Selected Short Stories

by Rabindranath Tagore

  The next year, when Uma was nine years old, a sānāi began to play one morning. It was her wedding-day. The groom was called Pyarimohan, one of Gobindalal’s fellow-writers. Although he was still quite young and had acquired some education, modern ideas had not penetrated him at all. He was therefore the darling of the neighbourhood. Gobindalal adopted him as a model, though not with complete success.

  Dressed in a Benares sari, her little face covered with a veil, Uma left tearfully for her father-in-law’s house. Her mother said, ‘Do what your mother-in-law tells you, my dear. Do the housework, don’t spend your time reading and writing.’ And Gobindalal said, ‘Mind that you don’t go scratching on walls; it’s not that sort of house. And make sure you don’t scrawl on any of Pyarimohan’s writings.’

  Uma’s heart trembled. She realized there would be no mercy in the house where she was going; she would have to learn after endless scoldings what things were regarded there as mistakes and faults.

  The sānāi sounded on that day too, but I doubt if anyone in that crowd of wedding-guests really understood what the girl felt in her trembling heart, behind her veil, Benares sari and ornaments.

  Yashi went along with Uma. She was supposed to settle her into her in-laws’ house, then leave her there. The tender-hearted Yashi, after much reflection, took Uma’s exercise-book along too. The book was a piece of her parental home: a much-loved memento of her short residence in the house of her birth; a brief record of parental affection, written in round childish letters. It gave her, in the midst of domestic duties that had come too early, a taste of the cherished freedom that is a young girl’s due.

  For the first few days that she was in her in-laws’ house she did not write anything – she had no time. But the time came for Yashi to return; and on the day that she left, Uma shut the door of her bedroom at midday, took her exercise-book out of her tin box, and tearfully wrote: ‘Yashi has gone home, I shall go back to Mother too.’

  Nowadays she had no leisure in which to copy out passages from Easy Reader or The Dawn of Understanding; maybe she had no inclination either. So there were no long passages dividing her own childish writings. Below the sentence mentioned above was written: ‘If only Dādā could take me home again, I would never spoil his writings again.’

  Word had it that Uma’s father sometimes tried to invite her home for a bit; but Gobindalal and Pyarimohan joined forces to prevent this. Gobindalal said that now was the time to learn her duties towards her husband: bringing her back to the old atmosphere of affection would disturb her quite unnecessarily. He wrote such a shrewd and witty essay on the subject, that his like-minded readers could not but agree. Uma got wind of what was happening, and wrote in her exercise-book: ‘Dādā, I beg you, take me home again just once – I promise not to annoy you.’

  One day she was in her room with the door closed, writing something similarly pointless. Her sister-in-law Tilakmanjari, who was very inquisitive, decided she must find out what Uma got up to behind her closed door. When she peeped through a crack and saw her writing, she was amazed: the Goddess of Learning1 had never before made so secret a visitation to the female quarters of the house. Her younger sister Kanakmanjari came and peeped too; and her youngest sister Anangamanjari – precariously standing on tiptoe to peer at the mysteries within.

  Uma, as she wrote, suddenly heard three familiar voices giggling outside the room. Realizing what was afoot, she hastily shut the exercise-book in her box and buried her face in the bedclothes.

  Pyarimohan was most perturbed when he was told about what had been seen. Reading and writing, once started, would lead to play- and novel-writing, and household norms would be endangered. As he thought further about the matter, he worked out a most subtle theory. Perfect marriage was produced by a combination of female and male power. But if through women’s education female power was weakened, then male power would prevail unchecked; and the clash between male and male would be so destructive that marriage would be annihilated, and women would be widowed. As yet, no one had been able to challenge this theory.

  That evening Pyarimohan came to Uma’s room and gave her a thorough scolding, and ridiculed her too, saying: ‘So the wife wants to go to an office with a pen behind her ear? We’ll have to get her a śāmlā!’ Uma could not understand what he meant. She had never read his articles, so she hadn’t learnt to appreciate his wit. But she was deeply humiliated, and wished that the earth would swallow her up.

