'The Meeting Pool' by Ruskin Bond

            'The Meeting Pool' by Ruskin Bond

∆ About the Author :

Ruskin Bond is an Indian author of British descent. He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children's authors and a top novelist. He wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof, when he was seventeen which won John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written several novellas, over 500 short stories, as well as various essays and poems, all of which have established him as one of the best-loved and most admired chroniclers of contemporary India. In 1992 he received the Sahitya Akademi award for English writing, for his short stories collection, "Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra", by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters in India. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for contributions to children's literature. He now lives with his adopted family in Landour near Mussoorie.

∆ 'The Meeting Pool' :

There were three friends playing together in a certain pool in the hillside of their area. They used to go there to enjoy swimming. They were Somi, Anil and Rusty is the narrator of the story. Somi had put forth a plan that they vowed to meet there after ten years. Each and everyone agreed to keep the promise and meet at their beloved pool in the forest of the foothills.

Rusty, the narrator, comes to the place just after the passage of ten years. He comes there to keep his promise. But coming there he finds neither his friends nor the pool. He then starts brooding over their plan and the result of their plan. When they were mere boys, the children of mud and sand, they used to play near a pool that had been discovered by Rusty. The pool was located in the dense hill-forest among the Sal trees surrounded by steep-rocks and cliffs. The natural scenic beauty was beyond comparison and description and the boys played there day and night.

Every day these three friends would slip out of their houses to the pool through the forest forgetting the acriel fears and the jungle spirits. They started diving, swimming and riding the buffaloes. Anil and Somi were perfect swimmers and their physical structure helped to be able to swim across the pool. Buffaloes always came there to drink and roll in the mud. Three boys used to sit on them until they were disturbed.

Anil and Somi were very efficient in catching fish and they had applied various methods like casting rod or line or bed sheet for fishing. Once they exploded a stick of gunpowder, caught fish, and roasted them on fire. They had made a bridge across the pool and one day a huge torrent. Likewise, they used to spend their childhood days here in the pool.

Now Rusty finds everything changed. Somi, after his matriculation, had joined the military service and remained there in his unit. He has developed a fierce military moustache. Anil on the other hand had been a successful businessman. His nature has changed and he has become a fierce, cruel, impulsive angry man. Both Anil and Somi still possess the sense of fun and adventure in them, in their manner and zeal.

Time has changed everybody. The simple-minded boys have become fierce young men of life and sphere of activities. They have really forgotten their previous vows. The current of time has carried away all of their promises, pledges and duties. Again, time has brought various problems for which they have gone away from their love of nature. Those scenic beauties of nature are no more found in the landscape.

The narrator seems to be more thoughtful and meditative. He speculates how time paces away carrying all the pledges with it.

Before coming to town, Rusty again stretches his look to the landscape. Suddenly he hears some mysterious sounds coming from near distance. Approaching there, Rusty finds a group of boys playing in the pool water of the stream. But this is another pool. Rusty imagines as if he and his two close friends are playing in the pool forgetting the outside world. His imagination gets mixed with the bitter reality and he comes back. He visited the place to keep his promise.

Thank you…