Polytechnic University of the Philippines

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
Sta. Mesa, Manila












Term Paper on a Nobel Prize Winner for Literature
RABINDRANATH TAGORE 1913












Submitted By:
Kennard U. Garcillano
Mabeth Y. Isaias
Brien L. Naco
BBTE II-1D












March 17, 2012


T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

















































I

I n t r o d u c t i o n

A. Why do you choose to decide to study the Nobel Prize Winner Rabindranath Tagore?
B. Statement of the Problem
C. Importance of the Study
D. Delimitation/Scope of the Study
E. Definition of Terms

II

B o d y



















































The Post Office
By Rabindranath Tagore

[Translated from Bengali to English by Devabrata Mukherjee]
[New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914
Copyright 1914, by Mitchell Kennerley;
Copyright, 1914 by The Macmillan Company]




DRAMATIS PERSON
MADHAV
AMAL, his adopted child
SUDHA, a little flower girl
THE DOCTOR
DAIRYMAN
WATCHMAN
GAFFER
VILLAGE HEADMAN, a bully
KING'S HERALD
ROYAL PHYSICIAN




THE POST OFFICE
ACT I
[Madhav's House]
Madhav. What a state I am in! Before he came, nothing mattered; I felt so free. But now that he has come, goodness
knows from where, my heart is filled with his dear self, and my home will be no home to me when he leaves.
Doctor, do you think he--
Physician. If there's life in his fate, then he will live long. But what the medical scriptures say, it seems--
Madhav. Great heavens, what?
Physician. The scriptures have it: "Bile or palsey, cold or gout spring all alike."
Madhav. Oh, get along, don't fling your scriptures at me; you only make me more anxious; tell me what I can do.
Physician [Taking snuff] The patient needs the most scrupulous care.
Madhav. That's true; but tell me how.
Physician. I have already mentioned, on no account must he be let out of doors.
Madhav Poor child, it is very hard to keep him indoors all day long.
Physician. What else can you do? The autumn sun and the damp are both very bad for the little fellow--for the
scriptures have it:
"In wheezing, swoon or in nervous fret,
In jaundice or leaden eyes--"
Madhav. Never mind the scriptures, please. Eh, then we must shut the poor thing up. Is there no other method?
Physician. None at all: for, "In the wind and in the sun--"
Madhav. What will your "in this and in that" do for me now? Why don't you let them alone and come straight to the
point? What's to be done then? Your system is very, very hard for the poor boy; and he is so quiet too with all
his pain and sickness. It tears my heart to see him wince, as he takes your medicine.
Physician. effect. That's why the sage Chyabana observes: "In medicine as in good advices, the least palatable
ones are the truest." Ah, well! I must be trotting now. [Exit]
[Gaffer enters]
Madhav. Well, I'm jiggered, there's Gaffer now.
Gaffer. Why, why, I won't bite you.
Madhav. No, but you are a devil to send children off their heads.
Gaffer. But you aren't a child, and you've no child in the house; why worry then?
Madhav. Oh, but I have brought a child into the house.
Gaffer. Indeed, how so?
Madhav. You remember how my wife was dying to adopt a child?
Gaffer. Yes, but that's an old story; you didn't like the idea.
Madhav. You know, brother, how hard all this getting money in has been. That somebody else's child would sail in
and waste all this money earned with so much trouble--Oh, I hated the idea. But this boy clings to my heart in
such a queer sort of way--
Gaffer. So that's the trouble! and your money goes all for him and feels jolly lucky it does go at all.
Madhav. Formerly, earning was a sort of passion with me; I simply couldn't help working for money. Now, I make
money and as I know it is all for this dear boy, earning becomes a joy to me.
Gaffer. Ah, well, and where did you pick him up?
Madhav. He is the son of a man who was a brother to my wife by village ties. He has had no mother since infancy;
and now the other day he lost his father as well.
Gaffer. Poor thing: and so he needs me all the more.
Madhav. The doctor says all the organs of his little body are at loggerheads with each other, and there isn't much
hope for his life. There is only one way to save him and that is to keep him out of this autumn wind and sun. But
you are such a terror! What with this game of yours at your age, too, to get children out of doors!
Gaffer. God bless my soul! So I'm already as bad as autumn wind and sun, eh! But, friend, I know something, too, of
the game of keeping them indoors. When my day's work is over I am coming in to make friends with this child of
yours. [Exit]
[Amal enters]
Amal. Uncle, I say, Uncle!
Madhav. Hullo! Is that you, Amal?
Amal. Mayn't I be out of the courtyard at all?
Madhav. No, my dear, no.
Amal. See, there where Auntie grinds lentils in the quirn, the squirrel is sitting with his tail up and with his wee hands
he's picking up the broken grains of lentils and crunching them. Can't I run up there?
Madhav. No, my darling, no.
Amal. Wish I were a squirrel!--it would be lovely. Uncle, why won't you let me go about?
Madhav. Doctor says it's bad for you to be out.
Amal. How can the doctor know?
Madhav. What a thing to say! The doctor can't know and he reads such huge books!
Amal. Does his book-learning tell him everything?
Madhav. Of course, don't you know!
Amal [With a sigh] Ah, I am so stupid! I don't read books.
Madhav. Now, think of it; very, very learned people are all like you; they are never out of doors.
Amal. Aren't they really?
Madhav. No, how can they? Early and late they toil and moil at their books, and they've eyes for nothing else. Now,
my little man, you are going to be learned when you grow up; and then you will stay at home and read such big
books, and people will notice you and say, "he's a wonder."
Amal. No, no, Uncle; I beg of you by your dear feet--I don't want to be learned, I won't.
Madhav. Dear, dear; it would have been my saving if I could have been learned.
Amal. No, I would rather go about and see everything that there is.
Madhav. Listen to that! See! What will you see, what is there so much to see?
Amal. See that far-away hill from our window--I often long to go beyond those hills and right away.
Madhav. Oh, you silly! As if there's nothing more to be done but just get up to the top of that hill and away! Eh! You
don't talk sense, my boy. Now listen, since that hill stands there upright as a barrier, it means you can't get beyond
it. Else, what was the use in heaping up so many large stones to make such a big affair of it, eh!
Amal. Uncle, do you think it is meant to prevent your crossing over? It seems to me because the earth can't speak it
raises its hands into the sky and beckons. And those who live far and sit alone by their windows can see the
signal. But I suppose the learned people--
Madhav. No, they don't have time for that sort of nonsense. They are not crazy like you.
Amal. Do you know, yesterday I met someone quite as crazy as I am.
Madhav. Gracious me, really, how so?
Amal. He had a bamboo staff on his shoulder with a small bundle at the top, and a brass pot in his left hand, and an
old pair of shoes on; he was making for those hills straight across that meadow there. I called out to him and
asked, "Where are you going?" He answered, "I don't know, anywhere!" I asked again, "Why are you going?" He
said, "I'm going out to seek work." Say, Uncle, have you to seek work?
Madhav. Of course I have to. There's many about looking for jobs.
Amal. How lovely! I'll go about, like them too, finding things to do.
Madhav. Suppose you seek and don't find. Then--
Amal. Wouldn't that be jolly? Then I should go farther! I watched that man slowly walking on with his pair of worn out
shoes. And when he got to where the water flows under the fig tree, he stopped and washed his feet in the
stream. Then he took out from his bundle some gram-flour, moistened it with water and began to eat. Then he tied
up his bundle and shouldered it again; tucked up his cloth above his knees and crossed the stream. I've asked
Auntie to let me go up to the stream, and eat my gram-flour just like him.
Madhav. And what did your Auntie say to that?
Amal. Auntie said, "Get well and then I'll take you over there." Please, Uncle, when shall I get well?
Madhav. It won't be long, dear.
Amal. Really, but then I shall go right away the moment I'm well again.
Madhav. And where will you go?
Amal. Oh, I will walk on, crossing so many streams, wading through water. Everybody will be asleep with their doors
shut in the heat of the day and I will tramp on and on seeking work far, very far.
Madhav. I see! I think you had better be getting well first; then--
Amal. But then you won't want me to be learned, will you, Uncle?
Madhav. What would you rather be then?
Amal. I can't think of anything just now; but I'll tell you later on.
Madhav. Very well. But mind you, you aren't to call out and talk to strangers again.
Amal. But I love to talk to strangers!
Madhav. Suppose they had kidnapped you?
Amal. That would have been splendid! But no one ever takes me away. They all want me to stay in here.
Madhav. I am off to my work--but, darling, you won't go out, will you?
Amal. No, I won't. But, Uncle, you'll let me be in this room by the roadside.
[Exit Madhav]
Dairyman. Curds, curds, good nice curds.
Amal. Curdseller, I say, Curdseller.
Dairyman. Why do you call me? Will you buy some curds?
Amal. How can I buy? I have no money.
Dairyman. What a boy! Why call out then? Ugh! What a waste of time.
Amal. I would go with you if I could.
Dairyman. With me?
Amal. Yes, I seem to feel homesick when I hear you call from far down the road.
Dairyman [Lowering his yoke-pole] Whatever are you doing here, my child?
Amal. The doctor says I'm not to be out, so I sit here all day long.
Dairyman. My poor child, whatever has happened to you?
Amal. I can't tell. You see I am not learned, so I don't know what's the matter with me. Say, Dairyman, where do you
come from?
Dairyman. From our village.
Amal. Your village? Is it very far?
Dairyman. Our village lies on the river Shamli at the foot of the Panch-mura hills.
Amal. Panch-mura hills! Shamli river! I wonder. I may have seen your village. I can't think when though!
Dairyman. Have you seen it? Been to the foot of those hills?
Amal. Never. But I seem to remember having seen it. Your village is under some very old big trees, just by the side
of the red road--isn't that so?
Dairyman. That's right, child.
Amal. And on the slope of the hill cattle grazing.
Dairyman. How wonderful! Aren't there cattle grazing in our village! Indeed, there are!
Amal. And your women with red sarees fill their pitchers from the river and carry them on their heads.
Dairyman. Good, that's right. Women from our dairy village do come and draw their water from the river; but then it
isn't everyone who has a red saree to put on. But, my dear child, surely you must have been there for a walk
some time.
Amal. Really, Dairyman, never been there at all. But the first day doctor lets me go out, you are going to take me to
your village.
Dairyman. I will, my child, with pleasure.
Amal. And you'll teach me to cry curds and shoulder the yoke like you and walk the long, long road?
Dairyman. Dear, dear, did you ever? Why should you sell curds? No, you will read big books and be learned.
Amal. No, I never want to be learned--I'll be like you and take my curds from the village by the red road near the old
banyan tree, and I will hawk it from cottage to cottage. Oh, how do you cry--"Curd, curd, good nice curd!" Teach
me the tune, will you?
Dairyman. Dear, dear, teach you the tune; what an idea!
Amal. Please do. I love to hear it. I can't tell you how queer I feel when I hear you cry out from the bend of that road,
