Rabindranath Tagore, "The Judge" (1894 / translated 2026)
Compare to Saurav Bhattacharya’s 2010 translation in Parabaas here
Tags: Justice system, Misogyny, Widows, Murder, Sexual assault, "Fallen women"
"The Judge"
Chapter One
After many changes of fortune, Kshiroda, whose youth had already passed, at last found the protection of a man. But when he too cast her aside as one throws away a worn-out garment, she felt such profound humiliation at the thought of seeking yet another protector merely for a handful of food that she could scarcely bring herself to do it.
At the end of youth there comes, like the clear white serenity of autumn, a deep, tranquil, and profoundly beautiful stage of life—the season when life's fruits ripen and its harvest matures. Then the restless exuberance of springlike youth no longer becomes us. By that time the building of our home amid the world is, in a sense, complete; through much good and evil, much joy and sorrow, life has matured the person within us. We have withdrawn our bewildered desires from the enchanted realm of unattainable dreams and established them within the modest walls of our own limited powers. At such an age, one can no longer captivate others with the enchanted glance of new love; yet to those who have long known us, we become dearer still. The bloom of youth gradually fades, but the ageless spirit within, shaped by years of companionship, becomes more distinctly inscribed upon the face and eyes. One's smile, one's glance, one's voice—all become permeated by the person who dwells within.
Having abandoned hope for what could never be attained, having ceased to mourn those who have left us, having forgiven those who have wronged us, we draw close those who have remained—those who have loved us, those few souls who have endured beside us through all the storms, griefs, sufferings, and separations of worldly life. Surrounded by the affection of these trusted, time-tested, and lifelong companions, we build a secure nest, and within it find the end of striving and the fulfillment of every longing.
Yet if, even in that gentle twilight of youth, in that peaceful season of life, one must still run after new acquisitions, new acquaintances, and new bonds, lured on by their empty promises—if one still has no bed prepared for rest, no evening lamp lit in welcome for one's return home—then there is no one in the world more pitiable than such a person.
One morning, on the threshold of her fading youth, Kshiroda awoke to discover that the man she loved had fled during the previous night, taking with him all her money and jewelry. She had nothing left with which to pay the rent, nor even the means to buy milk for her three-year-old son. As she reflected that in all her thirty-eight years she had not been able to make a single person truly her own, nor had she earned the right to live and die in even the smallest corner of a home, another thought struck her: once again she would have to wipe away her tears, darken her eyes with kohl, redden her lips and cheeks with dye, disguise the decay of her youth with elaborate artifices, and with an unfailing smile and endless patience spread fresh snares of illusion to capture yet another heart. At that realization, she barred the door of her room, threw herself upon the floor, and repeatedly beat her head against the hard ground. All day she lay there without food, like one at the point of death.
Evening came. Darkness gathered in the unlit corner of the room. By chance, one of her former lovers arrived and began knocking at the door, calling, “Kshiro! Kshiro!” Kshiroda suddenly flung the door open and, brandishing a broom, rushed at him with the roar of a tigress. The pleasure-seeking young man lost no time in making his escape.
Her little boy, exhausted from crying with hunger, had fallen asleep beneath the bed. Awakened by the commotion, he began to cry out in the darkness in a faint, broken voice, “Mother! Mother!”
Then Kshiroda clasped the sobbing child tightly to her breast with all her strength and, swift as lightning, rushed to a nearby well and leapt into it.
Hearing the splash, the neighbors hurried to the well carrying lamps. It did not take long to pull Kshiroda and the child out. Kshiroda was unconscious, and the child was dead.
Kshiroda recovered after being taken to the hospital. She was then committed by the magistrate to the Sessions Court on a charge of murder.
Chapter Two
Judge Mohit Mohan Dutta was a Statutory Civilian. By his stern judgment, Kshiroda was sentenced to death by hanging. Taking pity on the unfortunate woman's circumstances, her lawyers made every effort to save her, but all their attempts proved futile. The judge could not bring himself to regard her as deserving even the slightest measure of compassion.
There were reasons for this. On the one hand, he was accustomed to extolling Hindu women as goddesses; on the other, he harbored a profound distrust of womankind. It was his conviction that women were ever eager to break the bonds of family honor, and that if discipline were relaxed even a little, not a single virtuous woman would remain within the cage of society.
His belief, too, had its origins. To understand them, one must glance at a portion of Mohit's youthful history.
When Mohit was in the second year of college, he was, in both appearance and manner, an altogether different man from what he was now. At present, his forehead was bald, a traditional tuft of hair remained at the back of his head, and every morning the stubble of beard and mustache was carefully scraped clean with a sharp razor. But in those days, with his gold-rimmed spectacles, fashionable mustache and beard, and European-style coiffure, he looked like a modern nineteenth-century version of Kartik, the handsome god of youth. He paid great attention to his dress, had no dislike for meat or liquor, and displayed a few other associated youthful indulgences.