  For a long time after she wrote nothing. But one autumn morning she heard a beggar-woman singing an āgamanī song. She listened quietly, resting her chin on the bars of the window. The autumn sunshine brought back so many memories of childhood; hearing an āgamanī song as well was too much to bear.

  Uma could not sing; but ever since she learnt how to write, her habit had been to write down songs, to make up for not being able to sing them. This was what the beggar-woman sang that day:

  The citizens say to Uma’s1 mother,

  ‘Your lost star has returned.’

  The Queen runs, madly weeping,

  ‘Where is Uma, tell me?

  My Uma has returned –

  Come, my darling,

  Let me clasp you to me!’

  Stretching her arms,

  Hugging her mother’s neck,

  Uma chides her, sore at heart:

  ‘Why did you not send for me?’

  With the same soreness of heart, Uma’s eyes filled with tears. She furtively called the singer over and, shutting the door of her room, began to make a strangely spelt copy of the song in her exercise-book.

  Tilakmanjari, Kanakmanjari and Anangamanjari saw this through the crack in the door and shouted out, clapping their hands: ‘Baudidi, we’ve seen everything, Baudidi!’ Uma opened the door and said in great distress, ‘Dear sisters, don’t tell anyone, please, I beg you. I won’t do it again, I won’t write again.’ Then she saw that Tilakmanjari had her eye on the exercise-book. She ran over to it and clasped it to her breast. Her sisters-in-law struggled to snatch it from her; failing to do so, Ananga called her brother.

  Pyarimohan came and sat down on the bed sternly. ‘Give me that book,’ he thundered. When his command was not obeyed, he growled in an even deeper voice, ‘Give it to me.’

  The girl held the exercise-book to her breast and looked at her husband, entreating him with her gaze. When she saw that Pyarimohan was about to force it from her, she hurled it down, covered her face with her hands, and fell to the floor.

  Pyarimohan picked up the exercise-book and loudly read out from her childish writings. As she listened, Uma tried to clutch the nethermost depths of the earth. The other girls collapsed into peals of laughter.

  Uma never got the exercise-book back again. Pyarimohan also had an exercise-book full of various subtly barbed essays, but no one was philanthropic enough to snatch his book away and destroy it.

  Forbidden Entry

  One morning two young boys were standing by the roadside laying bets on an extremely daring enterprise. They were debating whether it was possible to take some flowers from the mādhabī-creeper in the temple compound. One of the boys was saying that he would be able to do it, and the other was saying, ‘You never will.’ To understand why this was easy to talk about but not so easy to do requires a fuller explanation.

  Jaykali Devi, widow of the late Madhabchandra Tarkabachaspati, was the guardian of the temple, which was dedicated to the Blessed Lord Krishna. Her husband had been given the title ‘Tarkabachaspati’ (‘Master of Debate’) in his capacity as teacher at the village ṭol, but had never been able to prove to his wife that he deserved it. Some pundits were of the opinion that, because talking and arguing were his wife’s preserve, he amply merited the title by virtue of being her ‘Master’.1 Actually, Jaykali did not say very much; she could stop even the mightiest verbal torrents with a couple of words or by saying nothing at all.

  Jaykali was a tall, strong, sharp-nosed, tough-minded woman. Through her husband’s mismanagement,
property endowed to them for the maintenance of the temple had almost been lost. His widow, by collecting all the arrears, fixing new limits, and recovering claims that had lapsed for many years, had managed to get everything straight again. No one could do her out of a single paisa.

  Because this woman had many of the qualities of a man, she had no female friends. Women were terrified of her. Gossip, small talk and tears were all anathema to her. Men were afraid of her too, because she could rebuke the bottomless idleness of the men of the village with a stare so fierce and silently contemptuous that it pierced their fat inertia, cut them to the quick. She had a remarkable capacity for contempt and a remarkable capacity for conveying contempt. Anyone she judged to be at fault, she could blast with her manner and expression, with a word or with no word. She kept close tabs on everything that happened in the village, good or bad. She effortlessly dominated all its affairs. Wherever she went she was in charge: neither she nor anyone doubted it.

