21 Sarvashreshtha Kahaniyaan - Ravindranath Tagore
My Rating: 5/5
The third book back-to-back in Hindi amongst the last five that I have read in March / April so far. What surprised me big time is that they are all from the Authors of the same era, Jai Shankar Prasad, Sarat Chandra and Rabindranath Tagore, but the language is the same or even identical, with so many common words used by all three of them. Or this might be the case of a common translator, unfortunately, none of the books mentions the translator’s name,e as I am sure Sarat Chandra and Tagore must have written their Stories in Bangla originally. Still, they all turn out to be heart-touching stories depicting late 19th to early 20th century life with the then women as the central core. Here also, marriage is a big subject for girls as young as 12 or a little more; someone turning 19 and unmarried will be treated as a bad mark. That made me think what has changed in the last 150-odd years after these stories were written. Last month we attended one of my cousins' marriages back home, and my daughter,r who turned 20 this year, was the apple of everyone's eye in that marriage, and I did hear so much hush-hush talking of her coming of age and that we might start looking for a good match for her :). Practically nothing has changed in our part of the world, for sure. Among the 21 stories covered in this book, my favourite will always be the “Kabuliwallah”. Little Mini is playing around with the man from Kabul who comes to her city to sell his dry fruits. His own back story as to why he never charges her father for anything that she takes or eats from his bag is totally super emotional. On top of that, when he gets arrested on the charges of murder, making sure he will never go back to his country, and his own little daughter will know nothing of him. How he keeps her memory with himself actually made not only my eyes go wet, but this time, actual tears rolled down my face. Imagine the impact of these emotional words on my fragile heart. This must be the nth time that I must have read this story and have seen a few adaptations too, but never had this impact earlier.
The second story that touched me deep inside was “Aparichita”. Where a girl’s father breaks the shackles by agreeing to dowry, but when the moment comes and they get publicly embarrassed by the groom’s family (one particular maternal uncle), he still entertains them and serves them food, etc., but refuses to marry his daughter to the man. What happens next is predictable, but the way it ends is totally unbelievable. One has to read the story to know the outcome, as it actually shocked me by the ending and kept me quite in suspense. There are so many other short stories with open endings too, which kept me thinking for a long time, and some with such shocking and abrupt endings where the author plainly refuses to go any further. Just like the way Jai Shankar Prasad and Sarat Chandra did earlier with me in their stories. This is almost my first ever book from Tagore in a long, long time, but now I will have to look out for some or all of his works that I should read at the earliest. Do let me know if you have read anything from Tagore in recent times, and also, if you have a personal favourite that you would like to recommend.
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