MY NAME IS BOND! RUSKIN BOND! (2) BOOK 10#

Title – ‘Maharani’

Publisher, Year, Place- Penguin India, 2012, New Delhi

Grade – 8^th and above

Pages - 123

Genre – Fiction, Young Adult

Theme- Humor

Author – Ruskin Bond

Brief Biography

Ruskin Bond is one of India's most renowned children's author. His writing career spans over six decades, he has written over 500 short stories and novels including the much-acclaimed 'Room on the Roof', and 'Vagrants in the Valley'. His stories 'The Blue Umbrella', 'A Flight of Pigeons' and 'Susanna's Seven Husbands' have also been adapted into successful Bollywood films. He received the ‘Sahitya Akademi Award’ in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the ‘Padma Bhushan’ in 2014.

Synopsis

‘Maharani’ is the story of Bond’s old acquaintance ‘the Maharani of Mastipur’ aka H.H or Neena. Bond witnessed the changes in the landscape of Mussorie over the years, but something that remained constant was the indomitable ‘Maharani’.

This book is the story of this surreal friendship between Ruskin Bond and H.H, narrated with the silver lining of humor.

Reading - Writing Strategies

You can use this story to talk about character development.

In this particular book, the story revolves around the character of ‘Maharani’.  You can use her as sample to introduce students to the process of character development.

Pre- reading

• You can begin by asking the students to share about their favorite characters from movies, books, shows etc.
• You can then do the following activity-

1. Ask the students to draw their favorite character on a paper and then talk to their friends about a few things that make that character special for them.
2. Give the students time to discuss this with each other.

• After this, introduce them to the idea of character development. You can begin by asking them to think about the way a character is created in a story. For e.g. - characters can be fictional, based completely on your imagination or real life characters, based on real people.

When creating a fictional character you can begin by –

1. Listing the traits of the character. For e.g. - what do they like, what do they don’t like, what type of a personality to they have, if there is a specific trait they show etc.
2. The next step would be to ‘Name’ the character. As the name of the character would reflect Socio- ethnic background of the character and also the way your audience will perceive the character.
3. The last step would be to draw the character, being specific to their physical features and the way they would dress up.

During reading

• You can give the following ‘Graphic Organiser ‘to the students and ask them to fill it while reading the story.
  

Post reading

• You can give the following ‘Graphic Organiser’ to the students to design a character of their own.

 

• Once students are done with this, you can ask them to share about their characters with each other.

 

Reflection

. ‘Maharani of Mastipur’ is one of the most intriguing Ruskin Bond characters. She is epitome of all things bad in the leftover royalty of newly uncrowned and independent India.  It depicts the typical Ruskin style of writing, where you can see, hear, taste and smell the setting of the story. The mundane, but yet intriguing characters provide you with this connection that is often missing when you read other children’s author.

Bond has this special quality of taking his readers through a range of emotions in a subtle manner. In this story he gives us an insight into this somewhat complex friendship, he shared with the ‘Maharani’. His effortless and elegant prose with this overshadowing humor , makes this story an interesting read.

 

 Sources-

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15821365-maharani