Rabindranath Tagore, "The Postmaster" (1891 / Translated 1911) (Short Story)
January 1911. Included in Stories from Tagore and Mashi and Other Stories. Detailed summary here.
Tags: Unconventional friendship, cross-class friendship, education, education of girls, country vs. city, displacement
THE POSTMASTER
The postmaster first took up his duties in the village of Ulapur. Though
the village was a small one, there was an indigo factory near by, and
the proprietor, an Englishman, had managed to get a post office
established.
Our postmaster belonged to Calcutta. He felt like a fish out of water in
this remote village. His office and living-room were in a dark thatched
shed, not far from a green, slimy pond, surrounded on all sides by a
dense growth.
The men employed in the indigo factory had no leisure; moreover, they
were hardly desirable companions for decent folk. Nor is a Calcutta boy
an adept in the art of associating with others. Among strangers he
appears either proud or ill at ease. At any rate, the postmaster had but
little company; nor had he much to do.
At times he tried his hand at writing a verse or two. That the movement
of the leaves and the clouds of the sky were enough to fill life with
joy--such were the sentiments to which he sought to give expression.
But God knows that the poor fellow would have felt it as the gift of a
new life, if some genie of the _Arabian Nights_ had in one night swept
away the trees, leaves and all, and replaced them with a macadamised
road, hiding the clouds from view with rows of tall houses.
The postmaster's salary was small. He had to cook his own meals, which
he used to share with Ratan, an orphan girl of the village, who did odd
jobs for him.
When in the evening the smoke began to curl up from the village
cowsheds, and the cicalas chirped in every bush; when the mendicants of
the Baul sect sang their shrill songs in their daily meeting-place, when
any poet, who had attempted to watch the movement of the leaves in the
dense bamboo thickets, would have felt a ghostly shiver run down his
back, the postmaster would light his little lamp, and call out "Ratan."
Ratan would sit outside waiting for this call, and, instead of coming in
at once, would reply, "Did you call me, sir?"
"What are you doing?" the postmaster would ask.
"I must be going to light the kitchen fire," would be the answer.
And the postmaster would say: "Oh, let the kitchen fire be for awhile;
light me my pipe first."
At last Ratan would enter, with puffed-out cheeks, vigorously blowing
into a flame a live coal to light the tobacco. This would give the
postmaster an opportunity of conversing. "Well, Ratan," perhaps he would
begin, "do you remember anything of your mother?" That was a fertile
subject. Ratan partly remembered, and partly didn't. Her father had been
fonder of her than her mother; him she recollected more vividly. He used
to come home in the evening after his work, and one or two evenings
stood out more clearly than others, like pictures in her memory. Ratan
would sit on the floor near the postmaster's feet, as memories crowded
in upon her. She called to mind a little brother that she had--and how
on some bygone cloudy day she had played at fishing with him on the edge
of the pond, with a twig for a make-believe fishing-rod. Such little
incidents would drive out greater events from her mind. Thus, as they
talked, it would often get very late, and the postmaster would feel too
lazy to do any cooking at all. Ratan would then hastily light the fire,
and toast some unleavened bread, which, with the cold remnants of the
morning meal, was enough for their supper.
On some evenings, seated at his desk in the corner of the big empty
shed, the postmaster too would call up memories of his own home, of his
mother and his sister, of those for whom in his exile his heart was
sad,--memories which were always haunting him, but which he could not
talk about with the men of the factory, though he found himself
naturally recalling them aloud in the presence of the simple little
girl. And so it came about that the girl would allude to his people as
mother, brother, and sister, as if she had known them all her life. In
fact, she had a complete picture of each one of them painted in her
little heart.
One noon, during a break in the rains, there was a cool soft breeze
blowing; the smell of the damp grass and leaves in the hot sun felt like
the warm breathing of the tired earth on one's body. A persistent bird
went on all the afternoon repeating the burden of its one complaint in
Nature's audience chamber.
The postmaster had nothing to do. The shimmer of the freshly washed
leaves, and the banked-up remnants of the retreating rain-clouds were
sights to see; and the postmaster was watching them and thinking to
himself: "Oh, if only some kindred soul were near--just one loving human
being whom I could hold near my heart!" This was exactly, he went on to
think, what that bird was trying to say, and it was the same feeling
which the murmuring leaves were striving to express. But no one knows,
or would believe, that such an idea might also take possession of an
ill-paid village postmaster in the deep, silent mid-day interval of his
work.
The postmaster sighed, and called out "Ratan." Ratan was then sprawling
beneath the guava-tree, busily engaged in eating unripe guavas. At the
voice of her master, she ran up breathlessly, saying: "Were you calling
me, Dada?" "I was thinking," said the postmaster, "of teaching you to
read." And then for the rest of the afternoon he taught her the
alphabet.
Thus, in a very short time, Ratan had got as far as the double
consonants.
It seemed as though the showers of the season would never end. Canals,
ditches, and hollows were all overflowing with water. Day and night the
patter of rain was heard, and the croaking of frogs. The village roads
became impassable, and marketing had to be done in punts.
One heavily clouded morning, the postmaster's little pupil had been long
waiting outside the door for her call, but, not hearing it as usual, she
took up her dog-eared book, and slowly entered the room. She found her
master stretched out on his bed, and, thinking that he was resting, she
was about to retire on tip-toe, when she suddenly heard her
name--"Ratan!" She turned at once and asked: "Were you sleeping, Dada?"
