Selected Short Stories

by Rabindranath Tagore

  11. ciṭhipatra, Vol. I, Letter No. 16, Shelidah, June 1898, to Mrinalini Devi

  Bhāi Chuṭi,1

  I found your letter when I got back from Dhaka. I’ll go briefly to Kaligram to tie up some business, and then come to Calcutta to make all necessary arrangements. But please, don’t worry yourself needlessly. Try to bear every occurrence with a calm, peaceful, serene mind. This is what I try to do all the time in the way I lead my own life. I’m not always successful, but if you can keep calm, then perhaps – strengthened by our mutual efforts – I also may achieve peace and happiness of mind. Of course you are much younger than I am, and your experiences have been much more limited, and your nature is in some respects much more patient, much more easily controlled than mine. Therefore you have less need than I to keep your mind free of emotional disturbance. But in everyone’s life major crises occur, in which the utmost patience and self-control are required. We then realize how silly we are to complain of trivial, daily annoyances, petty aches and pains. I shall love, and I shall do my best, and I shall do my duty by others cheerfully – if we follow this principle, we can cope with anything. Life does not last long, and its pleasures and travails are also constantly changing. Wounds, setbacks, deceptions – it’s hard to bear them lightly; but if we don’t, the burden of life gradually becomes insufferable, and it becomes impossible to fix one’s mind on any goal or ideal. If we fail, if we live in dissatisfaction and tension day after day, in constant conflict with our circumstances, then our lives become completely futile. Great calm, generous detachment, selfless love, disinterested effort: these are what make for success in life. If you can find peace in yourself and can spread comfort around you, you will be happier than an empress. Bhāi Chuṭi, if you go on fretting over little things you will do harm to yourself. Most of our troubles are self-imposed. Do not be cross at me for lecturing you pompously like this. You do not know the intense concern with which I am saying these things. I feel such deepening of my love and respect for you, such a strengthening of the sympathy that ties me to you, that the pure calm and contentment that I wish for you means more than anything else in the world: compared to it, life’s daily troubles and disappointments are nothing. These days I look at things with a new kind of longing.

  A woman when young can be unsettled and deluded by love, but even from your own experience you perhaps know that at a maturer age, amidst the extraordinary ups and downs of life, a steadier, quieter, deeper, more real and controlled love develops. As her family grows, the outside world recedes. So in one respect her isolation grows – ties of intimacy seal off the married couple from the world around them. Our souls are never more beautiful than when we can draw close and look at each other face to face: real love begins then. There is no infatuation any more, there is no need to see each other as gods any more, unions and partings do not create storms of feeling any more – but near or far, in security or in danger, in poverty or wealth, the pure and joyous light of unqualified trust shines all around. I know you have suffered much because of me, but I also know that because you have suffered on my account you will one day know a greater, fuller joy. Forgiveness in love and sharing of troubles are true happiness; the satisfaction of personal ambition is not happiness. These days my sole desire is that our lives should be simple and straightforward, that all around us there should be peace and cheerfulness, that our way of life should be unostentatious and full of bounty, that our needs should be small and our aims high and our efforts unselfish and our work for others more important than our work for ourselves. And even if our children gradually fall away from the example we have set them, I hope that we may, till the end, live our lives beautifully in mutual compassion and total, selfless, unambitious trust. This is why I have become so eager to take you all away from Calcutta’s stony temple of materialism, and bring you to a far and secluded village. In Calcutta there is no opportunity to forget profit and loss, friend and foe: one is so constantly troubled by trifling matters that in the end all the finer purposes of life are shattered into fragments. Here one is content with little, and one does not mistake falsehood for truth. Here it is not hard to ‘accept with equanimity whatever may come, happy or sad, pleasant or unpleasant’.1

  P.S. Pramatha, Suren and a Gujarati friend of Pramatha’s are here at Shelidah.2

  12. cithipatra, Vol. VI, Letter No. 4, Shelidah, 17 September 1900, to Jagadish Chandra Bose3

