“Daliya”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Tani Basu (2015)

Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Dalia” (1892), aka “Daliya” or “Daalia”, concerns the innocence of love in a social climate dominated by family duty, honor, and revenge.  This story served as the basis for the 26th and final episode, “Daliya”, of the anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015), which was under the general directorship of Anurag Basu, with this episode scripted by Anurag Basu and directed by Tani Basu.

Tagore’s story, as well as this episode, is set in 17th century Mughal India and concerns real historical personages, which is a departure from most of the episodes of this series that are set sometime in the 1930s.  The themes here, though, should be familiar to readers of other, more contemporary, Tagore stories – the contrast between love (understood to be an intuitive feeling of the heart) and tradition-bound social demands devoted to duty, honor, and revenge.

The historical background elements are concerned with the family of Shah Suja, who was the second son of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, known for, among other things, commissioning the construction of the Taj Mahal.  Shah Suja was serving as the appointed governor of Bengal, when his father, the emperor, came down with a serious illness.  This led to a ruthless war of succession, which resulted in the brother of Shah Suja, Aurangzeb, acceding to the Mughal throne and Shah Suja’s desperate flight to the Arakan (Rakhine) state in what is now Myanmar.  There the Arakani king supposedly offered refuge to Shah Suja and his family.

We can break the story of “Daliya” into four sections, or “acts”, parts of which are dramatized flashbacks.  Note that since this story has a surprise ending, you may want to avoid reading my account of the final act, as well as that of another review [1], before you see it for the first time.

1.  A Forest Caravan
At the outset a caravan transporting a litter (hand-carried sedan) is shown traveling through the forest.  We will soon learn that the principal figures of this caravan are: 

• a well-dressed young woman, Zulekha (played by Preeti Sharma)
• Zulekha’s attendant, “Uncle” Rehmat Khan (Dadhi Raj)
• Zulekha’s younger sister Amina (Shriya Sharma)
• a fisherman friend of Amina’s named Daliya (Kirin Srinivas)
• Amina’s fisherman stepfather, Budha (Niraj Sah). 

During a rest stop, Rehmat tells Budha that his adopted daughter is about to marry a king.  In order to explain why, Rehmat has to give Budha some background information.  Although later important background information will be presented in dramatized flashbacks, this background is told verbally.  Rehmat tells him that

1. Amina’s real father was Shah Suja, the brother of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb who had taken refuge in Arakan.
2. Years ago the Arakani king Sudamma had wanted his three sons to be married to Shah Suja’s three daughters, but Shah Suja rejected the offer/demand.  King Sudamma was so angered by this rejection that he decided to have Shah Suja killed.  So the King of Arakan ordered them all (Shah Suja and his three daughters) to be taken out in a boat and drowned.
3. In the event, Shah Suja and one of the daughters died, but the other two daughters, Zulekha and Amina, as well as Rehmat, somehow managed to escape immediate death. 
4. Although Rehmat and Zulekha had escaped, Amina, who was then a just small child, had been swept away in the water.  It turned out, though, that the fisherman Budha had found Amina in the water and rescued her.
5. One day not long ago, Rehmat had heard from one of his informers (played by Samrat Chakraborty, who also wrote the dialogue for this episode) that King Sudamma had passed away and that his son Budh Dutt (not to be confused with fisherman Budha) had become king of Arakan.  
6. The informer also told Rehmat that the new king Budh Dutt Sudamma had recently gone hunting and had seen Amina, now a young woman, in the distance walking in the forest.  He was immediately smitten by her beauty, and it was now his intention to marry the girl.
7. Hearing this and guessing that this girl must be sister Amina, Zulekha and Rehmat, who obtained from the informer the approximate location of the girl, had decided to go find her before King Budh Dutt did.

Thus the caravan’s participants that we see indicate that Zulekha and Rehmat had found Amina.

2.  Flashback – Zulekha Meets Amina
The story now moves to a flashback sequence depicting when Zulekha, riding in her litter through the forest, spotted Amina running nearby.  After they meet and embrace, Amina takes her sister to meet her “father”, the humble fisherman Budha.  Zulekha wanted to find her younger sister before the Arakan king did so that she could convey to her the necessity of doing her duty – commit a murder.  In order to avenge the brutal killing of their father and their older sister, it was necessary, she told Amina, for her to kill the king when she had the chance.  Even though this act of revenge would probably cost the girl her own life, it was absolutely necessary for Amina to fulfil her familial duty.  For her part, Amina expresses the (correct) opinion that revenge is pointless, and she is undecided about accepting her sister’s command to take revenge.

But we also see in other flashbacks that Amina has a very friendly relationship with another local boy, Daliya, who is another humble fisherman.  Indeed, Zulekha can readily see that the insouciant and flirtatious way that Daliya acts toward Amina suggests to her that the two of them are in love.

3.  A   Marriage Proposal is Received

Budha now receives an official marriage proposal from King Budh Dutt Sudamma for his stepdaughter, and the king also wants to have a meeting with the girl before the marriage.  Zulekha is excited, because she feels that this meeting will offer her sister the best opportunity to kill the king.  Again, she insistently calls on Amina to fulfil her duty to enact revenge.  And Amina reluctantly accepts.

But as Amina thinks things over, she realizes to her regret that the man she really cares about, Daliya, doesn’t seem unhappy that she is about to marry the Arakani king.  She realizes that she really loves Daliya.  This is the most beautiful part of the story, because it portrays Amina’s inner struggle between her heart and her sense of duty.  Even Zulekha, seeing her sister’s ardor for Daliya, begins to question whether her own obsession for revenge justifies sacrificing her dear sister’s life.

As the time approaches to go to the meeting with the king, Amina desperately tells Daliya that she loves him and that she wants to elope with him.  But Daliya just laughs her off and tells her he is too carefree for marriage.

4.  Meeting the King

Zulekha and Amina go to the arranged prenuptial meeting place, and just before Amina is about to go alone into the king’s chamber, Zulekha hands her sister their father’s bejeweled dagger.  She has been saving it for years for the right moment, and now the time has come. 