Not far away lived the family of a respectable householder. They had a widowed daughter named Hemshashi. She could not have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old.
A forest-clad blue shoreline seen from the sea appears dreamlike and exquisitely beautiful in a way that it does not when one stands upon it. Hemshashi, enclosed within the seclusion of widowhood and thus separated from the ordinary world, saw worldly life from just such a distance. To her it seemed like a mysterious pleasure garden lying beyond some enchanted shore. She did not know that the machinery of this world was immensely intricate and as hard as iron, woven inseparably of joy and sorrow, prosperity and misfortune, doubt and crisis, despair and suffering. She imagined that the journey through life flowed as effortlessly as the clear waters of a murmuring stream; that every road stretching before her into the beautiful world was broad and straight; that happiness existed only outside her window, while all unsatisfied longing dwelt only within her own tender, restless, yearning heart.
Above all, at that time a breeze of youth had begun to rise from the far horizon of her inner sky, clothing the whole world in the varied splendor of spring. The entire blue vault of heaven seemed filled with the surging tide of her own heart, and the earth itself appeared to blossom around the fragrant core of her being, layer upon layer, like the soft crimson petals of a lotus.
There was no one in her household besides her father, mother, and two younger brothers. The boys ate early each morning and went off to school. After returning home, they had their meal and, in the evening, went to the neighborhood night school to continue their studies. Their father earned only a modest salary and could not afford to hire a tutor for them.
Whenever she found a spare moment, Hem would come and sit by the window of her lonely room. She would gaze fixedly at the traffic on the street, listening to the plaintive cries of the hawkers as they passed. She imagined that the travelers were happy, that even the beggars were free, and that the hawkers were not laboring under the harsh compulsion of earning a living at all—they seemed to her merely actors upon the colorful stage of the world's bustling life.
Morning, afternoon, and evening, she would also catch sight of Mohit Mohan, impeccably dressed, proud in bearing, broad-chested, and handsome. To her he appeared like Mahendra, the king of the gods, endowed with every conceivable blessing. She felt that the noble, well-dressed, handsome young man possessed everything, and that everything could be given to him. Just as a little girl brings her dolls to life in play, so the young widow adorned Mohit in her imagination with every excellence and, fashioning him into a god, delighted in worshipping the idol of her own creation.
Sometimes, in the evenings, she would see Mohit's rooms ablaze with light, alive with the tinkling anklets of dancing girls and the melodies of women's voices. On those nights she would remain awake until dawn, gazing with sleepless, yearning eyes at the restless shadows cast upon the walls. Her wounded and aching heart beat violently against her breast like a bird fluttering desperately within a cage.
Did she inwardly rebuke or condemn her imagined deity for his life of pleasure? Not at all. Just as a flame lures the moth by promising it the splendor of the stars, so Mohit's brightly lit chamber, overflowing with music, revelry, and intoxicating delight, beckoned Hemshashi with the mirage of paradise. Alone in the depths of the night, she would weave from the light and shadow of that distant window, from its music, and from the longings and fantasies of her own heart, a kingdom of illusion. There, in the midst of that enchanted realm, she would enthrone the idol of her imagination and gaze upon it with wonder and adoration. She burned before it, like incense upon glowing embers, her entire life—her youth, her joys and sorrows, this world and the next—and offered them in worship within that lonely, silent temple.
She did not know that behind the windows of that stately mansion, beneath the glittering current of pleasure, there lay boundless weariness, degradation, filth, hideous hunger, and a fire that consumed the very soul. From afar, the young widow could not see the cruel, heartless smile of destruction that played ceaselessly amid those sleepless nocturnal lights.
Hem could have spent her entire life sitting by her lonely window, lost in dreams with her imagined heaven and her imagined god. But fate intervened. The god bestowed his favor, and heaven began to draw near. And when heaven at last descended to touch the earth, heaven itself shattered—and the one who had sat alone so long building that heaven was shattered into dust as well.
At what moment Mohit's covetous eyes first fell upon the enchanted girl at the window; when he began writing her letters under the false signature of "Binod Chandra"; how, after repeated attempts, he finally received a timid, anxious reply full of misspellings and overflowing emotion; how thereafter, for a time, storms of delight and hesitation, doubt and reverence, hope and fear swept over her; how, in the delirium of ecstatic ruin, the whole world began to whirl around the young widow; how, spinning ever faster, that world dissolved like an unreal shadow; and finally, how one day she was suddenly flung far away from that revolving wheel of existence—I see no need to recount those events in detail.
One deep night, leaving behind her father, mother, brothers, and home, Hemshashi climbed into a carriage with Mohit, who called himself Binod Chandra. When the idol she had worshipped descended from its pedestal and sat beside her, stripped of nothing but clothed in all its earthly clay, straw, and tinsel ornaments, she was overwhelmed with shame and self-contempt, as though she would sink into the ground.
