Book of humour’ is a slightly misleading name for this book. It does contain the gentle humour that is so typical of Ruskin Bond but tales of a cold-blooded murderer, a few mini-essays (that look like diary entries randomly assembled) and the everyday concerns of eking out a living also populate its pages.

Bond fans will find it a neat little addition to their collection even if not a particularly inspiring read. This is not poignant literature that leaves the reader breathless or awed, but rather, pleasant reading that soothes one into a state of dreamy reverie.

Bond shares his family, his loneliness and his rosy-coloured view of a forgotten world within these pages. He makes it clear in the author’s note at the beginning that the book also incorporates elements of fantasy.
Accounts of lazy summer vacations spent eating kofta curry and roast duck at his grandmother’s cottage make way for nonsensical tales of garrulous crows and over-friendly jinns.

There are descriptions of the rambling walks to be had in Mussoorie, character sketches of nutty locals, incorrigible relatives and even the odd ghost story, which turns out to be rather a damp squib as ghost stories go.

A mixture of the mundane and the mad make these writings unpredictable; there is no order to them save for a loose classification under such headings as, ‘Crazy Relatives’, Crazy Creatures’, ‘Crazy People’ ‘Crazy Places’ and ‘Crazy Writer’.

The thread that connects them together is the narrative voice, a cheerful reminder of all that is golden and quaint in that haven called ‘Dehra’ so close to the author’s heart.

There is a comfortable familiarity in the world of Ruskin Bond, one that creeps up on you.

If the reader avoids scrutiny of this work, Bond will work his magic softly and surely in the end.

Book of Humour; Ruskin Bond (Penguin Books, 2008, pp 278, Rs 195)