Introduction :-
The Postmaster ,a story of a young man from Kolkata is posted to a rural area and finds life dull and boring. Orphaned girl-child Ratan draws water for him and cooks for him. The postmaster occupies his leisure in teaching her how to read and write. This creates in Ratan a desire for self-improvement as well as an affection for her teacher and employer. The Postmaster falls ill and she nurses him devotedly. But he seeks and gets a transfer and Ratan feels abandoned.
About the Writer :-
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was an Indian poet, writer, painter, and philosopher born in Calcutta. A recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, he became the first Asian to win the prize. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Art (FRSA), he was knighted by the British government in 1915, but renounced his Knighthood after the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919. A prolific artist of gargantuan proportions, he is often credited with revolutionising the Bengali literary scene, and bringing India to the world. With the monetary funds of the Nobel Prize, he founded a university by the name of Visva-Bharati in 1921, which became a melting pot for artists from all over the world. In a literary career spanning more than six decades, he is credited with writing over a hundred short stories, thirteen novels, more than fifty plays, multiple collections of verses and essays, and several hundred songs. Rabindranath’s songs occupy a special position in the cultural canon of Bengali artistic sensibility, christened as Rabindrasangeet.
About the Short Story :-
"The Postmaster” is one of Tagore’s bleaker stories, spun around two immensely lonely characters whose only chance to end their loneliness is squandered. While as readers we may yearn for the happy ending where the Postmaster returns to the village to whisk Ratan away, Tagore instead uses these characters to lay out a parable about interpersonal relationships in developing modernity under British imperial rule of India.
Key here is the fact that the Postmaster is sent to the village of Ulapur as a colonial agent of the British, so that this little industry town can have a functioning post office. The Postmaster is, in turn, an agent of the British economic and colonial projects in India. Naturally they would select an educated man, but the price of the Postmaster putting that education to good use is finding working conditions that alienate him. Such alienation was a common condition of people involved with industry in the late 1800s (the time this story was written), and was a trope explored by writers ranging from Charles Dickens to Karl Marx.
At the end of the story, we get a contrast between the educated Postmaster’s “philosophy” and Ratan’s uneducated naivete. These are cast as equal burdens, with the Postmaster’s flippant decision to leave Ratan behind because life is full of separations and deaths portrayed as comparably tragic to Ratan’s delusional hope that Ratan might one day return to the village for her. It’s a mysterious little parable that doesn’t have a clear moral, but rather offers a meditation on a fundamental human tragedy that undergirds both loneliness and desire.
Summary of the Short Story :-
For his first job, the Postmaster is assigned to work in the village of Ulapur, a quiet backwater with an indigo factory. He feels sorely out of place in the village, feeling both too sophisticated as a Calcutta man amongst uneducated villagers, and needlessly arrogant to the very people who he might turn to, hoping for friendship.
For lack of anything better to do, the Postmaster takes to writing poetry about his scenic surroundings, pontificating on rain-soaked leaves and the like as a way to express his deepest sorrows. Since he doesn’t make much money, the Postmaster cooks for himself and enlists a young orphan girl named Ratan to help him with housework in exchange for some food.
One night while Ratan is preparing his hookah, the Postmaster asks her to describe her family. This begins a relationship where the two share intimate details about their families, with the Postmaster divulging how much he misses his mother and sister back in Calcutta. The rapport develops to such an extent that Ratan starts to consider the Postmaster’s family her own.
One day while watching a bird in a tree, the Postmaster is taken by a desperate need for female companionship, for someone who he could share this sighting of a bird with. He calls Ratan into his office and informs her that he’s going to teach her how to read. These lessons continue until the Postmaster falls ill and he grows unable and unwilling to continue. Ratan, regardless, practises what he has taught her. Fed up with the village and his illness, the Postmaster applies for a transfer and is denied.
Nonetheless, he quits the job to return home, and tells Ratan as much. Ratan begs him to take her with him, but he smugly tells her that’s impossible. He promises her that the next Postmaster will take care of her, but that does nothing to comfort her. Upon leaving, he tries to give Ratan money, but she refuses.
As the Postmaster is leaving, he is struck by a feeling that he should go back and take Ratan, but concludes that life is full of separations and endings, so what’s the point? Ratan doesn’t have the same view though, and holds out, in anguish, for the possibility that the Postmaster will return to take her to Calcutta.
Themes of the Story :-
LONELINESS
While there are many themes that run through the text, the major theme is of "loneliness". It is loneliness that makes the postmaster take an interest in Ratan and decide to teach her. It is also, to an extent, Ratan's own loneliness that encourages her to form what seems like a friendship with the postmaster. At the end, the abandoned Ratan remains lonely by hoping for the return of the postmaster while the latter never returns, probably, due to not being lonely since returning to the city.
CHARACTER OF THE STORY :-
Ratan :-
Ratan is a “twelve or thirteen” year old “orphaned village girl” who helps the postmaster with housework in return for a portion of his meals. She is lower-class, lacks a family, and cannot marry out of her poverty or find employment outside of menial household work. At first reluctant to interact with the postmaster, Ratan gradually begins to enjoy her conversations with her “master,” in which she recounts her own family background and begins to form “affectionate imaginary pictures” of the postmaster’s own family life. Ratan also learns quickly from the postmaster’s lessons in reading and the alphabet. Eventually, Ratan comes to think of the postmaster as a father or husband, and she becomes dependent on his generosity and his conversations with her. She nurses him back to health after his sickness, “staying awake at his bedside all night long.” Finally, after the postmaster has recovered and decides to leave Ulapur, Ratan asks him to take her “home” with him—essentially, to adopt or marry her. The postmaster’s incredulous rejection of this proposal horrifies and embarrasses Ratan. After his departure, she wanders “near the post office, weeping copiously.” Destitute, lonely, and still uneducated, Ratan cannot leave the confines of Ulapur, though she wishes desperately to. She has neither the freedom nor the philosophy of the postmaster, who can comfort himself in his grief with the knowledge that death and separation are an inescapable part of life. Ratan, though, has no such knowledge, and thus, no such comfort.
The Postmaster :-
The postmaster (known only by his job title, never by his actual name) is a young Indian man from Calcutta employed as a postmaster in Ulapur, a rural Bengal village. The postmaster comes to Ulapur after the British owner of an indigo dye factory in Ulapur asks the government to install a post office there.In his free time, he tries to write poetry, though he feels somewhat disillusioned with the themes of his own poems. He writes about the transcendent beauty of nature in Ulapur, yet he would prefer to be in urban Calcutta, with its impressive “paved roads” and “high rises.” Out of boredom and loneliness, the postmaster develops a relationship with Ratan, an orphan who helps him with housework, and he begins to share stories about his life with her. He also begins to teach her how to read. However, the unending monsoons in Ulapur depress the postmaster and cause him to become ill. He quits his job and leaves Ratan behind in Ulapur, offering her a significant sum of money out of guilt—which she refuses.
Conclusion :-
Tagore ends the story with an empty feeling in Ratan’s and the reader’s heart. Ratan is delusional. She entertains the false hope that the postmaster would come back and take her away with him. We sympathize with her because she has truly been devoted to the postmaster in every respect.
No comments:
Post a Comment