Amina enters the room and approaches the royally robed king from behind.  Trembling, she raises the unsheathed dagger to strike.  But at that moment, the king turns to face her and reveals himself to be her dear Daliya!  Seeing his face, Amina faints, and the king/Daliya carries the unconscious girl to the bed. 

Zulekha, who had been waiting outside, rushes into the room.  Daliya explains to her that he knew all along who Amina really was, and that he figured that the only way he could ever get her to accept him was to approach her first as a commoner.  He wanted her to see him without thinking of all the treachery associated with her father’s murder, which he admitted was a terrible wrong.  He tells Zulekha that he truly loves Amina.  When Amina awakens, she is thrilled to see her beloved Daliya tending to her.  And Zulekha is finally won over, too.

This is another moving story about love triumphing over all obstacles.  But a key feature here is that in this story, it is a man’s, not a woman’s, faith in love that turns the tide and wins the heart.  And Daliya accomplished this not by relying on his earthly powers, but by following the dictates of his compassionate heart.

★★★★

Notes:

1. Durga S, “The Happy Endings – Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (10)”, Writersbrew, (27 March 2016).   

“Wafadaar”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Sachin Deo (2015)

Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Khokababur Pratyabartan” (“The Return of Khokababu”, 1891) [1] features an interesting plot twist that triggers our consideration of several social themes.  It served as the basis for the 11th episode, “Wafadaar” (“Dutiful”), of the anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015) created by and under the general directorship of Anurag Basu, with this episode directed by Sachin Deo.

This filming of Tagore’s story is relatively faithful to the original, but since many of the episodes in the Stories by Rabindranath Tagore series are sequentially linked, there are slight narrative adjustments that serve to accommodate these linkages.  With the case of “Wafadaar”, for example, rather than follow the original story’s third-person presentation throughout, the story’s first two-thirds are presented as a narrative flashback – “Wafadaar’s” main character recounts his experiences to a character from Episodes 9 & 10 (“The Broken Nest”), Bhupati Babu, who is here only a passive listener and has no significance to this narrative.

As the story unfolds, we can make out some issues associated with three social themes that are of interest:

• Duty  
  What is the scope of duty and what are its boundaries?  To what extent is one’s very identity, both as perceived by him/herself or by others, characterized by his or her adherence to socially prescribed duty?
   
• Nature vs. Nurture 
  To what relative degrees are we the products of (a) our biological inheritances compared to (b) the behavioral moldings of the environments in which we are raised? 
   
• Class in India 
  What is the relative significance of class loyalty, as compared to more instinctual loyalties such as those of the family?

The story of “Wafadaar” evolves over three acts, the first two of which are told in flashback.

1.  Raicharan and “Little Master”
As a young boy, Raicharan is assigned, in accordance with some deal arranged by his father, to move into the house of an upperclass family and be both the servant and playmate of their son, Anukul, who is the same age as Raicharan.  Raicharan willingly and enthusiastically accepts his assigned role, and over the years becomes Anukul’s inseparable companion.  When Anukul finally gets married, Raicharan is fearful that his lifelong role is threatened, but he is soon overjoyed when Anukul and his wife give him the assignment of looking after their newborn boy.

When the infant boy is first uttering sounds, he calls Raicharan, “Channa”; and the young servant is thrilled to be given a name by the boy, whom he calls, “Little Master”.  Raicharan’s loyalty  to serving his master is so strong that he leaves his pregnant wife to be looked after by his sister in their home village, and he accompanies Anukul’s family when they shift to another town.  So here is an example of socially-defined duties taking precedence over more basic, primordial loyalties.

Raicharan lovingly looks after his Little Master, but one day while taking the little boy to the riverside, he momentarily loses sight of his charge, and the little toddler wanders off into the water and is presumably drowned in the river.  Naturally, both Anukul’s wife and Raicharan are overwhelmed with grief over this tragic event. 

2.  A Second Little Master 
Having now lost his self-defining role, Raicharan returns to his home village.  While he is still wallowing in drunken grief over what has happened, his wife dies giving birth to their son, who is given the name “Phelna”.  The still-self-pitying Raicharan doesn’t pay much attention to the infant, but one day he hears Phelna say, “channa”.  Raicharan is instantly overjoyed to hear this, because he concludes that his former Little Master has now forgiven him for his earlier neglect of his caretaking duties and has come back to him in the form of Phelna.  In other words, Phelna is taken to be the reincarnation of Little Master.

Raicharan immediately sells his few assets and property so that he can raise Phelna properly as the son of an upper-class family.  He takes Phelna to be schooled in Kolkata.

3.  Return to the Present  
The recounting of Raicharan’s experiences in flashback now comes to an end, and we see that in the “present” Phelna, aka (to Raicharan) “Little Master”, is now 18-years-old.  Because of Phelna’s always having been told the story that he is the son of an upper-class couple who died long ago in an accident and that Raicharan was assigned to look after him, the young man has grown up to be spoiled.  He looks down on his real father as a mere servant.  So it is evident that Raicharan has fashioned a snobbish upper-class playboy out of his own lower-class flesh-and-blood (although Raicharan, himself, fervently believes that Phelna is truly his original Little Master’s reincarnation).

However, at this point Raicharan’s resources are utterly exhausted, and his sister is threatening to tell Phelna who his real father is.  So Raicharan decides to return to Anukul’s wealthy household and “return” their son (which is what Raicharan takes Phelna to be) to them.  In order to get Anukul and his wife to accept this transfer, Raicharan falsely confesses to them that he had stolen their young son years ago when he was lost by the riverbank and raised the boy on his own.  With this gift Raicharan now hopes that he can return to being a servant in the Anukul home and be permitted to see his prized Little Master from time to time.

But although Anukul and his wife accept that Phelna is their real son, and Phelna accepts the idea that Anukul is his father, the couple flatly reject Raicharan’s request to return to their fold.  To them, Raicharan has committed a heinous crime and has been profoundly disloyal.  Phelna, taking pity on the menial servant who raised him, condescendingly suggests to his newfound “dad”, Anukul, that Raicharan can be made to go away for good if he is just given a little cash.