through the line of those trees! Do you know I feel like that when I hear the shrill cry of kites from almost the end of
the sky?
Dairyman. Dear child, will you have some curds? Yes, do.
Amal. But I have no money.
Dairyman. No, no, no, don't talk of money! You'll make me so happy if you have a little curds from me.
Amal. Say, have I kept you too long?
Dairyman. Not a bit; it has been no loss to me at all; you have taught me how to be happy selling curds. [Exit]
Amal [Intoning] Curds, curds, good nice curds--from the dairy village--from the country of the Panch-mura hills by the
Shamli bank. Curds, good curds; in the early morning the women make the cows stand in a row under the trees
and milk them, and in the evening they turn the milk into curds. Curds, good curds. Hello, there's the watchman on
his rounds. Watchman, I say, come and have a word with me.
Watchman. What's all this row you are making? Aren't you afraid of the likes of me?
Amal. No, why should I be?
Watchman. Suppose I march you off then?
Amal. Where will you take me to? Is it very far, right beyond the hills?
Watchman. Suppose I march you straight to the King?
Amal. To the King! Do, will you? But the doctor won't let me go out. No one can ever take me away. I've got to stay
here all day long.
Watchman. Doctor won't let you, poor fellow! So I see! Your face is pale and there are dark rings round your eyes.
Your veins stick out from your poor thin hands.
Amal. Won't you sound the gong, Watchman?
Watchman. Time has not yet come.
Amal. How curious! Some say time has not yet come, and some say time has gone by! But surely your time will
come the moment you strike the gong!
Watchman. That's not possible; I strike up the gong only when it is time.
Amal. Yes, I love to hear your gong. When it is midday and our meal is over, Uncle goes off to his work and Auntie
falls asleep reading her Rmayana, and in the courtyard under the shadow of the wall our doggie sleeps with his
nose in his curled up tail; then your gong strikes out, "Dong, dong, dong!" Tell me why does your gong sound?
Watchman. My gong sounds to tell the people, Time waits for none, but goes on forever.
Amal. Where, to what land?
Watchman. That none knows.
Amal. Then I suppose no one has ever been there! Oh, I do wish to fly with the time to that land of which no one
knows anything.
Watchman. All of us have to get there one day, my child.
Amal. Have I too?
Watchman. Yes, you too!
Amal. But doctor won't let me out.
Watchman. One day the doctor himself may take you there by the hand.
Amal. He won't; you don't know him. He only keeps me in.
Watchman. One greater than he comes and lets us free.
Amal. When will this great doctor come for me? I can't stick in here any more.
Watchman. Shouldn't talk like that, my child.
Amal. No. I am here where they have left me--I never move a bit. But when your gong goes off, dong, dong, dong, it
goes to my heart. Say, Watchman?
Watchman. Yes, my dear.
Amal. Say, what's going on there in that big house on the other side, where there is a flag flying high up and the
people are always going in and out?
Watchman. Oh, there? That's our new Post Office.
Amal. Post Office? Whose?
Watchman. Whose? Why, the King's surely!
Amal. Do letters come from the King to his office here?
Watchman. Of course. One fine day there may be a letter for you in there.
Amal. A letter for me? But I am only a little boy.
Watchman. The King sends tiny notes to little boys.
Amal. Oh, how lovely! When shall I have my letter? How do you guess he'll write to me?
Watchman. Otherwise why should he set his Post Office here right in front of your open window, with the golden flag
flying?
Amal. But who will fetch me my King's letter when it comes?
Watchman. The King has many postmen. Don't you see them run about with round gilt badges on their chests?
Amal. Well, where do they go?
Watchman. Oh, from door to door, all through the country.
Amal. I'll be the King's postman when I grow up.
Watchman. Ha! ha! Postman, indeed! Rain or shine, rich or poor, from house to house delivering letters--that's very
great work!
Amal. That's what I'd like best. What makes you smile so? Oh, yes, your work is great too. When it is silent
everywhere in the heat of the noonday, your gong sounds, Dong, dong, dong,-- and sometimes when I wake up
at night all of a sudden and find our lamp blown out, I can hear through the darkness your gong slowly sounding,
Dong, dong, dong!
Watchman. There's the village headman! I must be off. If he catches me gossiping with you there'll be a great to do.
Amal. The headman? Whereabouts is he?
Watchman. Right down the road there; see that huge palm-leaf umbrella hopping along? That's him!
Amal. I suppose the King's made him our headman here?
Watchman. Made him? Oh, no! A fussy busy-body! He knows so many ways of making himself unpleasant that
everybody is afraid of him. It's just a game for the likes of him, making trouble for everybody. I must be off now!
Mustn't keep work waiting, you know! I'll drop in again to-morrow morning and tell you all the news of the town.
[Exit]
Amal. It would be splendid to have a letter from the King every day. I'll read them at the window. But, oh! I can't read
writing. Who'll read them out to me, I wonder! Auntie reads her Rmayana; she may know the King's writing. If no
one will, then I must keep them carefully and read them when I'm grown up. But if the postman can't find me?
Headman, Mr. Headman, may I have a word with you?
Headman. Who is yelling after me on the highway? Oh, you wretched monkey!
Amal. You're the headman. Everybody minds you.
Headman [Looking pleased] Yes, oh yes, they do! They must!
Amal. Do the King's postmen listen to you?
Headman. They've got to. By Jove, I'd like to see--
Amal. Will you tell the postman it's Amal who sits by the window here?
Headman. What's the good of that?
Amal. In case there's a letter for me.
Headman. A letter for you! Whoever's going to write to you?
Amal. If the King does.
Headman. Ha! ha! What an uncommon little fellow you are! Ha! ha! the King indeed, aren't you his bosom friend, eh!
You haven't met for a long while and the King is pining, I am sure. Wait till to-morrow and you'll have your letter.
Amal. Say, Headman, why do you speak to me in that tone of voice? Are you cross?
Headman. Upon my word! Cross, indeed! You write to the King! Madhav is devilish swell nowadays. He'd made a
little pile; and so kings and padishahs are everyday talk with his people. Let me find him once and I'll make him
dance. Oh, you snipper-snapper! I'll get the King's letter sent to your house--indeed I will!
Amal. No, no, please don't trouble yourself about it.
Headman. And why not, pray! I'll tell the King about you and he won't be very long. One of his footmen will come
along presently for news of you. Madhav's impudence staggers me. If the King hears of this, that'll take some of
his nonsense out of him. [Exit]
Amal. Who are you walking there? How your anklets tinkle! Do stop a while, dear, won't you?
[A Girl enters]
Girl. I haven't a moment to spare; it is already late!
Amal. I see, you don't wish to stop; I don't care to stay on here either.
Girl. You make me think of some late star of the morning! Whatever's the matter with you?
Amal. I don't know; the doctor won't let me out.
Girl. Ah me! Don't then! Should listen to the doctor. People'll be cross with you if you're naughty. I know, always
looking out and watching must make you feel tired. Let me close the window a bit for you.
Amal. No, don't, only this one's open! All the others are shut. But will you tell me who you are? Don't seem to know
you.
Girl. I am Sudha.
Amal. What Sudha?
Sudha. Don't you know? Daughter of the flower-seller here.
Amal. What do you do?
Sudha. I gather flowers in my basket.
Amal. Oh, flower gathering! That is why your feet seem so glad and your anklets jingle so merrily as you walk. Wish I
could be out too. Then I would pick some flowers for you from the very topmost branches right out of sight.
Sudha. Would you really? Do you know more about flowers than I?
Amal. Yes, I do, quite as much. I know all about Champa of the fairy tale and his seven brothers. If only they let me,
I'll go right into the dense forest where you can't find your way. And where the honey-sipping hummingbird rocks
himself on the end of the thinnest branch, I will flower out as a champa. Would you be my sister Parul?
Sudha. You are silly! How can I be sister Parul when I am Sudha and my mother is Sasi, the flower-seller? I have to
weave so many garlands a day. It would be jolly if I could lounge here like you!
Amal. What would you do then, all the day long?
Sudha. I could have great times with my doll Benay the bride, and Meni the pussycat and--but I say it is getting late
and I mustn't stop, or I won't find a single flower.
Amal. Oh, wait a little longer; I do like it so!
Sudha. Ah, well--now don't you be naughty. Be good and sit still and on my way back home with the flowers I'll come
and talk with you.
Amal. And you'll let me have a flower then?
Sudha. No, how can I? It has to be paid for.
Amal. I'll pay when I grow up--before I leave to look for work out on the other side of that stream there.
Sudha. Very well, then.
Amal. And you'll come back when you have your flowers?
Sudha. I will.
Amal. You will, really?
Sudha. Yes, I will.
Amal. You won't forget me? I am Amal, remember that.
Sudha. I won't forget you, you'll see. [Exit]
[A Troop of Boys enter]
Amal. Say, brothers, where are you all off to? Stop here a little.
Boys. We're off to play.
Amal. What will you play at, brothers?
Boys. We'll play at being ploughmen.
First Boy [Showing a stick] This is our ploughshare.
Second Boy. We two are the pair of oxen.
Amal. And you're going to play the whole day?
Boys. Yes, all day long.
Amal. And you'll come back home in the evening by the road along the river bank?
Boys. Yes.
Amal. Do you pass our house on your way home?
Boys. You come out to play with us, yes do.
Amal. Doctor won't let me out.
Boys. Doctor! Suppose the likes of you mind the doctor. Let's be off; it is getting late.
Amal. Don't. Why not play on the road near this window? I could watch you then.
Third Boy. What can we play at here?
Amal. With all these toys of mine lying about. Here you are, have them. I can't play alone. They are getting dirty and
are of no use to me.
Boys. How jolly! What fine toys! Look, here's a ship. There's old mother Jatai; say, chaps, ain't he a gorgeous
sepoy? And you'll let us have them all? You don't really mind?
Amal. No, not a bit; have them by all means.
Boys. You don't want them back?
Amal. Oh, no, I shan't want them.
Boys. Say, won't you get a scolding for this?
Amal. No one will scold me. But will you play with them in front of our door for a while every morning? I'll get you new
ones when these are old.
Boys. Oh, yes, we will. Say, chaps, put these sepoys into a line. We'll play at war; where can we get a musket? Oh,
look here, this bit of reed will do nicely. Say, but you're off to sleep already.
Amal. I'm afraid I'm sleepy. I don't know, I feel like it at times. I have been sitting a long while and I'm tired; my back
aches.
Boys It's only early noon now. How is it you're sleepy? Listen! The gong's sounding the first watch.
Amal. Yes, dong, dong, dong, it tolls me to sleep.
Boys We had better go then. We'll come in again to-morrow morning.
Amal. I want to ask you something before you go. You are always out--do you know of the King's postmen?
Boys Yes, quite well.
Amal. Who are they? Tell me their names.
Boys One's Badal, another's Sarat. There's so many of them.
Amal. Do you think they will know me if there's a letter for me?
Boys Surely, if your name's on the letter they will find you out.
Amal. When you call in to-morrow morning, will you bring one of them along so that he'll know me?
Boys Yes, if you like.


