Night Train at Deoli

Ruskin Bond

Description

An enchanting collection of stories from the heartland of India Ruskin Bond s simple characters, living amidst the lush forests of the Himalayan foothills, are remarkable for their quiet heroism, courage and grace, and age-old values of honesty and fidelity. Residents of nondescript villages and towns, they lead lives that are touched by natural beauty as well as suffering the loss of a loved parent, unfulfilled dreams, natural calamities, ghostly visitations, a respected teacher turned crooked, strangers who make a nuisance of themselves which only reinforces their abiding faith in God, family and neighbour. Told in Bond s distinctive style, these stories are a magnificent evocation of an India that may be fast disappearing.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184754414
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ruskin Bond

THE NIGHT TRAIN AT DEOLI AND OTHER STORIES
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Introduction
The Woman on Platform 8
The Coral Tree
The Photograph
The Window
Chachi s Funeral
The Man Who Was Kipling
The Eyes Have It
The Thief
The Boy who Broke The Bank
His Neighbour s Wife
The Night Train at Deoli
Bus Stop, Pipalnagar
The Garlands on His Brow
A Guardian Angel
Death of a Familiar
The Kitemaker
The Monkeys
The Prospect of Flowers
A Case for Inspector Lal
A Face in the Night
A Job Well Done
The Story of Madhu
The Cherry Tree
My Father s Trees in Dehra
Panther s Moon
The Leopard
Sita and the River
Love is a Sad Song
When You Can t Climb Trees Any More
A Love of Long Ago
Footnote
Introduction
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE NIGHT TRAIN AT DEOLI AND OTHER STORIES
Ruskin Bond s first novel, The Room on the Roof , written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written a number of novellas, essays, poems and children s books, many of which have been published by Penguin. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.
Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.
For D - thanks for the memory
Introduction
Gentle Reader,
I use the old-fashioned term to address you, because I like it and because I know that only the more gentle kind of person is likely to care much for my stories.
I have never been any good at the more lurid sort of writing. Psychopathic killers, impotent war-heroes, self-tortured film stars, and seedy espionage agents must exist in this world, but strangely enough, I do not come across them, and I prefer to write about the people and places I have known and the lives of those whose paths I have crossed. This crossing of paths makes for stories rather than novels, and although I have worked in both mediums, I am happier being a short-story writer than a novelist.
Perhaps there is too much of me in my stories, and at times this book may read like an autobiography. It is a weakness, I know. It can t be helped; I am that kind of a writer, that kind of a person.
Looking back over the thirty years that I have been writing, I find to my surprise that I have written a number of love stories; or perhaps they are all love stories, of one kind or another. In fact, I can t really write unless I am in love with my subject. Another weakness, according to those who make up the rules for literature. But I have never gone by the rules.
Romance brought up the nine-fifteen, wrote Kipling, and I find that in the stories I wrote in the 1950 s (when I was in my teens and in my twenties) there is a good deal of romance, often associated with trains. People are always travelling in them and going all over the place, but just occasionally two people meet, their paths cross,
and though they may part again quite soon (as in The Woman on Platform 8 and The Eyes Have It ), their lives have been changed in some indefinable way.
Sometimes the hero (if I may use such a term) tries to prevent that moment from passing (as in The Night Train at Deoli ), but it is only the very strong among us who can alter events, change trains so to speak, and very often cause a derailment. The Night Train at Deoli is a favourite with many of my younger readers; that longing for something, someone, just out of reach, is familiar to them.
This is a representative collection of my stories selected by David Davidar from what I have written over the years. The early ones were written in Dehra Dun, when I was a young man struggling to make a living as a freelance writer. In the 1960 s, after a spell of office work in Delhi, I moved to the hill-station of Mussoorie, and many of the stories written in this period were, in fact, character studies of people I had known, although occasionally, as in Bus Stop, Pipalnagar, I went back to the years of struggle and youthful hopes.
As we grow older, despair and disillusion assail many of us. Our early hopes and dreams have been trodden in the dust. But I have always sought to buoy myself up by the sentiments embodied in an old-fashioned verse passed on me by my father * :
The pure, the bright, the beautiful,
That stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulse to a wordless prayer,
The dreams of love and truth;
The longings after something lost,
