Rusty and the Magic Mountain , livre ebook
73
pages
English
Ebooks
2015
Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement
Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement
73
pages
English
Ebook
2015
Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
27 novembre 2015
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789352140336
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Publié par
Date de parution
27 novembre 2015
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789352140336
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
RUSKIN BOND
RUSTY and the Magic Mountain
Illustrations By Archana Sreenivasan
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
By way of an Introduction
Adventure Is for the Adventurous
Chaatwali Gali
The Breakdown of a Bus
A Bloodthirsty Vampire Cat
Black Hat in the Cemetery
Dinner by Moonlight
A Tiger at the Door
Pitamber Goes Fishing
Climbing Witch Mountain
Princess Reema
A Concourse of Crows
The Little People
Rusty and Reema
A Musical Stone
Gone With the Moonlight
People in a Dream
Some Things to Think About
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PUFFIN BOOKS
RUSTY AND THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Born in Kasauli in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. His 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 over five hundred short stories, essays and novellas (some included in the collections Dust on the Mountains and Classic Ruskin Bond ) and more than forty books for children.
He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Delhi government s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for his total contribution to children s literature in 2013 and was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 2014. He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his extended 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
Ranji s Wonderful Bat and Other Stories
By Way of an Introduction
This is the book that Rusty wrote,
Or thought he d written.
This is the book that Nimmy edited,
That Aparajita designed,
That Archana made beautiful
With pictures.
This is the book that Sohini commissioned
That Hemali published
That Ananth sold
In hundreds of thousands!
This is the book that Krishna read
When he went to bed in Palakkad
This is the book that little Turiya
Read to her Granny in old Bodh Gaya
This is the book that Puffins slept on,
That little mice crept on,
That grown-ups wept on,
That some found delicious
(Try eating the pages, but only in stages)
And others quite vicious!
So all the young readers
Got together, and said:
Let s turn it into a film instead!
Lights, cameras, action!
But I ll never write another,
Said Rusty, after so much bother.
And here he is, at his desk near the door;
When I ve sung this song, I ll sing no more!
Who asked you to sing? said a passing snail,
Just turn the page, and tell a new tale!
Ruskin Bond
Landour, Mussoorie
Summer of 2015
Adventure Is for the Adventurous
Don t go up there, said the old man reclining in the shade of a peepal tree. There s a lot of magic on that mountain.
What kind of magic? asked Rusty, just out of school and looking for adventure. Black magic or white magic?
What do you know of black magic, son?
Nothing much. But Bibiji, our neighbour, says there are spirits on the mountain and not all of them are friendly. But if you are pure of heart, they cannot harm you. The Devi protects you.
The old peepal tree stood just outside the grounds of the Forest Research Institute and from its vantage point one could see the ranges to the north, with the summit of Witch Mountain towering above the rest. Even in late spring it was covered with a thin mantle of snow.
Rusty felt a strong urge to climb that mountain and see if it really held any magic, good or bad. He d been reading a lot, and going to the cinema once a week, but something seemed to be missing from his life. Adventure! That was it! His adventure wind was calling to him and he had to respond.
This adventure wind was something he had discovered a year or two ago, when he was at boarding school in Simla. It was a certain kind of breeze that sprang up suddenly, almost from nowhere, and it made his flesh tingle and his mind feel light and free, ready for almost anything. Boarding school had its own restrictions, so he had to be satisfied with dashing about on the playing field, or indulging in a dormitory pillow fight, or singing very loudly and very badly outside the staff common room and getting a flogging for his pains.
Dehra, being in a valley, was not a very windy place, but on that particular afternoon a soft breeze came down from the Sirmur hills, ruffled his hair and teased his cheeks and he knew he was going to do something just a little crazy, just a little dangerous.
