Selected Short Stories

SELECTED SHORT STORIES

Rabindranath Tagore

History of Collins

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Life & Times

About the Author

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) is regarded as the father of Indian modern literature. He was a polymath and all-round creative talent who became something of a celebrity in the West during the second half of his lifetime. In 1878 Tagore moved to England with the intention of obtaining a degree. However, he was ill-suited to formal education and returned to India in 1880, having failed in his academic ambitions. Despite this, his exposure to English literature, including Shakespeare, had made a lasting impression on Tagore, and he resolved to fuse the European concept of the novel with elements of Indian culture and society.

Tagore came from a very wealthy Indian family, which explains his position to travel and to indulge his creative interests in a country where poverty and hardship were the lot of the common man. Despite his privileged background, he had strong empathy for his fellow human beings, which is largely why he was able to write stories and poems with humility and connection. This empathy came from managing his vast ancestral estates, where he would travel to collect rents and interact with the tenants. This exposed him to traditional storytelling and songs, as well as philosophical and religious ideas. This fertile environment, combined with his intellectual curiosity and imagination, resulted in prolific creativity.

Selected Short Stories

Tagore’s stories are typically like a hybrid between fairytales and fables, as they incorporate elements of the traditional Indian belief system with philosophical insight. Many are short in length, simply because they have no need to be any longer. In fact, they are already filled with superfluous detail, so it would be quite possible to condense them further.

From a literary point of view, it is difficult to assess their merits, as the works we read in the West are merely translations. The stories themselves and their allegory survive intact, but the use of language is largely lost, primarily because the translator naturally gives a subjective interpretation of Tagore’s words and subsequent choice of English words. Also, the English language has a far richer vocabulary than Bengali, so an inevitable ambiguity results in terms of the literary forming of prose. Further complicating the issue is that Tagore also translated some of his own material into English.

Of course, Tagore’s tales also possess a distinctly Indian flavour in terms of their content and the behaviour of the characters. This exoticness certainly played its part in cementing Tagore’s appeal to the Western readership. In India, his fame was largely confined to the region in which he lived, and even then, only among the elite who were able to read.

Tagore and Kipling

It is difficult to discuss Tagore without comparing him with Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Kipling was also Indian, born of Caucasian stock, whose life ran parallel with that of Tagore. He too wrote many short stories and poems focused on the Indian subcontinent, which inevitably have a very similar feel. It would be fair to say that both writers shared a similar gift for the narrative and both were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature; Kipling in 1907 and Tagore in 1913.

While Kipling was among the Anglo-Indian population who administered the British Empire in India, Tagore was a native Indian who resented the colonial presence. He wasn’t overtly political in his activities, but he wasn’t afraid to let his feelings be known, either. He died during World War II and so missed seeing India gain its independence by only a few years.

Kipling is sometimes seen as intrinsically racist and had a particular dislike for Bengalis, of which Tagore was one. As a consequence, there was no love lost between the two literary giants. Tagore had interactions with other white writers, but he ignored Kipling as if he were a pariah. Kipling could not, or would not, acknowledge Tagore’s work as having any literary worth, because his prejudice was so strong. He suggested that Tagore was a pretentious pseudo-intellectual, incapable of writing anything of value. Kipling’s view was typically imperialist due to his upbringing. He had been conditioned to believe that ‘good’ Indians were those who knew their place as servants to the ruling elite, so his racism towards Tagore was amplified by his indignation that a native Indian had risen to the same literary heights as himself. Like all racists, Kipling evidently needed to feel superior to mask his own insecurities, so Tagore’s success presented a psychological impasse to him as it didn’t fit with his model of the way things should be ordered to make him feel self-confident.

In truth, both writers offered an unlikely overlap in literary approach and content, as if they were mirrors reflecting the same influences, but with slightly different perspectives. In many respects Tagore may be seen as the wiser and more intelligent of the two, for he was drawn to writing his own poetry from an early age and was far more open-minded and accommodating of disparate cultural influences. Kipling used writing as a form of escapism, so that it became a place to hide and express his emotions, having suffered a rather unfortunate childhood. The fundamental difference was that Tagore intellectualised the human condition and essentially put himself within the characters so that they were imbued with empathy and sympathy. Kipling lacked the capacity to do this, so that his characters are more stereotyped and lack the complexity observed in real people.

