Skip to main content

Book Review: A Night Walk Home by Ruskin Bond

A Night Walk Home by Ruskin Bond is a beautifully written short story that talks about the night ambience which the narrator often experiences in Landour – a small place in Mussoorie. Also, the story is very informative as it tells as how a night can be spent in the mountains, like the foothills of the Himalayas.


The theme of nature and wildlife conservation is too strong and Ruskin has used various animals and birds to depict his conviction for saving from any sort of trouble. The story is of one night when the narrator was walking back home midnight in the mountains. One can relate more with his experiences by going through the following excerpts:

"No night is so dark as it seems. Here in Landour, on the first range of the Himalayas, I have grown accustomed to the night's brightness - moonlight, starlight, lamplight, firelight! Even fireflies light up the darkness."

Clearly, the narrator loves night as he does not reckon it with darkness, rather he finds light in many forms. It gives him privacy and freedom, and he feels safer at night. But it does not mean that he goes to any place in the mountains where danger lurks for sure.

Though he senses, sees, and hears animals and birds every night. The author feels that walking home at midnight in Landour can be quite eventful, but in a different sort of way. One is conscious all the time of the silent life in the surrounding trees and bushes. He has smelt a leopard without seeing it. He has seen jackals on prowl. He has watched a lone fox dancing in the moonlight. He has seen squirrels flitting from tree to another. Not only this he has witnessed pine marten taking night journey, heard nightjars, and a variety of owls and owlets going for freedom flight at night. The author explores the sound of owls, according to their categories. However, he takes it a libel where one random author compares the hooting of an owl with a motorcycle sound. This is not true. Had it been the case, the jungle could have been full of motorcycles that make interesting and appealing sound and people could sleep peacefully.

It is interesting to note that Ruskin puts that no matter what sound nature produces it never disturbs the sleep of humans. And humans just do the other. In the story there are various interesting instances of nightly feel, you will like the story if you enjoy and have that nocturnal instinct.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

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 conversation fo

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r