TOWN CALLED DEHRA

Ruskin Bond

Description

In this delightful collection; Ruskin Bond introduces us to the Dehradun he knows intimately and loves unreservedly the town that he had spent many years of his childhood and youth in. A town which; when he knew it; was one of pony-drawn tongas and rickshaws; a town fond of gossip but tolerant of human foibles; a town of lush lichi trees; charming winter gardens and cool streams; a small town; a sleepy town; a town called Dehra . With classic stories and poems like Masterji ; Growing up with Trees and A Song for Lost Friends and previously unpublished treasures like Silver Screen ; Dilaram Bazaar and Lily of the Valley ; this anthology is replete with journal entries; extracts from the author s memoirs and; of course; poetry; non-fiction and stories set in or inspired by Dehra. Evocative; wistful and witty as only Ruskin Bond can be; A Town Called Dehra is a celebration of a dearly-loved town as well as an elegy for a way of life gone extinct.

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 23 août 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184750522
• Langue: English

Extrait

‘There was a wild flower, a weed, that grew all over Dehraand still does. We called it Blue Mint. It grow in ditches, in neglected gardens, anywhere there’s a bit of open land...I have known it since I was a boy, and as long as it’s thereI shall know that a part of me still lives in Dehra’.
In this delightful collection, Ruskin Bond introduces usto the Dehradun he knowsintimately and lovesunreservedly—the townthat he had spent manyyears of his childhood andyouth in. A town which, when he knew it, was one of pony-drawn tongas andrickshaws; a town fond ofgossip but tolerant ofhuman foibles; a town oflush lichi trees, charmingwinter gardens and coolstreams; a small town, a sleepy town, a towncalled ‘Dehra’.
With classic stories and poems like ‘Masterji’, ‘Growing up with Trees’and ‘A Song for Lost Friends’ and previously unpublishedtreasures like ‘Silver Screen’, ‘Dilaram Bazaar’ and ‘Lilyof the Valley’, this anthologyis replete with journalentries, extracts from theauthor’s memoirs and, of course, poetry, non-fictionand stories set in or inspiredby Dehra.
Evocative, wistful and witty as only Ruskin Bond canbe, A Town called Dehra is a celebration of a dearlyloved town as well as an elegy for a way of life gone extinct.


PENGUIN BOOKS
A TOWN CALLED DEHRA
 
Ruskin Bond’s 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 several novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley , A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far ), essays, poems and children’s books, many of which have been published by Penguin India. He has also written over 500 short stories and 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.
Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955 and has never left the country since. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.


ALSO BY RUSKIN BOND
Fiction The Room on the Roof & Vagrants in the Valley The Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories Time Stops at Shamli and Other Stories Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra Strangers in the Night: Two Novellas A Season of Ghosts When Darkness Falls and Other Stories A Flight of Pigeons Delhi Is Not Far A Face in the Dark and Other Hauntings
 
Non-fiction Rain in the Mountains Scenes from a Writer’s Life The Lamp Is Lit The Little Book of Comfort Landour Days
 
Anthologies Collected Fiction (1955–1996) The Best of Ruskin Bond Friends in Small Places Indian Ghost Stories (ed.) Indian Railway Stories (ed.) Classic Indian Love Stories and Lyrics (ed.) Tales of the Open Road Ruskin Bond’s Book of Nature Ruskin Bond’s Book of Humour
 
Poetry Ruskin Bond’s Book of Verse




A Town Called Dehra
 
 
 
 
 
 
RUSKIN BOND
 
 
 

PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Group (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published by Penguin Books India 2008
Copyright © Ruskin Bond 2008

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-01-4306-469-5

This Digital Edition published 2011. e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-052-2
Digital conversion prepared by DK Digital Media, India.

This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.


