle kind of person” correspondingly his main characters are also gentle and humane. The stories are about people and their social background with which every Indian can associate, his stories takes the reader into the psycheof his characters. They revolve around the narrator’s chanced meetingswith a stranger leaving a lasting impression on him. The bond between the narrator and the stranger is such strong that the slightest gesture of compassion and gentleness of the stranger lingers into the memory of the narrator for a long time.
His stories revolve around the routine life and relationships, of ordinary people, not only witheach other but also with nature- the connection,between two strangers (A Women at Platform 8, The Coral Tree, The Eyes Have it,), between grandfather/ grandmother and grandson or the stories of remembrance (The Photograph, The Kitemaker, When You Can’t Climb Trees Any More), stories of romantic relationships (The Night Train at Deoli, Love is a Sad Song, A Love of Long Ago, His Neighbours Wife),the bond between a thief and his master, (TheThief),man’s affinity to nature (The Window, The Prospect of Flowers, The Cherry Tree, My Father’s Tree in Dehra, The Leopard ), the mundane life of locals their relationship with each other and their struggle for survival (The Boy who Broke the Bank, Bus Stop, Pipalnagar, The Garlands on His Brow, Death of a Familiar, A Case of Inspector Lal, The Story of Madhu, Panther’s Moon, Sita and the River), a humorous tale of a child’s hatred (Chachi’s Funeral), a child’s affection for his prostitute aunt (A Guardian Angel), a child’s abhorrence for his stepfather( A Job Well Done) and the narrators quizzical meeting with Rudyard Kipling, The collection also contains two stories of supernatural elements (The Monkeys, A Face in the Night).
His mesmerizing description of nature particularly of the Himalayas has made critics refer to him as Indian 'William Wordsworth'. He spent most of his childhood amidst Himalayas consequently his writings show a strong influence from the social life in the hill stations at the foothills of the Himalayas. His distinctive writing style makes his readers understand the landscape and ethos through carefully mastered words. He writes about people and places he has known hence his characters, and their predicaments, are original. His characters meet coincidentally, while travelling and when they part after sometime, their short meeting leaves an indelible mark on their lives and changesthem in some indefinable way.The bond that they establish during that short period gives a new meaning to their lives through his characters; he presents a web of human relationships in his short stories.
Bond’s stories display human feelings like affection, care, kindness,insecurities, sorrow,andhatred. As his art is often referred to as autobiographical,his characters are real and we can find them in our neighbourhood. He describes the poor middle class men and women who have their own way of life. He writes about beggars, villagers and even thieves. He studies their attitude,behaviour as well as association with other fellow being. He points out that basically every human being whether a thief, sweeper or a beggar has a sense of honour, virtue and self-respect, Bond therefore loves humanity.
The Woman on Platform 8is a story about affection and care that Ruskin’s young protagonist experiences on platform 8. All the events are seen from his point of view. Arun a twelve year boy all alone on his way to boarding school meetsa stranger- a mysterious woman.The lonely child finds in her a caring mother as she treats him like a son and offers him tea and snacks. She helps him feelcomfortable: “She questioned me quietly from time to time, but preferred listening; she drew me out very well, and I had soon forgotten that we were strangers. But she didn’t ask me about my family or where I lived, and I did not ask her where she lived. I accepted her for what she had been to me – a quiet,kind andgentlewoman who gave sweets to a lonely boy on a railway platform”. (14)Arun forgets that he is talking to a stranger as he talks about his school, his friends, his likes and dislikes.
When she comes to Arun’s rescue and introduces herself to Satish’s mother, “Yes I am Arun’s mother” (15)her gentle and caring gesture bring relief to Arun.In contrast to her dignity and tenderness is the vanity and arrogance of Satish’s mother who nags Arun when she advises that he must be careful of strangers Arunreaction “I like strangers”(17)indicate the special bond that Arun shares with the strange woman.Arun's calls her 'mother' at the time of parting is a sweet gesture of recognition of a loving relationship, “Good –bye mother…”Satish’s mother was talking to her but she didn’t appear to be listening; she was looking at me as the train took me away”. (17)
Thenarrator of The Eyes Have It(also known as The Girl on the Train & The Eyes Are Not Here) is blind who on his way to Dehradun meets a girl. Once the train leaves the station, he starts chatting with her and quite daringly tells her that she had an interesting face. She laughs and replies that it was indeed a welcome deviation from the oft repeated phrase: "You have a pretty face". The story ends on a shocking note for the narrator when the girl departs and another passenger enters into the compartment and tells him, “She had beautiful eyes- but they were of no use to her. She was completely blind”. (37)
A Guardian Angel presents the sadness of life when the narrator recalls the grotesque truth of his Aunt Mirium immoral profession, the broken piece of guardian angel that stood at her gravestone pains the author in spite of her unholy profession he remembers her as “the very special guardian angel of my childhood”(87).