CURTAIN

THE POST OFFICE
ACT II
[Amal in Bed]
Amal. Can't I go near the window to-day, Uncle? Would the doctor mind that too?
Madhav. Yes, darling, you see you've made yourself worse squatting there day after day.
Amal. Oh, no, I don't know if it's made me more ill, but I always feel well when I'm there.
Madhav. No, you don't; you squat there and make friends with the whole lot of people round here, old and young, as
if they are holding a fair right under my eaves--flesh and blood won't stand that strain. Just see--your face is quite
pale.
Amal. Uncle, I fear my fakir'll pass and not see me by the window.
Madhav. Your fakir, whoever's that?
Amal. He comes and chats to me of the many lands where he's been. I love to hear him.
Madhav. How's that? I don't know of any fakirs.
Amal. This is about the time he comes in. I beg of you, by your dear feet, ask him in for a moment to talk to me here.
[Gaffer Enters in a Fakir's Guise]
Amal. There you are. Come here, Fakir, by my bedside.
Madhav. Upon my word, but this is--
Gaffer [Winking hard] I am the fakir.
Madhav. It beats my reckoning what you're not.
Amal. Where have you been this time, Fakir?
Fakir To the Isle of Parrots. I am just back.
Madhav. The Parrots' Isle!
Fakir. Is it so very astonishing? Am I like you, man? A journey doesn't cost a thing. I tramp just where I like.
Amal [Clapping] How jolly for you! Remember your promise to take me with you as your follower when I'm well.
Fakir. Of course, and I'll teach you such secrets too of travelling that nothing in sea or forest or mountain can bar
your way.
Madhav. What's all this rigmarole?
Gaffer. Amal, my dear, I bow to nothing in sea or mountain; but if the doctor joins in with this uncle of yours, then I
with all my magic must own myself beaten.
Amal. No. Uncle shan't tell the doctor. And I promise to lie quiet; but the day I am well, off I go with the Fakir and
nothing in sea or mountain or torrent shall stand in my way.
Madhav. Fie, dear child, don't keep on harping upon going! It makes me so sad to hear you talk so.
Amal. Tell me, Fakir, what the Parrots' Isle is like.
Gaffer. It's a land of wonders; it's a haunt of birds. There's no man; and they neither speak nor walk, they simply sing
and they fly.
Amal. How glorious! And it's by some sea?
Gaffer. Of course. It's on the sea.
Amal. And green hills are there?
Gaffer. Indeed, they live among the green hills; and in the time of the sunset when there is a red glow on the hillside,
all the birds with their green wings flock back to their nests.
Amal. And there are waterfalls!
Gaffer. Dear me, of course; you don't have a hill without its waterfalls. Oh, it's like molten diamonds; and, my dear,
what dances they have! Don't they make the pebbles sing as they rush over them to the sea. No devil of a doctor
can stop them for a moment. The birds looked upon me as nothing but a man, quite a trifling creature without
wings--and they would have nothing to do with me. Were it not so I would build a small cabin for myself among
their crowd of nests and pass my days counting the sea waves.
Amal. How I wish I were a bird! Then--
Gaffer. But that would have been a bit of a job; I hear you've fixed up with the dairyman to be a hawker of curds
when you grow up; I'm afraid such business won't flourish among birds; you might land yourself into serious loss.
Madhav. Really this is too much. Between you two I shall turn crazy. Now, I'm off.
Amal. Has the dairyman been, Uncle?
Madhav. And why shouldn't he? He won't bother his head running errands for your pet fakir, in and out among
the nests in his Parrots' Isle. But he has left a jar of curd for you saying that he is rather busy with his niece's
wedding in the village, and he has got to order a band at Kamlipara.
Amal. But he is going to marry me to his little niece.
Gaffer. Dear me, we are in a fix now.
Amal. He said she would find me a lovely little bride with a pair of pearl drops in her ears and dressed in a lovely
red sree; and in the morning she would milk with her own hands the black cow and feed me with warm milk with
foam on it from a brand new earthen cruse; and in the evenings she would carry the lamp round the cow-house,
and then come and sit by me to tell me tales of Champa and his six brothers.
Gaffer. How delicious! The prospect tempts even me, a hermit! But never mind, dear, about this wedding. Let it be. I
tell you when you wed there'll be no lack of nieces in his household.
Madhav. Shut up! This is more than I can stand. [Exit]
Amal. Fakir, now that Uncle's off, just tell me, has the King sent me a letter to the Post Office?
Gaffer. I gather that his letter has already started; but it's still on the way.
Amal. On the way? Where is it? Is it on that road winding through the trees which you can follow to the end of the
forest when the sky is quite clear after rain?
Gaffer. That's so. You know all about it already.
Amal. I do, everything.
Gaffer. So I see, but how?
Amal. I can't say; but it's quite clear to me. I fancy I've seen it often in days long gone by. How long ago I can't
tell. Do you know when? I can see it all: there, the King's postman coming down the hillside alone, a lantern in his
left hand and on his back a bag of letters climbing down for ever so long, for days and nights, and where at the
foot of the mountain the waterfall becomes a stream he takes to the footpath on the bank and walks on through
the rye; then comes the sugarcane field and he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of
sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be
seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and
nearer and my heart becomes glad.
Gaffer. My eyes aren't young; but you make me see all the same.
Amal. Say, Fakir, do you know the King who has this Post Office?
Gaffer. I do; I go to him for my alms every day.
Amal. Good! When I get well, I must have my alms too from him, mayn't I?
Gaffer. You won't need to ask, my dear, he'll give it to you of his own accord.
Amal. No, I would go to his gate and cry, "Victory to thee, O King!" and dancing to the tabor's sound, ask for alms.
Won't it be nice?
Gaffer. It would be splendid, and if you're with me, I shall have my full share. But what'll you ask?
Amal. I shall say, "Make me your postman, that I may go about lantern in hand, delivering your letters from door to
door. Don't let me stay at home all day!"
Gaffer. What is there to be sad for, my child, even were you to stay at home?
Amal. It isn't sad. When they shut me in here first I felt the day was so long. Since the King's Post Office I like it more
and more being indoors, and as I think I shall get a letter one day, I feel quite happy and then I don't mind being
quiet and alone. I wonder if I shall make out what'll be in the King's letter?
Gaffer. Even if you didn't wouldn't it be enough if it just bore your name?
[Madhav enters]
Madhav. Have you any idea of the trouble you've got me into, between you two?
Gaffer. What's the matter?
Madhav. I hear you've let it get rumored about that the King has planted his office here to send messages to both of
you.
Gaffer. Well, what about it?
Madhav. Our headman Panchanan has had it told to the King anonymously.
Gaffer. Aren't we aware that everything reaches the King's ears?
Madhav. Then why don't you look out? Why take the King's name in vain? You'll bring me to ruin if you do.
Amal. Say, Fakir, will the King be cross?
Gaffer. Cross, nonsense! And with a child like you and a fakir such as I am. Let's see if the King be angry, and then
won't I give him a piece of my mind.
Amal. Say, Fakir, I've been feeling a sort of darkness coming over my eyes since the morning. Everything seems like
a dream. I long to be quiet. I don't feel like talking at all. Won't the King's letter come? Suppose this room melts
away all on a sudden, suppose--
Gaffer [Fanning Amal] The letter's sure to come to-day, my boy.
[Doctor enters]
Doctor And how do you feel to-day?
Amal. Feel awfully well to-day, Doctor. All pain seems to have left me.
Doctor [Aside to Madhav] Don't quite like the look of that smile. Bad sign that, his feeling well! Chakradhan has
observed--
Madhav. For goodness sake, Doctor, leave Chakradhan alone. Tell me what's going to happen?
Doctor. Can't hold him in much longer, I fear! I warned you before--This looks like a fresh exposure.
Madhav. No, I've used the utmost care, never let him out of doors; and the windows have been shut almost all the
time.
Doctor. There's a peculiar quality in the air to-day. As I came in I found a fearful draught through your front door.
That's most hurtful. Better lock it at once. Would it matter if this kept your visitors off for two or three days? If
