Book Review : 'Voting at Fosterganj' by Ruskin Bond

Reading a Ruskin Bond book can firstly have you smiling. It just has to be there for a person to have a funny twitch around the lips. Anyway, it was with this feeling that I began ‘Voting at Fosterganj’. I felt like a part of the crowd, which was on the cover of the book, a crowd, which had gathered to vote. 

The book is a good one, but it gives us an all too familiar feel, which unfortunately I have been feeling with most of his books, nowadays. But, a fan that I am, I had begun to read it. Starting off with ‘The Old Lama’, this book gives us all a feeling of homesickness that ideally we should not have, considering that we are at home. 

We see the old lama, walking on to Tibet in the constant journey that he undertakes every other day. We then have a long day, with Suraj as he goes through the travails of a young boy, who is awaiting the results of his examinations, and then joined by Uncle Bertie and then of course, we have the effervescent grandpa, who leads Ruskin, as a boy onto a train with of course, a monkey, mistakenly thought of as a cat or a dog. After that, we are joined by a snake and a parrot and of course, Aunt Ruby, whose stories always regale us.

We are joined in by old Mehmood and Ali and their tale of kites, and then,

Ruskin Bond

the voting begins at Fosterganj. Then at night, we are joined for a walk in Landour, when we have foxes and flying squirrels, owls to keep us company, as the magic oil had Foster in his old cricketing flannel, come into the bank. Of course, no book of Ruskin Bond’s runs without a zigzag walk of Uncle Ken’s and of course, always a brief trip to England and Ruskin’s love for books, and music shine through, of course, Folks...

You can Buy the Book, right here.