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Book Review: ‘As Time Goes By’ by Ruskin Bond

As Time Goes By is a short story featured in the novella, Rusty Comes Home. The narrator is Rusty in his old days, way ahead than the frivolities of the youth he spent with his best friends in Dehradun and Mussoorie.


He sees that Prem’s boys have grown up to the verge of manhood. This sight makes him to look back at his own teenage life that he spent in Dehradun; he nostalgically remembers his two best friends: Somi and Ranbir. They were adventurous and how Rusty used to enjoy their company until they all parted away in different directions in search of lucrative careers and wealth.

Rusty recounts a beautiful account of finding a pool in the hills on a rainy day. It was formed by the downstream flowing streams and beneath it was a ravine. He was impatient to tell the others about the pool. So, they all named it as Rusty’s Pool. In this pool they would take buffalo rides and do wrestling and play in the muddy waters. For all it was a rendezvous point, often they included Kishen otherwise kept it secret from other local boys.

Rusty remembers that one day with an intention of making the pool deeper and larger they built a dam-like stone wall on one side of the stream. However, one day when it was raining heavily the dam broke and with it their clothes got washed away. As an upshot, the boys had to wait till nightfall to arrange for some clothes to cover up their naked bodies. The narrator did not know how exactly they parted but it happened gradually. First Somi, after completing school, left for Calcutta and then Rusty for England. Upon his return from England, he found Ranbir serving in the Indian Air Force as a pilot. Sadly, after three weeks of their meeting, it was heard that Ranbir had been killed in an air crash.

Somi writes from Calcutta and vaguely mentions about the pool days. But to Rusty the memory of pool is still fresh, even after thirty years. One day he visits through the hills to check the existence of the pool but there he finds no bed of pool. The ravine is there but the stream has changed its course the way Rusty and his friends have changed their course of life. When he turns away in disappointment, the shouting and screaming of children fills his ears. He chases down the trails of sound and finds that many children are playing in a pool, different than that of theirs. From behind the trees, he watches them with keen fascination and imagines Somi and Ranbir are playing in that pool. And feels that nothing has really changed, time is like that.

This story is beautifully woven between the reflections of time and it revs up the nostalgia and memories associated with teenage years that best describe the charm of friendship. Heart-touching account of early days: full of youth and vigor.
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