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The Kitemaker: Stories (2011)

by Ruskin Bond(Favorite Author)

3.73 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0143415972 (ISBN13: 9780143415978)

languge

English

genre

Middle Grade & Children's

publisher

Penguin Books India

review 1: I had heard a lot about Ruskin Bond, so picked up this short collection of stories. The style is very endearing, and easy to read. I can see why he became a known author. The stories themselves are very varied. A couple I just did not like at all, but most were written in the first person. The start was autobiographical, and so the most interesting stories for me were those where weird and wonderful characters turned up, and I was never sure if he was still being autobiographical or not!
review 2: “The Kitemaker: Stories” (by Ruskin Bond, publishers: Penguin Evergreens)- A ReviewThe first story, ‘Life with Father’, is a fitting start to the book. At once, in its beguiling simplicity and compassionate monochrome, it embodies all good things Ruskin Bond h... moreas come to be known for. In this story, he paints the picture of a year spent with his father. It is a picture in retrospect, painted not with CGI but on a drawing sheet with water colors, 32 in a set. The story tangentially also speaks about the days of the ‘Raj’, Ruskin’s life in a boarding school (more of this life would be depicted in the next story, ‘My Father’s Last Letter’), the separation of his parents, tidbits about his sister and grandmother and importantly, the various houses (and bungalows and tents and apartments) Ruskin and his father lived in, during an eventful year when as the World War-II raged on, a young boy’s world was breaking apart as well. ‘Untouchable’, also included in the collection is the first story Ruskin Bond had written. Written as a sixteen year old and a year before ‘Room on the Roof’, his John Llewellyn Rhys prize winner that would break him into the mainstream, ‘Untouchable’ is a disarmingly awkward account of the friendship between two children, each from different strata of society. The theme of friendship is further explored in the fifth story, ‘The Fight’, that evokes R.K. Narayan’s ‘Malgudi Days’ in its wholesome charm and innocence.‘Time stops at Shamli’ is perhaps Bond’s best loved story. And it pleases me no end that it has aged well. Playing around with facts and fiction, this story tells the untold tale of a small, languid town where nothing much ever happens. ‘Shamli’ is intriguing because we realize that it has come to become a microcosm of the other India we know so little about, the India that grazes by our urbane train windows and continues to lead a life of anonymity, the India that would soon be lost on us like Atlantis. Yes, the second act is probably contrived, but the atmosphere that the author manages to create is unparalleled and the story is a success.‘The Kitemaker’ takes me back to my school days because I remember having read this story in our those N.C.E.R.T standard seven English books. Nostalgia aside, this again is a strong short story, a commentary on the changing times, migration and industrialization. Mehmood, the story’s protagonist, is a composite picture of many lost souls in this rat-race.‘A Face in the Dark’ is another famous Bond story, a story you may have heard of as some urban legend, while not knowing then who the author was. Well, here is that very story and it is just as scary in print as it is in narration. ‘He said it with Aresnic’ is almost a misfit in the collection: a dark, noir-ish tale of a planned crime and its consequences. It is quite a gripping tale in its own way but not the quintessential Ruskin Bond.‘The Last Time I Saw Delhi’ is a touching end to the collection, with the author (or the narrator, difficult to say which one) describing a taxi-ride he had taken in one late-August to meet his mother in Delhi. Again, the story talks about the burgeoning urbanity and how it is impacting the things and people of yore. He succeeds in making the reader so disarmed with his non-threatening prose that if and when he does make statements on capitalism, education and politics, then the reader is quietly receptive to give those statements the gravitas they deserve because Bond rarely rants or lashes. He describes and he describes so heartbreakingly.“The Kitemaker: Stories” is a must-read collection of short stories by one of India’s foremost storytellers. less

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