The Post Office

By Rabindranath Tagore and Devabrata Mukerjea

This vintage book contains Rabindranath Tagore's 1912 play, 'The Post Office'. The play revolves around Amal, a child confined to his adopted uncle's house by an incurable disease who, inspired by the construction of a local post office, fantasizes about receiving a letter from the king or being a postman. The play was translated into English by W. B. Yeats, and was performed in English for the first time in 1912, by the 'Irish Theatre Company' in London with Tagore in attendance. The Bengali original was staged in Calcutta in 1917. Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941) was a Bengali polymath who reformed Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We are republishing this antiquarian volume now complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446547397

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.

Book preview

PREFACE

WHEN this little play was performed in London a year ago by the Irish players, some friends of mine discovered much detailed allegory, the Headman being one principle of social life, the Curdseller or the Gaffer another; but the meaning is less intellectual, more emotional and simple. The deliverance sought and won by the dying child is the same deliverance which rose before his imagination, Mr. Tagore has said, when once in the early dawn he heard, amid the noise of a crowd returning from some festival, this line out of an old village song, Ferryman, take me to the other shore of the river. It may come at any moment of life, though the child discovers it in death, for it always comes at the moment when the I, seeking no longer for gains that cannot be assimilated with its spirit, is able to say, All my work is thine (Sādhanā, pp. 162, 163). On the stage the little play shows that it is very perfectly constructed, and conveys to the right audience an emotion of gentleness and peace.

W. B. YEATS.

THE POST OFFICE

ACT I

ACT I

(Madhav’s House.)

Madhav

What a state I am in! Before he came, nothing mattered; I felt so free. But now that he has come, goodness knows from where, my heart is filled with his dear self, and my home will be no home to me when he leaves. Doctor, do you think he——

Physician

If there’s life in his fate, then he will live long. But what the medical scriptures say, it seems——

Madhav

Great heavens, what?

Physician

The scriptures have it: Bile or palsey, cold or gout spring all alike.

Madhav

Oh, get along, don’t fling your scriptures at me; you only make me more anxious; tell me what I can do.

Physician (taking snuff)

The patient needs the most scrupulous care.

Madhav

That’s true; but tell me how.

Physician

I have already mentioned, on no account must he be let out of doors.

Madhav

Poor child, it is very hard to keep him indoors all day long.

Physician

What else can you do? The autumn sun and the damp are both very bad for the little fellow—for the scriptures

Reviews for The Post Office

[Barkha Kumari · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The story is so touching. It has a deep meaning. It's symbolic.