Books For Beginners
Esha Rudresh
STUMBLING THROUGH LIFE by Ruskin Bond Rupa Publications, 2018, 127 pp., 195
November 2018, volume 42, No 11

Stumbling through Life is a collection of twenty-five small essays through which Bond shares various aspects of his life and of human nature, in his unique style of writing, which leaves readers thinking about larger issues in the end. He calls it his mini-autobiography, but it’s encyclopedic. Set mostly in Mussoorie, it takes us through the mind and life of the author in a unique manner, spread across a period of seven decades, in just over a hundred pages. Bond is a master of the miniature word picture for sure.

The Introduction to the book is a funny anecdote, where in the process of giving away some books from his collection, he asked a little boy Gautam to leave them in cafes and public places. Strangely, Gautam took the books authored by Bond instead, and Bond himself was witness to a monkey tearing it, after finding it on a bench near a tree where Gautam had left the book. Before the monkey could have its go at the book, two women had sat there talking away, oblivious to the book! What does one gather from this introduction? This incident told in good fun and apparently comic, actually speaks for the lack of value for good literature in these times.

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