Falling In Love Again

I'm a trifle overwhelmed.... and that feels like understatement.

I think overwhelmed not just by the beauty of the experience that's been Ruskin Bond, but by a plethora of thoughts and feelings that it's surfacing.....not the least of which is how have I not read a Ruskin Bond before? (save a story here and there which was read to the children)

Realized I'd bucketed....I'd somehow bucketed him author of kids books. My bad :(

I don't know how he does it, but as I went through each story, it was almost like having spent that little time with him. It feels like he puts himself out there....as is, from his core. It's an amazing trait.

End of book, he felt like a new friend, one I'd like to spend more time with, one I'd want to know better. 

There's a sensitivity, an insightfulness...a subtle sense of humor that evokes a spurt of laughter at the most unexpected places. And a gut level honesty, an honesty that's core, yet he has this really delicate and fragile way he touches it, it's like a feather touch, and you feel he's at times not sure what to do with it, but touch it he will.

Reading him is like going on a journey. A journey through the mountains, the winds, the old mansions, pretty lakes, old trees....it's like living it.

I know I'm sounding overboard. But then, didn't say 'overwhelmed' for nothing :)

And his writing style, it's at one time as simple can be simple, and yet you'd want to use the term 'literary genius'. How?

To quote a couple of phrases:

"I looked up from my typewriter to see what at first I thought was an apparition hovering over me. She seemed to shimmer before me in the hot sunlight that came slashing through the open door. I looked into her face and our eyes met over the rim of the glass. I forgot to take it from her. 

What I liked about her was her smile. It dropped over her face slowly, like sunshine moving over brown hills. She seemed to give out some of the glow that was in her face. I felt it pour over me. And the golden feeling did not pass when she left the room. That was how I knew she was going to mean something special to me"

I also liked how subtle he can get, In one story, he (the main character) gets off at an odd station in the mountains based on impulse, and he makes up a story for why he's there, he creates a fictional character called Major Roberts (for who ever will ask)

Other: And what brings you to Shamli?

RB: I'm looking for a friend called Major Roberts

And towards end of story he writes:

"Tomorrow morning I would go, and perhaps I would come back to Shamli one day, and perhaps not. I could always come here looking for Major Roberts, and who knows one day I might find him. What should he be like, this lost man? A romantic, a man with a dream, a man with brown skin and blue eyes, living in a hut on a snowy mountaintop, chopping wood and catching fish and swimming in cold mountain streams; a rough, free man with a kind heart and a shaggy beard, a man who owed allegiance to no one, who gave a damn for money and politics, and cities and civilizations, who was his own master, who lived at one with nature knowing no fear. 

But that was not Major Roberts - that was the man I wanted to be. He was not a Frenchman or an Englishman, he was me, a dream of myself. If only I could find Major Roberts."

I'm wowed.

I'm not even a short story person, I like my books to continue for long...yet I've been, well, converted I guess :)

To now come to the book itself, it's a collection of stories. The Girl from Copenhagen, The Eyes have it, Love is a sad song, Binya passes by, Time stops at Shamli, We must love someone, and some more.

'A love of long ago' and 'Time stops at Shamli', are my favorite, made me almost (?) want to got to Shamli.

They are not as much love stories, as stories about love. Each story touching one of the 'myriad variations of romantic love - fleeting, intimate, joyous, heartbreaking....a range of feelings that are indubitably part of the infinite spectrum of love'.

Yay, for having met Ruskin bond......Well, I feel like I have :)