Book Review #97: White Clouds, Green Mountains By Ruskin Bond

Title: White Clouds, Green Mountains

Author: Ruskin Bond

Publishers: Rupa Publications India

Genre: Short Memoir/Short Stories

Pages: 135 (Paperback)

Source: Advanced review copy from publishers

Ruskin Bond is a master story teller. When it comes to capturing the essence of nature and beautifying it exceptionally through writings, then, Ruskin Bond tops that list. He wrote an excellent collection of stories that describes the vast range of North Eastern region. This book mainly has the stories of nature, mountains, rivers, animals, birds, rains, snow capped mountains, etc… Author also dwells little into his personal details by writing two short stories on his adopted family and penned few pages describing his life along with them.

The book “White Clouds, Green Mountains” describes the stories of author’s sojourn in his hometown Mussoorie and his stay at various places surrounding this area. His encounters with the nature, the birds, and the animals are a treat to read from this book. The book has a collection of over 10 different stories that describes the nature, animals and birds.

A story that titled “Songs of the Whistling Thrush”, in which, the author speaks about a bird that has made its nest next to his bedroom window. He has seen this bird perched on his window and singing the sweetest whistles. As the days passed by, he sees the bird has formed its nest near the window and there are three eggs of that bird. Amused at the sight of it, author exclaims in jubilation saying, what if all these birds (young ones and old ones) started to sing in next few days, and for sure he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on his writings.

Another story that titled “Travels with my Bank Manager”, in which, the author writes about his experiences with his Bank Manager Ohri, who takes the author on a surprise trips across the valley to see some rare birds and animals. Though the author always finds these trips as tiresome, but he seems to enjoy a lot. He hasn’t forgotten to mention an embarrassing event where they had to eat Dog biscuits in order to satiate their hunger, when they were out of town and stuck in the middle of the forest.

In one of the stories that titled “The Kipling Road”, author finds the traces of the route that was long used by another famous writer Rudyard Kipling that visited Mussoorie a few years back. He got the leads from his friends from abroad regarding the Kipling’s visit to his town.

Describing his personal family details, author has penned a story that titled “And Now We Are Twelve”. Author gives us a brief account of his adopted family and fair share of their names. He also mentions about his grandsons with whom the author had shared a special camaraderie.  He also mentions about the places they have lived along all these years and the houses they have shifted, the female members of the family, the male members, the kids and toddlers with whom he has lived all these years and grown old with them.

We will also get to read some other interesting stories from the book such as The School among the Pines, The Night the Roof Blew Off, The Last Truck Ride, In Search of the Sweet Peas, White Clouds, Green Mountains, etc… overall, a nice collection of short stories along with some personal details of the author. Not a recommending material, but worth the time pass.

My Rating:

3/5

Note: This book was given to me by the Publishers in exchange for an unbiased review