I was always a great fan of Ruskin Bond. Recently I read his book "The Blue Umbrella". Though it is categorized as children's book I too enjoyed reading it. It is a beautifully written simple story of little Biniya set in a small village in Himachal Pradesh. A young tourist takes a fancy for her bead necklace with a leopard amulet and exchanges it with a blue umbrella, which soon makes the little girl the center of attraction in the village. The shop keeper of the village named Ram Bharosa eyes on her blue umbrella and plans to steal it from her. "The old man had by now had given up all hope of ever possessing Biniya's umbrella. He wished he had never set eyes on it. Because of the umbrella he had suffered the tortures of greed, the despair of loneliness. Because of the umbrella, people had stopped coming to his shop!" Read the book to find out how the old man and the little girl become friends again. The story is beautifully illustrated wi...