someone happens to call unexpectedly--there's the back door. You had better shut this window as well, it's letting
in the sunset rays only to keep the patient awake.
Madhav. Amal has shut his eyes. I expect he is sleeping. His face tells me--Oh, Doctor, I bring in a child who is a
stranger and love him as my own, and now I suppose I must lose him!
Doctor. What's that? There's your headman sailing in!--What a bother! I must be going, brother. You had better stir
about and see to the doors being properly fastened. I will send on a strong dose directly I get home. Try it on him--
it may save him at last, if he can be saved at all. [Exeunt Madhav and Doctor.]
[The Headman enters]
Headman. Hello, urchin!
Gaffer [Rising hastily] 'Sh, be quiet.
Amal. No, Fakir, did you think I was asleep? I wasn't. I can hear everything; yes, and voices far away. I feel that
mother and father are sitting by my pillow and speaking to me.
[Madhav enters]
Headman. I say, Madhav, I hear you hobnob with bigwigs nowadays.
Madhav. Spare me your jests, Headman, we are but common people.
Headman. But your child here is expecting a letter from the King.
Madhav. Don't you take any notice of him, a mere foolish boy!
Headman. Indeed, why not! It'll beat the King hard to find a better family! Don't you see why the King plants his new
Post Office right before your win- dow? Why there's a letter for you from the King, urchin.
Amal [Starting up] Indeed, really!
Headman. How can it be false? You're the King's chum. Here's your letter [showing a blank slip of paper]. Ha, ha,
ha! This is the letter.
Amal. Please don't mock me. Say, Fakir, is it so?
Gaffer. Yes, my dear. I as Fakir tell you it is his letter.
Amal. How is it I can't see? It all looks so blank to me. What is there in the letter, Mr. Headman?
Headman. The King says, "I am calling on you shortly; you had better arrange puffed rice offerings for me.--Palace
fare is quite tasteless to me now." Ha! ha! ha!
Madhav [With folded palms] I beseech you, headman, don't you joke about these things--
Gaffer. Cutting jokes indeed, dare he!
Madhav. Are you out of your mind too, Gaffer?
Gaffer. Out of my mind, well then I am; I can read plainly that the King writes he will come himself to see Amal, with
the state physician.
Amal. Fakir, Fakir, 'sh, his trumpet! Can't you hear?
Headman. Ha! ha! ha! I fear he won't until he's a bit more off his head.
Amal. Mr. Headman, I thought you were cross with me and didn't love me. I never could think you would fetch me the
King's letter. Let me wipe the dust off your feet.
Headman. This little child does have an instinct of reverence. Though a little silly, he has a good heart.
Amal. It's hard on the fourth watch now, I suppose--Hark the gong, "Dong, dong, ding," "Dong, dong, ding." Is the
evening star up? How is it I can't see--
Gaffer. Oh, the windows are all shut, I'll open them.
[A knocking outside]
Madhav. What's that?--Who is it--what a bother!
Voice [From outside] Open the door.
Madhav Say, Headman--Hope they're not robbers.
Headman Who's there?--It's Panchanan, the headman, calls--Aren't you afraid of the like of me? Fancy! The noise
has ceased! Panchanan's voice carries far.--Yes, show me the biggest robbers!
Madhav [Peering out of the window] I should think the noise has ceased. they've smashed the door.
[The King's Herald enters]
Herald. Our Sovereign King comes to-night!
Headman. My God!
Amal. At what hour of the night, Herald?
Herald. On the second watch.
Amal. When from the city gates my friend the watchman will strike his gong, "ding dong ding, ding dong ding"--then?
Herald. Yes, then. The King sends his greatest physician to attend on his young friend.
[State Physician enters]
State Physician. What's this? How close it is here! Open wide all the doors and windows. [Feeling Amal's body] How
do you feel, my child?
Amal. I feel very well, Doctor, very well. All pain is gone. How fresh and open! I can see all the stars now twinkling
from the other side of the dark.
Physician. Will you feel well enough to leave your bed with the King when he comes in the middle watches of the
night?
Amal. Of course, I'm dying to be about for ever so long. I'll ask the King to find me the polar star.--I must have seen it
often, but I don't know exactly which it is.
Physician. He will tell you everything. [To Madhav] Will you go about and arrange flowers through the room for the
King's visit? [Indicating the Headman] We can't have that person in here.
Amal. No, let him be, Doctor. He is a friend. It was he who brought me the King's letter.
Physician. Very well, my child. He may remain if he is a friend of yours.
Madhav [Whispering into Amal's ear] My child, the King loves you. He is coming himself. Beg for a gift from him. You
know our humble circumstances.
Amal. Don't you worry, Uncle.--I've made up my mind about it.
Madhav. What is it, my child?
Amal. I shall ask him to make me one of his postmen that I may wander far and wide, delivering his message from
door to door.
Madhav [Slapping his forehead] Alas, is that all?
Amal. What'll be our offerings to the King, Uncle, when he comes?
Herald. He has commanded puffed rice.
Amal. Puffed rice! Say, Headman, you're right. You said so. You knew all we didn't.
Headman. If you send word to my house then I could manage for the King's advent really nice--
Physician. No need at all. Now be quiet all of you. Sleep is coming over him. I'll sit by his pillow; he's dropping into
slumber. Blow out the oil-lamp. Only let the star-light stream in. Hush, he slumbers.
Madhav [Addressing Gaffer] What are you standing there for like a statue, folding your palms.--I am nervous.--Say,
are they good omens? Why are they darkening the room? How will star-light help?
Gaffer. Silence, unbeliever.
[Sudha enters]
Sudha. Amal!
Physician. He's asleep.
Sudha. I have some flowers for him. Mayn't I give them into his own hand?
Physician. Yes, you may.
Sudha. When will he be awake?
Physician. Directly the King comes and calls him.
Sudha. Will you whisper a word for me in his ear?
Physician. What shall I say?
Sudha. Tell him Sudha has not forgotten him.




CURTAIN











































Baby's World
Rabindranath Tagore

I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby's very own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds
and rainbows.
Those who make believe to be dumb, and look as if they never could move, come creeping to his window
with their stories and with trays crowded with bright toys.
I wish I could travel by the road that crosses baby's mind, and out beyond all bounds;
Where messengers run errands for no cause between the kingdoms of kings of no history;
Where Reason makes kites of her laws and flies them, and Truth sets Fact free from its fetters.






















"We Crown Thee King"
Rabindranath Tagore

When Nabendu Sekhar was wedded to Arunlekha, the God of marriage smiled from behind the sacrificial
fire. Alas! what is sport for the gods is not always a joke to us poor mortals.

Purnendu Sekhar, the father of Nabendu, was a man well known amongst the English officials of the
Government. In the voyage of life he had arrived at the desert shores of Rai Bahadurship by diligently
plying his oats of salaams. He held in reserve enough for further advancement, but at the age of fifty-five,
his tender gaze still fixed on the misty peals of Raja-hood, he suddenly found himself transported to a
region where earthly honours and decorations are naught, and his salaam-wearied neck found everlasting
repose on the funeral pyre.

According to modern science, force is not destroyed, but is merely converted to another form, and applied
to another point. So Purnendu's salaam-force, constant handmaid of the fickle Goddess of Fortune,
descended from the shoulder of the father to that of his worthy son; and the youthful head of Nabendu
Sekhar began to move up and down, at the doors of high-placed Englishmen, like a pumpkin swayed by
the wind.

The traditions of the family into which he had married were entirely different. Its eldest son, Pramathanath,
had won for himself the love of his kinsfolk and the regard of all who knew him. His kinsmen and his
neighbours looked up to him as their ideal in all things.

Pramathanath was a Bachelor of Arts, and in addition was gifted with common sense. But he held no high
official position; he had no handsome salary; nor did he exert any influence with his pen. There was no one
in power to lend him a helping hand, because he desired to keep away from Englishmen, as much as they
desired to keep away from him. So it happened that he shone only within the sphere of his family and his
friends, and excited no admiration beyond it.

