Book Review: Angry River by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, Angry River is a beautifully written novella. The main theme of the story is nature. When nature causes havoc, humans find it tough to avert. Though this story is of a poor little girl – Sita. She is too innocent and out of worldly affairs to create any damage to nature, well she is concerning the voice of many who get stuck with the ways of nature. Continue reading to know her story.

Sita is a little poor girl living with her grandparents on an island that is located in the middle of the river, which originates from the high mountains and ends in the sea. During the rainy season, the river turns gloomy and violent. The last time when it flooded the island was twenty years ago. However, her grandparents are living here for over ten years now. This year, as the monsoon is on, chances are that the island may get flooded.

Grandmother is ill and feverish, her condition deteriorating day by day. Thus, one day grandfather takes her on a boat to the hospital of Shahganj. It is raining heavily for many days. Sita is left alone on the island, where no other people live. Their hut is the only hut on a rocky hillock.

When rain doesn’t stop and water begins entering the hut, Sita puts all important clothes, ration, and items in the wooden trunk and hurriedly leaves the hut to perch on the peepul tree, which stands before the hut. In haste and panic, she forgets to put her doll Mumta, made of rugs, inside the trunk.

Now while sitting on a branch under the rain-dripping leaves, she is repenting for her doll. And soon as the water level rises, the doll flows away with the swift river currents. From the tree, she observes that the river has caused havoc all around and village folks around the river have been dislocated, items from houses and dead cattle can be seen flowing in the violent turbid river water.

The torrential rain submerges the hut on the island and weakens the peepul tree. The tree is about to give away, as an upshot Sita shivers with the fear of falling in the river. But soon a boy in a small boat comes her way to rescue her. The boy offers her sweet mangoes and takes her to a village from where she manages to get back to her grandfather in Shahganj. But before she leaves, he gives her his flute and promises that he will come back for her.

Upon reaching the town Shahganj, she comes to know about the death of her grandmother. She becomes sad, but all the more turns gloomy when she finds that her grandfather is feeling alone and forlorn in the absence of granny.

After three months, as the rain is over, they built their hut once again and the boy, Krishnan, comes to see her. The story is about hardship people face when caught in the difficult situations, like flood or landslide and so on. However, Sita, the main character of the novel shows the good presence of mind and temerity to overcome the hurdles. In many senses, the story is about bravery, courage, loss of belongings, struggle, and surviving along with the ways of nature. Man cannot mold the ways of nature - it is too powerful to be controlled by anyone. 

Like all other Ruskin Bond stories, this too is about nature and people of hills. Lovely writing – so simple that you will love it.