Seeing this complete dismissal of his very personhood after all his years of personal sacrifice, Raicharan is crushed.  He disconsolately wanders over to the riverbank where he had originally lost his Little Master and mournfully walks into the streaming waters.

So Tagore’s tale of “Wafadaar” is a sad one.  Duty and loyalty, and the way they affect personal affection, are manifested differently by the various characters in this story.  For Raicharan, duty and loyalty fueled the genuine love he felt for the people he served.  But in the end it is sad that all his sincere and innocent efforts to support the people he served, misguided though they may have been, did not have better outcomes for him.

★★★½

Notes:

1. Rabindranath Tagore, “The Child’s Return”, The Literature Network, (1891/1918).   

“The Broken Nest”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Tani Basu (2015)

Rabindranath Tagore’s famous novella Nastanirh (The Broken Nest, 1901 [1])  was the basis for the 9th and 10th episodes of the recent anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015). This series was created by and under the general directorship of Anurag Basu, and these two episodes covering Tagore’s story were directed by Anurag Basu’s wife, Tani Basu. 

Tagore’s Nastanirh concerns what happens in an upper-class Bengali household when the neglected young wife of a workaholic newspaper editor develops an unsettlingly close relationship with her husband’s younger male cousin. Tagore’s subtle portrayal shows a cultured family trying to come to grips with a potentially disruptive situation.  A related aspect that has always fascinated Tagore followers is that this kind of familial situation seems to have mirrored Tagore’s own personal experiences.  When he was growing up, Rabindranath Tagore was friendly with his older brother Jyotirindranath’s young wife, Kadambari Devi.  Similar to the age distribution of the principal characters in Nastanirh, Rabindranath was twelve years younger than Jyotirindranath but almost the same age as his sister-in-law.  With more free time available to them, Rabindranath and Kadambari Devi spent a lot of time together and became close companions, with common interests in poetry and art. However, shortly after Rabindranath had an arranged marriage at the age of 23, Kadambari Devi committed suicide, and it has always been assumed that her close relationship with Rabindranath may have figured into this tragic event.  I will not comment further about this other than to suggest that the feelings evoked in Tagore’s Nastanirh were probably very close to his heart.

It is not surprising then that Tagore’s delicate story about this situation has been filmed on several earlier occasions – the most notable of these being Satyajit Ray’s masterful rendition, Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964).  All things considered, both Ray’s film and Tani Basu’s TV production are relatively faithful presentations of Tagore’s Nastanirh, and both are excellent.  But they differ somewhat with respect to what they emphasize, and so I will make some comparisons between the two productions in what follows.  In this connection I invite the reader to consult my review of Ray’s Charulata, which I will occasionally refer to below [2].

Note that there is an idiosyncratic aspect of the Stories by Rabindranath Tagore that must be brought to your attention in case you just want to see this story in the series.  The individual Tagore stories were written over a fifty-year period, but they are linked together in this series, which is set sometime in the 1930s, so that at the tail end of one story, there is a lead-in to the next story.  In many cases this lead-in material offers significant information for the succeeding story that should not be missed.  This happens to be the case with the story of The Broken Nest, where important lead-in material is provided in the last eight minutes of the preceding story, “Punishment”, Episode 8 of the series.

The story of The Broken Nest concerns only five characters:

• Bhupati Babu (played by Kranti Prakash Jha) is a thirty-something upper-class Bengali and is the editor/publisher of a new progressive newspaper.  He is obsessively concerned about the success of his new newspaper, into which he has poured all the resources of his family estate.
   
• Charulata (Amrita Puri) is Bhupati’s beautiful and culturally aspiring young wife.
   
• Amol is Bhupati’s younger brother in this version of Tagore’s tale.  In Tagore’s original story and in Ray’s film, Amol was Bhupati’s cousin.  However, this distinction between brother and cousin seems not to be significant in these circumstances, since in accordance with Bengali family practice, cousins were often treated like brothers, and they called each other “brother”.  Amol is about a decade younger than Bhupati and comes to visit his “brother’s” household after finishing his undergraduate studies.
   
• Umapada is Charulata’s older brother.  Although he is thus Bhupati’s brother-in-law, again family custom leads Bhupati and Umapada to call each other “brother”. 
   
• Manda is Umapada’s young and relatively banal wife.

Because Bhupati is continually preoccupied with his work, Charulata is left unattended and is bored with her life.  In an effort to provide his wife with some companionship that might make things more interesting for her, he has invited his brother-in-law, Umapada, and his wife, Manda to come live with them at their family estate. 

At the outset of the story, shown in the last eight minutes of Episode 8 of this series, Charulata (aka Charu) is shown to be neglected and lonely in her sumptuous family estate.  Her husband Bhupati is busy at work all the time preparing for the inaugural issue of his new newspaper.  Although he has invited her brother Umapada and his wife Manda to come live with them, their presence hasn’t provided any stimulating company for Charu.  In hopes of finding something interesting to do with her time, Charu tells her husband that she wants to learn singing.

At the beginning of Episode 9, Amol comes to stay in the Babu household.  We immediately see the contrast between the two “brothers”, Amol and Bhupati.  While Bhupati is a gentle and thoughtful introvert, Amol is a loud and self-absorbed extrovert who wants to attract all attention to himself.  Though Amol is ostensibly engaged in the study of law, his real passion is for singing.  Upon seeing this, Bhupati asks Amol to teach singing to Charu.  Soon Charu and the viewer are regaled by songs sung by Amol.  And their growing affinity gradually becomes evident.  When Bhupati receives an attractive marriage offer for Amol (from a good family with a generous offer to finance his future legal studies), Amol flatly rejects the offer.  He can’t bear to abandon the carefree life he is now leading.

Meanwhile we see that Bhupati has engaged “brother” Umapada to look after the business side of his fledgling newspaper so that he can concentrate his time on editorial matters. 

