Skip to main content

Book Review: Bhabhiji’s House by Ruskin Bond

Bhabhji’s House is a short story by Ruskin Bond featured in the book ‘Rusty Comes Home’.  The story is set against the newly settling Delhi of 1950s post-independence, and focuses on the values and the chores that take place on a daily basis in a traditional joint family. Rusty is more of like a wanderer; he has no permanent place to live in Delhi; thus, one day he walks down from Connaught Place to Rajauri Garden, covering around eight miles, and reaches the home of his friend, Kamal. He begins living there with him, in his big home, and the family that live there is huge.


Through the story one point has been made clear that no one can live smoothly in a joint family where cots are snatched away at the crack of the day to place in the garden only to be re-laid at dusk; a number of children wailing and prancing around toughens the concentration on anything the person is doing, and above all women will never obey the senior lady and the senior lady will never cease to lament their loathsome and incapability. And it is the men who find it tough to support women, whether to go for wife or mother. A similar kind of commotion is featured in this story of a Punjabi family and Ruskin has captured the subtlest details and pretexts like an expert.

The grandmother, also known as the Bhabhiji, is the head of the family. She has three sons, a few daughters, and daughter-in-laws, and of course a dozen of children living pell-mell. No matter how hard and dedicatedly try the daughter-in-laws of the house to get up to prepare breakfast for their men but they are never before Bhabhiji. For this reason, she lampoons all of them and all the major decisions of the house are not passed until she consented.

Amidst such ruckus, Shobha – one of the daughter-in laws - finds it tough to cope up with the old lady and her husband cannot support her openly since he fears his mother. Thus, she finds some solace in interacting with Rusty who often carries out small favours for the couple.

Well, Rusty’s favourite person in the house is Madhu. She goes to school in the afternoon and performs all chores of the house silently without holding any grudges against any one. Bhabhiji resents the selection of the brides for his two married sons but she is determined to find a perfect bride for her youngest son, Kamal. For him she needs an educated as well as beautiful bride. The story underlines the unity of the family and the lineage of having joint family, a tradition that lasted for centuries in India but today it is on the verge of extinction because of urbanization and the need to have comfort and privacy in personal life.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversatio...
65 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should ...
68 comments
Read more

Character Sketch of Binya from ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond

The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond is a popular children’s story. It features Binya as the main character, though there are other important characters as well, but the story revolves around Binya and her little beautiful umbrella. The story is widely popular among children, thus it has also been included in the schools’ syllabus all across the country. Since it is often taught in the school, thus the character sketch of Binya is often demanded by students from year to year. Character Sketch of Binya from The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond Binya is the main character of the novel ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond. Her full name is Binyadevi. As in the hills or anywhere in India it is a kind of trend to call children with their short nicknames. Binya’s elder brother’s name is Bijju, whereas his real name is Vijay. Binya aged eleven is a hilly girl. She lives with her small family in the hills of Garhwal. Her father died when she was two years of age. For sustenance, the...
41 comments
Read more