Ruskin Bond

Religious Strain in the story Angry River By Abha Sirohi Research Scholar, A. K. P. G. College, Hapur (Ghaziabad) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Ruskin Bond attempts to analyze human psychology in his short stories; He deals with the elemental and impulsive life of man. He tells the stories objectively and beyond all these things his stories shows goodness of man’s heart and his faith in the Supreme power.

He has innate power to produce the influence of one’s emotions, sounds and sights that thrills the senses of other man; it is due to his profound faith in God. As a writer he has put goodness of man and dignity of human self above all considerations this is the reason sometimes our heart is filled with pleasure and a sense of spiritual satisfaction. Ruskin Bond is a writer of children and when we talk about children a sense of innocence creeps over our mind.

The bent of mind of the author takes it in a religious way; he wants to show us innocence of nature, the basic decencies of God. God creates and nourishes us with innocence without any partiality, in return He needs only our dedication, but most of the times we ignore this fact due to our business, our careless attitude:- “in worrying about own distress, they had forgotten about the island, in the middle of the river. The river was very angry now, rampaging down from the hills and thundering across the plains… 165 Ruskin Bonds children stories are very famous in all over world. Some of his popular stories are Blue Umbrella, Untouchable, Panther’s Moon, Time Stops at Shamli and Angry River. The story Angry River portrays the work of nature. How nature affects our lives? What He (God, the Supreme power) wants from us? How should we treat and preserve the nature. The story is a pathetic description of a family of remote area, where no one can imagine about survival.

The Angry River is the story of a girl Sita who lives with her grandparents on a lonely island in the middle of a river. The story illustrates the life in the lap of nature, which is a symbol of simplicity and naturality. Bond has narrated the opening lines of the story in a very beautiful way:- “In the middle of the river, the river that began in the mountains of the Himalayas and ended in the bay Bengal there was a small