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Elective English—IV

Notes compatriots. He falls for a Brahmo girl, compelling his worried foster father to reveal his lost
past and cease his nativist zeal. As a “true dialectic” advancing “arguments for and against strict
traditionalism”, it tackles the colonial conundrum by “portray[ing] the value of all positions
within a particular frame [...] not only syncretism, not only liberal orthodoxy, but the extremest
reactionary traditionalism he defends by an appeal to what humans share.” Among these Tagore
highlights “identity [...] conceived of as dharma.”
In Jogajog (Relationships), the heroine Kumudini—bound by the ideals of Úiva-Sati, exemplified
by Dâkshâyani—is torn between her pity for the sinking fortunes of her progressive and
compassionate elder brother and his foil: her roue of a husband. Tagore flaunts his feminist
leanings; pathos depicts the plight and ultimate demise of women trapped by pregnancy, duty,
and family honour; he simultaneously trucks with Bengal’s putrescent landed gentry. The story
revolves around the underlying rivalry between two families—the Chatterjees, aristocrats now
on the decline (Biprodas) and the Ghosals (Madhusudan), representing new money and new
arrogance. Kumudini, Biprodas’ sister, is caught between the two as she is married off to
Madhusudan. She had risen in an observant and sheltered traditional home, as had all her
female relations.
Others were uplifting: Shesher Kobita—translated twice as Last Poem and Farewell Song—is his
most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by a poet protagonist. It contains
elements of satire and postmodernism and has stock characters who gleefully attack the reputation
of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by a familiar name:
“Rabindranath Tagore”. Though his novels remain among the least-appreciated of his works,
they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations by Ray and others: Chokher Bali
and Ghare Baire are exemplary. In the first, Tagore inscribes Bengali society via its heroine: a
rebellious widow who would live for herself alone. He pillories the custom of perpetual
mourning on the part of widows, who were not allowed to remarry, who were consigned to
seclusion and loneliness. Tagore wrote of it: “I have always regretted the ending”.

10.2.5 Stories

Tagore’s three-volume Galpaguchchha comprises eighty-four stories that reflect upon the author’s
surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on mind puzzles. Tagore associated his
earliest stories, such as those of the “Sadhana” period, with an exuberance of vitality and
spontaneity; these traits were cultivated by zamindar Tagore’s life in Patisar, Shajadpur,
Shelaidaha, and other villages. Seeing the common and the poor, he examined their lives with
a depth and feeling singular in Indian literature up to that point. In “The Fruitseller from
Kabul”, Tagore speaks in first person as a town dweller and novelist imputing exotic perquisites
to an Afghan seller. He channels the lucubrative lust of those mired in the blasé, nidorous, and
sudorific morass of subcontinental city life: for distant vistas. “There were autumn mornings,
the time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little
corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of
another country, my heart would go out to it [...] I would fall to weaving a network of dreams:
the mountains, the glens, the forest [...].”
The Golpoguchchho (Bunch of Stories) was written in Tagore’s Sabuj Patra period, which lasted
from 1914 to 1917 and was named for another of his magazines. These yarns are celebrated fare
in Bengali fiction and are commonly used as plot fodder by Bengali film and theatre. The Ray
film Charulata echoed the controversial Tagore novella Nastanirh (The Broken Nest). In Atithi,
which was made into another film, the little Brahmin boy Tarapada shares a boat ride with a
village zamindar. The boy relates his flight from home and his subsequent wanderings. Taking
pity, the elder adopts him; he fixes the boy to marry his own daughter. The night before his
wedding, Tarapada runs off—again. Strir Patra (The Wife’s Letter) is an early treatise in female

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