Skip to main content

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.
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