The book, ‘Crazy Times with Uncle Ken’ (2011) chronicles the deeds and misdeeds, adventures and misadventures of Uncle Ken, who helped to enliven Ruskin Bond’s boyhood days. Uncle Ken lived under the dominion of several strong-minded-women – his mother, four sisters, and several cousins and nieces. So, he needed an ally, and sometimes he found an ally in Ruskin. His jobs did not last very long, his grandiose schemes were unsuccessful, and he got both Ruskin and himself – into trouble every now and then. Elders are expected to set a good example for the growing boys and Ruskin writes: “I’ am afraid he did not set a good example for growing boy” (Bond, vii). Reminiscing about the garden of childhood memories, Ruskin remembers Granny’s fabulous
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By the time, they reach the forest rest house, “one of the car doors had fallen off its hinges, and a large lantana bush had got entwined in the bumper” (141). The happy-go-lucky and careless Uncle Ken never minds saying its all part of the adventure. Led by the forest guard, they enter in thick jungle; see a number of spotted deer and several pheasants, but no red jungle fowl. They escape a attack by elephants but they have to say goodbye to their car as they see “Grandfather’s fiat overturned by one of the elephants, while another proceeded to trample it underfoot. The other elephants joined in the mayhem and soon the car was a flattered piece of junk” (146). Thus, Ruskin’s childhood world was full of such hair-raising misadventures. His childhood days with Uncle Ken were full of grandiose schemes – their venture in a lunatic asylum, zigzag throng town, his slipping mice into Uncle’s room those run about inside Ken’s pyjamas, his espionage on Aunt Ruby and her lover Rocky, his bird watching with Uncle Ken, jungle tour in search of red jungle fowl. ‘Stranger than fiction’ these stories are reminiscences about Ruskin’s boyhood in Dehra. Bond’s sensibility and observation of the world of children is amazing. He is at his best in evoking a mood of nostalgia for the vanished sights and scenes of boyhood. Nostalgia in Bond’s writing is like a lingering fragrance pervading the entire ambience. He is at his best evoking a mood of nostalgia for the vanished sights of scenes of boyhood, of the pathos of the inexorable march of time. Thus, longing for something that is lost – brooding nostalgia- is one of the dominant features of his short stories. Bond points out the sincere, innocent, ingenuous, communicative and upright world of children that is most often in direct contrast with the world of
By the time, they reach the forest rest house, “one of the car doors had fallen off its hinges, and a large lantana bush had got entwined in the bumper” (141). The happy-go-lucky and careless Uncle Ken never minds saying its all part of the adventure. Led by the forest guard, they enter in thick jungle; see a number of spotted deer and several pheasants, but no red jungle fowl. They escape a attack by elephants but they have to say goodbye to their car as they see “Grandfather’s fiat overturned by one of the elephants, while another proceeded to trample it underfoot. The other elephants joined in the mayhem and soon the car was a flattered piece of junk” (146). Thus, Ruskin’s childhood world was full of such hair-raising misadventures. His childhood days with Uncle Ken were full of grandiose schemes – their venture in a lunatic asylum, zigzag throng town, his slipping mice into Uncle’s room those run about inside Ken’s pyjamas, his espionage on Aunt Ruby and her lover Rocky, his bird watching with Uncle Ken, jungle tour in search of red jungle fowl. ‘Stranger than fiction’ these stories are reminiscences about Ruskin’s boyhood in Dehra. Bond’s sensibility and observation of the world of children is amazing. He is at his best in evoking a mood of nostalgia for the vanished sights and scenes of boyhood. Nostalgia in Bond’s writing is like a lingering fragrance pervading the entire ambience. He is at his best evoking a mood of nostalgia for the vanished sights of scenes of boyhood, of the pathos of the inexorable march of time. Thus, longing for something that is lost – brooding nostalgia- is one of the dominant features of his short stories. Bond points out the sincere, innocent, ingenuous, communicative and upright world of children that is most often in direct contrast with the world of