Much of this 9th episode, though, is devoted to presenting Amol’s singing, and this lends a decidedly lyrical feeling to this first-half of the story.  This musical tone of the story is in fact a key feature of this telling of Tagore’s story.  Note that in Tagore’s original story, as well as in Ray’s film, The Lonely Wife, Amol and Charulata engage each other by composing and reciting poetry.  So there is a resulting contrast between the logical and analytical world of Bhupati’s prose and the more free-flowing and emotive poetic world of Amol and Charulata.  But it is still bounded by the limitations of text.   Here in The Broken Nest, by contrast, the distinction between Bhupati and Amol is more profound – it is that between the mechanical formulations of text and the visceral feelings of music.  And in my view that is a significant virtue and advantage of this work.  A further advantage here is the way these songs are presented visually, with evocative and well-edited closeups giving expressive color to the songs that are sung.

As their singing sessions continue, Charu unconsciously becomes more and more attracted to the brash and handsome Amol.  One day she hears Amol singing one of their songs on national radio.  For Amol, this is a proud moment, but Charu takes offence that a song she had taken to be composed for her, alone, had been made into a public commodity.  So she goes ahead and composes her own song.  But when she sits down at the piano and plays it for Bhupati, she is perturbed to see that her over-worked husband has fallen asleep.

In the 10th episode the ramifications of the previous developments come to a head.  First Charu sings her own composition to Amol, and he is impressed with and charmed by her own musical abilities.  But then a disaster strikes the household.  They learn that Umapada has all along failed to pay Bhupati’s business creditors and has now made off with all of the money that Bhupati had entrusted to him.  Bhupati is financially ruined, and his newspaper must be shut down.  All his hard work has come to nothing. However, Bhupati confides to Amol that the biggest hurt came from being betrayed by someone close to him and whom he had trusted. But he says he can keep going as long as he has Charu by his side.  Amol listens to this lament and realizes that his growing relationship with Charu represents a potentially even greater betrayal of Bhupati’s trust.

So when Bhupati receives another marriage proposal for Amol, the now silently self-reproving young man quickly accepts the offer.  Charu is immediately distraught at the prospect of losing her cherished friend.  When they have a chance to be alone, she begs Amol to decline the proposal, and she tearfully embraces him in desperation.  But Amol is adamant.  Honor ultimately triumphs over love in this situation, and he departs.

The scene now shifts to two months later, and Bhupati has been hesitantly sharing with Charu his nascent attempts at writing poetry.  But Charu is still obsessed with the absent Amol and is trying to exchange telegrams with him.  In the closing scene, when Bhupati finally realizes that Charu has a hitherto concealed passion for Amol, he breaks down in tears and disconsolately burns all the poetry he had written for Charu.  Then he departs from his broken nest.


There is an underlying philosophical theme of this story that was well articulated in Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophical treatise Either/Or (1843) concerning the tension between the ethical and the aesthetic modes of human existence. Accordingly, the uppermost levels of the aesthetic side are driven by love and aesthetic appreciation, while the top levels of the ethical side are driven by humanistic principles governed by human reason.  In this regard the ethical  side in this story is represented by Bhupati, and the aesthetic side is represented by Amol and Charulata.  As I mentioned in my review of Satyajit Ray’s Charulata,

“. . . Bhupati is a decent, ethical man.  He tries to follow the rules.  He means well, and he strives for a world in which justice prevails and the common good thrives.  His concerns center around how practically to build a world that achieves these aims.  By deliberately and rigorously following such a path, he believes that a progression towards a better world can be achieved.” [2]

whereas

“Though they would not deny Bhupati’s aims, Charulata and Amal seek something beyond Bhupati’s just world. This is a world where human creativity rises above the mechanics of ethical rules. The world they seek is a mystical union – one of love . . .” [2]

This tension between the aesthetic and ethical modes of existence is more clearly articulated and balanced in Ray’s Charulata than it is in Basu’s The Broken Nest.  Here in The Broken Nest the emphasis is very much tilted toward the aesthetic side.  Indeed in this version of Tagore’s story, Bhupati’s Brahmo-Samaj-inspired political progressivism (i.e. his external ethical concern) is downplayed, and he is shown to have his own aesthetic sensibilities (his poetry), too.  So the ethical vs. aesthetic divide is less clear-cut in this treatment as compared to Ray’s Charulata.  Thus with respect to this underlying philosophical theme of the aesthetic vs. the ethical, I would say that Ray’s film is the more successful presentation.

Nevertheless, Basu’s The Broken Nest has its undeniable virtues.  The episodes encompassing this story are permeated with a melodic quality that enhances the feelings about what this tale is about.  Besides the many songs that are explicitly sung, the background music is, despite its often intrusive character, a further instrument supporting this story’s overall musical temper.
             

Note also that given the blurring of the aesthetic vs. the ethical opposition here in The Broken Nest, we might say that the duality under concern here is not so much the ethical vs. the aesthetic as it is the related pair of the textual vs. the musical.  Bhupati here in this presentation is a man of text.  He supervises rationally-based textual discourse for his newspaper; and when he is away from the paper, he writes poetry.  In contrast, Amol is a man of soulful music.  He  sings what is in his heart.  Moreover, in this version as compared to Ray’s film, the Bhupati character is more sympathetically portrayed, while the Amol character is more self-centered and egotistical – he is less Charu’s soul-mate here.  That slight shift in character portrayal in this version renders the musical/passion side of the presented duality more mindless and instinctive – which makes Charu’s ambivalent feelings more profound to her innermost being and therefore more tragic.

Overall and despite some occasional uneven elements, I think Basu’s The Broken Nest is an excellent work.  It is particularly buoyed by the well-crafted and lyrical songs that are presentedd, along with the moving performances by Kranti Prakash Jha (as Bhupati Babu) and Amrita Puri (Charulata).
★★★★

Notes:

1. Rabindranath Tagore, Broken Nest and Other Stories, (Sharmistha Mohanty, trans.), Westland Limited, (1901/2009).
2. The Film Sufi, “‘Charulata’ - Satyajit Ray (1964)”, The Film Sufi, (30 November 2013).     

“Punishment”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Debatma Mandal (2015)

Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Punishment” (“Shasti”, 1893) [1] was the basis for the eighth episode of the anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015).  The series was under the general directorship of Anurag Basu, but this particular episode was directed by Debatma Mandal. The story concerns how a domestic crime that erupts in the collective household of two brothers and their wives is addressed .

