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?