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Penguin Books Ltd - Ruskin Bond

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90 pages

English

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Rusty is a quiet, imaginative and sensitive boy who lives with his grandparents in pre-Independence Dehra Dun. Though he is not the adventurous himself, the strangest and most extraordinary things keep happening around him. The house in Dehra is full of strange creatures. Rusty has to deal with everything from his grandfather s pet python to the ever-inventive Uncle Ken. Visiting his father in wartime Java, Rusty narrowly escapes enemy bombardment, and survives a plane crash in the Arabian Sea. Back in India, he spends his time encountering a ghost in the garden and recreating his grandmother s youthful days from an old photograph. Then, something totally unexpected happens and Rusty is forced to leave Dehra, his future uncertain This volume of Rusty stories, the first in a series, traces Rusty s development from early childhood to his early teens and is a riveting read for younger and older children alike.

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	10 octobre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184754490
Langue	English

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Ruskin Bond

RUSTY THE BOY FROM THE HILLS
Illustrations by Archana Sreenivasan
PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
All Creatures Great and Small
The Tree Lover
A Tiger in the House
Monkey Trouble
Animals on the Track
Escape from Java
The Room of Many Colours
The Last Tonga Ride
Life with Uncle Ken
The Ghost in the Garden
The Photograph
The Funeral
Coming Home to Dehra
The Wish
Author s Note
Read More
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PUFFIN BOOKS
RUSTY, THE BOY FROM THE HILLS
Ruskin Bond s first novel, The Room on the Roof , written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written a number of novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley, A Flight of Pigeons and Mr Oliver s Diary ) essays, poems and children s books, many of which have been published in Puffin Books. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.
Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Simla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.
Also in Puffin by Ruskin Bond
Puffin Classics: The Room on the Roof
The Room of Many Colours: Ruskin Bond s Treasury of Stories for Children
Panther s Moon and Other Stories
The Hidden Pool
The Parrot Who Wouldn t Talk and Other Stories
Mr Oliver s Diary
Escape from Java and Other Tales of Danger
Crazy Times with Uncle Ken
Rusty the Boy from the Hills
Rusty Runs Away
Rusty and the Leopard
Rusty Goes to London
Rusty Comes Home
The Puffin Book of Classic School Stories
The Puffin Good Reading Guide for Children
The Kashmiri Storyteller
Hip-Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems
The Adventures of Rusty: Collected Stories
The Cherry Tree
Getting Granny s Glasses
The Eyes of the Eagle
Thick as Thieves: Tales of Friendship
Uncles, Aunts and Elephants: Tales from Your Favourite Storyteller
All Creatures Great and Small
INSTEAD OF HAVING brothers and sisters to grow up with in India, I had as my companions an odd assortment of pets, which included a monkey, a tortoise, a python and a Great Indian Hornbill. The person responsible for all this wildlife in the home was my paternal grandfather. As the house was his own, other members of the family could not prevent him from keeping a large variety of pets, though they could certainly voice their objections; and as most of the household consisted of women-my grandmother and visiting aunts (my father was working for a firm dealing in rubber in Burma at the time and I hadn t seen my mother since her separation from Father when I was only four)-Grandfather and I had to be alert and resourceful in dealing with them. We saw eye to eye on the subject of pets, and whenever Grandmother decided it was time to get rid of a tame white rat or a squirrel,
I would conceal them in a hole in the jackfruit tree; but unlike my aunts, she was generally tolerant of Grandfather s hobby, and even took a liking to some of our pets.
Grandfather s house and menagerie were in Dehra and I remember travelling there in a horse-drawn buggy. There were cars in those days but in the foothills a tonga was just as good, almost as fast, and certainly more dependable when it came to getting across the swift little Tons river.
During the rains, when the river flowed strong and deep, it was impossible to get across except on a hand-operated ropeway; but in the dry months, the horse went splashing through, the carriage wheels churning through clear mountain water. If the horse found the going difficult, we removed our shoes, rolled up our skirts or trousers, and waded across.
When Grandfather first went to stay in Dehra, the only way of getting there was by the night mail coach. Mail ponies, he told me, were difficult animals, always attempting to turn around and get into the coach with the passengers. It was only when the coachman used his whip liberally, and reviled the ponies ancestors as far back as their third and fourth generations that the beasts could be persuaded to move. And once they started, there was no stopping them. It was a gallop all the way to the first stage, where the ponies were changed to the accompaniment of a bugle blown by the coachman.
