The postmaster story of rabindranath tagore biography

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O poor, unthinking human heart! The girl read her old lessons over and over again,—her great fear was lest, when the call came, she might be found wanting in the double consonants. He had never seen Ratan like this before.

The new incumbent duly arrived, and the postmaster, having given over charge, prepared to depart. At one time he had an impulse to go back, and bring away along with him that lonesome waif, forsaken of the world.

She sat outside the door going over her old lessons numerous times. 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. Ratan partly remembered, and partly didn’t. She was wandering about the post office in a flood of tears. Such alienation was a common condition of people involved with industry in the late 1800s (the time this story was written), and was a trope explored by writers ranging from Charles Dickens to Karl Marx.

At the end of the story, we get a contrast between the educated Postmaster’s “philosophy” and Ratan’s uneducated naivete.

Ratan begs him to take her with him, but he smugly tells her that’s impossible. The postmaster had hardly any work: truly the only things to look at were the smooth, shiny, rain-washed leaves quivering, the layers of sun-whitened, broken-up clouds left over from the rain. As she talked, Ratan edged nearer to the postmaster, and would end up sitting on the ground at his feet.

‘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, but who can fathom the feelings of a woman? She saw the postmaster lying on his bed: thinking that he was resting, she began to tip-toe out again.

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. Her father had been fonder of her than her mother; him she recollected more vividly. So there was not much contact between him and the residents in the area.

But he had very little work to do.

‘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. This begins a relationship where the two share intimate details about their families, with the Postmaster divulging how much he misses his mother and sister back in Calcutta. He remembered the touch on his forehead of soft hands, conch-shell bangles.