Mr Oliver''s Diary

Ruskin Bond

Description

A gun-toting; violin-playing Headmaster.A homicidal barber.A hungry leopard and about a hundred frogs on the loose.Boys with a talent for pranks and jokes.Ruskin Bond’s fresh new school stories are a non-stop laugh riot.Mr Oliver; a history teacher; arrives in Simla with a train-load of hungry boys to start a new term at the Prep School. As he records the antics of the amazing characters there; and all that they get up to; we quickly realize that there is never a dull moment. A fire; a missing Headmaster; runaway students make sure not a day goes by when Mr Oliver has nothing to report in his diary. He writes about the eccentric teachers; the girls’ school next door and the lovely Anjali Ramola; whom he secretly admires.Laugh-out-loud funny; with a core of old-world charm that is trademark Bond; Mr Oliver’s Diary has stories and characters that have never appeared anywhere before. With his runaway wig; pet shrew and endearing dry wit; Mr Oliver is sure to become as well-loved as those other vintage Ruskin Bond characters; Uncle Ken and Rusty.

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd
• Date de parution: 02 février 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9788184753875
• Langue: English

Extrait

RUSKIN BOND
Mr Oliver s Diary
Illustrated by Anjali Nayar
PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
7 March
8 March
10 March
15 March
18 March
24 March
1 April
6 April
10 April
20 April
25 April
27 April
4 May
7 May
10 May
15 May
20 May
25 May
27 May
29 May
31 May
2 June
3 June
6 June
10 June
13 June
15 June
16 June
20 June
25 June
2 July
3 July
7 July
10 July
15 July
18 July
20 July
25 July
29 July
2 August
5 August
10 August
15 August
16 August
18 August
21 August
25 August
1 September
2 September
3 September
5 September
6 September
10 September
Postscript
Copyright Page
PUFFIN BOOKS
MR OLIVER S DIARY
Born in Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar (Gujarat), Dehra Dun, New Delhi and Simla. His first novel, The Room on the Roof , written when he was seventeen, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written over three hundred short stories, essays and novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley , A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far ), and more than thirty books for children.
He has also written numerous articles that have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999.
He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his extended family.
ALSO IN PUFFIN BY RUSKIN BOND
The Room on the Roof A Room of Many Colours; Ruskin Bond s Treasury of Stories for Children Panther s Moon and Other Stories The Hidden Pool The Parrot Who Wouldn t Talk and Other Stories Rusty the Boy from the Hills Rusty Runs Away Rusty and the Leopard Rusty Goes to London Rusty Comes Home
For Argha Mukherjee, friend and schoolteacher Good luck in a difficult profession!
7 March
Pure vindictiveness on the part of the Headmaster, putting me in charge of the school party for the entire duration of the train journey from Kalka to Simla. A day of sheer misery for me. Over a hundred small boys doing their best to sabotage the train! And no help from Miss Babcock, a trained nurse, who was supposed to help me control the Prep school contingent. Of course she s deaf (or pretends to be), so she simply made herself comfortable in the compartment and slept through the entire journey.
Normally the journey takes about eight hours on our little mountain railway, but with all the delays and unnecessary stops, it took us nearly twelve.
I had to take a roll-call when we started; then another at Barog where we stopped for breakfast; then one at Solan, where we stopped for no reason at all; and finally one at Tara Devi where the engine-driver had relatives. He was away for almost an hour, enjoying tea and samosas in his in-laws home. The boys grew restless, and several of them started walking up the track, saying they d get to Simla before the train! They probably would have, too, but I couldn t let them take off on their own, so I had to run after them and herd them back to the station, threatening them with a supper-less evening if they disobeyed.
We were to go without supper anyway. My tribulations had started earlier, at Barog, famous for its breakfasts and lunches. It was brunch time, about noon, when we got there, and the boys were hungry, as they always are. Instead of having the regulation breakfast arranged by the school, most of the boys decided to spend their pocket money on the puris and chol that were being cooked and sold at a dhaba behind the station.
After leaving Barog, the train enters a tunnel-the longest of the 100-odd tunnels that are cut through these ranges-and it takes a full five minutes for it to emerge into daylight. By the time we were out in the open, a number of boys were sick, the puri-chol having been far from fresh. Several boys had also been left behind at the station.
The engine-driver very courteously stopped and waited for them. I sent our biggest boys, Tata and Mirchandani, to fetch them. They disappeared into the tunnel and took a long time coming back, one of them having sprained his ankle in the dark. We woke Miss Babcock, who said there was nothing she could do until we got to Simla, there being no water on the train.
We stopped again at Solan, as mentioned, and Tata very kindly asked me if I d like a beer.
I don t drink, I said. But why do you ask?
They make beer here, he said. It s called the Solan Brewery.
In that case, I said, see that nobody gets off the train. We can t have the boys wandering about in a brewery.
Very good, sir, said Tata, and set off to see that my orders were carried out. Must recommend him for Head Prefect this year.
Someone came around selling glasses of nimbu-pani. Mirchandani drank two glasses and fell asleep!
Must have been some beer in it, said Tata knowledgeably. They call it Shandy, sir.
These twelve-year-olds seem to know everything. Classes 1 to 6, that s the Prep school range And by the time they get into Senior school, there s nothing you can teach them.
Anyway, it was late evening and getting dark by the time we left Tara Devi, well behind schedule.
And then it began to snow!
And it snowed and snowed.
The train had to stop about three miles out of Simla. The engine s wheels kept slipping, and at times we were going backwards instead of forwards. Finally we came to a dead halt, and the guard came around telling us we could go no further. We had a choice between getting out and walking to the station, and then another three miles to school, or spending the night in the train.
By now it was dark and snowing heavily. We could not see the railway lines.
We ll stay where we are until someone comes and gets us! declared Miss Babcock, who had finally come to life.
I had to agree with her. There was no sense in marching off into the blizzard like brave Scott looking for the South Pole-not with a hundred schoolboys in tow!
The boys rather liked the idea of spending the night in our cramped little compartments; but after an hour s excitement, it dawned on all that they would have to go without supper. There was no food on the train!
Everyone s hungry, complained Tata.
Well, they ll have to stay hungry till morning, I snapped. They can have breakfast in school.
Breakfast, sir! They ll die of starvation before that!
There was much grumbling and mumbling, and then all along the length of the train, a howl went up, Supper, sir, supper! Water, water!
Finally I decided I would walk up the track to the station to see if some food could be arranged. I asked for volunteers, and Tata, Mirchandani and two or three others offered to accompany me.
We trudged through the snow for half-an-hour until we reached the station. There was no food there. All the vendors had gone home. However, the boys very enterprisingly dashed up to the Lower Bazaar, where they made a deal with a small restaurant, and the result was a continuous supply of kulchas, puris and curries being sent in relays back to the stationary train, where they were soon wolfed down by our contingent of hungry boys.
I had to fork out several hundred rupees for this feast, and I have yet to be reimbursed.
There was no sleeping accommodation on the train, and we had to spend the night sitting upright on our bunks. This did not prevent Miss Babcock from sleeping. She had moved into my compartment, and soon nodded off. But her snoring kept us all awake. It reverberated through the night and she sounded just like a bear with a bad cold.
Tata tried to solve the problem by slipping a paper bag over her head, but the bag simply floated away.