Chachi’s Funeral is a humorous tale of a Child’s innocent hatred for his Chachi,itdescribeslove–haterelationship betweena Sunil and hisChachi. The story presents the genuine and pure feelings of a child, when he says, “Nothing Chachi .I love you so much. Please don’t us” (30). A Job Well Done is a comprehensive hate story where a child with the help of his gardener gets rid of his hateful stepfather. The Boy Who Broke the Bank is about the hustle bustle of mundane life of small town people. It is a humorous account of how people in small towns react to trivial situations.
Bus Stop, Pipalnagardiscovers the bond of friendship between two strangers, their affection for each other as: “It is good to have friends” (76). In Death of a Familiarthe narratorrecallsthe memories of his friend Sunil who is killed.The Thief explores a relationship between twenty year old young man and a fifteen year old thief who befriends the young man to rob him. Though he runs away with his master’s money but his conscience pricks him, he comes back and put the money at its place. The thief’s sense of guilt is expressed aptly in the following sentences, “He was the most trusting person I had ever met. And that was why I couldn’t make up my mind to rob him” (40). The story elucidates that even the criminals understand the bond of trust in Bond’s world.A Case for Inspector Lalis about a benevolent police inspector who doesn’t arrest a young girl though he knows that the girl has murdered a womanwanted to sexually exploit the girl, “I couldn’t have the girl put away in a remand home. It would have crushed her spirit” (121).The Story ofMadhucontains sympathetic author’s feelings for a poor girl and he decides to send her to school.She reciprocates the feelings when she worries about his loneliness.
The dominant theme of the collection is longings after something is lost, old and young yearn for their good old days, their association with past make them nostalgic.The despair and disillusion of growing old and the bond with the past are represented in the stories, where the characters lament losing out their past. In When You Can’t Climb Trees Any Morethe nameless stranger meets a nameless girl, when he visits his father’s house which now occupied by the girl’s family. “Twenty- five years ago. When I was a boy. And then again, when I was a young man…until my grandmother died, and then we sold the house and went away”(239). The girl becomes a source of recalling memoriesfor him with her help he finds his grandfather’s Iron Cross but without taking it with him he leavesand says “no it wasn’t the Cross I came for.It was my lost youth”(241).
The Coral Tree is a story of a young man who is leaving his country and his grandfather’s bungalow to move to a strange country to earn better livelihood. While waiting for his tonga he sees a girl, “fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth”, (20) who has come to take flowersfrom the coral tree,he gets flower for the girl, just the experience of climbing a tree makes him nostalgically think about his grandfather's house and he suddenly longs for childhood. The Photographportrays eccentricities of the narrator’s old grandmother when she refuses to reveal the identity of the girl in the photograph. Mehmood, in The Kitemaker, laments the loss of appreciation for the art of kite making. He yearns for the old times when he used to make beautiful and special kites. “Now everyone hurried,hurried in a heat of hope, and delicate things like kites and daydreams were trampled underfoot”. (102)
The kaleidoscopic imagery and of his stories depicts man’s association with nature. The pictorial description offlora and fauna of the Himalayashas always been Bond’s extraordinary literary ability. Heis successful in capturing the beauty and the ethos of the Himalayas in a manner that was never tried before. His mesmerizing description of nature gives the status of picture postcards to his stories.In The Prospect of Flowers there is Miss Mackenzie and just a talk on flowers. In The Window Bond remembers a window simply because of the view it had given. In My Father's Trees at Dehra, is a striking example of Bond’s love for nature and environment as the narrator in the story plants saplings,The Leopard is another tale of nature’s flora and fauna. Panther’s Moon presents a struggle between man and animal.
Innocent romance of Bond love stories transports his readers to their teen ages. In The Night Trainat Deoliit is just a brief encounter of the narrator with the basket-selling girl but her smiling face gets etched in his memory forever.There are also stories of mystified and perplexed love as in His Neighbours Wife.Love is a Sad Son and A Love Long Agoare two, stories of unfulfilled love.
Ruskin Bond focus of attention is the issues of everyday life. He wrote about every stage of life, his characters are innocent boys or girls having their own private fears and apprehensions. A child's simple pleasures like flying a kite, playing cricket, creating harmless trouble are depicted in narratives of innocence. The stories of youthful enthusiasm of adolescence, and the desire to discover life usher theminto maturation, as depicted in his love stories, for they experience joy and despair associated to love. Stories about their growing up days depict their bond with their friends and strangers who leave an everlasting impression on their lives. When they age the changing times threaten their identities compelling them to call back their youth and innocent childhood in their memories. Bond’s affinity to nature and human relations establishes him as an author who knows the inside out of his characters.He applies a psychological approach in portraying his characters. They are those individuals whom he had met in the hilly areas and got emotionally attached to them. His short stories indeed are short stories of characters.
His simple and clear style of writing can be read and grasped by anybody. Though he stated that there is more fiction than reality in his stories but it can’t be ignored that most of his stories come from his experiences. One can’t overlook the presence of Bond in most of his stories.
References
Ruskin Bond, The Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories, Penguin Books, 1998.
Ruskin Bond, The Best of Ruskin Bond, Penguin Books, 2003.
AmitaAggarwal, The Fictional World of Ruskin Bond, Sarup & Sons, 2005.