Stories

Tagores three volume Galpaguchchha comprises eighty four stories that reflect upon the authors 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 Tagores 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 blas?, 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 Tagores 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 offagain. Strir Patra (The Wifes Letter) is an early treatise in female emancipation. Mrinal is wife to a Bengali middle class man prissy, preening, and patriarchal. Travelling alone she writes a letter, which comprehends the story. She details the pettiness of a life spent entreating his viraginous virility, she ultimately gives up married life, proclaiming, Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum And I shall live. Here, I live.Haimanti assails Hindu arranged marriage and spotlights their often dismal domesticity, the hypocrisies plaguing the Indian middle classes, and how Haimanti, a young woman, due to her insufferable sensitivity and free spirit, foredid herself. In the last passage Tagore blasts the reification of Sitas self immolation attempt, she had meant to appease her consort Ramas doubts of her chastity. Musalmani Didi eyes recrudescent Hindu Muslim tensions and, in many ways, embodies the essence of Tagores humanism. The somewhat auto referential Darpaharan describes a fey young man who harbours literary ambitions. Though he loves his wife, he wishes to stifle her literary career, deeming it unfeminine. In youth Tagore likely agreed with him. Darpaharan depicts the final humbling of the man as he ultimately acknowledges his wifes talents. As do many other Tagore stories, Jibito o Mrito equips Bengalis with a ubiquitous epigram Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more naiKadombini died, thereby proving that she hadnt.