  Dear Friend,

  I was sitting quietly, flicking over the pages of a French grammar, when your letter arrived – it made me jump and twitch like an electrocuted dead frog! I was desperate to show your letter to Loken and Suren, but they are far away: I must send it to them at once. Make a declaration of war! Don’t exempt anyone. If there are any who refuse to surrender, burn down their citadels with the fire of your arguments – as pitilessly as Lord Roberts.1 You’ll be able to combine your various armies into such a force that I firmly believe you will spend Christmas in Pretoria. And after your victory, we Bengalis will share the glory of it! There will be no need to understand what you did, no need to spend thought, money or time on it; praise from the English in The Times newspaper will be quite sufficient for us. Then one of our own famous newspapers will say, ‘We’re not such little people after all’; and other papers will say, ‘We’re advancing the frontiers of science’. No one will give a thought to the money you need – but when you bring in the harvest of world-wide fame we will claim you for our own. The farmer’s labour is yours alone, but the profits will be ours; so when you win, we shall be even more victorious than you!

  There you are, all keyed up at Point A, while I sit idly and serenely at Point B! All round me fields of sugar-cane and late rice, dewy with advancing autumn, are waving in the breeze. You’ll be surprised to hear that I’m drawing in a sketch-book as I sit.2 Needless to say, I’m not preparing pictures for a Paris salon, and I haven’t the slightest fear that some foreign National Gallery will add to the tax revenue of this country by suddenly buying them. But just as a mother can feel extraordinary love for her child, however ugly, so one’s heart can be attracted even to what one cannot do well. It was when I decided to give myself wholly to idleness that these pictures began to emerge in my mind. There is one major obstacle to my improving: I’m having to use the rubber much more than the pencil – so I’m getting more practice with the rubber. Raphael can sleep happily in his grave! His fame will not be threatened by me.

  Loken has been trying to get me to accompany him on a trip to the Simla Hills during the pūjā-holiday: but I’m not budging. It was different when the ancient sages went to the mountain-tops to practise meditation: nowadays you know how little peace there is in the mountains. I hope you haven’t forgotten the friend you met on the way to Darjeeling. I’m sticking to watching the beautiful autumn assembly of squawking ducks on my beloved Padma. I think I remember that you were promising to take me on a trip – to Kashmir or Orissa or Trivancore – and indeed I’d like to smuggle myself into a chapter of your biography! I hope to meet your wishes – I’m trying to set aside some money for a future trip. My wife is sitting near by in an armchair and is pressing me to bathe and eat – it’s getting late. So you must excuse me for a moment – I shan’t be long.

  Loken’s eagerness to bring out a book of my poems has cooled somewhat since his trip to England. If he doesn’t mind, I can see to this myself. You may be surprised that I’m drawing pictures, but no more surprised than you will be to hear that Loken has started writing poems! Such a state he was in – the poor fellow was finally driven to poetry! He’s doing a verse translation of Omar Khayyam.1 A brief sample will show you his condition:

  Fools you are to give up pleasure, hoping for salvation,

  Throwing yourselves in a dark gaol in search of liberation;

  No longer calling debts in, for you’re sure of heavenly profit –

  I, for my part, leap at any chance to line my pocket.

  But by squandering his wealth on these poems, Loken has thrown awa
y his business prospects: he no longer cares about savings or interest – he wants to blow everything he’s got, and I’m not willing to buy shares in such an enterprise.

  Your brother-in-law’s wife, Arya Sarala,2 has recently begun to study Sanskrit with Bidyarnab.3 The method of learning is my own invention. She’s improving rapidly – the pundit is delighted at having such an intelligent pupil. I encouraged her at the beginning by saying that if she learnt Sanskrit by my method she would master the language within a year. I’m very pleased that she’s learning. Our present-day educated women need to learn Sanskrit in order to balance the excessively English education they receive.

  Dear sir, I’m not very hopeful of keeping the estate at Puri for you: the Magistrate has got his eye on it.1 My manager there has written to say that the Puri District Board has its eye on my little plot. If the man who is claiming the land has a case, then it won’t be possible to save it. If you can live there and start building a house, then maybe the fellow will not be able to get hold of it.

