Tagore\'s Best Short Stories

Contents: Introduction. 2. Atithi (The visitor). 3. Dena Paona (Debts and Dues). 4. Ek Ratri (One Night).  5. Khokababur Pratyabartan (The return of Khokababu). 6. Kankal (The Skeleton). 7. Kabuliwallah (The man from Kabul). 8. Chhuti (The Holiday). 9. Samapti (The ending). 10.3 Kshudhita Pashan (The Hungry stones). 11. Monnihara (Loss of Bejewelled Glory). 12. Nashtaneer (Broken Nest). 13. Streer Patra (The Wife’s Epistle).

In commemoration of Rabindaranath Tagore’s (1861-1941) 150th birth anniversary, this new collection of English translation of his selected short stories opens up the possibility of an English-reading global audience discovering a new contemporary relevance in Tagore’s creations more than a century after they were penned in colonial India.

Introducing Tagore’s short stories afresh to a generation intrigued by the contemporary interface of the global and the local is significant, as these stories are marked by a fascinating dialectic of historical contexts, with all their cultural particularity, on the one hand, and Tagore’s vision of universal humanity, on the other.

At a time when the ideology of consumerism is propagating an ethic based on individual needs, Tagore’s short stories permeated with values based on care, attachment and empathy strike a deep chord, precisely because this value orientation is fast eroding all over the globalized world.

Tagore’s stories, representing a multiplicity of voices, have a timeless ethical relevance in terms of their commitment to social and cultural plurality. Moving representations of the subjectivity of variously marginalized persons signify Tagore’s attachment to the cause of social justice that he equated with his love for a God, whom he saw as the profundity of life personified.