Published Paper Details:

This paper offers a comparative analysis of the short stories of Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan, two major Anglophone writers from India whose work--while equally accessible--reveals markedly different literary sensibilities. Using close reading of representative stories (Bond's "The Eyes Are Not Here"/"The Eyes Have It," "The Night Train at Deoli," "The Blue Umbrella," and "Panther's Moon"; Narayan's "An Astrologer's Day," "A Horse and Two Goats," "Engine Trouble," and "Lawley Road"), the paper contrasts their themes, narrative strategies, characterization, humor and irony, treatment of place, and language. It argues that Bond's lyric humanism and nature-centered intimacy create moments of tender melancholy, while Narayan's comic realism and gentle satire construct a moral universe grounded in the rhythms of small-town life. Both develop a distinct Indian idiom in English and celebrate ordinary people, but they diverge in the textures of memory, landscape, and social critique they bring to the short form.