And there was the mountain, overshadowing all the others, daring Rusty to come up and be friends with it. And it wasn t only his desire for adventure that made him want to climb that faraway mountain. After all, there were lots of mountains, range upon range of them, stretching away towards the eternal snow, all offering something exciting by way of birds and animals, waterfalls, streams, forests and rivers. But it was this particular mountain that intrigued him-Witch Mountain, as it was called, even by those who had never been there-with its legends of strange inhabitants, ruined palaces and occasional earth tremors. There was mystery there. And treasure too, from what he had heard. Rusty didn t just want to write a mystery . . . he wanted to live one.
*
Mum, he said when he got home, I m thinking of climbing Witch Mountain. I ll be away for a few days.
Who s going with you? asked his mother. You can t go on your own. It isn t safe. There are strange tales about that place.
It s only a mountain!
It s a wild place, full of leopards and bears. There are no roads. No one lives on that mountain. You could have an accident. There s a curse upon it from what I ve heard!
I ll be careful.
Even the most careful of men can be crushed by a falling boulder.
That sounds like a proverb. Did you just make it up? I must use it in one of my stories.
Well, stay at home and write a story. Much safer. Or help me in the hotel. Since his Granny s death, Rusty s mother had been managing their small hotel in Dehra. They were going through hard times financially, but the job had helped towards paying Rusty s school fees.
I want to live one of my stories, Mum.
Well, take someone with you . . .
I ll ask Bhim to join me.
*
But Bhim was preparing for his NDA exam and had no time for adventures that were not part of his single-minded pursuit of an army career.
Everyone seemed to be preparing for exams of one kind or another, but Rusty had had enough of exams; they would keep for another day. He d been sitting in classrooms for more than ten years of his life and he did not want to see another desk or blackboard anytime soon.
Don t you want to go to college? asked his mother.
Not just now, Mum. Let me enjoy a little freedom.
Wandering through the Arhat Bazaar, which was full of grain merchants shops, Rusty spied little Popat Lal with whom he sometimes played cricket.
Popat was very small for his fifteen years, almost a midget, but he was a wily leg-spin bowler. Both he and Rusty were members of the same cricket team, the Doon All-Stars, and on weekends they played against other local teams-usually on patches of waste ground on the outskirts of the town.
No cricket next week, said Popat, when he saw Rusty.
Exams, I suppose?
No, I ve finished with exams this year. But my father wants me to go to Chakrata to collect some money that s owed to him.
Chakrata? But that s where I m going! And from there I m headed towards Deoban and then up the Witch Mountain. Let s go together!
I can t climb mountains, said Popat. And no one goes to that mountain any more-not since the earthquake damaged the temple and most of the buildings. It s a wilderness now, my father tells me. But you can come with me up to Chakrata.
That s fine. From there I could carry on by myself.
No, don t go alone. There s a curse on that place. People have disappeared from there!
But I have nobody else to come with me.
Maybe my cousin Pitamber can accompany you.
Is he a student?
No, he s free these days. Looking for a job. Meet me near the Clock Tower this evening. I ll introduce you to Pitamber. Now I must help my father with his accounts. And Popat returned to the interior of the grain shop, while Rusty, hands in his pockets, sauntered home to tell his mother that he d found someone to accompany him on his trek to the Witch Mountain.
Chaatwali Gali
Rusty found Popat waiting for him beneath the banyan tree opposite the Clock Tower. For once, the Clock Tower was showing the correct time-6 p.m.-and the good citizens of Dehra were out on the streets, shopping, eating and gossiping, more or less in that order.
Where s your cousin? asked Rusty.
He s expecting us, said Popat, leading Rusty through the evening throng to a shady avenue where a small crowd was watching a wrestling match.
There were two young men in the wrestling pit, struggling to throw each other down. Their sweat, mingled with the mud from the pit, gave their gleaming bodies a superhuman aspect. All they wore were their tight langotis.
They were both tall young men and their muscles stood out as they heaved and slithered around in the mud. This is what Superman really looks like, thought Rusty, not dressed up for a fashion parade .
There was n
