THE POSTMASTER
By RABINDRANATH TAGORE
For his first job, the postmaster came to the village of Ulapur. It
was
a very humble village. There was an indigo-factory near by,
and the British manager
had with much effort established a new
post office.
The postmaster was a
Calcutta boy - he was a fish out of water
in a village like this. His office
was in a dark thatched hut; there
was a pond next to it, scummed over with weeds,
and jungle all
around. The indigo agents and employees had hardly any spare
time, and were not suitable company for an educated man. Or
rather, his Calcutta
background made him a bad mixer - in an
unfamiliar place he was either arrogant
or ill-at-ease. So there
was not much contact between him and the residents in
the area.
But he had very little work to do. Sometimes he tried to write
poems. The bliss of spending one's life watching the leaves
trembling in the
trees or the clouds in the sky - that was what the
poems expressed. God knew,
however, that if a genie out of an
Arab tale had come and cut down all the leafy
trees overnight,
made a road, and blocked out the sky with rows of tall buildings,
this half-dead, well-bred young man would have come alive
again.
The postmaster's
salary was meagre. He had to cook for him-
self, and an orphaned village-girl
did housework for him in
return for a little food. Her name was Ratan, and she
was about
twelve or thirteen. It seemed unlikely that she would get married.
In the evenings, when smoke curled up from the village cowsheds,
crickets grated
in the bushes, a band of intoxicated Baul singers
in a far village sang raucously
to drums and cymbals, and even a
poet if seated alone on a dark verandah might
have shuddered a little
at the trembling leaves, the postmaster would go inside,
light a
dim lamp in a corner of the room and call for Ratan. Ratan would
be waiting at the door for this, but she did not come at the first
call - she
would call back, 'What is it, Dadababu, what do you want?'
'What are you doing
?' the postmaster would say.
'I must go and light the kitchen fire -’
'You
can do your kitchen work later. Get my hookah ready for
me.
Soon Ratan came
in, puffing out her cheeks as she blew on the
bowl of the hookah. Taking it from
her, the postmaster would say
abruptly, 'So, Ratan, do you remember your mother
?' She had
lots to tell him: some things she remembered, others she did not.
Her father loved her more than her mother did she remembered
him a little. He
used to come home in the evening after working
hard all day, and one or two evenings
were clearly etched in her
memory. As she talked, Ratan edged nearer to the postmaster,
and would end up sitting on the ground at his feet. She remem-
bered her little
brother: one distant day, during the rainy season,
they had stood on the edge
of a small pond and played at catching
fish with sticks broken off trees - this
memory was far more
vividly fixed in her mind than many more important things.
Sometimes these conversations went on late into the night, and
the postmaster
then felt too sleepy to cook. There would be some
vegetable curry left over from
midday, and Ratan would quickly
light the fire and cook some chapati: they made
their supper out
of that.
Occasionally, sitting on a low wooden office-stool
in a corner of
his large hut, the postmaster would speak of his family - his
younger brother, mother and elder sister - all those for whom his
heart ached,
alone and exiled as he was. He told this illiterate
young girl things which were
often in his mind but which be
would never have dreamt of divulging to the indigo
employees -
and it seemed quite natural to do so. Eventually Ratan referred to
the postmaster family - his mother, sister and brother? - as if
they were her
own. She even formed affectionate imaginary
pictures of them in her mind.
Ii was a fine afternoon in the rainy season. The breeze was softly
warm;
there was a smell of sunshine on wet grass and leaves.
Earth's. breath - hot
with fatigue - seemed to brush against the
skin'. A persistent bird cried out
monotonously somewhere,
making repeated and pathetic appeals at Nature's midday
durbar,
The postmaster had hardly any work: truly the only things to
were
the smooth, shiny, rain-washed leaves quivering, the
layers of sun-whitened,
broken-up clouds left over from the rain.
He watched, and felt how it would be
to have a close companion
here, a human object for the heart's most intimate
affections.
Gradually it seemed that the bird was saying precisely this, again
and again; that in the afternoon shade and solitude the same
meaning was in the
rustle of the leaves. Few would believe or
imagine that a poorly paid sub-postmaster
in a small village could
have such feelings in the deep, idle stillness of the
afternoon
Sighing heavily, the postmaster called for Ratan. Ratan was at
that moment stretched out under a guava tree, eating unripe
guavas. At the sound
of her master's call she got up at once and
ran to him.
'Yes, Dadabahu, you
called ?' she said, breathlessly.
'I'm going to teach you to read, a little bit
each day,' said the
postmaster. He taught her daily at midday from then on, starting
with the vowels but quickly progressing to the consonants and
conjuncts.
During the month of Sraban, the rain was continuous. Ditches,
pits and channels
filled to overflowing with water. The croaking
of frogs and the patter of rain
went on day and night. It was
virtually impossible to get about on foot - one
had to go to
market by boat. One day it rained torrentially from dawn. The
postmaster's pupil waited for a long time at the door, but when
the usual call
failed to come, she quietly entered the room, with
her bundle of books. She saw
the postmaster lying on his bed.'
thinking that he was resting, she began to
tip-toe out again.
Suddenly she heard him call her. She turned round and quickly
went up to him saying, 'Weren't you asleep, Dadababu?'
'I don't feel well,' said
the postmaster painfully. 'Have a look -
feel my forehead.
