One ritual I can take pride in now is reading aloud children's books to my son since he was a toddler. I have stopped this habit now that he is over nine years of age, but the habit has instilled in him reading as a permanent hobby. Reading aloud was not the only way to guide him to the world of books. During the coronavirus pandemic, we started listening to audiobooks made available for free by Audible at that time. And then, to wean off the habit of reading aloud by the parent, I also used the method of reading each page aloud alternatively between me and my kid. The last piece of information is not relevant to the purpose of this article: a book recommendation. I mentioned it to complete the experience that led him to develop a taste for reading without the need for us to nudge him.
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I picked The Blue Umbrella during our phase of listening to stories on Audible. A heart-warming story that situates children amidst elders with flaws like dishonesty and greed, while transporting you to the hills, to the meadows and forests on hills, and to the lives of the tenacious people who live on hills. We had loved the story then. It had evoked such beautiful emotions in me that I had written a few lines in praise of the story:
Of times when a little girl
could wander alone in a valley.
Dark forests and lonely hilltops
“held no terror”.
Of lives in which children wandered barefoot,
ate wild berries to satiate hunger.
Of a village where no one kept birthdays.
Where the social fibre enabled adults
to accept and amend mistakes
at their own pace.
When our apartment building got a library, this was one of the books that I bought for the place. Recently, I came across another edition, this time an illustrated one. Now that my child was able to read on his own, I bought the illustrated one for him. He had loved Bond's book, Angry River but I was in for a surprise because he found this one "boring". Was my first impression wrong then? Due to its tiny size, I put my current reading-list aside and started reading. No, I was not wrong. If anything, I was more impressed with Bond's writing this time. The first time, it was about the world of Binya, the girl who chances upon The Blue Umbrella. This time, it was the literature. Who would believe that a text of about fifty pages can create an everlasting impact? Suffice it to say, I got back into my habit of keeping notes!! :) Bringing forth a few quotes and pictures from this edition published by Red Turtle, Rupa.
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"The umbrella was like a flower, a great blue flower that had sprung up on the dry brown hillside."
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| Pic 1: Binya finds a blue umbrella with the townsfolk who are on a picnic (copyright: Red Turtle) |
Quote 2:
"Binya felt no fear when climbing trees. She was proud of the fact that she could climb them as well as Bijju."
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| Pic 2: Carried by the wind, the umbrella has fallen off a cliff but Binya wants it (copyright: Red Turtle) |
"She walked home through the darkening glade, singing of the stars, and the trees stood still and listening to her, and the mountains were glad."
With over a hundred titles to the author's credit, I'm sure my budding reader will find another work or another time to revert and appreciate this book. To reiterate my discovery, in the language of Gen-Z, this piece of literature is a masterclass in writing. From world-building to story-telling to humour to a vault of verbs, there is something for each of us to take away.
Did you know that Angry River and The Blue Umbrella are Ruskin Bond's first and second books, respectively, in the genre of children's fiction?
