The Eyes Have It

By: Ruskin Bond

Made By:
Shivay Singhal
(A2305213051)
Abdullah Nasir Jamal
(A2305213036)
 About the Author
Ruskin Bond is an Indian author of British descent. He has been
awarded the “Sahitya Akadmi” award in 1992 and wasl awarded the
“Padma Shri” in 1999 and the “Padma Bhushan” in 2014. He currently
resides in Mussoori. His work, namely “A Flight of Pigeons” has been
made into a Bollywood movie “Junoon” produced by Shashi Kapoor.
He has also made on screen appearance in the movie “7 Khoon
Maaf”. He has also earlier collaborated on “The blue Umbrella” which
was also based on his story. Most of his works are influenced by life in
the hill stations at the foothills of the Himalayas. He has written more
than 30 books for children, published two volumes of his
autobiography and over 300 short stories, essays and novels out of
 Introduction
 The story presents to us a conversation between two characters.
 The conversation is between the narrator, who reveals to his
readers that he is a sightless person, and a girl who happens to fill
the empty coach of the narrator.
 The narrator doesn’t reveal his disability to the girl and takes up the
pretense of a person with perfect sight.
 He talks to her with careful comments so as to not give away
himself, and almost does exactly that a couple of times.
 Neither of the two reveal in any way that they are sightless and
take extreme care and thought on what to speak next.
 Summary
 The story is set in a compartment of a train heading to Dehradun
via Saharanpur in the pleasant month of October.
 The story begins with the author finding himself alone in his coach
until the train reached Rohana.
 At Rohana a girl gets into the same compartment and as any other
parent would they bidadue to their daughter travelling alone
instructing her to keep care of her belongings, not to lean out of the
window and avoid talking to strangers.
 The narrator at this point, surprisingly reveals that he is a siteless
person to the readers.
 The narrator strikes up a conversation with the girl asking if she is
going to Dehradun.
 The girl was taken aback as she thought she was alone in the
compartment. The girl replied that she was going to Saharanpur
where her aunt would receive her.
 The narrator presents a beautiful picture of Mussoori to the girl, the
town he was headed to.
 The narrator, throughout the conversation, consciously keeps the
pretense of being a person with perfect eye-sight.
 Though he was very careful in keeping up with his pretense there
were points where he noted that he had almost given himself up due
to some of his careless comments.
 After a while of chit-chat, the narrator tells her quite daringly, that
she has interesting facial features.
 The girl replies happily that it was a welcome deviation from what
she is often told, “You have a pretty face.”
 Soon enough The Saharanpur station arrives and the girl is ready to
leave.
 The girl leaves the compartment and the author hears a commotion
at the door of the carriage and a man apologizing.
 The very same man enters into the compartment in which the author
was seated and apologizes to narrator for not being as attractive a
travelling companion as the previous one.
 The narrator then very curiously asks the man that how the girl had
worn her hair.
 The man replied that he hadn’t noticed her hair but saw only her
eyes, which were beautiful but of no use to her as she was blind.
 The last question the man asked the narrator was that if he had
noticed it too.
 The story ends with the narrator resuming his pretense of posing as
a person with sight.
 Conclusion
 Ruskin Bond in this story very beautifully presents the problems
faced by disabled people and also tries to present their mindset to
us.
 People with disabilities, as in this case “sightlessness”, to be able
to mix well with the crowd and so they try to hide their weaknesses
and be somebody who they are not.
 The society should accept people for who they are, so that nobody
lives in a pretense, nobody feels the need to fake or hide and just
be there natural self without the fear of being judged.