Customer Reviews

Hungry Stones and Other Stories

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Rabindranath Tagore is the most significant Indian literary figure. He is primarily known for his poetry, which is sublime and inimitable. Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, Nobel Prize in literature has had a rather checkered history. Many of its early recipients are largely forgotten today, and many of the recent prizes have been given for political, rather than literary, reasons. I approached Tagore's writings with a grain of salt, but my skepticism proved to be unwarranted. His poetry is of the highest caliber, and his literary reputation is well deserved. He is not read much in the English-speaking world any more, which is a shame. He deserves to be rediscovered and his writings reintroduced to the new generation of readers.

All of the stories in this collection are imaginative and infused with higher spiritual notions and themes. The stories range from fanciful fables to short autobiographical sketches. They are fictionalized comments on the human condition, as well as a cross section of Indian life and customs. The stories are easy to read and for the most part entertaining. Their charm is unquestionable, and they are a good reflection of an author who was supremely at ease with the written word. Whether you are reading Tagore for the first time or have already been exposed to him before, you will enjoy this collection of short stories.

Tagore (1861-1941) has been called the greatest writer in the Bengali language. India's foremost Romantic poet, he was also the first author to elevate the Bengali short story into a serious art-form. His short stories number approximately 90.

This anthology was first published in 1916 and contained 13 of the stories in English translation. Presumably the pieces were written between the 1890s and the 1910s. The translators were referred to as "several hands," including the Englishman Charles F. Andrews and Tagore himself. It's been claimed by some that Andrews didn't serve Tagore well, modifying and westernizing some stories in collaboration with the author.

The stories in the collection were of several types. Some were written as if narrated directly from Tagore's own experience and were set in his native Calcutta or at his country home ("Kabuliwallah," "The Devotee"); most of the others were in the third person. Some seemed primarily to contain criticism of the caste system or people's lack of sufficient compassion for one another, and revolved around issues of mistaken identity or impersonation ("The Renunciation," "My Lord, the Baby," "The Babus of Nayanjore"). Others of this type focused somewhat melodramatically on the relations between wife and husband ("Vision") or mother and child ("The Home-Coming"). The former tale was the only one written from a woman's point of view.

Some of the works featured a sly sense of humor, including mockery aimed at the narrator himself, women, or others. One of these poked fun at Indians who sought advancement and recognition from the English ("'We Crown Thee King'"). Others were allegories mocking social attitudes of the time or the artist's position in the world ("The Kingdom of Cards," "The Victory"). In the former, three companions were shipwrecked on a island that contained a highly regulated society ruled by playing cards, who wanted most of all to know what caste they belonged to, what their clan was, and what food they would take.

A few concerned ghosts or the macabre, as told by a narrator similar to Tagore ("The Hungry Stones") or written in the third person ("Living or Dead?"). For this reader, the latter was far superior to the former, which the author appeared to not know how to end.

In the stories as a whole, the author's compassion, particularly for children and those not valued by society, came through. Many of the tales concluded sadly; six involved tragedies related to babies or young people, a misfortune the author experienced in his own life. However, there were a few happy endings ("Vision," "The Kingdom of Cards," "The Babus of Nayanjore").

The story enjoyed the least seemed to combine an endless fairy tale and a narrator's frequent intrusion into its telling to recall his grandmother's yarns and comment on the story ("Once There Was a King"). Stories enjoyed the most included "Kabuliwallah," in which the Tagore-like narrator glimpsed the passing of time and affirmed people's common humanity ("I forgot that he was a poor Kabuli fruit-seller, while I was ---. But no, what was I more than he? He also was a father. The impression of the hand of his little Parbati in her distant mountain home reminded me of my own little [daughter]"). And "Living or Dead?" which had a beautiful structure and showed a woman who felt caught between life and death.

For the stories in this collection, this reader sometimes got the feeling that the author was writing from a rather elevated, privileged and apolitical standpoint. Though he was certainly acquainted with tragedy, sometimes it felt as if he didn't care to look into the darkest aspects of psychology, people or the world that were probed by later writers -- Premchand, Manto, Manik Bandyopadhyay -- in some of their best stories ("The Shroud," "The Return," "Prehistoric").

A larger, much more recent translation of Tagore's short stories is Selected Short Stories, edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri (Oxford University Press, 2000), with 26 works written between 1884 and 1941. Another is Selected Short Stories, edited by William Radice (Penguin Books, 1991, revised 1994), with 30 works from the 1890s.

Some excerpts from the present collection:

"Hitherto I had only looked upon [a neighbor's daughter] . . . as a somewhat worthless commodity in the marriage market, waiting in vain to attract a husband. But now I found, with a shock of surprise, that in the corner of that room a human heart was beating."

"Saying this, he put his hand inside his big loose robe, and brought out a small and dirty piece of paper. With great care he unfolded this, and smoothed it out with both hands on my table. It bore the impression of a little hand. Not a photograph. Not a drawing. The impression of an ink-smeared hand laid flat on the paper. This touch of his own little daughter had been always on his heart, as he had come year after year to Calcutta to sell his wares in the streets."

"Everywhere else the world held on its course; only in this gentle little breast, suffering with love, the watch of time stood still for ever . . . . The widow could not remember whether the child, in the sweet voice of love, called her 'Auntie,' as if for the last time, or not; she could not remember whether, as she left the world she knew for death's endless unknown journey, she had received a parting gift of affection, love's passage-money for the silent land."

"I hold tight this broken rudder of a heart till my hands bleed. The waves have become too strong for me."

"When I heard [the greed in my husband's voice], I wondered in my mind why God had not made me deaf as well as blind."

"Women never make mistakes, or, if they do, a sensible man never mentions them; it is better to take them on his own shoulders."

"Women do not love mystery, because, though uncertainty may be transmuted into poetry, into heroism, into scholarship, it cannot be turned to account in household work. So, when a woman cannot understand a thing, she either destroys and forgets it, or she shapes it anew for her own use; if she fails to deal with it in one of these ways, she loses her temper with it."

"At the age of fifty-five, his tender gaze still fixed on the misty peak of Raja-hood, he suddenly found himself transported to a region where earthly honours and decorations are naught, and his salaam-wearied neck found everlasting repose on the funeral pyre."

"Whether [the main character] derived any consolation . . . he alone can tell; but we greatly doubt it. We believe, in fact, that he will become a Rai Bahadur before he has done, and [the pro-English newspapers] will write heart-rending articles lamenting his demise at the proper time. So, in the meanwhile, Three Cheers for Babu Purnendu Sekhar!"