Book:  Falling in Love Again, ( Stories of Love and Romance)

Author: Ruskin Bond

Publication: Rupa publication India 2013

Pages: 197

Price: Click the link 

“Falling in Love Again” is a perfect love story collection by our most adorable and honourable author Ruskin Bond. I grab the book. First of all, he is Ruskin Bond, with whom anyone can fall in love again and again. Secondly, the book’s cover. Amidst myriads of assorted colours, it can easily catch one’s attention with soothing calmness and a pastel shade of serenity.  The fluttering butterflies all over the pink-white flowers and sea-green leaves make your heart leaps to touch it, hold it and smell every page before you jump to read every story.

There is a total of 19 stories and each one is discretely impressive to keep a scratch on your heart. The prose is sometimes dipped in passion, sometimes subdued by the warmth of innocence. Again they are startlingly succinct in approach, sharply self-reflexive, poignant with the blotches of innocuous humour. Themes of love, longing, hope despair, craving for human connection all merge in one palette.

The Eyes Have It, the opening story is a superb one with two blind people’s craving for knowing the other. But the most interesting part of it, or the twist of it lies at the ending. The blind boy and the blind girl are deranged from each other with the illusion that the other is not blind. Though the boy will come to know that from the other passenger, the girl will never know. That’s our life. The Night Train at Deoli captures the hopeless hope of the narrator to meet the basket selling girl at Deoli station whom he lost during his journey. The hope to find her again kept him dreaming of her.

” I prefer to keep hoping and dreaming and looking out of the window up and down that lonely platform, waiting for the girl with the baskets.”

Tribute to a Dead Friend is the story of the friendship between Thanh, Pravin, and the narrator. Love is a Sad Song is the story of the narrator’s love for a young girl Sushila.

His Neighbour’s Wife is a story of different tastes with a flow of strong emotion mingled with humour.

Susanna’s Seven Husband is a funny story that reminds me of the movie, Saat Khub Maap by Priyanka Chopra.

Nature speaks in his pen:

This stirring collection captures all the hues of loveliness in the fascinating frame where nature adds extra colour in the glow of characters. The description of lustrous nature amplified the …

One unique feature of Ruskin Bond is he never repeats the thought. Every single story every single character is distinctly textured never matches with the previous. Clash of fate and free will lingers in the lives of characters. The universal theme of love and despair underpins the heart of every story. Ruskin Bond is a mastermind in spilling fantasy over mundane reality. A feeling of melancholy intersperses the stories that as a piece of soft gloomy music keeps humming in your heart even after you finish the story.

Alvina,s Verdict:

I like Ruskin Bond personally for his easy flowing of language and eloquent narrative style. There is no ornate word or sentence structure to pop out your brain out of the head. His literary charisma always demands the highest plaudits from his admirers.