  She was expert in nursing the sick, but her patients feared her as much as death. If anyone broke the treatment or diet she prescribed, her anger was hotter than the fever itself. Her tall, strict presence hung over the village like the Judgement of God; no one loved her, yet no one dared to defy her. She knew everyone, yet no one was as isolated as she.

  The widow had no children, but she had taken on the upbringing of two orphaned nephews. No one could say that the lack of a male parent had deprived them of discipline, or that they had been spoilt by blind affection from their aunt. The elder of them was now eighteen. From time to time the question of his marriage arose, and the boy was not averse to the bonds of love. But his aunt’s mind was shut to that happy prospect. Unlike other women, she did not find the blooming of love in a young married couple particularly pleasing to contemplate. On the contrary, it was to her unpleasantly likely that, like other married men, her nephew would sit about the house, growing fatter by the day as his wife pampered him. No, she said, Pulin had better start earning – then he could bring a wife into the house. Neighbours were shocked by her harsh words.

  The temple was Jaykali’s most precious possession. She was never remiss in tending, dressing and bathing the deity. The two attendant Brahmins feared her far more than the god himself. Formerly the god had not received his full rations, because there was another object of worship living secretly in the temple, a ‘temple-maid’ called Nistarini. Offerings of ghee, milk, curds and butter were shared between heaven and hell. But under Jaykali’s iron rule, offerings were enjoyed in full by the deity. Lesser gods had to find means of support elsewhere.

  The widow made sure that the courtyard of the temple stayed spotlessly clean – not a blade of grass anywhere. On a trellis to one side there was a mādhabī-creeper: whenever it shed dry leaves, Jaykali removed them. She could not bear the slightest invasion of the sanctity, cleanliness and orderliness of the temple. Previously local boys playing hide-and-seek had hidden inside the courtyard, and sometimes baby goats came and chewed at the bark of the mādhabī. There was no chance of that now. Except on festival-days, boys were not permitted to enter the courtyard, and hungry little goats, beaten by sticks, had to run bleating to their mothers.

  Irreverent persons, even if they were close relatives, were not allowed to enter the temple yard. Her brother-in-law, who liked eating chicken-meat cooked by Muslims, had come to the village once to see his relations, and had wanted to visit the temple; Jaykali objected so violently, there had nearly been a complete rift between her and her elder sister. The excessive zeal with which the widow watched over the temple seemed quite crazy to ordinary people.

  Whereas in other spheres Jaykali was harsh and haughty and independent, in her care of the temple she surrendered herself completely. To the image inside it she was mother, wife and slave: she treated it with watchfulness, tenderness, grace and humility. The stone temple with its stone image was the only thing that brought out her femininity. It was her husband and son: her entire world.

  Readers will now appreciate what limitless courage was required to steal mādhabī-blossoms from the temple courtyard. The boy concerned was Nalin, the younger of her nephews. He knew what his aunt was like, but discipline had not tamed him. He was drawn to anything risky, and was always eager to break restrictions. It was said that in childhood his aunt had been like that too.

  Jaykali was, at the time, sitting on her verandah telling her rosary, gazing with motherly love and devotion at the image of the deity. The boy crept up from behind and stood underneath the mādhabī. He found that the flowers on the lower branches had all been used for pūjā. So he gingerly started to climb the trellis. Seeing some buds on a high branch, he stretched with the whole length of his body and arm to pick them; but the strain on the frail trellis was too great, and it noisily collapsed. Boy and creeper fell sprawling on the ground together.

  This glorious feat brought Jaykali running: she grabbed him by the arms and wrenched him up from the ground. He had been knocked badly by his fall, but one could not call this a punishment, because it had not come from a living thing. So now Jaykali’s living punishment rained down on the boy’s bruised body. He suffered it in silence, without a single tear. His aunt then dragged him into a room and bolted the door. He was given no food that afternoon. Hearing this, the servant-girl Mokshada begged – tearfully and with trembling voice – that the boy be forgiven. Jaykali would not be moved. No one in the house dared give food to the hungry boy behind Jaykali’s back.

