The Blue Umbrella

For the film see, The Blue Umbrella (film).

The Blue Umbrella is a children's novel written by Ruskin Bond. The story is set in a small village of Himachal Pradesh, where a little girl, Binya, trades her leopard claw necklace for a pretty, frilly blue umbrella. In a village where the richest man is the shopkeeper who keeps an old ruined shop and sells warm Coca Cola bottles due to no refrigerator, an umbrella is a precious thing to have. The people in the village become very fond of her and her umbrella. Soon the shopkeeper becomes envious of the umbrella and employs a boy to steal it. One day the girl finds her umbrella missing. Soon after the shopkeeper gets a similar umbrella in red. With this, the center of attraction shifts from Binya to the shopkeeper.

His celebrity status doesn't last very long as the villagers discover the umbrella is the stolen umbrella, only it had been dyed red. As a result the shopkeeper's name is tarnished in the village. The story concludes with the girl giving the umbrella to the shopkeeper and, in return, the shopkeeper gives the little girl a bear claw on a silver chain.

This story appeared in Bond's collection of short stories, Children's Omnibus.