Contents
Copyright
Introduction
A Childhood in the Shade of Lichi Trees
Coming Home to Dehra
Dehradun—Winter of ’45
The Last Tonga Ride
Growing Up with Trees
Adventures in a Banyan Tree
The Old Gramophone
The Photograph
A Vagrant in the Doon Valley
On the Road to Dehra
The Window
What’s Your Dream?
As Time Goes By
The Silver Screen
In My Twenties: Writing and Living
First Time I Saw My Novel in Print
Living Without Money
Meena
Geoffrey Davis
The Garlands on His Brow
Looking for the Dehra I Knew
Landour Days: Notes from My Journal
In Search of a Winter Garden
Lily of the Valley
The Dilaram Bazaar
Pedestrian in Peril
My Father’s Trees in Dehra
A Song for Lost Friends
Parts of Old Dehra

Introduction
Formally, it’s known as Dehradun, but in the 1940s and 1950s, when we were young, everyone called it Dehra.
That’s where I spent much of my childhood, boyhood, and early manhood, and it was the Dehra I wrote about in many of my books and stories.
It was very different from the Dehradun of today—much smaller, much greener, considerably less crowded; sleepier too, and somewhat laid-back, easy-going; fond of gossip, but tolerant of human foibles. A place of bicycles and pony-drawn tongas. Only a few cars; no three-wheelers. And you could walk almost anywhere, at any time of the year, night or day.
The Dehra I knew really fell into three periods. The Dehra of my childhood, staying in my grandmother’s house on the old Survey Road (not much left of that bungalow now). The Dehra of my schooldays, when I would come home for the holidays to stay with my mother and stepfather—a different house on about every visit, right up until the time I left for England. And then the Dehra of my return to India, when I lived on my own in a small flat above Astley Hall, and wrote many of the stories that you will find in this book.

Front veranda of Granny’s house in Dehradun. The dog was called ‘Crazy’ .

My mother, age six or seven, in a Dehradun garden (circa 1920) .
While I was in England I wrote my first novel, The Room on the Roof , which was all about the Dehra I had left and the people and young friends I had known and loved. It was a little immature but it came straight from the heart—the heart and mind of a seventeen-year-old—and if it’s still fresh today, fifty years after its first publication, it’s probably because it was so spontaneous and unsophisticated.
Back in Dehra, I wrote a sequel of sorts, Vagrants in the Valley . It wasn’t as good, probably because I had exhausted my adolescence as a subject for fiction; but it did capture aspects of life in Dehra and the Doon Valley in the early fifties.
I had returned to India and Dehra when I was twenty-one, and set up my writing shop, so to speak, in that flat above Bibiji’s provision store.
Bibiji was my stepfather’s first wife. He and my mother had moved to Delhi, leaving Bibiji with the provision store. I got on very well with her and helped her with accounts, and she gave me the use of her rooms above the shop. I think it’s only in India that you could find such a situation—a young offspring of the Raj, somewhat at odds with his mother and his stepfather, choosing to live with the latter’s abandoned first wife!
Bibiji made excellent parathas, shalgam pickle, and kanji, a spicy carrot juice. And so, romantic though I may have been, I was far from being the young poet starving in a garret.
Bibiji was, of course, much older than me. Heavily built, strong. She could toss sacks of flour about the shop. Her son, rather mischievous, kept out of her reach; a cuff about the ears would send him sprawling. She suffered from a hernia, and was immensely grateful to me for bringing her a hernia-belt from England; it provided her with considerable relief.
Early morning she would march off to the mandi to get her provisions (rice, atta, pulses, etc.) wholesale, and occasionally I would accompany her. In this way I learnt the names of different pulses and lentils— moong , urad , malka , arhar , masoor , channa , lobia , rajma , etc. But I’ve never been tempted to write a cookbook or run a ration-shop of my own.
I was quite happy cooking up stories, most of them written after dark, by the light of a kerosene lantern. Bibiji hadn’t been able to pay the flat’s accumulated electricity bills, and as a result the connection had been cut. But this did not bother me. I was quit