He felt in need
of comfort, ill and miserable as he was, in this
isolated place, the rain pouring'
down, He remembered the touch
on his forehead of soft hands, conch-shell bangles.
He wished his
mother or sister were sitting here next to him, soothing his illness
and loneliness with feminine tenderness. And his longings did
not stay unfulfilled.
The young girl Ratan was a young girl
no longer. From that moment on she took
on the role of a
mother, calling the doctor, giving him pills at the right time,
staying awake at his bedside all night long, cooking him convales
cent meals,
and saying a hundred times, 'Are you feeling a bit
better, Dadababu ?'
Many
days later, the postmaster got up from his bed, thin and
weak. He had decided
that enough was enough: somehow he
would have to leave. He wrote at once to his
head office in
Calcutta, applying for a transfer because of the unhealthiness
of the place.
Released from nursing the postmaster, Ratan once again took
up her normal place outside his door. But his call did not come
for her as before.
Sometimes she would peep in and see the
postmaster sitting distractedly on his
stool or lying on his bed.
While she sat expecting his summons, he was anxiously
awaiting
a reply to his application. She sat outside the door going over her
old lessons numerous times. She was terrified that if he suddenly
summoned her
again one day, the conjunct consonants would all
be muddled up in her mind. Eventually,
after several weeks, his
call came again one evening. With eager heart, Ratan
rushed into
the room. 'Did you call, Dadababu ?' she asked.
'I'm leaving
tomorrow, Ratan,' said the postmaster.
'Where are you going, Dadababu ?'
'I'm going home.'
'When are you coming back ?'
'I shan't come back again.'
Ratan did not question him further. The postmaster himself
told her that he had
applied for a transfer, but his application had
been rejected; so he was resigning
from his post and returning
home. For several minutes, neither of them spoke.
The lamp
flickered weakly; through a hole in the crumbling thatched roof,
rain-water steadily dripped on to an earthenware dish. Ratan then
went slowly
out to the kitchen to make some chapati. She made
them with none of her usual
energy. No doubt her thoughts
distracted her. When the postmaster had had his
meal, she sud-
denly asked, 'Dadababu, will you take me home with you ?'
'How could I do that!' said the postmaster, laughing. He saw
no need to explain
to the girl why the idea was impossible.
All night long, whether dreaming or
awake, Ratan felt the
postmaster’s laugh ringing in her ears. 'How could I do
that !'
When he rose at dawn, the postmaster saw that his bath-water
had
been put out ready for him (he bathed according to his
Calcutta habit, in water
brought in a bucket). Ratan had not been
able to bring herself to ask him what
time he would be leaving;
she had carried the bath-water up from the river late
at night, in
case he needed it early in the morning. As soon as he finished his
bath, the postmaster called her. She entered the room softly and
looked at him
once without speaking, ready for her orders.
'Ratan,' he said, 'I'll tell the
man who replaces me that he should
look after you as I have; you mustn't worry
just because I'm
going.
No doubt this remark was inspired by kind and generous
feelings, hut who can fathom the feelings of a woman ? Ratan had
meekly suffered
many scoldings from her master, but these kindly
words were more than she could
bear. The passion in her heart
exploded, and she cried, 'No, no, you mustn't
say anything to
anyone - I don't want to stay here.' The postmaster was taken
aback: he had never seen Ratan behave like that before.
A new postmaster came.
After handing over his charge to him,
the resigning postmaster got ready to leave.
Before going, he
called Ratan and said, 'Ratan, I've never been able to pay you
anything. Today before I go I want to give you something, to last
you for a few
days.' Except for the little that he needed for the
journey, he took out all
the salary that was in his pocket. But
Ratan sank to the ground and clung to
his feet, saying, 'I beg you,
Dadababu, I beg you - don't give me any money.
Please, no one
need bother about me.' Then she fled, running.
The departing
postmaster sighed, picked up his carpet-bag,
put his umbrella over his shoulder,
and, with a coolie carrying his
blue-and-white-striped tin trunk on his head,
slowly made his
way towards the boat.
When he was on the boat and it had
set sail, when the swollen
flood-waters of the river started to heave like the
Earth's brim-
ming tears, the postmaster felt a huge anguish: the image of a
simple young village-girl's grief-stricken face seemed to speak a
great inarticulate
universal sorrow. He felt a sharp desire to go
back: should he not fetch that
orphaned girl, whom the world had
abandoned? But the wind was filling the sails
by then, the swollen
river was flowing fiercely, the village had been left behind,
the
riverside burning-ground was in view. Detached by the current
of the
river, he reflected philosophically that in life there are
many separations,
many deaths. What point was there in going
back ? Who belonged to whom in this
world ?
But Ratan had no such philosophy to console her. All she could
do
was wander near the post office, weeping copiously. Maybe a
faint hope lingered
in her mind that [)adababu might return; and
this was enough to tie her to the
spot, prevent her from going far.
O poor, unthinking human heart! Error will
not go away, logic
and reason are slow to penetrate. We cling with both arms
to false
hope, refusing to believe the weightiest proofs against it, embra-
cing it with all our strength. In the end it escapes, ripping our
veins and draining
our heart's blood; until, regaining conscious-
ness, we rush to fall into snares
of delusion all over again.
*** END***
Translated by William Radice
