Time Stops At Shamli
A Collection of short stories by Ruskin Bond
It is at once a matter of great privilege and huge responsibility to write about the works of a great author and a childhood favourite like Ruskin Bond.
Before I actually speak about the book itself, I would like to throw some on the bond I share with Ruskin Bond. I was touched by the magic of Ruskin Bond’s writing at a very young age. Our otherwise ineffectual education system must get credit for this. The mundane English reader at school, named after a famous tree that blossoms in the peak of summer in north India would carry utmost one piece by this great man, just enough to whet my appetite for more. The earliest opinion about these stories was the immense simplicity with which they were written and how they seemed so refreshing however many number of times one read them. (Being a part of the school curriculum generally ensured that every lesson had to be read umpteen number of times).
I never got a chance to get more than a sampler of Ruskin Bond till I laid my hands on ‘Delhi is not far’ and now ‘Time Stops at Shamli’.
Time Stops at Shamli is a collection of stories, some of which I had read in some other collection by this wonderful author. The chance incidence of finding a piece of writing that I may have read sometime in the past unlocked a box of memories and transported me to a different realm of time and space.
The collection is named after the story ‘Time Stops at Shamli’. The story delivers the priceless lesson of letting go of people and associated memories when memories only bring pain and despair.
The collection is uniquely Bond in the sense that it doesn’t suffer from the one-dimensional nature that many such collections are guilty of. The stories cover diverse aspects of the human nature-from the mundane and the everyday to the supernatural. The railway watchman who watches trains speed fast, the young boy who waits expectantly for his dead father, the uncle who poisons with arsenic or the professor accused of forgery-the characters remain etched in the memory long after their stories finish.
The stories bring to life an India not to many of us- the rural and rustic India, an India of village bumpkins-stupid and affectionate at the same time, an India of bicycles and dusty trails, an India of Re2 evenings snacks, an India that belongs to wild animals and singing birds, an India untouched by the sleaze and ‘glamour’ of urban India, an India complete and content in its existence.
The common thread in all of his stories remains that the real happiness lies in simplicity. Ruskin Bond’s simplicity of writing echoes this sentiment all along.
The collection is a must read in this world of chaos, complexity and anxiety.
A Collection of short stories by Ruskin Bond
It is at once a matter of great privilege and huge responsibility to write about the works of a great author and a childhood favourite like Ruskin Bond.
Before I actually speak about the book itself, I would like to throw some on the bond I share with Ruskin Bond. I was touched by the magic of Ruskin Bond’s writing at a very young age. Our otherwise ineffectual education system must get credit for this. The mundane English reader at school, named after a famous tree that blossoms in the peak of summer in north India would carry utmost one piece by this great man, just enough to whet my appetite for more. The earliest opinion about these stories was the immense simplicity with which they were written and how they seemed so refreshing however many number of times one read them. (Being a part of the school curriculum generally ensured that every lesson had to be read umpteen number of times).
I never got a chance to get more than a sampler of Ruskin Bond till I laid my hands on ‘Delhi is not far’ and now ‘Time Stops at Shamli’.
Time Stops at Shamli is a collection of stories, some of which I had read in some other collection by this wonderful author. The chance incidence of finding a piece of writing that I may have read sometime in the past unlocked a box of memories and transported me to a different realm of time and space.
The collection is named after the story ‘Time Stops at Shamli’. The story delivers the priceless lesson of letting go of people and associated memories when memories only bring pain and despair.
The collection is uniquely Bond in the sense that it doesn’t suffer from the one-dimensional nature that many such collections are guilty of. The stories cover diverse aspects of the human nature-from the mundane and the everyday to the supernatural. The railway watchman who watches trains speed fast, the young boy who waits expectantly for his dead father, the uncle who poisons with arsenic or the professor accused of forgery-the characters remain etched in the memory long after their stories finish.
The stories bring to life an India not to many of us- the rural and rustic India, an India of village bumpkins-stupid and affectionate at the same time, an India of bicycles and dusty trails, an India of Re2 evenings snacks, an India that belongs to wild animals and singing birds, an India untouched by the sleaze and ‘glamour’ of urban India, an India complete and content in its existence.
The common thread in all of his stories remains that the real happiness lies in simplicity. Ruskin Bond’s simplicity of writing echoes this sentiment all along.
The collection is a must read in this world of chaos, complexity and anxiety.