The postmaster in a plaintive voice said: "I am not well. Feel my head;
is it very hot?"
In the loneliness of his exile, and in the gloom of the rains, his
ailing body needed a little tender nursing. He longed to remember the
touch on the forehead of soft hands with tinkling bracelets, to imagine
the presence of loving womanhood, the nearness of mother and sister. And
the exile was not disappointed. Ratan ceased to be a little girl. She at
once stepped into the post of mother, called in the village doctor, gave
the patient his pills at the proper intervals, sat up all night by his
pillow, cooked his gruel for him, and every now and then asked: "Are you
feeling a little better, Dada?"
It was some time before the postmaster, with weakened body, was able to
leave his sick-bed. "No more of this," said he with decision. "I must
get a transfer." He at once wrote off to Calcutta an application for a
transfer, on the ground of the unhealthiness of the place.
Relieved from her duties as nurse, Ratan again took up her old place
outside the door. But she no longer heard the same old call. She would
sometimes peep inside furtively to find the postmaster sitting on his
chair, or stretched on his bed, and staring absent-mindedly into the
air. While Ratan was awaiting her call, the postmaster was awaiting a
reply to his application. The girl read her old lessons over and over
again,--her great fear was lest, when the call came, she might be found
wanting in the double consonants. At last, after a week, the call did
come one evening. With an overflowing heart Ratan rushed into the room
with her--"Were you calling me, Dada?"
The postmaster said: "I am going away to-morrow, Ratan."
"Where are you going, Dada?"
"I am going home."
"When will you come back?"
"I am not coming back."
Ratan asked no other question. The postmaster, of his own accord, went
on to tell her that his application for a transfer had been rejected, so
he had resigned his post and was going home.
For a long time neither of them spoke another word. The lamp went on
dimly burning, and from a leak in one corner of the thatch water dripped
steadily into an earthen vessel on the floor beneath it.
After a while Ratan rose, and went off to the kitchen to prepare the
meal; but she was not so quick about it as on other days. Many new
things to think of had entered her little brain. When the postmaster had
finished his supper, the girl suddenly asked him: "Dada, will you take
me to your home?"
The postmaster laughed. "What an idea!" said he; but he did not think it
necessary to explain to the girl wherein lay the absurdity.
That whole night, in her waking and in her dreams, the postmaster's
laughing reply haunted her--"What an idea!"
On getting up in the morning, the postmaster found his bath ready. He
had stuck to his Calcutta habit of bathing in water drawn and kept in
pitchers, instead of taking a plunge in the river as was the custom of
the village. For some reason or other, the girl could not ask him about
the time of his departure, so she had fetched the water from the river
long before sunrise, that it should be ready as early as he might want
it. After the bath came a call for Ratan. She entered noiselessly, and
looked silently into her master's face for orders. The master said: "You
need not be anxious about my going away, Ratan; I shall tell my
successor to look after you." These words were kindly meant, no doubt:
but inscrutable are the ways of a woman's heart!
Ratan had borne many a scolding from her master without complaint, but
these kind words she could not bear. She burst out weeping, and said:
"No, no, you need not tell anybody anything at all about me; I don't
want to stay on here."
The postmaster was dumbfounded. He had never seen Ratan like this
before.
The new incumbent duly arrived, and the postmaster, having given over
charge, prepared to depart. Just before starting he called Ratan and
said: "Here is something for you; I hope it will keep you for some
little time." He brought out from his pocket the whole of his month's
salary, retaining only a trifle for his travelling expenses. Then Ratan
fell at his feet and cried: "Oh, Dada, I pray you, don't give me
anything, don't in any way trouble about me," and then she ran away out
of sight.
The postmaster heaved a sigh, took up his carpet bag, put his umbrella
over his shoulder, and, accompanied by a man carrying his many-coloured
tin trunk, he slowly made for the boat.
When he got in and the boat was under way, and the rain-swollen river,
like a stream of tears welling up from the earth, swirled and sobbed at
her bows, then he felt a pain at heart; the grief-stricken face of a
village girl seemed to represent for him the great unspoken pervading
grief of Mother Earth herself. At one time he had an impulse to go back,
and bring away along with him that lonesome waif, forsaken of the world.
But the wind had just filled the sails, the boat had got well into the
middle of the turbulent current, and already the village was left
behind, and its outlying burning-ground came in sight.
So the traveller, borne on the breast of the swift-flowing river,
consoled himself with philosophical reflections on the numberless
meetings and partings going on in the world--on death, the great
parting, from which none returns.
But Ratan had no philosophy. She was wandering about the post office in
a flood of tears. It may be that she had still a lurking hope in some
corner of her heart that her Dada would return, and that is why she
could not tear herself away. Alas for our foolish human nature! Its fond
mistakes are persistent. The dictates of reason take a long time to
assert their own sway. The surest proofs meanwhile are disbelieved.
False hope is clung to with all one's might and main, till a day comes
when it has sucked the heart dry and it forcibly breaks through its
bonds and departs. After that comes the misery of awakening, and then
once again the longing to get back into the maze of the same mistakes.
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