Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore Bengali poet, short-story writer, song composer, playwright, essayist, and painter who introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit.
In 1913 he became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In 1891 Tagore went to East Bengal (now in Bangladesh) to manage his family’s estates at Shilaidah and Shazadpur for 10 years. There he often stayed in a houseboat on the Padma River (the main channel of the Ganges River), in close contact with village folk, and his sympathy for them became the keynote of much of his later writing. Most of his finest short stories, which examine “humble lives and their small miseries,” date from the 1890s and have a poignancy, laced with gentle irony, that is unique to him (though admirably captured by the director Satyajit Ray in later film adaptations). Tagore came to love the Bengali countryside, most of all the Padma River, an often-repeated image in his verse. [Britannica]
This piece of fact I found was lovely because the collection of short stories I read by Rabindranath Tagore reflect the humble lives and small miseries of people from the Bengali countryside, mostly of the Padma River. The descriptions and observations of the people and places embody the fact that Tagore lived there for so long.
Taking you into a glimpse of the ten stories. The language is so simple, beautiful and fluid that you are immediately immersed in Tagore’s writing. I was inspired first by a poem by Rabindranath Tagore called ‘Unending love.’ A most passionate and deep poem that I was very touched by. And still it was so relatable. So I’ve promised to read more of his work.
The Kabuliwalah
The title of the story itself reflects a sort of intimacy in the story. Like the friendship between Mini and the Kabuliwalah. Someone she could share things with and talk to freely. One she felt at ease with.
I love the passage where the Kabuliwalah realizes his own daughter must have grown in the long time that he served in prison. It was his own daughter he had to make friends with again.
The description of how the friendship evolves is so simply brought towards the end of the story. You can almost have an imagery of the entire tale which is one of the key aspects of beautiful writing.
The Homecoming
The heartache of the boy Phatik in this story who was taken to a different household and how his heart aches for his own home, his mother.
I loved the passage where Phatik felt suffocated in his surroundings and longed for the open country. How he dreamed of his village home. His loneliness and despair comes out so beautifully that your heart cries out for him.
It’s a wonderful story of a boy his love for his home and his longing to be united with his mother.
Once there was a King
According to me this story is about stories and what they mean when you tell them to children. How children assume all stories to be and want to know what comes next. Also how while telling a story to a child even the horror of death can be transformed that it is remembered only as a peaceful slumber.
It’s a story of how you can engage a restless child in the magic of a well spun tale.
The Child’s Return
This a narration of how one careless mistake could turn your life around and could forever put you in a debt. The life of Raicharan and how he went about setting right a wrong and what characterized his entire life by right till the end.
It’s an interesting most mysterious tale.
Master Mashai
I found this one to be very similar to the Child’s Return they both brought about the equation between master and servant. The bond between a master and servant where the servant’s happiness lies with the masters is beautifully brought out here.
Subha
The murmur of the brook, the voice of the village folk, the songs of the boatmen, the crying of the birds and rustle of trees mingled and were one with the trembling of her heart. They became one vast wave of sound which beat upon her restless soul. This murmur and movement of Nature were the dumb girl’s language; that speech of the dark eyes, which the long lashes shaded, was the language of the world about her. From the trees, where the cicalas chirped, to the quiet stars there was nothing but signs and gestures, weeping and sighing.
And in the deep mid-noon, when the boatmen and fisher-folk had gone to their dinner, when the villagers slept and birds were still, when the ferry-boats were idle, when the great busy world paused in its toil and became suddenly a lonely, awful giant, then beneath the vast impressive heavens there were only dumb Nature and a dumb girl, sitting very silent,—one under the spreading sunlight, the other where a small tree cast its shadow.
I’ve highlighted this passage here because it clearly spoke to me of how sounds are so important and they can become one with you. I often like to sit out and take in the sounds from my neighbourhood. They bring me a kind of inner joy and peace. So for Subha the rhythm of nature became her language.
Thus when she was married away from her village her heart wept for that same wondrous sound of nature and sounds that were familiar to her lonely heart.
The Postmaster
Often we get so habituated to certain people and things. We can’t do without them but sometimes they leave us and although we feel grieved by their loss there’s always an acceptance of it. Going back to the way things were.
The Castaway
I felt so many of the stories ended on a lingering note as if for you to interpret its meaning and what could have happened to the character. It left a kind of mystery in your heart towards the end so as for this tale of the castaway Nilkanta.
The Son of Rashmani
My favorite part of this story is how Rashmani convinced her son to return a toy and how in his mind he grew up thinking nothing can be attained without any inevitable suffering and without paying for it. How this moment of careful and clever upbringing changed Kalipada and his approach to life and work. it’s an emotional story right through the end.
The Babus of Nayanjore
This was a witty and fun loving story of how Kailas Babu finally admitted to being poor and forgot all about his ancestral dignity and the prank pulled on him. The last of the stories of this lovely compilation.
My favorite stories of all the beautifully rendered ones in Short Stories by Rabindranath Tagore are The Kabuliwalah and Subha. The Kabuliwalah because instantly being the first story drew me into the book and Subha just plainly resonated with my heart and mind.
It’s strange how that I have studied and read about Rabindranath Tagore all my life and how our National Anthem always fills pride in me. It’s only now that I’m touching upon his works and that’s all right because how wonderful it is to begin a truly beautiful chapter in reading and discovering Tagore.
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