Although Tagore’s stories were separately written over a wide timespan and were not linked with respect to their content, the series creators’ penchant for linking up the series episodes led to a dramatic connection between this episode and the previous one, “Kabuliwala”.  The young woman Mini turns out to be a key dramatic personage in both “Kabuliwala” and “Punishment”.  But this linkage is only an incidental and distracting artefact, and the two stories told are in other respects quite distinct [2].

One thing notable about this episode is the high quality of the acting, particularly that for the role of the older sister-in-law, Radha. Although the acting over the course of this series is generally very good, it reaches a high point on this occasion. They make the dramatic events in this story come alive with feeling.

The story of “Punishment” begins by depicting the married lives of two brothers, Devendra and Upendra, who jointly operate the thriving tea plantation that they inherited from their father.  Devendra is married to Radha, an incessantly crabby nagger who makes life difficult for the people around her.  Younger brother Upendra has recently married Mini, who as a child in the previous episode had been the object of the Kabuliwala’s attentions, and she is now struggling to accommodate and fit in with her bad-tempered sister-in-law.  But Radha persistently complains that Mini is not conforming to the norms of a proper housewife and attending to her  domestic chores.  However, Upendra comforts his sensitive young wife by reminding her that he is madly in love with her and that she will always be the center of his devotion.

Despite the semi-turmoil on the domestic scene, the two brothers seem to be enjoying prosperity with their tea plantation operation.  However, one day a British attorney comes to inform Devendra that the brothers have lost the title to their tea plantation property.  It quickly appears that this is a coercive swindle, and this passage suggests that exploitative elements within the British Raj corruptly manipulated their imposed legal mechanisms to routinely deprive “brown-skinned” natives of their rightful property.  The brothers are powerless to stop the takeover, and they suddenly find themselves in poverty.

Note that this sequence of events depicting British duplicitous exploitation of innocent Indians was not part of Tagore’s original story, which depicted the two brothers just as common day laborers [1]. But I think it is an interesting addition to the narrative, which is, after all, about societal norms, guilt, and punishment. 

Anyway, this situation that the two brothers now face naturally distresses them, particularly older brother Devendra, who had managed their affairs and is now struggling to get them out of debt.  And his disturbed state is only exacerbated by his wife Radha’s perpetually bitchy complaints.  One day when he encounters one of her storms of vituperation, he loses his temper.   He angrily smacks Radha with a vase, and she unexpectedly falls backward out of their second-story window to her death.

Devendra, Upendra, and Mini are all horrified by what has happened and are in a state of shock.  But  Upendra recovers himself enough to tell Mini to stay silent when the authorities arrive and let him do all the talking.  When the police come, Upendra tells them that it was Mini who quarreled with Radha and killed her.  Mini is stunned to hear her husband say this, but she dutifully remains silent.  Upendra reassuringly whispers to her that she should not worry and that he will take care of everything to keep her safe from harm.

After the police arrest Mini, Upendra, in justification of his actions, confides to the still stunned Devendra that he knows that he can always get another wife, but he could never get another brother. Such are the mores of many traditional societies, according to which blood family ties and fealty always take precedence over those towards a woman who has joined a family by marriage.  For Upendra, Mini is a beautiful toy that can be replaced.

Now in jail, Mini stays loyal to her husband’s command and remains silent when she is questioned.  She recalls her father’s adjurations when she got married that now she must selflessly devote herself to her new husband and his family that she has joined. 

When the court case takes place, Mini is accused of murder and warned that she faces execution if what her husband has said is correct.  Still the stunned woman holds her tongue.  Now finally overcome with guilt at what he is causing, Upendra rises from his seat in the audience and announces that he, himself, committed the murder.  Upon hearing his brother’s sacrificial confession, Devendra then stands up and insists that it was he who committed the murder. 

The judge now has three conflicting accounts as to who committed the murder.  But he is procedurally oriented and has only one person before him who has been formally accused of the crime.  He turns to Mini and asks her to give her account as to what really happened.  Again the stunned girl, still confused about her proper duties, remains silent.  So the judge, taking Mini’s silence as a confession of guilt, condemns the woman to be hanged.  The story ends with Mini silently and tearfully facing the gallows noose.

This is a sad story about justice and punishment.  An accidental death has occurred, and “justice” demands punishment.  Mini has been made to feel guilty and obliged throughout her marriage, and in the end she assumes the guilt for a crime she didn’t commit.  Given the misogonystic social norms under which she lived, the deck was always stacked against her. 

The ending here differs somewhat from Tagore’s story, in which the accused wife, in order to punish her husband with guilt for falsely casting the blame on her, publicly proclaims that she did commit the murder.  At the end of that story, the condemned wife bitterly rejects her husband before she is executed.  I like the ending here in this filmed episode better.  It makes the woman’s sad fate even more poignant.
★★★★

Notes:

1. Rabindranath Tagore , “Punishment”, (1893), Shawkat Hussain (trans., November 2016), Gitanjali & Beyond. 1. 203. 10.14297/gnb.1.1.203-213.
2. Durga S, “Punishment – Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (4)”, Writersbrew, (6 August 2015).   

“Kabuliwala”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Tani Basu (2015)

One of Rabindranath Tagore’s more popular short stories, “Kabuliwala” (1892), formed the content of  the seventh episode of the recent anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015) under the general directorship of Anurag Basu.  One measure of this story’s popularity is that it has previously been the basis of two successful feature films, the Bengali movie Kabuliwala (1957) and the Hindi movie Kabuliwala (1961).  This TV episode, which was directed by Anurag Basu’s wife, Tani Basu, follows Tagore’s story quite closely; however, it features a flashback temporal construction that was not part of the original story [1].

The “Kabuliwala” story is about a poor Afghani Pashtun street trader (known in India as a “Kabuliwala”) in Calcutta who fortuitously strikes up an unusual relationship with a very young girl from an upper-middle class Bengali family.  The young girl in Tagore’s story, Mini, is only five years old and described as a relentlessly energetic chatterbox.  Actress Amrita Mukherjee, who plays the role of Mini in this episode, is about eight years old and perhaps less exuberant, but she still presents a compellingly cherubic figure.