The spirit s yearning cry,
The striving after better hopes . . .
These things can never die.
The longings after something lost. Perhaps that is the dominant theme in my stories. It is a longing that has been experienced by all of us at various times in our lives unless one has become desensit- ized by power and money.
The longing, the yearning, is there in the early stories and it is there in the later stories. In the 1970 s, when I found myself being
weighed down by both personal and professional problems, I turned to writing for children, and this helped me to find a way out of my difficulties. Sita and the River became Angry River and also ended up in several European languages; so did Panther s Moon and a number of stories that are not included here because this is not a children s collection. In writing for children one has to adopt a less subjective approach; things must happen, for boys and girls have no time for mood pieces. So this kind of writing does help me to get away from myself. At the same time, because I have so strong an empathy with children, I can enter into their minds when I am writing about them. As children we are all individualists; it is only as we grow older that we acquire a certain grey similarity to each other.
But I still return to the old themes from time to time. A Love of Long Ago was written even as this book was being prepared for the press. Some of the old longing had returned. When I had finished the story, I thought, Well that s it. I am fifty-four now. No more love stories, and no more falling in love . . . But then, on my way home in the twilight, walking through the streets I had known as a boy I met this girl with the most beautiful smile in the world. She was trying to find a bus to Yamunanagar. But I ll tell you about it another time.
Mussoorie 24 March 1988
Ruskin Bond
The Woman on Platform 8
It was my second year at boarding-school, and I was sitting on platform no. 8 at Ambala station, waiting for the northern bound train. I think I was about twelve at the time. My parents considered me old enough to travel alone, and I had arrived by bus at Ambala early in the evening: now there was a wait till midnight before my train arrived. Most of the time I had been pacing up and down the platform, browsing at the book-stall, or feeding broken biscuits to stray dogs; trains came and went, and the platform would be quiet for a while and then, when a train arrived, it would be an inferno of heaving, shouting, agitated human bodies. As the carriage doors opened, a tide of people would sweep down upon the nervous little ticket-collector at the gate; and every time this happened I would be caught in the rush and swept outside the station. Now tired of this game and of ambling about the platform, I sat down on my suitcase and gazed dismally across the railway-tracks.
Trolleys rolled past me, and I was conscious of the cries of the various vendors - the men who sold curds and lemon, the sweet- meat-seller, the newspaper boy - but I had lost interest in all that went on along the busy platform, and continued to stare across the railway-tracks, feeling bored and a little lonely.
Are you all alone, my son? asked a soft voice close behind me. I looked up and saw a woman standing near me. She was leaning over, and I saw a pale face, and dark kind eyes. She wore no jewels, and was dressed very simply in a white sari .
Yes, I am going to school, I said, and stood up respectfully; she seemed poor, but there was a dignity about her that commanded respect.
I have been watching you for some time, she said. Didn t your parents come to see you off?
I don t live here, I said. I had to change trains. Anyway, I can travel alone.
I am sure you can, she said, and I liked her for saying that, and I also liked her for the simplicity of her dress, and for her deep, soft voice and the serenity of her face.
Tell me, what is your name? she asked.
Arun, I said.
And how long do you have to wait for your train?
About an hour, I think. It comes at twelve o clock.
Then come with me and have something to eat.
I was going to refuse, out of shyness and suspicion, but she took me by the hand, and then I felt it would be silly to pull my hand away. She told a coolie to look after my suitcase, and then she led me away down the platform. Her hand was gentle, and she held mine neither too firmly nor too lightly. I looked up at her again. She was not young. And she was not old. She must have been over thirty but, had she been fifty, I think she would have looked much the same.
She took me into the station dining-room, ordered tea and samosas and jalebies , and at once I began to thaw and take a new interest in this kind woman. The strange encounter had little effect on my appetite. I was a hungry school boy, and I ate as much as I could in as polite a manner as possible. She took obvious pleasure in watch- ing me eat, and I think it was the food that strengthened the bond between us and cemented our friendship, for under the influence of the tea and sweets I began to talk quite freely, and told her about my school, my friends, my likes and dislikes. She questioned me quietly from time to time, but p