  It’s stormy today. The sky is cloudy – every now and then there are torrential showers of rain, and sharp gusts of wind which rattle the doors and windows. The storm and wind and rain throw me into a holiday mood – such as they can’t understand in Western countries, where they are so addicted to work. I’ve done no work all week – and when it’s less rainy, when the autumn sun shines or the south wind blows, I feel even less like work. I close the shutters and open the door of my room – the rain is pattering loudly as it pours down.

  If you wish to get out of my expecting you to reply to this letter, then hand it over to Sarala. If she answers on your behalf, [ shan’t complain. Please give her my loving greetings. Don’t forget that every detail of your work is fascinating to me. I’m thirsting for a full account of everything that’s happening, everything that’s being said or written.

  13. ciṭhipatra, Vol. VI, Letter No. 5, Calcutta, 24 or 25 October 1900, to Jagadish Chandra Bose

  Dear Friend,

  Is even the ship that Caesar embarks on safe from shipwreck? You’ve been called to so great a work – you must get well again soon.

  I’ve come to Calcutta because a nephew of mine has fallen seriously ill1 – I’ve had no sleep for nearly eight nights. So today I felt quite disorientated in mind and exhausted in body. Yesterday, to our great relief, he passed the danger point; now I must look to myself. I’ve decided to go to Bolpur-Santiniketan for a few days.

  All my short stories are being published in a collected edition.2 The first volume has appeared, but because we’re still waiting for the second I can’t yet send the complete edition to you. But I am, as you requested, enclosing the first volume. Most of the best stories are in the second. Of the stories in the first volume, the most suitable for translation would perhaps be: ‘The Postmaster’, ‘Skeleton’, ‘In the Middle of the Night’, and ‘The Neighbour’.3 But I don’t have much faith in Mrs Knight’s literary ability.4

  I have passed on all your news to the Maharajah of Tripura.5 I’m very pleased to see the esteem he has for you. He has sent me word that to help you in your work he is ready to give you much more than the amount he has already promised.

  Have you made up your mind about that chance of working in England? I’ve given you my opinion on this before: don’t have any hesitation in seizing it! If your own country is proving an impediment to your success, then you must, however reluctantly, bid her farewell.

  I’m feeling terribly tired. I earnestly pray that you recover quickly.

  14. ciṭhipatra, Vol. I, Letter No. 29, Shelidah, June 1901, to Mrinalini Devi

  Bhāi Chuṭi,

  With the palaver of the puṇyaha ceremony over,6 I’m able to write again. Whenever I get the chance to write I’m like a fish thrown into the water again from the bank. The isolation here now gives me complete protection, the irritations of the world can no longer touch me, and I find I can easily forgive those who are my enemies. I can well understand why the isolation got you and the children down: if I could get you to enjoy some of the feelings that I have here, I’d be very happy – but it’s not something that can be given to anyone. If you leave Calcutta and come to this isolated place, I know you will not like it for the first few days – and later, even if you tolerate it, you will feel a suppressed impatience within. But for me life is fruitless, somehow, in Calcutta’s crowds: they put me in such a bad mood that every trivial thing annoys me. I can’t preserve my peace of mind there, forgiving people and avoiding conflict. Besides, I can’t make proper arrangements for the children’s education – they are always so restless and inattentive. That’s why you will have to accept this sentence of exile. Later, when I am able, I shall choose a more suitable place than this; but I shall never be able to bury my own nature and live in Calcutta.

  The whole sky is dark with clouds, and rain has started: I’ve shut all the downstairs windows, and am watching the rain as I write to you. From your two-storey house in Calcutta you won’t get a sight like this. The dark, cool, new rain on the green fields all round is beautiful to watch. I’m writing an essay on the Meghadūta.1 If I could colour it with some of the darkness of the teeming monsoon rain today, if I could make permanent for my readers the way in which the green fields of my Shelidah are turned a sort of bluey-green by the rain, that would be something. I’ve said lots of things in lots of different ways in my writing, but where is this gathering of clouds, this shaking of branches, this ceaseless stream of water, this pall of shade in which, as it were, earth and sky embrace? How easy it seems! How effortlessly the rain falls on land and air in this empty rural solitude, how casually this cloudy, relaxed, Aṣāṛh afternoon progresses towards dusk – yet I cannot retain a single trace of it in my writing. No one will be able to know when and where I was, sitting through long leisured hours in an empty house, spinning these words out of my thoughts.