At the outset of the story, a successful Bengali novelist (played by Bobby Parvez) is making extensive preparations for his daughter Mini’s imminent marriage ceremony and celebration. In the midst of these concerns, a somewhat disheveled man off the street, Rahamat (Mushtaq Kak), comes to their home hoping to see Mini.  The father does recognize Rahamat, but he has not seen him for the past eight years, because the man has been in prison.  The story then shifts into an extended flashback concerning events that took place eight years earlier.  Unfortunately this movement into flashback is not well signaled cinematically, and some viewers may be temporarily confused by the changed context.

In the flashback, the little girl Mini is seem prattling away to her loving father, who dotingly allows her to interrupt his work on his novel to allow her to proclaim her childish opinions about the world around her.  One day, though, Mini notices a Kabuliwala peddling his dried fruit on the urban street in front of her home, and she gleefully calls out to him, “Oh, Kabuliwala!”.  When the bearded street peddler, who we see is Rahamat, turns towards her house, Mini runs inside in terror.  Seeing this, Mini’s father chides his daughter for being a scaredy-cat, and he politely buys some fruit from the man.

Soon, though, Mini’s father observes that the Kabuliwala has overcome Mini’s skittishness and has become her friend.  He regularly stops by their house, offering the girl some of his fruit and engaging in children’s games that they mutually concoct.  This is the beautiful part of the story – the way Rahamat can lovingly relate to Mini and engage her on her childish terms.  We see a series of incidents showing Rahamat on his knees before the child and enthusiastically participating and wrapped up in one of their playfully dreamed-up narratives.  One of the pet phrases the Kabuliwala uses is when he naughtily warns Mini about going to the home of her in-laws, a playful reference to something far beyond the little girl’s existing comprehension.  She would respond by asking her Kabuliwala whether he would go to his in-laws.

These sequences remind us that when we interact with anyone – and with a child, in particular – in order to be effective, we need to relate to a shared narrative that we both embrace and commit to.  To a certain extent Mini’s father does this with Mini; but Rahamat does it more fully.  He is her best friend.

Mini’s mother was alarmed over her daughter’s close friendship with a shabby, perhaps unsavory, older foreign man off the street.  She wanted to forbid it, but her husband gave her assurances that the Kabuliwala-Mini relationship was entirely innocent.

One day Mini’s father hears a disturbance out on the street in front of his house, and he goes out to see Rahamat being led away in handcuffs. He learns that Rahamat has been arrested for stabbing a customer who had refused to pay his overdue bill.  When Mini comes outside and sees her Kabuliwala being led away, she asks him where he is going.  He responds by ironically telling her that he is going to the home of his “in-laws”, which is another slang meaning for “going to the in-laws”, i.e. going to jail, that is beyond the girl’s comprehension [2].

That concludes the extended flashback, and we return to the “present”, eight years later.  Rahamat wants to once again see his dear little friend.  Mini’s father is disturbed to bring his about-to-be-married daughter before the ex-convict Rahamat on this portentous day, but when he once again perceives the sincerity of the man, he relents. 

When Rahamat finally sees Mini, he is struck by the realization that his dear friend has grown up into a young woman and has all but forgotten him.  He realizes that his own only daughter, of the same age as Mini, back in Afghanistan has similarly grown up and now may barely remember her own father.  He breaks down in tears.  At this point it is revealed that Rahamat’s love for Mini was a surrogate expression of his parental love for his own daughter back in Afghanistan.  When Mini’s father sees this, he realizes that he shares a deep bond and sympathy with the man.  The universal feeling of parental love for one’s innocent child transcends all the class, cultural, and national differences that might be presumed to separate the two men.  Even a man capable of a violent, homicidal act can share this with an educated compassionate humanist.  Both men are going through the shared and inevitable pain of seeing their daughters fly off to their new in-laws.

As a partial expression for his sympathy, Mini’s father immediately gives Rahamat a considerable sum of money that will enable the Kabuliwala to return home and see his own daughter.  And so at the end of this story, we are left to ponder how that reunion may turn out.

This poignant expression of the universality of parental love is the charming theme of this story.
★★★½

Notes:

1. Here are two English translations of Tagore’s “Kabuliwala”:
• Rabindranath Tagore, “Kabuliwala”, (1892). (trans. by Mohammad A. Quayum, Flinders Open Access Research, Volume 1, Issue 2, May 2009, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia).    
• Rabindranath Tagore, “Kabuliwala”,  (1892).   
2. Durga S, “Kabuliwala – Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (3)”, Writersbrew, (3 August 2015).

“Detective”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Debatma Mandal (2015)

“Detective” is the sixth episode of the anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015) that was created and directed by Anurag Basu.  This episode, which was directed by Debatma Mandal and is based on the short story “The Detective” [1] that Tagore published in 1898, is played to relative comedic effect, but it has some more serious considerations, too [2].

The story concerns the activities of an ambitious young police detective Mahimchandra, who, like many men, has only two goals in life – to be a hero in his professional life and to be a hero in his love life.  As he tells his adorable and loving wife Neelu (aka Nilakshi),

“I have two goals in my life. To be a detective and reveal the greatest secrets.  And secondly to be the husband of a very beautiful woman.”

On the domestic side of things, Neelu loves Mahimchandra, but she expresses some jealousy over the fact that her husband has an attractive and intelligent female colleague, Harimati, working with him at the police office.  But Mahimchandra assures Neelu that he has no thoughts for Harimati (even though we soon learn that the woman is rather flirtatious).

In Mahimchandra’s professional sphere he wants to achieve glory as a master detective, in the fashion of his detective fiction heroes, Sherlock Holmes and Sam Spade [3].  But he is frustrated by the dimwitted and unimaginative lawbreakers he captures.  They never offer him a diabolical scheme for him to unravel and so demonstrate his skills as a master criminologist.  What Mahimchandra is looking for is a villainous miscreant who has spun a false narrative for his criminal activities and which only Mahimchandra has the perspicacity to see through.  But all he finds is thugs who confess to their crimes immediately on being caught.

