Delhi Is Still Far Away: A Study of Drifting Dreams in Ruskin Bond’s Delhi Is Not Far

Abstract

The sarcastic usage ‘Delhi is still far away’-still used in our daily lives-has been used in different context in Ruskin Bond’s Delhi is Not Far (a novella). Here, Delhi metaphorically stands for ‘destination’, which is aimed to be accomplished by Deep Chand, Pitamber, Goonga, and Aziz living in Pipalnagar, an imaginary city located somewhere in North India. They plan to explore their respective business in Delhi but no one succeeds in carrying out their dream by the end of the novella. Like them, Arun, an emotional gentleman having good knowledge of Delhi, also fails to get fulfilled his desire of becoming a well-recognized detective novelist in Urdu due to his lack of perfection in writing and the unhelpful hands of publishers. Arun, despite such failure, does not lose his hope but remains very optimistic of writing a bestselling novel in near future. The paper primarily attempts to reveal as to why these characters have failed to achieve their respective dreams, despite of the fact that they don’t have any big dream. Besides their aspirations, the paper also seeks to explore as to how and where these disadvantaged people of Pipalnagar live in. Despite such failure, hope somewhere remains a waking dream for the characters by the end of the novella.