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 Concluding Lines



THE

   





W

Ruskin



   R





  I


Bond


 T





 E





 R
  
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'Small wayside stations have always fascinated me. Manmed sometimes by just one
or two men, and often situated in the middle of a damp sub-tropical forest, or clinging to the mountainside
on the way to Shimla or Darjeeling, these little stations are, for me, outposts of romance, lonely symbols of the spirit
that led a certain kind of pioneer to lay tracks into the remote corners of the earth.'
-  Ruskin Bond.

The Woman On Platform No. 8
Chachi's Funeral
Coral Tree
The Room On The Roof
The Photograph
The Window
The Man Who Was Kipling
The Eyes Have It
A Guardian Angel
A Case For Inspector Lal

THE WOMAN ON PLATFORM NO. 8

... I DIDN'T WAVE OR SHOUT, but sat still in front of the window, gazing at the woman on the platform. Satish's mother was talking to her, but she didn't appear to be listening; she was looking at me, as the train took me away. She stood there on the busy platform, a pale sweet woman in white, and I watched her until she was lost in the milling crowd.

CHACHI'S FUNERAL

... 'PERHAPS HE DOES CARE FOR me, at all,' she thought and patting him gently on the head. She took him by the hand and led him back into the kitchen.

THE CORAL TREE

... THE RIBBON HAD COME LOOSE from her pigtail and lay on the ground with the coral blossoms.
'I am going everywhere,' I said to myself, 'and no one can stop me.'
And she was fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth.

THE ROOM ON THE ROOF

... KISHEN LAUGHED.
'One day you'll be great, Rusty. A writer or an actor or a prime minister or something. Maybe a poet! Why not a poet, Rusty?'
Rusty smiled. He knew he was smiling, because he was smiling at himself.
'Yes,' he said, 'why not a poet?'
So they began to walk.
Ahead of them lay forest of silence- what was left of time . . . .

THE PHOTOGRAPH

... 'I WONDER WHOSE HANDS THEY were,' whispered Grandmother to herself, with her head bowed, and her needles clicking away in the soft warm silence of that summer afternoon.

THE WINDOW

... WHEN THE TONGA WAS OUT of sight I took the spray of bouganvillaea in my hand and pushed it out of the room. Then I closed the window. It would be opened only when the spring and Koki came again.

THE MAN WHO WAS KIPLING

... I LEFT THE MUSEUM AND wandered about the streets for a long time but I couldn't find Kipling anywhere. Was it the boom of London's traffic that I heard or the boom of the Sutluj river racing through the valleys?

THE EYES HAVE IT

... 'I DON'T REMEMBER HER,' HE said sounding puzzled. 'It was her eyes I noticed, not her hair. She had beautiful eyes but they were of no use to her. She was completely blind. Didn't you notice?'

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

... BUT INSPITE OF A BROKEN wing and a smile it was a very ordinary stone angel and could not hold a candle to my Aunt Mariam the very special guardian angel of my childhood.

A CASE FOR INSPECTOR LAL

... THE BEER BOTTLES WERE ALL empty, and Inspector Keemat Lal got up to leave. His final words to me were, 'I should naver have been a policeman.'

 

NOTE : This list has openings from Ruskin's novels chosen at random.


  
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