But one evening Mahimchandra sees a man out on the street outside his apartment window who fires up his suspicious imagination.  The man appears to be lurking there out on a street corner every evening for no apparent reason.  What is he doing there?  What are his intentions?

Mahimchandra, in disguise, approaches the man, whose name turns out to be Manmath, but his brief conversation with him reveals nothing.  Manmath is cordial but evasive.  Mahimchandra  learns that Manmath is a college student; but the college examinations are finished and all the other students have gone to their homes for the student recess.  Why is Manmath still hanging around on the street at night?

Mahimchandra concludes that Manmath must be part of a criminal or revolutionary scheme, and he decides to masquerade as a student and befriend Manmath in order to uncover his evildoings.  So he shaves off his mustache and rents a room in the same building where Manmath is renting.  Now Mahimchandra’s sleuthing mind turns to how he can gain Manmath’s confidence and get him to reveal his secrets.  The way to do that, he concludes, is to confess his own innermost vulnerabilities to Manmath – and that would mean introducing a woman into their discussions.  So Mahimchandra fabricates a tale that he is in unrequited love with Harimati, who willingly agrees to cooperate in Mahimchandra’s ruse. 

By confessing his innermost yearnings to Manmath, Mahimchandra hopes that the young man will reveal his own personal thoughts about his presumably criminal schemes.  So he arranges to have some meetings with himself and Harimati in the company of Manmath so that he can encourage more intimacy.  Things get more complicated and counter to Mahimchandra’s plans, though, when Harimati develops a crush on Manmath.  All the while, Manmath remains surprisingly friendly to them, but he reveals nothing more about himself.

Finally Mahimchandra snoops around in Manmath’s room when his friend is away, and he discovers a note indicating that Manmath will meet someone in his room at 8pm while Mahimchandra is supposed to be out with Harimati.  This, Mahimchandra presumes, must be a clandestine meeting between Manmath and one of his co-conspirators.  So he arranges for himself and Harimati to burst in on this 8pm meeting and discover what these plotters are up to.

In the event, though, there is a big surprise.  When Mahimchandra bursts in on the meeting, he discovers that Manmath is not the kind of criminal he thought him to be.  Everything is finally revealed in a letter that Manmath writes to Nilakshi.  It turns out that Manmath is, himself, a sleuth – and perhaps a different kind of thief, as well.


This filmed version of Tagore’s story is basically faithful to the original, but there are some differences.  In particular, the character of Harimati is expanded in this version, which may slightly alter the viewer’s perception of Mahimchandra’s sincerity.

It is generally true that all of us are continually constructing narratives, about ourselves and about the people we interact with.  These narratives we store in our memories and represent our understanding of the world.  A detective tries to construct, and then demonstrate the veracity of, a narrative about a criminal suspect in which the suspect is the guilty agent.  In this respect both Mahimchandra and Manmath were detectives, but the supposedly guilt-proving narratives they constructed were both false. And what drove both of them to construct these false narratives was overweening pride and selfish desire.  It is best to withhold conclusive judgement until all the facts are in and a more reliable narrative description can be constructed.
★★★

Notes:

1. Rabindranath Tagore, “Detective”, (1898), (trans. by Saquib Rahman and Rita Bullwinkel, Dhaka Tribune, 5 May 2017).  
2. Durga S, “Atithi, Maanbhanjan & Detective – Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2)”. Writersbrew, (23 July 2015).  
3. Sam Spade was the protagonist in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1930).  See
• The Film Sufi, “Bogart and Brando ('The Maltese Falcon' & 'The Wild Ones')”, The Film Sufi, (26 June 2011).   

“Maanbhanjan”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Anurag Basu (2015)

“Maanbhanjan” (“Fury Appeased”), the fifth episode of the well-received anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015) that was created and directed by Anurag Basu, is based on the short story of the same name that Tagore (1861-1941) published in 1895 [1].  It tells the story of some people consumed by the adulation that can arise from role-playing. 

The story concerns Gopinath (played by Trishaan), a young zamindar who got married to his wife, Giribala (Ranjini Chakraborty), when they were both children.  As they grew up together, they were playmates and had a close relationship.  But as Giribala tells it, when Gopinath’s father died and he took over the zamindar responsibilities, Gopinath’s relationship with Giribala cooled.  Although we can clearly see that Giribala is elegant and beautiful, Gopinath now neglects his wife and spends most of his time, even his evenings, outside their home.  Giribala is left alone in their mansion and idly spends time playing games of chess with herself.

While Giribala is left home in the evenings, Gopinath is out attending theatrical stage shows. There he fixes his gaze on lead actress Latika (Purva Naresh), whose performances he worshipfully applauds.  In fact Gopinath is having an extra-marital affair with Latika, and he sneaks backstage after her performances to spend more intimate time with her. But Gopinath is possessive, and he grudgingly confesses to her that he doesn’t like it when other people gaze at her.

When the viewer sees Latika, he or she is immediately challenged with the question as to what it is about the woman that so attracts Gopinath. Compared to Giribala’s refined beauty, Latika is fleshy and earthy, and from appearances alone she would seem to be no match for the woman.  But Latika’s allure seems to come from the fact that she is performing romantic roles on stage that fire her audience’s imagination.  She is like a media star, and she comports herself with the confidence of a star.  She is used to being admired, and she expects the adulation she receives.

Eventually Giribala sends her woman attendant Shudhomukhi (Natasha Pillai) out to track her husband’s evening activities, and the woman reports back about his watching Latika on stage.  She also remarks that Latika looks like a very unlikely candidate for his affections.  Now more curious than ever, Giribala decides to go out to the theater and see things for herself. When she sees Latika emerge from her dressing room after her show and face her adoring fans, including Gopinath, Giribala cringes with jealousy.

When she starts attending the theatrical shows, though, Giribala quickly becomes rapt with feeling for the characters she is experiencing vicariously.  Soon she is laughing and crying at what she sees being performed before her.  So while Latika revels in being the focus of so much empathy, Giribala is on the other side, immersed in empathic feeling.  They are both enthralled by the potency of shared experiences generated by role-playing.