  The widow sent for men to repair the trellis, and once again took her seat on the verandah with her rosary in hand. A little later Mokshada came up to her and said timorously, ‘Thākurmā, the young master is weeping with hunger: shall I give him some milk?’

  ‘No,’ said Jaykali with her face set. Mokshada withdrew again. From the room in the hut near by Nalin’s plaintive whimpering gradually swelled into wails of anger – until, much later, he was too exhausted to go on, and only an occasional panting sob reached the ears of his aunt as she sat telling her rosary.

  Nalin’s distress had subsided into exhausted near-silence when the sounds of another unhappy creature – mixed with the distant noise of people running and shouting – loudly disturbed the road outside the temple. Suddenly footsteps were heard in the temple yard. Jaykali turned and saw something heaving under the creeper. ‘Nalin!’ she shouted furiously. No one replied. She thought that Nalin must have somehow escaped from his prison and was trying to enrage her again. She stepped down into the yard, with her lips grimly clenched. ‘Nalin!’ she shouted again as she neared the creeper. There was still no answer. Lifting up a branch, she saw an extremely dirty and frightened pig lurking in the thick foliage.

  The creeper that was a modest substitute, in this brick-built courtyard, for the groves of Vrindavan, the scent of whose blossoms recalled the fragrant breath of the gopīs and evoked a gorgeous dream of dalliance along the banks of the Yamuna – to think that the sacredness of it, tended by the widow with total devotion, had been suddenly desecrated by this sordid event! An attendant Brahmin came with a stick to drive out the pig, but Jaykali rushed to stop him, and bolted the gate of the temple from inside.

  A short while later a crowd of drunken Doms arrived at the temple gate and began to clamour for the animal they intended to sacrifice. ‘Clear off, you scum,’ shouted Jaykali from behind the closed gate. ‘Don’t you dare besmirch my temple.’

  The crowd dispersed. Even though they had as good as seen it with their own eyes, it was beyond belief that Mā Jaykali had given asylum to an unclean animal inside her Krishna temple.

  The great god of all mortal creatures was delighted at this odd little episode, even if the petty god of mean and narrow social custom was mightily outraged.

  In the Middle of the Night

  ‘Doctor! Doctor!’

  Someone pestering me! In the middle of the night! I opened my eyes to see our local zamindar, Dakshinacharan Babu. I scrambled to my feet, dragged out my broken-backed armchair for him, sat h
im down, and looked anxiously into his face. It was half past two by my watch.

  His face was pale and his eyes were staring as he spoke: ‘The same trouble again tonight – your medicine hasn’t worked.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ve been drinking again,’ I said, hesitantly.

  He flared up. ‘You’re quite wrong there – it isn’t drink. Unless I tell you the whole story from beginning to end, you’ll never know the reason.’

  The small tin kerosene lamp on the shelf was guttering, and I raised the wick. It shone a little more brightly and made lots of smoke. I tucked up my dhoti and sat cross-legged on a packing-case covered with newspaper. Dakshinacharan Babu began.

  ‘You don’t find many housewives like my first wife. But I was young then, and susceptible, and always immersed in poetry, so undiluted housewifery didn’t appeal to me much. Those lines of Kalidasa kept coming to me:

  A wife is a counsellor, friend and lover;

  In the fine arts, it’s a joy to teach her.

  But I didn’t get much joy in my efforts to teach my wife, and if I tried to address her in terms of a lover she would burst out laughing. Like Indra’s elephant floundering in the Ganges, the finest gems of poetry and fondest endearments were swept away instantly by her laughter. She was marvellously good at laughing.

  ‘Four years went by, and then I fell terribly ill. I had boils on my lips; I was delirious with fever; I was fighting for my life. No one thought I would survive. Things got so far, that the doctor gave me up for lost. But then a relative of mine brought a monk from somewhere: he gave me a root mixed with ghee – and, whether through the power of this medicine or through Fate, I recovered.