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138 pages

English

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From the time he was a boy living with his grandparents in Dehra; surrounded by an assortment of odd animals; people and relatives; to when he gets sent away to school; then makes his way to London and becomes a writer; Rusty’s had more adventures than we can count.The Adventures of Rusty brings together his best; funniest; most exciting escapades. In these pages there’s Toto; the monkey that travelled in a bag in a train; an encounter with a leopard; life as a young writer in faraway London; and the return home to roots that were always loved and never forgotten.An evergreen classic of children’s writing in India; Rusty’s stories will be enjoyed like never before in this omnibus edition.

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Publié par	Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd
Date de parution	01 janvier 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184756098
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0374€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

RUSKIN BOND
The Adventures of Rusty
Collected Stories
PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Introduction
All Creatures Great and Small
The Tree Lover
A Tiger in the House
Monkey Trouble
Animals on the Track
The Last Tonga Ride
The Photograph
The Funeral
Coming Home to Dehra
The Wish
The Window
A Job Well Done
The Woman on Platform No. 8
Running Away
The Hills and Beyond
A Far Cry from India
Days of Wine and Roses
Return to Dehra
Summertime in Old New Delhi
From Small Beginnings
When You Can t Climb Trees Any More
As Time Goes By
Copyright Page
PUFFIN BOOKS
THE ADVENTURES OF RUSTY
Born in Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar (Gujarat), Dehra Dun, New Delhi and Simla. His first novel, The Room on the Roof , written when he was seventeen, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written over 300 short stories, essays and novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley , A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far ), and more than thirty books for children.
He has also written numerous articles that have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999. Three of his stories have been filmed, and the Rusty stories were turned into a TV serial, Ek Tha Rusty , a few years ago.
He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his extended family.
ALSO IN PUFFIN BY RUSKIN BOND
Puffin Classics: The Room on the Roof
A 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
Rusty the Boy from the Hills
Rusty Runs Away
Rusty and the Leopard
Rusty Goes to London
Rusty Comes Home
Escape from Java
Crazy Times With Uncle Ken
The Kashmiri Storyteller
Introduction
RUSTY AND THE WINNING OF FRIENDS
Just the other day, when I was signing some of my books, I was surrounded by a group of bright youngsters from a school in Udaipur; and before I could scribble my name on a title-page, several of them chimed in with the request, Please sign as Rusty. Sign Rusty above your name!
I was happy to oblige; at which, one bright spark asked, You are Rusty, aren t you?
And I had to admit that Rusty the boy was the author as a boy. In part, anyway. Rusty s friends and adventures parallel my own experiences as a boy and as a young man. Fact becomes fiction; fiction becomes fact. As in great works like David Copperfield or Robinson Crusoe or Huckleberry Finn , they merge into one and create the story of a life.
Recently a smart critic wrote that Rusty was so-called because he had rusted like scrap iron, that he was old-fashioned, antiquated.
Wrong, my friend. My Rusty comes from Rusty the Lion in the Panchatantra , that collection of wise and witty fables from ancient India and beyond. It consists of five parts, or five books, and one of these is called The Winning of Friends .
And that is what my Rusty is all about-the winning of friends.
For these are stories of friendship-discovering a different India with Somi and Ranbir; running away with Daljit; sharing a home with Kishen; looking for wild flowers with old Miss Mackenzie; finding love with Binya; getting into trouble with Sitaram; digging a tunnel with Omar. Their shared experiences bring them together. Their sincere, affectionate natures find a response in Rusty, a sensitive and often lonely boy. He puts his trust in friendship.
As Swift the Crow testifies to Spot the Deer:
Tis hard to find in life A friend, a bow, a wife, Strong, supple to endure, In stock and sinew pure, In time of danger sure.
False friends are common. Yes, but where True nature links a friendly pair, The blessing is as rich as rare.
These verses come from Arthur W. Ryder s translation from the Sanskrit of The Panchatantra , first published in 1925 by the University of Chicago.
I am indebted to Sudeshna Shome Ghosh for her careful and sensitive editing of this new edition of the Rusty stories. I hope it finds many new readers, and that it pleases those who are already familiar with Rusty and friends.
RUSKIN BOND
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 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, visiting aunts and occasional in-laws (my parents were in Burma at the time)-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 m nagerie were in Dehra and I remember travelling there in a horse-drawn buggy. There were cars in those days-it was just over twenty years ago-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, early in the century, 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 m nagerie.
Toto was really a pretty 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, Si