Yet this Pramathanath had once sojourned in England for some three years. The kindly treatment he
received during his stay there overpowered him so much that he forgot the sorrow and the humiliation of his
own country, and came back dressed in European clothes. This rather grieved his brothers and his sisters
at first, but after a few days they began to think that European clothes suited nobody better, and gradually
they came to share his pride and dignity.

On his return from England, Pramathanath resolved that he would show the world how to associate with
Anglo-Indians on terms of equality. Those of our countrymen who think that no such association is possible,
unless we bend our knees to them, showed their utter lack of self-respect, and were also unjust to the
English-so thought Pramathanath.

He brought with him letters of introduction from many distinguished Englishmen at home, and these gave
him some recognition in Anglo-Indian society. He and his wife occasionally enjoyed English hospitality at
tea, dinner, sports and other entertainments. Such good luck intoxicated him, and began to produce a
tingling sensation in every vein of his body.

About this time, at the opening of a new railway line, many of the town, proud recipients of official favour,
were invited by the Lieutenant-Governor to take the first trip. Pramathanath was among them. On the return
journey, a European Sergeant of the Police expelled some Indian gentlemen from a railway-carriage with
great insolence. Pramathanath, dressed in his European clothes, was there. He, too, was getting out, when
the Sergeant said: " You needn't move, sir. Keep your seat, please."

At first Pramathanath felt flattered at the special respect thus shown to him. When, however, the train went
on, the dull rays of the setting sun, at the west of the fields, now ploughed up and stripped of green,
seemed in his eyes to spread a glow of shame over the whole country. Sitting near the window of his lonely
compartment, he seemed to catch a glimpse of the down-cast eyes of his Motherland, hidden behind the
trees. As Pramathanath sat there, lost in reverie, burning tears flowed down his cheeks, and his heart burst
with indignation.

He now remembered the story of a donkey who was drawing the chariot of an idol along the street. The
wayfarers bowed down to the idol, and touched the dusty ground with their foreheads. The foolish donkey
imagined that all this reverence was being shown to him. "The only difference," said Pramathanath to
himself, " between the donkey and myself is this: I understand to-day that the respect I receive is not given
to me but to the burden on my back."

Arriving home, Pramathanath called together all the children of the household, and lighting a big bonfire,
threw all his European clothes into it one by one. The children danced round and round it, and the higher
the flames shot up, the greater was their merriment. After that, Pramathanath gave up his sip of tea and
bits of toast in Anglo-Indian houses, and once again sat inaccessible within the castle of his house, while
his insulted friends went about from the door of one Englishman to that of another, bending their turbaned
heads as before.

By an irony of fate, poor Nabendu Sekhar married the second daughter of this house. His sisters-in-law
were well educated and handsome. Nabendu considered he had made a lucky bargain. But he lost no time
in trying to impress on the family that it was a rare bargain on their side also. As if by mistake, he would
often hand to his sisters-in-law sundry letters that his late father had received from Europeans. And when
the cherry lips of those young ladies smiled sarcastically, and the point of a shining dagger peeped out of
its sheath of red velvet, the unfortunate man saw his folly, and regretted it.

Labanyalekha, the eldest sister, surpassed the rest in beauty and cleverness. Finding an auspicious day,
she put on the mantel-shelf of Nabendu's bedroom two pairs of English boots, daubed with vermilion, and
arranged flowers, sandal-paste, incense and a couple of burning candles before them in true ceremonial
fashion. When Nabendu came in, the two sisters-in-law stood on either side of him, and said with mock
solemnity: "Bow down to your gods, and may you prosper through their blessings."

The third sister Kiranlekha spent many days in embroidering with red silk one hundred common English
names such as Jones, Smith, Brown, Thomson, etc., on a chadar. When it was ready, she presented this
namavoli (A namavoli is a sheet of cloth printed all over with the names of Hindu gods and goddesses and
worn by pious Hindus when engaged in devotional exercises.) to Nabendu Sekhar with great ceremony.
The fourth, Sasankalekha, of tender age and therefore of no account, said: " I will make you a string of
beads, brother, with which to tell the names of your gods-the sahibs." Her sisters reproved her, saying:
"Run away, you saucy girl."

Feelings of shame and irritation assailed by turns the mind of Nabendu Sekhar. Still he could not forego the
company of his sisters-in-law, especially as the eldest one was beautiful. Her honey was no less than her
gall, and Nabendu's mind tasted at once the sweetness of the one and the bitterness of the other. The
butterfly, with its bruised wings, buzzes round the flower in blind fury, unable to depart.

The society of his sisters-in-Law so much infatuated him that at last Nabendu began to disavow his craving
for European favours. When he went to salaam the Burra Sahib, he used to pretend that he was going to
listen to a speech by Mr. Surendranath Banerjea. When he went to the railway station to pay respects to
the Chota Sahib, returning from Darjeeling, he would tell his sisters-in-law that he expected his youngest
uncle.

It was a sore trial to the unhappy man placed between the cross-fires of his Sahibs and his sisters-in-law.
The sisters-in-law, however, secretly vowed that they would not rest till the Sahibs had been put to rout.
About this time it was rumoured that Nabendu's name would be included in the forthcoming list of Birthday
honours, and that he would mount the first step of the ladder to Paradise by becoming a Rai Bahadur. The
poor fellow had not the courage to break the joyful news to his sisters-in-law. One evening, however, when
the autumn moon was flooding the earth with its mischievous beams, Nabendu's heart was so full that he
could not contain himself any longer, and he told his wife. The next day, Mrs. Nabendu betook herself to
her eldest sister's house in a palanquin, and in a voice choked with tears bewailed her lot.

"He isn't going to grow a tail," said Labanya, "by becoming a Rai Bahadur, is he? Why should you feel so
very humiliated? "

"Oh, no, sister dear," replied Arunlekha, "I am prepared to be anything--but not a Rai-Baha-durni.'' The fact
was that in her circle of acquaintances there was one Bhutnath Babu, who was a Rai Bahadur, and that
explained her intense aversion to that title.

Labanya said to her sister in soothing tones: " Don't be upset about it, dear; I will see what I can do to
prevent it"

Babu Nilratan, the husband of Labanya, was a pleader at Buxar. When the autumn was over, Nabendu
received an invitation from Labanya to pay them a visit, and he started for Buxar greatly pleased.

The early winter of the western province endowed Labanyalekha with new health and beauty, and brought
a glowing colour to her pale cheeks, She looked like the flower-laden kasa reeds on a clear autumn day,
growing by the lonely bank of a rivulet. To Nabendu's enchanted eyes she appeared like a malati plant in
full blossom, showering dew-drops brilliant with the morning light.

Nabendu had never felt better in his life. The exhilaration of his own health and the genial company of his
pretty sister-in-law made him think himself light enough to tread on air. The Ganges in front of the garden
seemed to him to be flowing ceaselessly to regions unknown, as though it gave shape to his own wild
fantasies.

As he returned in the early morning from his walk on the bank of the river, the mellow rays of the winter sun
gave his whole frame that pleasing sensation of warmth which lovers feel in each other's arms. Coming
home, he would now and then find his sister-in-Law amusing herself by cooking some dishes. He would
offer his help, and display his want of skill and ignorance at every step. But Nabendu did not appear to be
at all anxious to improve himself by practice and attention. On the contrary he thoroughly enjoyed the
rebukes he received from his sister-in-law. He was at great pains to prove every day that he was inefficient
and helpless as a new-born babe in mixing spices, handling the saucepan, and regulating the heat so as to
prevent things getting burnt-and he was duly rewarded with pitiful smiles and scoldings.

In the middle of the day he ate a great deal of the good food set before him, incited by his keen appetite
and the coaxing of his sister-in-law. Later on, he would sit down to a game of cards--at which he betrayed
the same lack of ability. He would cheat, pry into his adversary's hand, quarrel--but never did he win a
single rubber, and worse still, he would not acknowledge defeat. This brought him abuse every day, and
still he remained incorrigible.

There was, however, one matter in which his reform was complete. For the time at least, he had forgotten
that to win the smiles of Sahibs was the final goal of life. He was beginning to understand how happy and
worthy we might feel by winning the affection and esteem of those near and dear to us.

Besides, Nabendu was now moving in a new atmosphere. Labanya's husband, Babu Nilratan, a leader of
the bar, was reproached by many, because he refused to pay his respects to European officials. To all such
reproaches Nilratan would reply: "No, thank you, --if they are not polite enough to return my call, then the
politeness I offer them is a loss that can never be made up for. The sands of the desert may be very white
and shiny, but I would much rather sow my seeds in black soil, where I can expect a return."

And Nabendu began to adopt similar ideas, all regardless of the future. His chance of Rai Bahadurship
throve on the soil carefully prepared by his late father and also by himself in days gone by, nor was any
fresh watering required. Had he not at great expense laid out a splendid race-course in a town, which was
a fashionable resort of Europeans?

When the time of Congress drew near, Nilratan received a request from head-quarters to collect
subscriptions. Nabendu, free from anxiety, was merrily engaged in a game of cards with his sister-in. law,
when Nilratan Babu came upon him with a subscription-book in his hand, and said: "Your signature,
please."

>From old habit Nabendu looked horrified. Labanya, assuming an air of great concern and anxiety, said:
"Never do that. It would ruin your racecourse beyond repair."

Nabendu blurted out: "Do you suppose I pass sleepless nights through fear of that?"
"We won't publish your name in the papers," said Nilratan reassuringly.