Try a pillow-case, someone suggested.
Haven t got one. All our boxes were sent ahead in trucks.
Mirchandani produced a towel and this was placed gently over Miss Babcock s slumbering countenance. It mitigated the snoring somewhat, although I was alarmed when it sounded as though the good lady was choking to death.
I lifted the towel slightly to allow her to breathe more freely. She opened one eye, and gave me a long, malevolent stare. I dropped the end of the towel in a hurry, and made no further attempts at resuscitation. Miss Babcock was imperishable.
Came the dawn, and we all shuffled wearily out of our seats and into the freezing cold outside the train.
Let s start walking, boys, I said cheerfully, although I felt pretty miserable.
Another trudge through the snow, past the station, and then tramp, tramp, tramp, along the highway-tramp, tramp, tramp, the road is free-until we straggled into Chotta Simla and through the familiar gates of our famous Prep school. The boys to their dormitories and finally to the dining-hall, where porridge and parathas awaited them (an odd combination of East and West). And I to my quarters-a large bed-sitting room above the Bakery, with a view of the Headmaster s vegetable garden and a corner of the playing-field where the school bell-a large brass gong-hung from a branch of an old willow tree. I was to live with that bell for the next nine months.
Meanwhile, to the bathroom for a hot shower. Undressed, turned on the tap. Nothing happened. The pipes had frozen.
8 March
Morning duty.
Stepped out of my front door into bright sunshine and received a snowball full in the face.
Caught a glimpse of a bunch of boys scurrying around the side of the building, but could not recognize any of them. Got my own back by making the whole lot wait an extra ten minutes before opening the dining-room doors for breakfast.
During the morning break, while I was sitting in my room going through the newspaper, I heard them chanting outside my window. That tiresome, stale old ditty they ve made up:
Olly, Olly, Olly, with his big nose on a trolley,
And his wig all painted green.
I don t mind the bit about my big nose-in fact I m rather proud of it ( You have a Roman nose, my mother used to say.), but I m still rather touchy about the wig. It was late last year that one of the boys (Rudra, I suspec