The unconscious in Ruskin Bond's literature is formed through his everyday encounters with the world prior to its objectification of the world of his fictions. A particular episode in the adolescent days of the author's real life will be a case of much relevance to my present analysis. I will analyze two versions – the first is a newspaper publication and the second, a revision of the first by the author for inclusion in an anthology – of a fantasy story taken from an early stage of the author's career.

The significance of the story is that it is an allegorical reflection upon the meta-fictional crises that engender the transference of romantic desires of a young man into inscribed fantasies. A comparison of the two versions of the story will lead us to understand how contingencies of the zeitgeist sometimes intervene to confuse an author at an experimental stage about the authenticity of the literary idiom that should represent him best. The version that least represents him might get circulated when the best is not included in any anthology, and is soon forgotten. It is the task of critical scholarship to rescue the most representative version from obscurity.

The title given by the author to both versions of the story is ‘The Eyes are not Here’. To acquaint the readers with the slender plot of the story I will depend on the popular version included in the Sahitya Academy compilation, Contemporary Indian Short Stories in English (36–39) (hereafter referred to as the SA version).