Labanya, looking grave and anxious, said: "Still, it wouldn't be safe. Things spread so, from mouth to mouth
"
Nabendu replied with vehemence: "My name wouldn't suffer by appearing in the newspapers." So saying,
he snatched the subscription list from Nilratan's hand, and signed away a thousand rupees. Secretly he
hoped that the papers would not publish the news.

Labanya struck her forehead with her palm and gasped out: What--have you--done?"
"Nothing wrong," said Nabendu boastfully.

"Butbut--," drawled Labanya, "the Guard sahib of Sealdah Station, the shop-assistant at Whiteaway's, the
syce-sahib of Hart Bros.--these gentlemen might be angry with you, and decline to come to your Poojah
dinner to drink your champagne, you know. Just think, they mightn't pat you on the back, when you meet
them again!"

"It wouldn't break my heart," Nabendu snapped out.

A few days passed. One morning Nabendu was sipping his tea, and glancing at a newspaper. Suddenly a
letter signed "X" caught his eye. The writer thanked him profusely for his donation, and declared that the
increase of strength the Congress had acquired by having such a man within its fold, was inestimable.
Alas, father Purnendu Sekhar! Was it to increase the strength of the Congress, that you brought this wretch
into the world?

Put the cloud of misfortune had its silver lining. That he was not a mere cypher was clear from the fact that
the Anglo-Indian community on the one side and the Congress on the other were each waiting patiently,
eager to hook him, and land him on their own side. So Nabendu, beaming with pleasure took the paper to
his sister-in-law, and showed her the letter. Looking as though she knew nothing about it, Labanya
exclaimed in surprise: "Oh, what a pity! Everything has come out! Who bore you such ill-will? Oh, how cruel
of him, how wicked of him!"

Nabendu laughed out, saying: " Now--nowdon't call him names, Labanya. I forgive him with all my heart,
and bless him too."

A couple of days after this, an anti-Congress Anglo-Indian paper reached Nabendu through the post. There
was a letter in it, signed "One who knows," and contradicting the above report. "Those who have the
pleasure of Babu Nabendu Sekhar's personal acquaintance," the writer went on, "cannot for a moment
believe this absurd libel to be true. For him to turn a Congresswalla is as impossible as it is for the leopard
to change his spots. He is a man of genuine worth, and neither a disappointed candidate for Government
employ nor a briefless barrister. He is not one of those who, after a brief sojourn in England, return aping
our dress and manners, audaciously try to thrust themselves on Anglo-Indian society, and finally go back in
dejection. So there is absolutely no reason why Balm Nabendu Sekhar," etc., etc.

Ah, father Purnendu Sekhar! What a reputation you had made with the Europeans before you died!
This letter also was paraded before his sister-in-law, for did it not assert that he was no mean, contemptible
scallywag, but a man of real worth?

Labanya exclaimed again in feigned surprise: "Which of your friends wrote it now? Oh, come--is it the
Ticket Collector, or the hide merchant, or is it the drum-major of the Fort? "

"You ought to send in a contradiction, I think," said Nilratan.

"Is it necessary?" said Nabendu loftily. Must I contradict every little thing they choose to say against me? "
Labanya filled the room with a deluge of laughter. Nabendu felt a little disconcerted at this, and said: "Why?
What's the matter?" She went on laughing, unable to check herself, and her youthful slender form waved to
and fro. This torrent of merriment had the effect of overthrowing Nabendu completely, and he said in
pitiable accents: "Do you imagine that I am afraid to contradict it?"

"Oh, dear, no," said Labanya; "I was thinking that you haven't yet ceased trying to save that race-course of
yours, so full of promise. While there is life, there is hope, you know."

"That's what I am afraid of, you think, do you? Very well, you shall see," said Nabendu desperately, and
forthwith sat down to write his contradiction. When he had finished, Labanya and Nilratan read it through,
and said: "It isn't strong enough. We must give it them pretty hot, mustn't we?" And they kindly undertook to
revise the composition. Thus it ran: "When one connected to us by ties of blood turns our enemy he
becomes far more dangerous than any outsider. To the Government of India, the haughty Anglo-Indians
are worse enemies than the Russians or the frontier Pathans themselves--they are the impenetrable
barrier, forever hindering the growth of any bond of friendship between the Government and people of the
country. It is the Congress which has opened up the royal road to a better understanding between the
rulers and the ruled, and the Anglo-Indian papers have planted themselves like thorns across the whole
breadth of that road," etc., etc.

Nabendu had an inward fear as to the mischief this letter might do, but at the same time he felt elated at the
excellence of its composition, which he fondly imagined to be his own. It was duly published, and for some
days comments, replies, and rejoinders went on in various newspapers, and the air was full of trumpet-
notes, proclaiming the fact that Nabendu had joined the Congress, and the amount of his subscription.
Nabendu, now grown desperate, talked as though he was a patriot of the fiercest type. Labanya laughed
inwardly, and said to herself: "Well- well--you have to pass through the ordeal of fire yet."

One morning when Nabendu, before his bath, had finished rubbing oil over his chest, and was trying
various devices to reach the inaccessible portions of his back, the bearer brought in a card inscribed with
the name of the District Magistrate himself! Good heavens!--What would he do? He could not possibly go,
and receive the Magistrate Sahib, thus oil-besmeared. He shook and twitched like a koi-fish, ready dressed
for the frying pan. He finished his bath in a great hurry, tugged on his clothes somehow, and ran
breathlessly to the outer apartments. The bearer said that the Sahib had just left after waiting for a long
time. How much of the blame for concocting this drama of invented incidents may be set down to Labanya,
and how much to the bearer is a nice problem for ethical mathematics to solve.

Nabendu's heart was convulsed with pain within his breast, like the tail of a lizard just cut off. He moped like
an owl all day long.

Labanya banished all traces of inward merriment from her face, and kept on enquiring in anxious tones:
"What has happened to you? You are not ill, I hope?"

Nabendu made great efforts to smile, and find a humorous reply. "How can there be," he managed to say,
"any illness within your jurisdiction, since you yourself are the Goddess of Health?"

But the smile soon flickered out. His thoughts were: "I subscribed to the Congress fund to begin with,
published a nasty letter in a newspaper, and on the top of that, when the Magistrate Sahib himself did me
the honour to call on me, I kept him waiting. I wonder what he is thinking of me."

Alas, father Purnendu Sekhar, by an irony of Fate I am made to appear what I am not.

The next morning, Nabendu decked himself in his best clothes, wore his watch and chain, and put a big
turban on his head.

"Where are you off to?" enquired his sister-in-law.
"Urgent business," Nabendu replied. Labanya kept quiet.
Arriving at the Magistrate's gate, he took out his card-case.
"You cannot see him now," said the orderly peon icily.
Nabendu took out a couple of rupees from his pocket. The peon at once salaamed him and said: "There
are five of us, sir." Immediately Nabendu pulled out a ten-rupee note, and handed it to him.

He was sent for by the Magistrate, who was writing in his dressing-gown and bedroom slippers. Nabendu
salaamed him. The Magistrate pointed to a chair with his finger, and without raising his eyes from the paper
before him said: "What can I do for you, Babu?"

Fingering his watch-chain nervously, Nabendu said is shaky tones: "Yesterday you were good enough to
call at my place, sir"

The Sahib knitted his brows, and, lifting just one eye from his paper, said: "I called at your place! Babu,
what nonsense are you talking?"

"Beg your pardon, sir," faltered out Nabendu. There has been a mistake-- some confusion," and wet with
perspiration, he tumbled out of the room somehow. And that night, as he lay tossing on his bed, a distant
dream-like voice came into his ear with a recurring persistency: "Babu, you are a howling idiot."
On his way home, Nabendu came to the conclusion that the Magistrate denied having called, simply
because he was highly offended.

So he explained to Labanya that he had been out purchasing rose-water. No sooner had he uttered the
words than half-a-dozen chuprassis wearing the Collectorate badge made their appearance, and after
salaaming Nabendu, stood there grinning.

"Have they come to arrest you because you subscribed to the Congress fund?" whispered Labanya with a
smile.

The six peons displayed a dozen rows of teeth and said: Bakshish-- Babu-Sahib."
>From a side room Nilratan came out, and said in an irritated manner: "Bakshish? What for?"
The peons, grinning as before, answered: "The Babu-Sahib went to see the Magistrate--so we have come
for bakshish"

"I didn't know," laughed out Labanya, "that the Magistrate was selling rose-water nowadays. Coolness
wasn't the special feature of his trade before."

Nabendu in trying to reconcile the story of his purchase with his visit to the Magistrate, uttered some
incoherent words, which nobody could make sense of

Nilratan spoke to the peons: "There has been no occasion for bakshish; you shan't have it."
Nabendu said, feeling very small: "Oh, they are poor men--what's the harm of giving them something?" And
he took out a currency note. Nilratan snatched it way from Nabendu's hand, remarking: "There are poorer
men in the world--I will give it to them for you."

Nabendu felt greatly distressed that he was not able to appease these ghostly retainers of the angry Siva.
When the peons were leaving, with thunder in their eyes, he looked at them languishingly, as much as to
say: "You know everything, gentlemen, it is not my fault."

The Congress was to be held at Calcutta this year. Nilratan went down thither with his wife to attend the
sittings. Nabendu accompanied them.

As soon as they arrived at Calcutta, the Congress party surrounded Nabendu, and their delight and
enthusiasm knew no bounds. They cheered him, honoured him, and extolled him up to the skies.
Everybody said that, unless leading men like Nabendu devoted themselves to the Cause, there was no
hope for the country. Nabendu was disposed to agree with them, and emerged out of the chaos of mistake
and confusion as a leader of the country. When he entered the Congress Pavilion on the first day,
everybody stood up, and shouted " Hip, hip, hurrah," in a loud outlandish voice, hearing which our
Motherland reddened with shame to the root of her ears.

