The story is about a blind man on a train who has a conversation with a woman who also enters his compartment without realizing that she too is blind. They have a pleasant discussion where the man uses questions to learn facts about the woman. When she leaves, another passenger mentions that the woman was blind, surprising the man since he did not realize during their interaction. The story explores how people make assumptions without fully observing and can fail to perceive what is plainly in front of them.

1. communication skills
presentation
krunal chaudhari
enrollment no:160210106033
civil semester-1

2. EYE'S ARE NOT
HERE
RUSHKIN BOND

3. about author
Ruskin Bond (born 19 May 1934) is an Indian author of
British descent. He lives with his adopted family in
Landour, in Mussoorie, India. The Indian Council for Child
Education has recognized his role in the growth of
children's literature in India. He got the Sahitya Academy
Award in 1992 for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra, for his
published work in English. He was awarded the Padma
Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2014.

4. the plot of the story is this: a man (presumably a young
man) is sitting in a compartment in a train when a woman
(apparently a young woman) also enters the compartment.
The woman doesn’t notice that the man is blind, and he
does not tell her. Instead, he asks her a series of questions
that allow him to infer certain facts about her. She also
converses pleasantly with him. After she gets off the train at
her stop, another male enters the compartment and
mentions in passing that the young woman who just left the
compartment was blind.
PLOT

5. Thus, the young man on the train failed to perceive that the
young woman was blind, as did the reader of the story. The
young woman apparently also failed to perceive that the
young man was blind, and this may also be true of the male
who enters the compartment near the end of the story. In
a very brief tale, then, Bond has managed to create a
remarkably complex story about the limits of human
perception and perceptiveness and about how people tend
to make assumptions and then take those assumptions for
granted in ways that influence what they perceive or fail to
perceive.

6. We learn at the beginning of the story that the man waiting in
the train compartment is blind. Truly his "eyes are not here" in
that he can only distinguish between light and darkness. The
first sign that the girl shares his blindness is the concern of her
parents when they put her on the train. They tell her where to
put her luggage and how to act.
The next sign the girl is blind is that she is startled when the man
begins a conversation. The girl obviously thought she was alone
in the train compartment. The two eventually talk with general
conversation about where they are going before the girl reaches
her stop. Before she exits, the man tells her she has an
"interesting" face, which the girl loves because she is usually told
she is simply "pretty."
Justification of title

7. The true realization of the story comes when the next
passenger enters and apologizes for not being as
attractive as the previous one. Due to his blindness, the
man asks if the girl had long or short hair. The new
passenger didn't notice because he was entranced only
with her eyes: the things that were of no use to her
because she was blind.
So, truly, the passenger "with good eyesight fail[s] to see
what is right in front of [him]." The title of the story
shows that the eyes of the girl and the man "are not
here" because both are blind. The irony is that people
who can see are "blind" as well.

8. Well, before justifying the most-used title, please realize
that this story is often given other titles as well: "The Girl
on the Train" and "The Eyes Have It." In short, the title
refers to the fact that the two main characters, the girl
and the man, are blind.
Well, it often happens that people with good eyesight fail
to see what is right in front of them. They have too much
to take in, I suppose. Whereas people who cannot see (or
see very little) have to take in only the essentials,
whatever registers most tellingly with their remaining
senses.

9. The eyes are not here(also known as the girl on the
train and the eyes have it) is a short story by
RUSHKIN BOND that was originally published in
contemporary indian english stories the narrator of
this story ,a blind man whose eyes where sensitive
only to light and darkness, was going todehradun by
train when he met a girl and had chit- chat with her,
it was only after she left and another passenger
came into the compartment that the narrator realise
the girl was blind
Summary