At one stage of the journey drums were beaten; and if it was night, torches were lit to keep away the wild elephants who, resenting the approach of this clumsy caravan, would sometimes trumpet a challenge and throw the ponies into confusion.
Grandfather disliked dressing up and going out, and was only too glad to send everyone shopping or to the pictures-Harold Lloyd and Eddie Cantor were the favourites at Dehra s small cinema-so that he could be left alone to feed his pets and potter about in the garden. There were a lot of animals to be fed, including, for a time, a pair of Great Danes who had such enormous appetites that we were forced to give them away to a more affluent family.
The Great Danes were gentle creatures, and I would sit astride one of them and go for rides round the garden. In spite of their size, they were very sure-footed and never knocked over people or chairs. A little monkey, like Toto, did much more damage.
Grandfather bought Toto from a tonga-owner for the sum of five rupees. The tonga-man used to keep the little red monkey tied to a feeding trough, and Toto looked so out of place there-almost conscious of his own incongruity-that Grandfather immediately decided to add him to our menagerie.
Toto was really a cute little monkey. His bright eyes sparkled with mischief beneath deep-set eyebrows, and his teeth, a pearly white, were often on display in a smile that frightened the life out of elderly Anglo-Indian ladies. His hands were not those of a Tallulah Bankhead (Grandfather s only favourite actress), but were shrivelled and dried-up, as though they had been pickled in the sun for many years. But his fingers were quick and restless; and his tail, while adding to his good looks-Grandfather maintained that a tail would add to anyone s good looks-often performed the service of a third hand. He could use it to hang from a branch, and it was capable of scooping up any delicacy that might be out of reach of his hands.
Grandmother, anticipating an outcry from other relatives, always raised objections when Grandfather brought home some new bird or animal, and so for a while we managed to keep Toto s presence a secret by lodging him in a little closet opening into my bedroom wall. But in a few hours he managed to dispose of Grandmother s ornamental wallpaper and the better part of my school blazer. He was transferred to the stables for a day or two, and then Grandfather had to make a trip to neighbouring Saharanpur to collect his railway pension and, anxious to keep Toto out of trouble, he decided to take the monkey along with him.
Unfortunately, I could not accompany Grandfather on this trip, but he told me about it afterwards.
A black kitbag was provided for Toto. When the strings of the bag were tied, there was no means of escape from within, and the canvas was too strong for Toto to bite his way through. His initial efforts to get out only had the effect of making the bag roll about on the floor, or occasionally jump in the air-an exhibition that attracted a curious crowd of onlookers on the Dehra railway platform.
Toto remained in the bag as far as Saharanpur, but while Grandfather was producing his ticket at the railway turnstile, Toto managed to get his hands through the aperture where the bag was tied, loosened the strings, and suddenly thrust his head through the opening.
The poor ticket-collector was visibly alarmed, but with great presence of mind, and much to the annoyance of Grandfather, he said, Sir, you have a dog with you. You ll have to pay for it accordingly.
It s not a dog! said Grandfather indignantly. This is a baby monkey of the species macacus-mischievous, closely related to the human species homus-horriblis! And there is no charge for babies!
It s as big as a cat, said the ticket-collector.
Next you ll be asking to see his mother, snapped Grandfather.
In vain did Grandfather take Toto out of the bag to prove that a monkey was not a dog or even a quadruped. The ticket-collector, now thoroughly annoyed, insisted on classifying Toto as a dog; and three rupees and four annas had to be handed over as his fare. Then Grandfather, out of sheer spite, took out from his pocket a small live tortoise that he happened to have with him, and asked testily, What must I pay for this, since you charge for all creatures great and small?
The ticket-collector retreated a pace or two, then advancing again with caution, he subjected the tortoise to a grave and knowledgeable stare.
No ticket is necessary, sir, he finally declared. There is no charge for insects.

When we discovered that Toto s favourite pastime was catching mice, we were able to persuade Grandmother to let us keep him. The unsuspecting mice would emerge from their holes at night to pick up any corn left over by our pony; and to get at it they had to run the gauntlet of Toto s section of the stable. He knew this, and would pretend to be asleep, keeping, however, one eye open. A mouse would make a rush-in vain; Toto, as swift as a cat, would have his paws upon him . . . Grandmother decided to put his talents to constructive use by tying him up one night in the larder, where a guerrilla band of mice were playing havoc with our food supplies.
Toto was removed from his comfortable bed of straw in the stable, and chained up in the larder, beneath shelves of jam pots and other delicacies. The night was a long and miserable one for Toto, who must have wondered what he had