Works of Rabindranath Tagore. Can you count, handpick and comment on them all? Surely not! No one can for sure. If one gets a collection of the great author's delicious short-stories. What can he/she do other than savour his/her eyes n' mind on them? That's what I did when I got this book in my hands. I simply went on undithered till the last page.
The Selected Short Stories is a collection of 26 short stories by Rabindranath Tagore. The most famous of them being,
''The Ghat's Story'',
''The Exercise-Book'',
''A Single Night'',
''Punishment'',
''The Unapproved Story'',
''The Living and the Dead'',
''Kabuliwala'',
''Grandfather'',
''Tin Sangi'',
''Hungry Stones'' and many more.
''The Postmaster'' & ''Kabuliwalla'' are two of my personal favourites. ''The Postmaster'' is not a part of this book. But I included it as this was the one which touched me deeply. ''The Kabuliwalla'' for the golden heart of a father irrespective of his social status. This story of a father's longing to see his daughter and spending days with a thought that he will get to see her after twenty years as he had left her as a child. This was something which brought that salty water in the corners of my eyes.
The strong factors in Rabindranath Tagore's stories are stark realism and a dash of poetry to underline it. And the main focus is always the human nature. The phenomenal changes in human nature according to his/her character and the surrounding changes taking place is something to notice in each of these stories. Everything is rather unexpected, everything comes with a shock, everything that one reads from Tagore remains with him/her till the last breathe of life, if not knowingly maybe unknowingly. As I have mentioned in my review on 'Gitanjali', these 'Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore' posses a power of taking one off his/her feet from any corner of the world to the lanes of Bengal. Many of the stories included in these 26 stories are based on Tagore's experiences in rural parts of East Bengal.
The ‘Selected Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore’ is the English translation of the original Bengali short stories. The stories have been selected and edited by 'Sukanta Chaudhari'. The book gives an artistic feel with the paintings included with each of the stories. These paintings come from Tagore himself, some from his nephew and the famous artist 'Gaganendranath Tagore' and the rest of the artists from Shantiniketan. These works of art add to the reading experience. I haven't grown up enough to understand all these paintings, but yes as much as I could understand, many of them carry the theme of his stories rather than directly addressing the adjoining story.
The ‘Selected Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore’ is surely a must read, especially for the youth in their late teens. As that is the time when a person grows largely into his adulthood. What can play the best as an anchor to a ship called life in it's stormy nights? What else other than the works of the legend himself.
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