In due time the Queen's birthday came, and Nabendu's name was not found in the list of Rai Bahadurs.
He received an invitation from Labanya for that evening. When he arrived there, Labanya with great pomp
and ceremony presented him with a robe of honour, and with her own hand put a mark of red sandal paste
on the middle of his forehead. Each of the other sisters threw round his neck a garland of flowers woven by
herself. Decked in a pink Sari and dazzling jewels, his wife Arunlekha was waiting in a side room, her face
lit up with smiles and blushes. Her sisters rushed to her, and, placing another garland in her hand, insisted
that she also should come, and do her part in the ceremony, but she would not listen to it; and that principal
garland, cherishing a desire for Nabendu's neck, waited patiently for the still secrecy of midnight.

The sisters said to Nabendu : "To-day we crown thee King. Such honour will not be done to any body else
in Hindoostan."

Whether Nabendu derived any consolation from this, he alone can tell; but we greatly doubt it. We believe,
in fact, that he will become a Rai Bahadur before he has done, and the Englishman and the Pioneer will
write heart-rending articles lamenting his demise at the proper time. So, in the meanwhile, Three Cheers for
Babu Purnendu Sekhar! Hip, hip, hurrah--Hip, hip, hurrah--Hip, hip, hurrah.

_________ -THE END- Rabindranath Tagore's short story: "We Crown Thee King"














ARTICLE ABOUT RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Labelling Tagore as an Anglo-Indian poet, this presentation speech, spills out that the Nobel prize was not given to
him just for his literary excellence.
It was because he was perceived to be a poet who was far removed from traditional oriental philosophy, was
a member of the Brahmo Samaj (enlightened, because it was not a sect of ancient Hindu type!), who could be
considered as a product of the world-wide rejuvenating force of the Christian mission and a master of the poetic art
that was a never-failing concomitant of the expansion of the British civilization.
Such colonial zealots! Even the Bhakti movement was claimed to be influenced and refined by Christianity!!
The Nobel Pri ze i n Li terat ure 1913: Presentati on Speech

Presentation Speech by Harald Hjrne, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of theSwedish Academy, on
December 10, 1913
In awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to the Anglo-Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, the Academy has found
itself in the happy position of being able to accord this recognition to an author who, in conformity with the express
wording of Alfred Nobels last will and testament, had during the current year, written the finest poems of an
idealistic tendency. Moreover, after exhaustive and conscientious deliberation, having concluded that these poems
of his most nearly approach the prescribed standard, the Academy thought that there was no reason to hesitate
because the poets name was still comparatively unknown in Europe, due to the distant location of his home. There
was even less reason since the founder of the Prize laid it down in set terms as his express wish and desire that, in
the awarding of the Prize, no consideration should be paid to the nationality to which any proposed candidate might
belong.
Tagores Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), a collection of religious poems, was the one of his works that especially
arrested the attention of the selecting critics. Since last year the book, in a real and full sense, has belonged to
English literature, for the author himself, who by education and practice is a poet in his native Indian tongue, has
bestowed upon the poems a new dress, alike perfect in form and personally original in inspiration. This has made
them accessible to all in England, America, and the entire Western world for whom noble literature is of interest and
moment. Quite independently of any knowledge of his Bengali poetry, irrespective, too, of differences of religious
faiths, literary schools, or party aims, Tagore has been hailed from various quarters as a new and admirable
master of that poetic art which has been a never-failing concomitant of the expansion of British
civilization ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth. The features of this poetry that won immediate and enthusiastic
admiration are the perfection with which the poets own ideas and those he has borrowed have been harmonized into
a complete whole; his rhythmically balanced style, that, to quote an English critics opinion, combines at once the
feminine grace of poetry with the virile power of prose; his austere, by some termed classic, taste in the choice of
words and his use of the other elements of expression in a borrowed tongue those features, in short, that stamp an
original work as such, but which at the same time render more difficult its reproduction in another language.
The same estimate is true of the second cycle of poems that came before us, The Gardener, Lyrics of Love and
Life (1913). In this work, however, as the author himself points out, he has recast rather than interpreted his earlier
inspirations. Here we see another phase of his personality, now subject to the alternately blissful and torturing
experiences of youthful love, now prey to the feelings of longing and joy that the vicissitudes of life give rise to, the
whole interspersed nevertheless with glimpses of a higher world.
English translations of Tagores prose stories have been published under the titleGlimpses of Bengal Life (1913).
Though the form of these tales does not bear his own stamp the rendering being by another hand their content
gives evidence of his versatility and wide range of observation, of his heartfelt sympathy with the fates and
experiences of differing types of men, and of his talent for plot construction and development.
Tagore has since published both a collection of poems, poetic pictures of childhood and home life, symbolically
entitled The Crescent Moon (1913), and a number of lectures given before American and English university
audiences, which in book form he callsSdhan: The Realisation of Life (1913). They embody his views of the ways
in which man can arrive at a faith in the light of which it may be possible to live. This very seeking of his to discover
the true relation between faith and thought makes Tagore stand out as a poet of rich endowment, characterized by
his great profundity of thought, but most of all by his warmth of feeling and by the moving power of his figurative
language. Seldom indeed in the realm of imaginative literature are attained so great a range and diversity of note and
of colour, capable of expressing with equal harmony and grace the emotions of every mood from the longing of the
soul after eternity to the joyous merriment prompted by the innocent child at play.
Concerning our understanding of this poetry, by no means exotic but truly universally human in character, the future
will probably add to what we know now. We do know, however, that the poets motivation extends to the effort of
reconciling two spheres of civilization widely separated, which above all is the characteristic mark of our present
epoch and constitutes its most important task and problem. The true inwardness of this work is most clearly and
purely revealed in the efforts exerted in the Christian mission-field throughout the world. In times to come,
historical inquirers will know better how to appraise its importance and influence, even in what is at present hidden
from our gaze and where no or only grudging recognition is accorded. They will undoubtedly form a higher estimate
of it than the one now deemed fitting in many quarters. Thanks to this movement, fresh, bubbling springs of living
water have been tapped, from which poetry in particular may draw inspiration, even though those springs are
perhaps intermingled with alien streams, and whether or not they be traced to their right source or their origin be
attributed to the depths of the dreamworld. More especially, the preaching of the Christian religion has provided
in many places the first definite impulse toward a revival and regeneration of the vernacular language, i.e.,
its liberation from the bondage of an artificial tradition, and consequently also toward a development of its
capacity for nurturing and sustaining a vein of living and natural poetry.

