Customer Reviews

Gora

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Gora is inteligent, energetic and a strong believer. He believes in believing and acting for those beliefs. He is strong he is aggressive. He thinks that the strong belief can bring in all the good. Strong belief in God, Culture, country, ... will automatically make them self confident and will lead to progress. Which will eliminate the problems for the society. He subscribes to the beliefs, that he thinks are birth right to him. He is strong Hindu, He is strong Indian, Strong __, ... At the end he comes to know that his all the beliefs are baseless. He is devastated! The meaning of his existence was closely bound to his beliefs, but there is nothing to believe. What can he survive on? He gains new insights and so do we.

All the women characters are simply great!! Which is very characteristic of Tagore and Sharad Chandra.

This book changed me!

To truly appreciate this book one needs to have some fair idea of the social, religious and political situation of India during the late nineteenth-early twentieth century. This book revolutionised the thinking and beliefs of the then contemporary modern thinkers and intellectuals, laying the foundation of the idea of a secular Indian society. The underlying theme is the essence of being a human, and very few in the history of mankind could find words that brings this out so beautifully (more so in the original Bengali, much of it is lost in the English translation). The reader undergoes the journey of self discovery along with the main protagonist, Gora. The beauty of Tagore's writing is that the unpredicatability and the vulnerability of the characters make them so natural and real, bringing out the inherent self-contradictions of human beings until they discover their true self and then all the cunfusions and the contradictions in one's own faith vanish. One finds one's place in this cosmos, realises the implication of being a human, experiences the beauty of life. And this makes the appeal of the book timeless.

Don't buy this kindle edition. The book is a classic in Indian literature, but this edition has the worst translation. The author has translated bengali into english word to word, with no semblance of grammar, sentence structure or meaning. Better get the penguin paperback edition, and not this mess.

This book is sometimes referred to as Tagore's response to Kipling's Kim, but it's much more; in fact, there's only a single British official in the novel, and he only appears for several pages. This novel takes place in Kolkata in the mid 1880s (?), and focuses on the generation coming of age a few decades after the Sepoy Rebellion, especially on the Brahman revivalist Gora and his close friend Binoy, who is drawn to a less restrictive code. They form close personal, and gradually romantic connections, with the strong-willed girls in a family involved in the equally restrictive Hindu Samaj movement. Though the characters struggle to reconcile themselves with Bengali etiquette, they also embody the modernizing impulses of the nascent nationalist movement that is informed by English education and social values.

The above may sound dry, but the novel is quite gripping, and it provides a nuanced and loving recreation of a generation struggling to come to terms with India's extreme cultural & religious diversity and the outside influences that place additional strain on it. And, from our post-Partition perspective, we see perhaps the last, best chance to create one, comprehensive Bharatvarsha.

Although it has a very helpful introduction and notes, I've given the work 4 stars because of the occasional misspellings and syntactic trainwrecks that occur every 30 or 40 pages (there aren't many, but when they occur, it's quite messy).

The Kindle edition of this famous novel is a disgrace to Tagore. I am amazed that Amazon keeps this on its list. The translation is unbelievably bad.

'Gora', a novel by Rabindranath Tagore was published in 1910. Being one of the most popular & complex works by Tagore, Gora tries to bring out the complex issues of the society such as caste system and the role of women in the society.

The story is set in a tine when Bengal is divided between the orthodox Hindus and liberal Brahmo Samaj. Where many traditional Hindu ceremonies, idol worship, and caste system are very strong amongst the orthodox Hindus, the Brahmos of Brahmo Samaj are totally opposed to all these practices. Even though the Brahmos seems like they are more liberal, they do have their own drawbacks. Tagore effectively tries to bring out these ideas through a story and many characters. Gora or Gaurmohan, who is the central character of this story is a staunch Hindu who believes in following all Hindu ceremonies & rituals. Gora is depicted as a person who is highly patriotic & doesn't believe in attrocities to the poor. Gora's best friend Binoy too is a Hindu, but is more liberal as compared to Gora, therefore bringing out many heated discussions and debates between the two friends. The main women characters of this story - Sucharita and Lolita - are educated women of those times who are taught to think for themselves.

Summarizing the entire book may be a bit difficult because all the debates and discussions can have different interpretations by people reading it.

Go ahead, pick up a copy & interpret!

It took me 5 days to read and complete this book. It captivated me through and through. It is fascinating how the two main male figures in the book, both Gora and Binoy are aspects of the same consciousness. Every thought, reflection and exchange between these two and with others arise from the same core. Only a master story teller can assume two equally important roles and keep them playing until the end. The women in the book reflect old patterns, newer thoughts, hopes and self discovery, all over the book. Extreme personalities of the complete mother who has formed a religion of her own based on motherhood, and ignorance of foolish and greedy unwise womanhood - all fearful reflect the conscious and unconscious mind. A great psychological book, where the collective assume a persona and the individual reflects the collective. The younger women-children in the story make me wonder how easy it is for women of today and yet how much we complain. They were perfect and had to be ever vigilant and are even today inspiring. Amazing work, extremely fascinating until the end.