The Night Train at Deoli

 ‘The Night Train at Deoli’ is one of the earliest stories written by Ruskin Bond. It is taken from ‘My First Love And Other Stories (1968). Ruskin Bond wrote stories to share a particular experience with others and try to touch the heart. The Night Train at Deoli is a touching story. The narrator tells his boyhood love for a girl selling baskets at a wayside railway station.

          The narrator tells when he was at college; he used to spend his summer vacations in Dehra, at his grandmother’s place. The train would reach Deoli at about five in the morning. Deoli was a small railway station about thirty miles from Dehra. It was the beginning of the heavy jungles. It had only one platform. There was an office for the station-master. There was a waiting room for the passengers. On the platform, there were a tea stall, a fruit vender and a few wondering dogs. The train stopped there for only ten minutes. But nobody got off the train and nobody got in the train. There were never any coolies on the platform. So the narrator felt sorry for that lonely little platform.

          When the narrator was eighteen years old, he was visiting his grandmother. At that time, the train stopped at Deoli. He saw a young girl, selling baskets. She had a shawl thrown across her shoulder. Her feet were bare and her clothes were old. Her skin was pale. Her hair was black and shiny. Her eyes were dark but troubled. They were searching and eloquent. She was walking gracefully and with dignity on the platform. In short, the writer tells she was very poor and unhappy.

         

The narrator was looking at her intently, but at first she pretended not to notice. When he walking to the tea stall, she followed him and asked, “Do you want to buy a basket?”  At that time, they looked at each other for a long time. Then he bought a basket and gave her a rupee, hardly daring to touch her fingers. As she was about to speak further, the guard blew his whistle and he had to run back to his compartment. She was alone on the platform and looking at him smilingly. He too watched her until the signal box came in the way. When he reached Dehra, the incident became distant. But when he was making the return journey two months later, he remembered the girl.

          In the second meeting, they recognized each other. They were totally attracted to each other. He told that he had to go to Delhi and assured he would come again. At departing, he asked whether she would be there. She nodded to him. But when he came at Deoli, he couldn’t see the girl anywhere on the platform. He was deeply disappointed. He inquired the station-master but he didn’t know. When he reached grandmother’s house, he felt restless. He returned his journey within a couple of weeks. He again inquired the owner of the tea stall but he didn’t know about the girl. At last, he decided to find out the girl who had stolen his heart with nothing but a look from her dark impatient eyes. But he had no enough courage to break his journey at Deoli and find out what happened to her.

          In this way, the end of the story is tragic. The narrator preferred to keep hoping and dreaming, because he knows too well that his dream would be lost if he were to dig beneath the surface. It shows the conflict between dream and reality. The writer says that it is a love and affection that the most youth experience in their teens which does not have any permanent value. It is only an adolescent love. The story also tells that the lazy human beings are about pursuing their emotions especially when it comes to the point of gaining relationships. In this way Ruskin Bond tries to explore the human heart with the help of this story.

Questions:

·        Deoli Railway Station –

·        The physical features of the basket-selling girl –

·        The delicate pathos and tenderness in the story –

·        How has the narrator described his first love with the basket selling girl?

·        “Bond tries to explore the human heart in this story” Do you agree?

·        What is the end of the story? How does the narrator respond to it?

 Objective questions:

1]      How much did the narrator pay the girl for the basket?

        The narrator paid the girl for the basket a rupee.

2]      Why was the grandmother not happy with the narrator’s visit?

        The grandmother was not happy with the narrator’s visit because he didn’t stay at her (house) place more than a couple of weeks. (Two weeks)

3]      How many times did the narrator meet the basket-selling girl on the station?

          The narrator met two times to the basket-selling girl at the station.

4]      Where did the narrator spend his summer vocation?

mythical aspects in Chinua Achebe's novels

MYTHICAL ASPECTS IN THE NOVELS OF CHINUA ACHEBE

     The outstanding Igbo novelist was Chinua Achebe. All his novels present the conflict of

emergent Africa, in

Things Fall Apart (1958) he showed the impact of British rule on Igbo

village life; in

No Longer at Ease (1960) he analyzed the conflict in the mind of an African civil

servant in Lagos who is torn between the social pressures of upper-class urban life and the

demands of his village union: in

Arrow of God (1964) he explored the breakup of traditional

values and the struggle for political power in an Igbo village.

A Man of the People (1966) is a

bitter, disillusioned story of political corruption and intimidation in independent Nigeria. The

same themes emerge in

Anthills of the Savannah (1987).

     In the course of a writing life that has included five novels, Achebe has consistently

argued for the right of Africans to tell their own story in their own way. African creations of

stories are as varied and imaginative as elsewhere in the world.