Beyond Writing

Of course, Tagore was also much more than a writer. He was a talented poet, playwright, artist and songwriter. He applied himself on the basis that he was first and foremost a creative soul, so that this core could be tasked with any medium and achieve success. His intellectual curiosity undoubtedly assisted in this end, too, because it provided Tagore with an intimate understanding of the medium and themes upon which to fashion the creative process. Then, there was the simple willingness to try. So many people prevent themselves from being creative because they perpetuate a lack of self-belief borne on their fear of failure. They fail to realise that creative success actually emerges from the process of failure. In other words, we hone our skills by learning from our mistakes, so that every new attempt takes us closer to our objective. Tagore possessed that innate quality that might be described as enjoyment of the process. By not caring about the outcome, he freed his body and mind from fear and subsequently produced consistent results.

Aside from his creative endeavours, Tagore was also a humanitarian and spokesman for the common man. Perhaps his greatest moment came when he renounced his British knighthood in 1919 in indignation at a massacre of Indian men, women and children that occurred in the city of Amritsar. A British officer had feared an insurrection due to the increasing movement against the colonial regime. He ordered his men to fire indiscriminately on a crowd of Indians who had met in the public garden. Several hundred died in the incident, which became known as the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. Tagore was so ashamed by his official association with the British that he returned his knighthood in protest. By doing so, he rendered himself ordinary again, so that he could stand alongside the victims who had evidently been regarded as so insignificant that their lives had no perceived value to the British. It was about as big a statement against the British mindset as anyone could make, and it only served to elevate Tagore’s reputation as a man of the people. He had won the moral high ground, which would eventually result in India’s independence in 1947.

Of course, he would not have been in a position to make this statement had he not had his creative successes in the first place, so the two went hand-in-hand. The British had awarded Tagore the knighthood as a move to show that they were able to respect the native Indian, well aware of increasing unrest at their colonial presence. This backfired, though, as they had inadvertently given Tagore the means to symbolically demonstrate the national feeling towards the British. It was a classic case of having been hoisted by one’s own petard, as Shakespeare so eloquently put it.

As Tagore’s writings were centred on the cosmology of the Indian race, he became a personification of India – a kind of spiritual envoy. When he died, at the age of 80, his reputation was such that the date of his death is still mourned to this day. It seemed only right that two of his songs should be used as the national anthems for India and Bangladesh, as lasting reminders of his influence.

CONTENTS

Title Page

History of Collins

Life & Times

The Hungry Stones

The Cabuliwallah

The Home-Coming

Once there was a King

The Child’s Return

Master Mashai

Subha

The Postmaster

The Castaway

The Son of Rashmani

The Babus of Nayanjore

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

Copyright

About the Publisher

The Hungry Stones

My kinsman and myself were returning to Calcutta from our Puja trip when we met the man in a train. From his dress and bearing we took him at first for an up-country Mahomedan, but we were puzzled as we heard him talk. He discoursed upon all subjects so confidently that you might think the Disposer of All Things consulted him at all times in all that He did. Hitherto we had been perfectly happy, as we did not know that secret and unheard-of forces were at work, that the Russians had advanced close to us, that the English had deep and secret policies, that confusion among the native chiefs had come to a head. But our newly-acquired friend said with a sly smile: “There happen more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are reported in your newspapers.” As we had never stirred out of our homes before, the demeanour of the man struck us dumb with wonder. Be the topic ever so trivial, he would quote science, or comment on the Vedas, or repeat quatrains from some Persian poet; and as we had no pretence to a knowledge of science or the Vedas or Persian, our admiration for him went on increasing, and my kinsman, a theosophist, was firmly convinced that our fellow-passenger must have been supernaturally inspired by some strange “magnetism” or “occult power,” by an “astral body” or something of that kind. He listened to the tritest saying that fell from the lips of our extraordinary companion with devotional rapture, and secretly took down notes of his conversation. I fancy that the extraordinary man saw this, and was a little pleased !with it.