At last, when the carriage started to move, she burst into tears, clasped Mohit's feet, and cried, "Please, I beg you—take me back home." Alarmed, Mohit quickly covered her mouth with his hand, while the carriage sped onward.
Just as a drowning person, on the verge of death, sees the whole course of life flash vividly before the mind in a single instant, so, in the dense darkness of that closed carriage, memories came flooding back to Hemshashi. She remembered how her father would never sit down to eat unless she was before him. She remembered how her youngest brother, returning from school, loved to eat from his elder sister's hands. She remembered preparing betel leaves with her mother every morning, and how every afternoon her mother would comb and braid her hair. Every little corner of the house, every small daily task, rose before her with startling clarity.
Then it seemed to her that her quiet life and humble household had itself been heaven. Preparing betel leaves, braiding her hair, fanning her father while he ate, plucking his gray hairs during his midday nap on holidays, patiently enduring the mischief of her younger brothers—all these now appeared to her as rare and perfect blessings of peace. She could no longer understand what greater happiness anyone could possibly seek while possessing such simple joys.
It seemed to her that, in homes everywhere across the world, all the sheltered daughters of respectable families were now sunk in deep sleep. Why had she never before realized what happiness there was in lying peacefully asleep through the silent night in one's own bed, within one's own home? Tomorrow morning those girls would awaken in their homes and, without the slightest fear or hesitation, go about their familiar household duties. But where would dawn break upon this sleepless night of Hemshashi, now cast out from her home? And when the gentle, smiling sunlight of morning, so familiar and serene, fell upon that little house by the narrow lane, what shame would suddenly be revealed there—what humiliation, what heart-rending cries would awaken!
Hem wept as though her heart would burst. With desperate entreaties she pleaded, "There is still time—it is still night. My mother and my two brothers have not yet awakened. Please, take me back home before they do." But her god paid no heed. He seated her in the rattling carriage of a second-class railway compartment and bore her onward toward the heaven she had long yearned for.
Before long, however, both the god and the heaven departed once more, traveling away by another route in yet another shabby second-class carriage—leaving the woman sunk to her neck in the mire.
Chapter Three
From Mohit Mohan's earlier life I have recounted only this single incident. I have omitted the others lest the narrative become monotonous.
Nor is there any need now to revive those old stories. It is doubtful whether there remains anyone in the world who even remembers the name "Binod Chandra." Mohit has now become a man of impeccable piety. He performs his daily religious rites and spends his time discussing the scriptures. He has his young sons practice yoga and keeps the women of his household under strict discipline within an inner apartment more inaccessible than the realms of the sun, the moon, or the winds. Yet because he himself once sinned against more than one woman, he now imposes the harshest possible punishment upon every social transgression committed by women.
A day or two after sentencing Kshiroda to death by hanging, the food-loving Mohit went to the prison garden to gather vegetables to his liking. It occurred to him that he would like to know whether Kshiroda had repented of the sins of her fallen life, and with that curiosity he entered the women's prison.
Even before he reached the cell, he could hear the sound of a loud quarrel. Entering, he found Kshiroda engaged in a fierce argument with one of the warders. Mohit smiled to himself. "Just like women," he thought. "Death is at the door, yet they cannot refrain from quarreling. I suppose they would argue even with the messengers of Yama in the land of the dead."
He reflected that perhaps, through proper rebuke and pious counsel, it might still be possible to awaken repentance in her heart. But no sooner had he approached her with this noble intention than Kshiroda folded her hands and pleaded pitifully,
"O Judge Sahib, I beg you! Please tell him to give me back my ring."
On inquiry he learned that Kshiroda had hidden a ring in her hair. By chance the warder had noticed it and confiscated it.
Mohit smiled inwardly once again. "Tomorrow or the day after she will mount the gallows," he thought, "and still she cannot part with her attachment to a ring. Jewelry is everything to women!"
He said to the warder, "Let me see the ring."
The warder placed it in his hand.
The instant it touched his palm, he started as though he had seized a burning coal. On one side of the ring was set a tiny ivory miniature painted in oils—a young man with mustache and beard. On the other side, engraved in the gold, was a single name:
Binod Chandra.
Mohit slowly lifted his eyes from the ring and looked closely at Kshiroda's face. Suddenly another face came back to him from twenty-four years before—a face wet with tears, tender with love, shy and fearful. There was a resemblance between that face and this one.
He looked once more at the golden ring. Then, as he slowly raised his eyes again, the disgraced fallen woman standing before him seemed, in the radiant gleam of that tiny golden circlet, transformed into the image of a golden goddess.
This translation was made using generative AI in 2026.
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- Short Stories by Rabindranath Tagore: A Collection Amardeep Singh