  A heavy shower of rain has just finished – I must seize my chance to post this letter.

  Bibliographical Notes

  The following notes are restricted to giving the Bengali titles of the stories translated in this book, the Bengali periodicals and books in which they were published, and previous English translations. In order to give my selection shape and balance, I have not followed a strictly chronological order. For the stories published in hitabādī, exact publication dates are not known. The Bengali editions of Tagore’s short stories referred to are:

  choṭa galpa, published by Kalidas Chakrabarti and printed by him at the Adi Brahmo Samaj Press (Calcutta, 1894)

  bicitra galpa, Vols. I and II, published by Kalidas Chakrabarti and printed by Yajneshvar Ghosh at the Sahitya Press (Calcutta, 1894)

  kathā-catuṣṭay, published by Kalidas Chakrabarti and printed by Yajneshvar Ghosh at the Sahitya Press (Calcutta, 1894)

  galpa-daśak, published by Kalidas Chakrabarti and printed by Yajneshvar Ghosh at the Sahitya Press (Calcutta, 1894)

  galpaguccha, Vols. I and II, published by Amulyanarayan Ray at the Majumdar Agency and printed by Debendranath Bhattacharya at the Adi Brahmo Samaj Press (Calcutta, 1900 and 1901)

  An edition of Tagore’s stories up to 1907, galpaguccha, was published in five volumes by Indian Publishing House in Calcutta in 1908–9. Visva-Bharati’s edition, also called galpaguccha, first appeared in 1926 (Vols. I and II) and 1927 (Vol. III). These volumes were expanded and rearranged in 1933–4. A new edition, adding Vol. IV, was published in 1946–7, and is the one that is currently available. All the stories I have chosen come from Vols. I and II of the current edition, or can be found in the complete rabīndra-racanābalī (‘Collected Works of Tagore’, Visva-Bharati, 1939–98).

  For books of translations, the following abbreviations are used:

  GBL

  Glimpses of Bengal Life, translated and introduced by Rajani Ranjan Sen (G. A. Nateson & Co., Madras, 1913)

  HS

  Hungry Stones and Other Stories (Macmillan, London and New York, 1916)

  MS

&
nbsp; Mashi and Other Stories (Macmillan, London and New York, 1918)

  ST

  Stories from Tagore (Macmillan, London, Calcutta and New York, 1918)

  BTS

  Broken Ties and Other Stories (Macmillan, London, 1925, New York, 1926)

  MST

  More Stories from Tagore (Macmillan, Calcutta, 1951)

  RS

  The Runaway and Other Stories, edited by Somnath Maitra (Visva-Bharati, Calcutta, 1959)

  HWS

  The Housewarming and Other Selected Writings, edited by Amiya Chakravarty, translated by Mary Lago, Tarun Gupta and Amiya Chakravarty (A Signet Classic, New American Library, New York and Toronto, 1965)

  CS

  Collected Stories (Macmillan, New Delhi, 1974)

  TR

  A Tagore Reader, edited by Amiya Chakravarty (Macmillan, London and New York, 1961)

  Information about Tagore in English can be found in Katherine Henn, Rabindranath Tagore: A Bibliography (The American Theological Library Association, Metuchen, N.J. and London, 1985). Full information about the publication of the Bengali texts of the stories is given in the Appendix to Pramathanath Bisi’s rabīndranāther chota galpa (Calcutta, 1954). I am greatly indebted to both these books. For information about the very early translations of Tagore’s stories which appeared in the magazine New India, I am grateful to their discoverer, Samir Roy Chowdhury of Santiniketan. The Macmillan editions of Tagore’s stories were published as if they were his own translations. In fact they were generally done by friends, with or without the author’s help.1 In the notes below, names of the Macmillan translators or co-translators are given when known; if no name is given it should be assumed that the translator is unknown. I have myself worked completely independently of earlier translations, but readers may wish to look at other versions for comparison.