When the train reached the junction, we assembled in the waiting room for the connection. It was then 10 P.M., and as the train, we heard, was likely to be very late, owing to something wrong in the lines, I spread my bed on the table and was about to lie down for a comfortable doze, when the extraordinary person deliberately set about spinning the following yarn. Of course, I could get no sleep that night.

When, owing to a disagreement about some questions of administrative policy, I threw up my post at Junagarh, and entered the service of the Nizam of Hydria, they appointed me at once, as a strong young man, collector of cotton duties at Barich.

Barich is a lovely place. The Susta “chatters over stony ways and babbles on the pebbles,” tripping, like a skilful dancing girl, in through the woods below the lonely hills. A flight of 150 steps rises from the river, and above that flight, on the river’s brim and at the foot of the hills, there stands a solitary marble palace. Around it there is no habitation of man—the village and the cotton mart of Barich being far off.

About 250 years ago the Emperor Mahmud Shah II had built this lonely palace for his pleasure and luxury. In his days, jets of rose-water spurted from its fountains, and on the cold marble floors of its spray-cooled rooms young Persian damsels would sit, their hair dishevelled before bathing, and, splashing their soft naked feet in the clear water of the reservoirs, would sing, to the tune of the guitar, the ghazals of their vineyards.

The fountains play no longer; the songs have ceased; no longer do snow-white feet step gracefully on the snowy marble. It is but the vast and solitary quarters of cess-collectors like us, men oppressed with solitude and deprived of the society of women. Now, Karim Khan, the old clerk of my office, warned me repeatedly not to take up my abode there. “Pass the day there, if you like,” said he, “but never stay the night.” I passed it off with a light laugh. The servants said that they would work till dark and go away at night. I gave my ready assent. The house had such a bad name that even thieves would not venture near it after dark.

At first the solitude of the deserted palace weighed upon me like a nightmare. I would stay out, and work hard as long as possible, then return home at night jaded and tired, go to bed and fall asleep.

Before a week had passed, the place began to exert a weird fascination upon me. It is difficult to describe or to induce people to believe; but I felt as if the whole house was like a living organism slowly and imperceptibly digesting me by the action of some stupefying gastric juice.

Perhaps the process had begun as soon as I set my foot in the house, but I distinctly remember the day on which I first was conscious of it.

It was the beginning of summer, and the market being dull, I had no work to do. A little before sunset I was sitting in an arm-chair near the water’s edge below the steps. The Susta had shrunk and sunk low; a broad patch of sand on the other side glowed with the hues of evening; on this side the pebbles at the bottom of the clear shallow waters were glistening. There was not a breath of wind anywhere, and the still air was laden with an oppressive scent from the spicy shrubs growing on the hills close by.

As the sun sank behind the hill-tops a long dark curtain fell upon the stage of day, and the intervening hills cut short the time in which light and shade mingle at sunset. I thought of going out for a ride, and was about to get up when I heard a footfall on the steps behind. I looked back, but there was no one.

As I sat down again, thinking it to be an illusion, I heard many footfalls, as if a large number of persons were rushing down the steps. A strange thrill of delight, slightly tinged with fear, passed through my frame, and though there was not a figure before my eyes, methought I saw a bevy of joyous maidens coming down the steps to bathe in the Susta in that summer evening. Not a sound was in the valley, in the river, or in the palace, to break the silence, but I distinctly heard the maidens’ gay and mirthful laugh, like the gurgle of a spring gushing forth in a hundred cascades, as they ran past me, in quick playful pursuit of each other, towards the river, without noticing me at all. As they were invisible to me, so I was, as it were, invisible to them. The river was perfectly calm, but I felt that its still, shallow, and clear waters were stirred suddenly by the splash of many an arm jingling with bracelets, that the girls laughed and dashed and spattered water at one another, that the feet of the fair swimmers tossed the tiny waves up in showers of pearl.

I felt a thrill at my heart—I cannot say whether the excitement was due to fear or delight or curiosity. I had a strong desire to see them more clearly, but naught was visible before me; I thought I could catch all that they said if I only strained my ears; but however hard I strained them, I heard nothing but the chirping of the cicadas in the woods. It seemed as if a dark curtain of 250 years was hanging before me, and I would fain lift a corner of it tremblingly and peer through, though the assembly on the other side was completely enveloped in darkness.