In a myth told by the Igbo people of Nigeria, men once decided to send a messenger to

ask Chuku, the supreme God, if the dead could be permitted to come back to life. As their

messenger, they chose a dog. But the dog delayed and a toad which had been eavesdropping,

reached Chuku first. Wanting to punish man, the toad reversed the requested, and told Chuku

that after death men did not want to return to the world. The God said that he would so as they

wished, and when the dog arrived with true message he refused to change his mind. Thus, men

may be born again but only in a different form.

     The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe recounts this myth, which exists in hundreds of

versions throughout Africa. The myth holds another lesson as well. One that has been

fundamental to the career of Achebe, who has been called ‘the patriarch of the African novel’.

With his masterpiece, ‘Things Fall Apart’ one of the first works of African perspective, Achebe

began the literary reclamation of his country’s history from generations of colonial writers.

      The issue of power in the novel

Anthills of the Savannah is presented through the

perspectives of four major characters: His Excellency, Sam, Christopher Orika, Ikem Osodi and

the Beatrice Okoh. However the centrality of power in the novel is graphically shown through

the author’s reflection on a myth which one of the communities in the fictitious nation of Kangan

has fashioned to explain their reality. The author presents the myth thus:

In the beginning Power rampaged through our world naked. So the Almighty, looking at

his creation through the round undying eye of the sun, saw and pondered and finally decided to

send his daughter, Idemili, to bear witness to the moral nature of authority by wrapping around

power’s rude waist a loin cloth of peace and modesty.(p.102)

     Although this mythology is used by the author to explain the invaluable role of Beatrice,

it is the succinct commentary on the limits of personified power. This image of power rampaging

‘naked’ also illustrates the necessity for a conscious control of power and its refinement with

moral values. It is this mixture of power with moral values that informs the subsequent

exploration of power in Anthills of the Savannah.

Chinua Achebe weaves folk tales into the fabric of his stories illuminating community

values in both the content and the form of the storytelling. The tale about the Earth and the Sky

in

Things Fall Apart for example emphasizes the interdependency of the masculine and

feminine.

     There has been lot of work done on Chinua Achebe’s novels. However, there is scarcity

as far as mythical aspects are concerned. Joseph Asanbe published book “The Place of the

Individual in the novels of Chinua Achebe”. The book ‘The pitfalls of Cultural Consciousness

‘published by Chielozonz Eze. John Clement Ball published book ‘Satire of the Post Colonial

Nove: Chinua Achebe.’ There is also Social linguistic Study off Chinua Achebe’s novels.

Nwando published book ‘Balancing Male and Female Principles: Teaching about Gender in

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The work on Chinua Achebe finds expression through the

article ‘The Question of Leadership: A Critical Analysis of the Novels of Chinua Achebe by

Kishor Kumar Das. As well as Prof. Lindfores at US Africa, says, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart:

Time for Nobles Prize for Literature has come …announced in a conference recently.

     One of the foremost functions of myth is to establish models for behavior and that myths

may also provide a religious experience. By telling or reenacting myths, members of traditional

societies detach themselves closer to the divine. In some cases, a society will reenact a myth in

an attempt to reproduce the conditions of the mythical age. For example, it will reenact the

healing performed by a god at the beginning of time in order to heal someone in the present. The

modern culture explores religious experience. Because it is not the job of science to define

human morality, a religious experience is an attempt to connect with a perceived moral past,

which is in contrast with the technological present. So it can help to experience the awe of the

universe, to explain the shape of the universe, support and validate a certain social order and how

to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.

References

1. Writings by Achebe, Chinua

Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann, 1958.No Longer at Ease. London: Heinemann,

1960.Arrow of God. London: Heinemann, 1964; Garden City: New YorkA Man of the People.

London: Heinemann, and New York: John Day, 1966.Anthills of the Savannah. Kenya:

Heinemann, 1987.

2. Ashcroft, Bill. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literature.

London New York: Pent ledge .1989.

3. Bier, Ulli. Ed. Introduction to African Literature. London : Longman, 1967.

4. Cook , David. African Literature :A Critical View. London :Longman , 1980.

5. Dorsey, David. “Chinua Achebe’s Morning yet on Creation Day and Whole Soyinka ‘s

Myth , Literature and the African world”. WLWE XXII . 2 [Nov 78 ] : 453-461.

6. Drabble . ed. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press ,

1995.

7. Duerden, Dennis & Cosmo Pieterse. African Writers Talking : A Collection of interview .

London : Heinemann ,1978.

8. Holger. Critical Approaches to Anthills of the Savannah