Showing results by author "Ruskin Bond" in All Categories

Night Train at Deoli is a collection of stories, most of which are set in the valleys of Uttarakhand, a place where the author himself grew up. The stories revolve around the lives of simple folk who live a serene life away from the hustle bustle of cities. These simple and heartwarming stories are sure to hit a chord and bring smiles to the faces of listeners.

"A Handful of Nuts" is a gloriously funny and unexpectedly tender story of being young and adventurous in small town India. The central character would like to establish himself as a writer, but he is constantly diverted from his task by assorted escapades, romances, friends, and other distractions. "The Sensualist" is altogether more somber but deals with a similar theme - the trials and tribulations of a young man are coming of age. Gripping, erotic, even brutal, it explores the demons that its protagonist must grapple with before he is able to come to terms with himself.

Semi-autobiographical in nature, these 14 stories span the period from the author's childhood to the present. We are introduced, in a series of beautifully imagined and crafted cameos, to the author's family, friends, and various other people who left a lasting impression on him. In other stories we revisit Bond's beloved Garhwal hills and the small towns and villages that he has returned to time and again in his fiction.

For more than four decades now, by way of innumerable short stories, essays, poems, and novels, Ruskin Bond has championed simplicity and quietude in life and in art. This collection of essays and episodes from his journals is, in his own words, "a celebration of my survival as a freelance".

This collection brings together the best of Ruskin Bond's cameos, all beautifully imagined and crafted, inspired by people who have left a lasting impression on him. In addition, there are a host of characters culled from Bond's numerous short stories. Taken together, they constitute a magnificent evocation of the small-town India by one of the country's best storytellers.

A great imagination makes for terrific ghost stories - stories that go beyond the tapping on the doors in the middle of a night or a whistling thrush or even a squeaky swing in the wind. This is a collection of some such horror stories selected and compiled by Ruskin Bond that will send shivers down your spine.

Rusty, the boy whose stories have charmed and entertained children for years, brings together his best adventures in one volume! From the time he was a boy living with his grandparents in Dehra, surrounded by an assortment of odd animals, people and relatives, to when he gets sent away to school, then makes his way to London and becomes a writer, Rusty's had more adventures than we can count.

Why be happy and how, and why not to worry if you think you are not. Why it is easy to be happy, and how you can miss happiness even if it stands before you. How a bird can fill you with joy and how a stranger’s smile can soothe you. Why happiness may not even be the word for what we really need.

In this brilliantly listenable autobiography, one of India’s greatest writers shows us the roots of everything he has written. He begins with a dream and a gentle haunting before taking us to an idyllic childhood in Jamnagar by the Arabian Sea and New Delhi in the early 1940s - where he found material for his first short story. A search for companionship and security, undercut by a fierce independence and a tendency for risk-taking, would inform every choice he made for the rest of his life.

It was a small island set in the middle of the big river, yet large enough for Sita and her grandparents to live there, together with their three goats, their hens, their vegetable patch, and the peepul tree.

Sometimes a journey can be of discovery. And in this compilation, Ruskin Bond has discovered hair-raising stories of other people's journeys taken many, many years ago. Bond describes the old track from Rajpur to Mussorie, surrounded by oak trees and colonial buildings in 'The Kipling Road'. Braving blizzards and bandits, M. Huc takes a momentous journey to Ladakh in 'Journey to the Forbidden City', while Osa Johnson, the only woman adventurer in the book, gives her awe-inspiring account of cannibals in 'A Woman Among Cannibals'.

Ruskin Bond's writing brings the world to us in profound and remarkable ways. His signature style is simplicity itself, but the themes he tackles are big, deep and universal - love, loss, happiness, grief, and all the shades of emotion in between. These are stories of city and small town, mountain and lowland, and of life lived slowly and lightly. For over 50 years, these tales have charmed and beguiled several generations of readers.

Stories Short and Sweet by Ruskin Bond is a collection of his choicest short stories, capturing the myriad facets of life in the hills. Humour, nostalgia, love, friendship, trust and betrayal - Bond captures every mood that makes our life worth remembering.

Great Stories for Children is a potpourri of short stories that effectively transports the reader to the fascinating world of its endearing characters. The ensemble includes Tutu the monkey, who is fond of troubling the no-nonsense Aunt Ruby; a pet python who makes sudden appearances at the most unusual places; a troublesome Pret who enjoys stirring up the household he resides in; three young children stranded on the Haunted Hill; and Himalayan bears who feast on pumpkins, plums and apricots.

School Days is a collection of stories that captures the splendour of our school days. Here Ruskin Bond has weaved together some of the most adventurous and engaging school stories written by master storytellers like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Samuel Smiles, Anton Chekhov, Richmal Crompton and others.

Ruskin Bond has been writing stories for children for over six decades now, delighting and enchanting each new generation with his heart-warming tales of friendship, love and coming-of-age. Curated in this essential collection are some of his best-loved stories, designed to introduce the young listener to Ruskin's cast of beloved characters.

Ruskin Bond not only brings to life a town in northern India capturing the scenery, the people, the atmosphere - but also shows that children are the same the world over. Included are such classics as 'Ranji's Wonderful Bat', 'The Boy Who Broke the Bank' and 'Koki's Song'.

I forget what took me to Fosterganj in the first place. Destiny, perhaps, although I'm not sure why destiny would have bothered to guide an itinerant writer to an obscure little hamlet in the hills. Chance would be a better word. For chance plays a great part in all our lives. And it was just by chance that I found myself in the Fosterganj bazaar one fine morning early in May....

So here I am, delving into the past like Monsieur Poirot, not to solve a mystery but to try to understand some of the events that have helped define the sort of person I have become. Some of it, naturally, is in the genes; but much of it is in the environment, in the circumstances in which we grow up, in the people who come into our lives, even in the air we breathe. Had I grown up in London or Timbuktu, I would have been a different sort of person, I'm sure. My parents (and those before them) made me. But India made me, too.

A tale of sweet revenge. Ruskin is keen to teach his scatterbrained uncle a lesson. After all, he put him on the wrong train! Armed with gifts from his new friend, the stationmaster - yummy rasgullas and a pair of beautiful white mice - Ruskin devises the perfect payback. Peppered with endearing characters, this is one of Bond's most unforgettable tales.