The oppressive closeness of the evening was broken by a sudden gust of wind, and the still surface of the Susta rippled and curled like the hair of a nymph, and from the woods wrapt in the evening gloom there came forth a simultaneous murmur, as though they were awakening from a black dream. Call it reality or dream, the momentary glimpse of that invisible mirage reflected from a far-off world, 250 years old, vanished in a flash. The mystic forms that brushed past me with their quick unbodied steps, and loud, voiceless laughter, and threw themselves into the river, did not go back wringing their dripping robes as they went. Like fragrance wafted away by the wind they were dispersed by a single breath of the spring.

Then I was filled with a lively fear that it was the Muse that had taken advantage of my solitude and possessed me—the witch had evidently come to ruin a poor devil like myself making a living by collecting cotton duties. I decided to have a good dinner—it is the empty stomach that all sorts of incurable diseases find an easy prey. I sent for my cook and gave orders for a rich, sumptuous moghlai dinner, redolent of spices and ghi.

Next morning the whole affair appeared a queer fantasy. With a light heart I put on a sola hat like the sahebs, and drove out to my work. I was to have written my quarterly report that day, and expected to return late; but before it was dark I was strangely drawn to my house—by what I could not say—I felt they were all waiting, and that I should delay no longer. Leaving my report unfinished I rose, put on my sola hat, and startling the dark, shady, desolate path with the rattle of my carriage, I reached the vast silent palace standing on the gloomy skirts of the hills.

On the first floor the stairs led to a very spacious hall, its roof stretching wide over ornamental arches resting on three rows of massive pillars, and groaning day and night under the weight of its own intense solitude. The day had just closed, and the lamps had not yet been lighted. As I pushed the door open a great bustle seemed to follow within, as if a throng of people had broken up in confusion, and rushed out through the doors and windows and corridors and verandas and rooms, to make its hurried escape.

As I saw no one I stood bewildered, my hair on end in a kind of ecstatic delight, and a faint scent of attar and unguents almost effected by age lingered in my nostrils. Standing in the darkness of that vast desolate hall between the rows of those ancient pillars, I could hear the gurgle of fountains splashing on the marble floor, a strange tune on the guitar, the jingle of ornaments and the tinkle of anklets, the clang of bells tolling the hours, the distant note of nahabat, the din of the crystal pendants of chandeliers shaken by the breeze, the song of bulbuls from the cages in the corridors, the cackle of storks in the gardens, all creating round me a strange unearthly music.

Then I came under such a spell that this intangible, inaccessible, unearthly vision appeared to be the only reality in the world—and all else a mere dream. That I, that is to say, Srijut So-and-so, the eldest son of So-and-so of blessed memory, should be drawing a monthly salary of Rs. 450 by the discharge of my duties as collector of cotton duties, and driving in my dog-cart to my office every day in a short coat and soia hat, appeared to me to be such an astonishingly ludicrous illusion that I burst into a horse-laugh, as I stood in the gloom of that vast silent hall.

At that moment my servant entered with a lighted kerosene lamp in his hand. I do not know whether he thought me mad, but it came back to me at once that I was in very deed Srijut So-and-so, son of So-and-so of blessed memory, and that, while our poets, great and small, alone could say whether inside of or outside the earth there was a region where unseen fountains perpetually played and fairy guitars, struck by invisible fingers, sent forth an eternal harmony, this at any rate was certain, that I collected duties at the cotton market at Banch, and earned thereby Rs. 450 per mensem as my salary. I laughed in great glee at my curious illusion, as I sat over the newspaper at my camp-table, lighted by the kerosene lamp.

After I had finished my paper and eaten my moghlai dinner, I put out the lamp, and lay down on my bed in a small side-room. Through the open window a radiant star, high above the Avalli hills skirted by the darkness of their woods, was gazing intently from millions and millions of miles away in the sky at Mr. Collector lying on a humble camp-bedstead. I wondered and felt amused at the idea, and do not knew when I fell asleep or how long I slept; but I suddenly awoke with a start, though I heard no sound and saw no intruder—only the steady bright star on the hilltop had set, and the dim light of the new moon was stealthily entering the room through the open window, as if ashamed of its intrusion.