AUTHOR: Ruskin Bond
ISBN/ASIN: 9788171673407
GENRE: Fiction / Children
NUMBER OF PAGES: 83
FORMAT: Paperback
SERIES / STANDALONE: Standalone Novella
HOW I GOT THIS BOOK: A gift to start my Ruskin Bond Collection :)
SUMMARY:
'The umbrella was like a flower, a great blue flower that had sprung up on the dry brown hillside.'
In exchange for her lucky leopard's claw pendant, Binya acquires a beautiful blue umbrella that makes her the envy of everyone
in the village, especially Ram Bharosa, the shopkeeper. It is the prettiest umbrella in the whole village and she carries it
everywhere she goes.
The Blue Umbrella is a short and humorous novella set in the hills of Garhwal. Written in simple yet witty language, it captures
life in a village - where ordinary characters become heroic, and others find opportunities to redeem themselves.
FIRST IMPRESSION:
When I received this book via Amazon today evening, I was surprised by the light weight. The package seemed to contain nothing
but a small handbook. And only after checking the bill and opening the parcel did I convince myself that it was indeed the right
book. It was so thin and small, true to the name of being a 'Children's book'.
Naturally, the cover was a huge attraction and it is my first actual own Ruskin Bond book. (Ignoring the hand me downs and the
second hand copies purchased - those that recent devastations took away from me). So with a very sentimental value, I opened
this book and the huge font and illustrations in every alternate page took me back to my childhood, those initial days of reading
when I would gaze at the images with as much wonder as I usually reserve for the magic the words created.
REVIEW:
There are books, then there are classics. There are writers, then there are authors. A step above you have the story tellers. But
there are people, beyond these mortal levels. People whose words weave a web so powerful that you realise, once again, why you
could never put a good book down and concentrate on other work, no matter how big or small it is. These are the people who tell
you what a solace reading can be. The words seem to leap out at you from the pages and you feel that the author's chisel has
worked over something ordinary and made it extraordinary. It is more about the familiarity one feels as a reader rather than the
actual story and content of the book. Much like the case with music, it does not matter what the content is, as long as the
accompanying memories are powerful enough. So the moment I began reading, the first reaction was one of familiarity.
So what is so special about this book? A simple village girl, Binya, exchanges her lucky pendant for a blue umbrella she sees with
picknickers who had come to the mountainside near her sleepy village. The book follows the story of Binya and her blue
umbrella. The one liner of the plot does no justice to the actual story. When you see Binya struggling with the blue umbrella and
the near misses and losses she has with it, your heart goes out to her. When you see the villagers' reaction to a simple girl having
a fancy umbrella, many facets of human emotions are so effortlessly revealed. When you see how her brother Bijju supports her
through all this, you can see how a true sibling bond behaves.
The story is not majestic, not grand. But when one imagines the umbrella blowing away in the wind out of Binya's hand, one can
very well get the thrill of having read about a high profile criminal car chase at 220 miles per hour. And the sigh of relief after she
safely gets the beloved umbrella is followed by a deep breath of contentment from the reader's side. The characters are simple in
their complexity and complex in their simplicity. The magic of the book is not in the storyline, but is in the way the author brings
you into the part of the story so much so that for the twenty odd minutes one would take to read this book, one would leave the
armchair that holds them and instead, travel with Binya and Bijju and other characters of that sleepy Himalayan village.
Overall, a trip down the memory lane, and as far as my memory holds, the first book I actually received, read and reviewed within
a span of 4 hours. The first part is not much of a feat, but of late, the second part is very much so!
WHAT I LIKED:
- The Blue Umbrella
- The ending
- and everything in between
VERDICT:
This book took me back to those idyllic days when reading was more about my library copies and personal purchases and the
sheer joy of having read a classic. Try this if you want to have your memories recalled fondly. And oh, yes, also to know what
happens to the blue umbrella in the end!
RATING: 5/5 Just for the sake of being my very first Ruskin Bond purchase and
also for being the book reviewed in the shortest span of time since its arrival. A new personal record that made me realise that it
is the level of interest a book holds rather than a readers' block that keeps one from reading at a go!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruskin Bond is an Indian author of British descent. He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children's authors
and a top novelist.
He wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof, when he was seventeen which won John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957.
Since then he has written several novellas, over 500 short stories, as well as various essays and poems, all of which have
established him as one of the best-loved and most admired chroniclers of contemporary India.
In 1992 he received the Sahitya Akademi award for English writing, for his short stories collection, "Our Trees Still Grow in
Dehra", by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters in India. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for
contributions to children's literature.
He now lives with his adopted family in Landour near Mussoorie.
EDITIONS AVAILABLE: Kindle, Paperback
PRICE Free on Kindle Unlimited, Rs. 72 for paperback
BOOK LINKS: Amazon
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