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Unit 8: A Flight of Pigeons by Ruskin Bond-Detailed Study

Many of Bond’s stories display his love of nature. They show how man is associated with Notes
nature, and how nature is being disrupted by modernization and scientific revolutions. In “All
Creatures Great and Small,” Bond describes a grandfather’s love for animals and nature. While
this is not a true story, because in reality he never got the love of his grandfather, in his
autobiography he only mentions about his grandmother. Bond is concerned with the rapid
disappearance of forests and animal wealth. In “Time Stops at Shamli,” he writes about a
stag’s head mounted. He apparently does not like hunting rather he loves animals. Half of his
stories have been inspired by the animals, he has seen around him. In his autobiography,
Bond raised the voice in favour of animals and suggested that there must be some rights of
animals like human beings on earth.
Another common theme in Bond’s work is unrequited love. Bond’s first real experience with
love happened when he was in England to make his career. He fell in love with a Vietnamese
girl, Vu Phuong. He describes her as a pretty, attractive and soft-spoken girl. They passed
much time with each other. They had very innocent relationship. They walked clasping each
other’s hands, and she made tea for him, but unfortunately, she regarded him as a brother and
when she returned to Vietnam to visit her family, she never came back to him.
In Ruskin Bond’s love stories, the paths of two individuals cross briefly on Life’s journey; they
are attracted to each other but there is no fulfillment or lasting relationship. Most of his stories
are related to unanswered love where the “joy” of the lover lies in remembering past happy
moments rather than in possessing the object of his love. Bond presents a whole range of love
stories from the carefree and natural love between a male and a female, to a love hampered
by the restrictions placed on the female by her family, to one in which the female’s spontaneous
feelings are corrupted by social considerations.
The love stories are always told in the first person; mostly involve an unnamed protagonist
in his thirties who falls in love with a young teenager. While relationship between two individuals
with such a vast age difference may disturb some readers, suggesting sexual abuse, this is far
from the case. It is a mutual relationship where the youth of the female partner denotes anage
of innocence, a state of pure, unrestrained love when she gives innaturally to her physical and
emotional needs. For instance, as Ruskin Bond writes in the introduction to The Night Train
at Deoli, The male protagonist cherishes the memory of the brief encounter as a perfect love.
Bond’s love stories is always loyal and steady, the female is erratic, immature, orsusceptible
to the social considerations of respectability, status, financial security, and social approval. His
love stories are exposing of the intricacies involved in arranging a marriage and the controls
placed on men and women.
He takes up the real situation in life and writes stories related to them. He is never harsh or
deadly to his characters. He joins the sweeper boy, sleeps with him and holds his broom and
bucket that is way of his life, he follows.

In fact Ruskin Bond is a living legend who has been portraying life and experiences through
various genres of literature. Ruskin Bond has contributed in making three generations of
Indian school children into readers. His short- stories, poems and essays- even those written
forty or fifty years back- are widely authorized in school texts, and his books are recommended
for reading in many schools throughout the country where English is the medium of communication.

8.1 A Flight of Pigeons

Ruskin Bond’s A Flight of Pigeons is based on the life of Ruth Labadoor of Shahjahanpur who
survived the mutiny of 1857 (First war of Independence). Just enough imagination is used to
weave Ruth’s life, accounts and records of the mutiny into a novella highlighting the lifestyle,

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