The Christian mission has exercised its influence as a rejuvenating force in India, too, where in conjunction
with religious revivals many of the vernaculars were early put to literary use, thereby acquiring status and stability.
However, with only too regular frequency, they fossilized again under pressure from the new tradition that gradually
established itself. But the influence of the Christian mission has extended far beyond the range of the actually
registered proselytizing work. The struggle that the last century witnessed between the living vernaculars and the
sacred language of ancient times for control over the new literatures springing into life would have had a very
different course and outcome, had not the former found able support in the fostering care bestowed upon them by the
self-sacrificing missionaries.
It was in Bengal, the oldest Anglo-Indian province and the scene many years before of the indefatigable labours of
that missionary pioneer, Carey, to promote the Christian religion and to improve the vernacular language, that
Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861. He was a scion of a respected family that had already given evidence of
intellectual ability in many areas. The surroundings in which the boy and young man grew up were in no sense
primitive or calculated to hem in his conceptions of the world and of life. On the contrary, in his home there prevailed,
along with a highly cultivated appreciation of art, a profound reverence for the inquiring spirit and wisdom of the
forefathers of the race, whose texts were used for family devotional worship. Around him, too, there was then coming
into being a new literary spirit that consciously sought to reach forth to the people and to make itself acquainted with
their life needs. This new spirit gained in force as reforms ere firmly effected by the Government, after the quelling of
the widespread, confused Indian Mutiny.
Rabindranaths father was one of the leading and most zealous members of a religious community to which
his son still belongs. That body, known by the name of Brahmo Samaj, did not arise as a sect of the
ancient Hindu type, with the purpose of spreading the worship of some particular godhead as superior to all
others. Rather, it was founded in the early part of the nineteenth century by an enlightened and influential
man who had been much impressed by the doctrines of Christianity, which he had studied also in England.
He endeavoured to give to the native Hindu traditions, handed down from the past, an interpretation in
agreement with what he conceived to be the spirit and import of the Christian faith. Doctrinal controversy has
since been rife regarding the interpretation of truth that he and his successors were thus led to give, whereby the
community has been subdivided into a number of independent sects. The character, too, of the community,
appealing essentially to highly trained intellectual minds, has from its inception always precluded any large growth of
the numbers of its avowed adherents. Nevertheless, the indirect influence exercised by the body, even upon the
development of popular education and literature, is held to be very considerable indeed. Among those community
members who have grown up in recent years, Rabindranath Tagore has laboured to a pre-eminent degree. To them
he has stood as a revered master and prophet. That intimate interplay of teacher and pupil so earnestly sought after
has attained a deep, hearty, and simple manifestation, both in religious life and in literary training.
To carry out his lifes work Tagore equipped himself with a many-sided culture, European as well as Indian, extended
and matured by travels abroad and by advanced study in London. In his youth he travelled widely in his own land,
accompanying his father as far as the Himalayas. He was still quite young when he began to write in Bengali, and he
has tried his hand in prose and poetry, lyrics and dramas. In addition to his descriptions of the life of he common
people of his own country, he has dealt in separate works with questions in literary criticism, philosophy, and
sociology. At one period, some time ago, there occurred a break in the busy round of his activities, for he then felt
obliged, in accord with immemorial practice among his race, to pursue for a time a contemplative hermit life in a boat
floating on the waters of a tributary of the sacred Ganges River. After he returned to ordinary life, his reputation
among his own people as a man of refined wisdom and chastened piety grew greater from day to day. The open-air
school which he established in western Bengal, beneath the sheltering branches of the mango tree, has brought up
numbers of youths who as devoted disciples have spread his teaching throughout the land. To this place he has now
retired, after spending nearly a year as an honoured guest in the literary circles of England and America and
attending the Religious History Congress held in Paris last summer (1913).
Wherever Tagore has encountered minds open to receive his high teaching, the reception accorded him has been
that suited to a bearer of good tidings which are delivered, in language intelligible to all, from that treasure house of
the East whose existence had long been conjectured. His own attitude, moreover, is that he is but the intermediary,
giving freely of that to which by birth he has access. He is not at all anxious to shine before men as a genius or as an
inventor of some new thing. In contrast to the cult of work, which is the product of life in the fenced-in cities of the
Western world, with its fostering of a restless, contentious spirit; in contrast to its struggle to conquer nature for the
love of gain and profit, as if we are living, Tagore says, in a hostile world where we have to wrest everything we
want from an unwilling and alien arrangement of things (Sdhan, p. 5); in contrast to all that enervating hurry and
scurry, he places before us the culture that in the vast, peaceful, and enshrining forests of India attains its perfection,
a culture that seeks primarily the quiet peace of the soul in ever-increasing harmony with the life of nature herself It is
a poetical, not a historical, picture that Tagore here reveals to us to confirm his promise that a peace awaits us, too.
By virtue of the right associated with the gift of prophecy, he freely depicts the scenes that have loomed before his
creative vision at a period contemporary with the beginning of time.
He is, however, as far removed as anyone in our midst from all that we are accustomed to hear dispensed
and purveyed in the market places as Oriental philosophy, from painful dreams about the transmigration of
souls and the impersonal karma, from the pantheistic, and in reality abstract, belief that is usually regarded
as peculiarly characteristic of the higher civilization in India. Tagore himself is not even prepared to admit
that a belief of that description can claim any authority from the profoundest utterances of the wise men of
the past. He peruses his Vedic hymns, his Upanishads, and indeed the theses of Buddha himself, in such a
manner that he discovers in them, what is for him an irrefutable truth. If he seeks the divinity in nature, he finds
there a living personality with the features of omnipotence, the all-embracing lord of nature, whose preternatural
spiritual power nevertheless likewise reveals its presence in all temporal life, small as well as great, but especially in
the soul of man predestined for eternity. Praise, prayer, and fervent devotion pervade the song offerings that he lays
at the feet of this nameless divinity of his. Ascetic and even ethic austerity would appear to be alien to his type of
divinity worship, which may be characterized as a species of aesthetic theism. Piety of that description is in full
concord with the whole of his poetry, and it has bestowed peace upon him. He proclaims the coming of that peace for
weary and careworn souls even within the bounds of Christendom.
This is mysticism, if we like to call it so, but not a mysticism that, relinquishing personality, seeks to become absorbed
in an All that approaches a Nothingness, but one that, with all the talents and faculties of the soul trained to their
highest pitch, eagerly sets forth to meet the living Father of the whole creation. This more strenuous type of
mysticism was not wholly unknown even in India before the days of Tagore, hardly indeed among the ascetics and
philosophers of ancient times but rather in the many forms of bhakti, a piety whose very essence is the profound love
of and reliance upon God.Ever since the Middle Ages, influenced in some measure by the Christian and other
foreign religions, bhakti has sought the ideals of its faith in the different phases of Hinduism, varied in
character but each to all intents monotheistic in conception. All those higher forms of faith have disappeared
or have been depraved past recognition, choked by the superabundant growth of that mixture of cults that
has attracted to its banner all those Indian peoples who lacked an adequate power of resistance to its
blandishments. Even though Tagore may have borrowed one or another note from the orchestral symphonies of his
native predecessors, yet he treads upon firmer ground in this age that draws the peoples of the earth closer together
along paths of peace, and of strife too, to joint and collective responsibilities, and that spends its own energies in
dispatching greetings and good wishes far over land and sea. Tagore, though, in thought-impelling pictures, has
shown us how all things temporal are swallowed up in the eternal:
Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.
There is none to count thy minutes.
Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. Thou knowest how to wait.
Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.
We have no time to lose, and having no time, we must scramble for our chances. We are too poor to be late.
And thus it is that time goes try, while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, and thine altar is empty of all
offerings to the last.
At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut; but if I find that yet there is time.








BIOGRAPHY OF TAGORE

Born: May 7, 1861
Died: August 7, 1941
Achievements: Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to became Nobel laureate when he won Nobel Prize for
his collection of poems, Gitanjali, in 1913; awarded knighthood by the British King George V; established
Viswabharati University; two songs from his Rabindrasangit canon are now the national anthems of India and
Bangladesh

Rabindranath Tagore was an icon of Indian culture. He was a poet, philosopher, musician, writer, and educationist.
Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to became Nobel laureate when he won Nobel Prize for his collection of
poems, Gitanjali, in 1913. He was popularly called as Gurudev and his songs were popularly known as
Rabindrasangeet. Two songs from his Rabindrasangit canon are now the national anthems of India and Bangladesh:
the Jana Gana Mana and the Amar Shonar Bangla.

Rabindranath Tagore was born on May 7, 1861 in a wealthy Brahmin family in Calcutta. He was the ninth son of
Debendranath and Sarada Devi. His grandfather Dwarkanath Tagore was a rich landlord and social reformer.
Rabindra Nath Tagore had his initial education in Oriental Seminary School. But he did not like the conventional
education and started studying at home under several teachers. After undergoing his upanayan (coming-of-age) rite
at the age of eleven, Tagore and his father left Calcutta in 1873 to tour India for several months, visiting his father's
Santiniketan estate and Amritsar before reaching the Himalayan hill station of Dalhousie. There, Tagore read
biographies, studied history, astronomy, modern science, and Sanskrit, and examined the classical poetry of
Kalidasa.

In 1874, Tagore's poem Abhilaash (Desire) was published anonymously in a magazine called Tattobodhini. Tagore's
mother Sarada Devi expired in 1875. Rabindranath's first book of poems, Kabi Kahini ( tale of a poet ) was published
in 1878. In the same year Tagore sailed to England with his elder brother Satyandranath to study law. But he
returned to India in 1880 and started his career as poet and writer. In 1883, Rabindranath Tagore married Mrinalini
Devi Raichaudhuri, with whom he had two sons and three daughters.

In 1884, Tagore wrote a collection of poems Kori-o-Kamal (Sharp and Flats). He also wrote dramas - Raja-o-Rani (
King and Queen) and Visarjan (Sacrifice). In 1890, Rabindranath Tagore moved to Shilaidaha (now in Bangladesh) to
look after the family estate. Between 1893 and 1900 Tagore wrote seven volumes of poetry, which included Sonar
Tari (The Golden Boat) and Khanika. In 1901, Rabindranath Tagore became the editor of the magazine
Bangadarshan. He Established Bolpur Bramhacharyaashram at Shantiniketan, a school based on the pattern of old
Indian Ashrama. In 1902, his wife Mrinalini died. Tagore composed Smaran ( In Memoriam ), a collection of poems,
dedicated to his wife.

In 1905, Lord Curzon decided to divide Bengal into two parts. Rabindranath Tagore strongly protested against this
decision. Tagore wrote a number of national songs and attended protest meetings. He introduced the Rakhibandhan
ceremony , symbolizing the underlying unity of undivided Bengal.

In 1909, Rabindranath Tagore started writing Gitanjali. In 1912, Tagore went to Europe for the second time. On the
journey to London he translated some of his poems/songs from Gitanjali to English. He met William Rothenstein, a
noted British painter, in London. Rothenstien was impressed by the poems, made copies and gave to Yeats and
other English poets. Yeats was enthralled. He later wrote the introduction to Gitanjali when it was published in
September 1912 in a limited edition by the India Society in London. Rabindranath Tagore was awarded Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali. In 1915 he was knighted by the British King George V.

In 1919, following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Tagore renounced his knighthood. He was a supporter of Gandhiji
but he stayed out of politics. He was opposed to nationalism and militarism as a matter of principle, and instead
promoted spiritual values and the creation of a new world culture founded in multi-culturalism, diversity and tolerance.
Unable to gain ideological support to his views, he retired into relative solitude. Between the years 1916 and 1934 he
traveled widely.

1n 1921, Rabindranath Tagore established Viswabharati University. He gave all his money from Nobel Prize and
royalty money from his books to this University. Tagore was not only a creative genius, he was quite knowledgeable
of Western culture, especially Western poetry and science too. Tagore had a good grasp of modern - post-Newtonian
- physics, and was well able to hold his own in a debate with Einstein in 1930 on the newly emerging principles of
quantum mechanics and chaos. His meetings and tape recorded conversations with his contemporaries such Albert
Einstein and H.G. Wells, epitomize his brilliance.

In 1940 Oxford University arranged a special ceremony in Santiniketan and awarded Rabindranath Tagore with
Doctorate Of Literature. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore passed away on August 7, 1941 in his ancestral home in
Calcutta.