A Flight Of Pigeons Analysis

Ruskin Bond writes mainly from his experiences, however in the novella A Flight of Pigeons, his critical as well as creative circumferences of mind move away to the pre partition era of India. With the melange of creative and critical, this work becomes a brilliant example of the way in which binaries can be converted to harmonious symbiotic entities. Various emotional, political and social dichotomies have become the hallmark of conventional colonizer-colonized relationship and have been theorized and represented as such. In fact, it has become the common conventional wisdom. Ruskin Bond’s novella A Flight of Pigeons not only challenges this stereotypical and dichotomous understanding of the East and the West, but it also reorients ones understanding of this dynamic through a nuanced portrayal of native-foreign overlap. On the face of it, it begins by constructing the conventional stereotypes but the way these stereotypes are detailed, soon lead to their pounding. A Flight of Pigeons lays before the readers an interaction between ethos; ethos that are considered as binaries. East and West are considered conventionally as two opposites, but here this opposition becomes

She shows compassion to them and tells Javed Khan to ‘Be kind to them’. Gradually Kothiwali becomes a good friend to Ruth and her family crossing the man-made boundaries of East and West.a The love and affection that is being showered by Qamran, Javed Khan’s sister on Ruth and her mother is worth mentioning here. When Ruth and her family along with Khan Begum reach there, people come to see the firangans but, gradually majority of them become fond of Mariam and her family. This bond of love, of friendship and of humanity goes beyond the geometrical space and the stereotypical virtual space (space created by our thinking) of colonizer and colonized. Once Qamran tells