The Blue Umbrella
Encyclopedia
The Blue Umbrella is a children's novel
written by Ruskin Bond
. The story is set in a small village of Himachal Pradesh
, where a little girl, Binya, trades her leopard claw necklace for a pretty, frilly blue umbrella. In a village where the richest man is the shopkeeper who keeps an old ruined shop and sells warm Coca Cola bottles due to no refrigerator, an umbrella is a precious thing to have. The people in the village become very fond of her. Soon the shopkeeper becomes envious of the umbrella and employs a boy to steal it. One day the girl finds her umbrella missing. Soon after the shopkeeper gets a similar umbrella in red. With this, the center of attraction shifts from the Binya to the shopkeeper.
His celebrity status doesn't last very long as the villagers discover the umbrella is the stolen umbrella, only it had been dyed red. As a result the shopkeeper's name is tarnished in the village. The story concludes with the girl giving the umbrella to the shopkeeper and, in return, the shopkeeper gives the little girl a bear claw on a silver chain.
This story appeared in Bond's collection of short stories, Children's Omnibus.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
written by Ruskin Bond
Ruskin Bond
Ruskin Bond, born 19 May 1934, 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....
. The story is set in a small village of Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh is a state in Northern India. It is spread over , and is bordered by the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir on the north, Punjab on the west and south-west, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on the south, Uttarakhand on the south-east and by the Tibet Autonomous Region on the east...
, where a little girl, Binya, trades her leopard claw necklace for a pretty, frilly blue umbrella. In a village where the richest man is the shopkeeper who keeps an old ruined shop and sells warm Coca Cola bottles due to no refrigerator, an umbrella is a precious thing to have. The people in the village become very fond of her. Soon the shopkeeper becomes envious of the umbrella and employs a boy to steal it. One day the girl finds her umbrella missing. Soon after the shopkeeper gets a similar umbrella in red. With this, the center of attraction shifts from the Binya to the shopkeeper.
His celebrity status doesn't last very long as the villagers discover the umbrella is the stolen umbrella, only it had been dyed red. As a result the shopkeeper's name is tarnished in the village. The story concludes with the girl giving the umbrella to the shopkeeper and, in return, the shopkeeper gives the little girl a bear claw on a silver chain.
This story appeared in Bond's collection of short stories, Children's Omnibus.