‘What should he be like, this lost man? A romantic, a man with a dream, a man with brown skin and blue eyes, living in a hut on a snowy mountaintop… a man who owed allegiance to no one… who was his own master, who lived at one with nature knowing no fear. But that was not Major Roberts—that was the man I wanted to be.’

It is believed that the foundation of every good relationship—platonic or otherwise—is friendship. The familiarity and ease that grow in friendships is what get many of us through a hard day. But it is not just the long-lasting associations that help us through life; it is also the acquaintances that we collect along the way. People are a sum of parts—of ephemeral yet significant encounters, and enduring and monumental intimacies. What makes a person whole is all the parts of themselves— good, wonderful, bad, ugly. In The Yellow Umbrella, with the story titled the same that has never appeared in print before, Ruskin Bond takes us down memory lane with nuggets from his past. The parts that made him who he is: unattainable love, intriguing friends, sturdy companions and books that help us through a rainy day.