Clouds and Sunshine

By Rabindranath Tagore

This short life-drama originally penned by Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali begins in an idyllic setting. While the clouds and the sunshine are the two prominent players in the firmament, on the earthly stage below the main players are a little girl named Giribala and the young law graduate, Shasibhusan. 19th century Bengali culture is biased against education of girls and favors child marriage. Giribala's brothers, who go to school refuse to teach her to read and to write. Files of strange tiny black glyphs guard the entrance to a mysterious world, carrying on their shoulders dependent vowel signs and the like pointed all the way up. They never care to answer the questions which Giribala asks. The Garland of Tales refuses to betray its tales of tigers, foxes, horses and donkeys to the curious little girl and The Rachis of Narratives gazes at her in silence with its store of narratives, narrating nothing. But soon the weak-sighted Shasibhusan becomes Giribala's preceptor. It is his labor of love. In two years Giribala learns the English and Bengali alphabets and finishes reading a few elementary books. Then Shasi is kept busy by some legal proceedings and his doleful pupil distances herself from him gradually. Around this time, Giri's family marries her off at the age of ten. Left with practically nothing to do, Shasi decides to leave his village for Calcutta city but gets into trouble en route twice in a row and gives us a fine example of Murphy. Friendless and penniless, a surprise awaits him in the end. This long short story is a faithful translation of arguably the best work in prose by the gray-haired bloke who took the Literature Nobel outside Europe 100 years ago ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. Datta
• Release date: Oct 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301205189

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at University College London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.

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Reviews for Clouds and Sunshine

[A. Datta · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A bibliophile's spiritual journey through the ups and downs of life. Village life. Honor, cruelty, corruption, reward.