So Giribala goes home and decides to do some glamorous role-playing for Gopinath.  She dresses up as a legendary princess and tries to seduce her husband.  But he will have none of it.  Instead he rewards her coquettishness by rudely roughing her up and then storming out of the house to  see Latika.

Meanwhile Latika, knowing that her infatuated lover, Gopinath, is a rich zamindar, imperiously commands him to fund a lavish new stage production for her.  This he proceeds to do, and he gets the best director, musicians, and production designers for the task.  However, when rehearsals begin, the production’s new director looks critically at Latika’s skills.   He is not a stage-struck fan, but a hardened professional, and he sees her work as awkward and coarse.  When Gopinath walks in on a rehearsal and sees Latika suffering from the director’s scornful criticism, he angrily whisks her out of the show and proceeds to elope with her out to a remote country residence.  Giribala has now been thoroughly abandoned.

Gopinath and Latika are presumably now living in romantic bliss, but Latika begins longing for the old excitement of performing before an enraptured audience.  She reads in the newspaper that there is a new diva superstar drawing rave reviews for her performance as Miribai, and she presses to go back to Kolkata and see how the woman performs. 

When they go back and attend a show, Gopinath is stunned to see that the new diva is none other than Giribala, whose moving soulful performance tops whatever Latika could do.  Now it is Latika’s turn to humbly watch Giribala emerge after the show to face her own adoring fans.

The ending of “Maanbhanjan” brings to mind the ending of Random Harvest (1942). Sometimes a person long searches for paradise, not realizing that the sought-after heavenly goal was standing there right in front of him or her all the time.  Gopinath had fabricated a romantic narrative out of Latika’s persona that was based on her fantasy role-playing on the stage.  When he sees Giribala in that same kind of role at the end, he can’t take it.  His possessive nature has now been completely overturned.

With respect to the two women in this story, Giribala and Latika, they were both captivated by the lure of performing.  They wanted to play romantic roles that would appeal to their audiences, but perhaps Giribala was more fully and soulfully immersed than was Latika in the romantic roles she was playing. That made her even more alluring.

★★★½

Notes:

1. Durga S, “Atithi, Maanbhanjan & Detective – Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2)”. Writersbrew, (23 July 2015).  

“Atithi”, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore - Anurag Basu (2015)

“Antithi” (“The Guest”) is the fourth episode of the anthology television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (2015) that was created and directed by Anurag Basu.  The episode is based on the short story of the same name that Tagore (1861-1941) published in 1895.  It tells the story of a gentle teenage boy consumed with wanderlust.

At the beginning, the teenage boy Tarapada (played by Rohan Shah) is shown working in the service of a minstrel singer who wanders about the countryside seeking alms for his spiritual songs.  The boy, who has taken his minstrel master to be a spiritual sage, is surprised to hear him talk onetime about mundane concerns. His master responds by saying that the boy must presumably be, like many youngsters, in search of the meaning of life.  But the boy says to himself:

“I simply want to live life.

I don’t want to ask the tall trees how they grew so big. I simply want to watch their vastness and feel delighted.

I don’t want to question the flow of the river.  I simply want to watch it flowing, for miles on end. 

I want to assimilate this unique aspect of nature within myself. I want to lose myself and not find myself. I want to dissolve, as the sun dissolves in water.

I don’t know the meaning of life.  But I want to know what life is.”

It is on this account that Tarapada, perpetually searching for new experiences with life’s wonders, has many times run away from his home and family. So the boy now wanders off on his own and encounters a zamindar, named Motilal, and his family traveling on the river in a budgerow (houseboat).  When the boat docks, the helpful boy makes himself useful to the zamindar’s retinue, and soon he is taken on as an extra helper.

Although Tarapada is at first only a servant, his constantly cheerfully congenial and assistive nature soon endears the boy to the zamindar’s family.  When he is not industriously attending his chores, he charms the family with his singing and flute-playing.  In fact Tarapada’s many soulful vocal serenades charm this viewer, too, and are a feature of this episode.

After awhile the zamindar and his wife invite Tarapada to come to their stately mansion, and they begin treating the boy like a member of their own family.  But not everyone is pleased with this new situation.  The zamindar’s preteen daughter, Charusashi (aka Charu), is spoiled and not used to sharing the spotlight of the family’s attention with someone else. Soon she is petulantly disrupting or spoiling as many of Tarapada’s activities as possible.  When the good-natured boy refuses to take offense at her shenanigans and tries to befriend her, she simply sulks and turns away.

Things only get worse for Charu’s spoiled ego when she learns that her father has begun teaching the inquisitive boy English.  Charu demands to be included in the English instruction, but she doesn’t have the discipline to learn; she only wants to be the center of attention.  When that fails, she insolently spoils Tarapada’s homework by pouring ink all over it.  All during this time, though, Tarapada remains patient and forgiving.  And little by little, Charu slowly warms to Tarapada’s presence, and they start spending more time together.

At this time Motilal and his wife are thinking of choosing a marriage partner for Charu.  Although the girl is very young, the arranged marriage of preteen girls was common in India at this time (Rabindrath Tagore’s own wife was only ten-years-old when she was married to him).  However, when an audience is arranged for a prospective groom’s family, it is spoiled by Charu’s ill-tempered tantrum, and Motilal and his wife realize that it will be difficult to find anyone who can put up with Charu’s petulance. 

They finally come to the conclusion that Tarapada would make an ideal husband for Charu.  Although he comes from a poor family, he is intelligent, cooperative, industrious, and seems to be the only one who could tame Charu’s self-indulgence.  Motilal is so impressed with the boy that he also intends to include him as his partner in managing his landlord estate. Tarapada will become more than a guest, he will become like a step-son, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the boy. But can he resist his eternal urge to hearken to and follow the song of the open road?  You will find out at the conclusion of this story.


Overall, “Atithi” is a tale that is exquisitely told.  It displays a poetic lyricism featuring an almost  perfect blend of soulful music and atmospheric imagery.  In fact for the expression of its narrative theme, it stands as a cinematic “tone poem”.

★★★★