THE POSTMASTER

by Rabindranath Tagore

The postmaster first took up his duties in the village of Ulapur. Though the village was a
small one, there was an indigo factory near by, and the proprietor, an Englishman, had
managed to get a post office established.

Our postmaster belonged to Calcutta. He felt like a fish out of water in this remote village.
His office and living-room were in a dark thatched shed, not far from a green, slimy pond,
surrounded on all sides by a dense growth.

The men employed in the indigo factory had no leisure; moreover, they were hardly
desirable companions for decent folk. Nor is a Calcutta boy an adept in the art of
associating with others. Among strangers he appears either proud or ill at ease. At any
rate, the postmaster had but little company; nor had he much to do.

At times he tried his hand at writing a verse or two. That the movement of the leaves and
the clouds of the sky were enough to fill life with joy—such were the sentiments to which
he sought to give expression. But God knows that the poor fellow would have felt it as the
gift of a new life, if some genie of the Arabian Nights had in one night swept away the
trees, leaves and all, and replaced them with a macadamised road, hiding the clouds
from view with rows of tall houses.

The postmaster's salary was small. He had to cook his own meals, which he used to
share with Ratan, an orphan girl of the village, who did odd jobs for him.

When in the evening the smoke began to curl up from the village cowsheds, and the
cicadas chirped in every bush; when the mendicants of the Baül sect sang their shrill
songs in their daily meeting-place, when any poet, who had attempted to watch the
movement of the leaves in the dense bamboo thickets, would have felt a ghostly shiver
run down his back, the postmaster would light his little lamp, and call out "Ratan."

Ratan would sit outside waiting for this call, and, instead of coming in at once, would
reply, "Did you call me, sir?"

"What are you doing?" the postmaster would ask.

"I must be going to light the kitchen fire," would be the answer.

And the postmaster would say: "Oh, let the kitchen fire be for awhile; light me my pipe
first."

At last Ratan would enter, with puffed-out cheeks, vigorously blowing into a flame a live
coal to light the tobacco. This would give the postmaster an opportunity of conversing.
"Well, Ratan," perhaps he would begin, "do you remember anything of your mother?"
That was a fertile subject. Ratan partly remembered, and partly didn't. Her father had
been fonder of her than her mother; him she recollected more vividly. He used to come
home in the evening after his work, and one or two evenings stood out more clearly than
others, like pictures in her memory. Ratan would sit on the floor near the postmaster's
feet, as memories crowded in upon her. She called to mind a little brother that she had—
and how on some bygone cloudy day she had played at fishing with him on the edge of
the pond, with a twig for a make-believe fishing-rod. Such little incidents would drive out
greater events from her mind. Thus, as they talked, it would often get very late, and the
postmaster would feel too lazy to do any cooking at all. Ratan would then hastily light the
fire, and toast some unleavened bread, which, with the cold remnants of the morning
meal, was enough for their supper.

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On some evenings, seated at his desk in the corner of the big empty shed, the
postmaster too would call up memories of his own home, of his mother and his sister, of
those for whom in his exile his heart was sad,—memories which were always haunting
him, but which he could not talk about with the men of the factory, though he found
himself naturally recalling them aloud in the presence of the simple little girl. And so it
came about that the girl would allude to his people as mother, brother, and sister, as if
she had known them all her life. In fact, she had a complete picture of each one of them
painted in her little heart.

One noon, during a break in the rains, there was a cool soft breeze blowing; the smell of
the damp grass and leaves in the hot sun felt like the warm breathing of the tired earth on
one's body. A persistent bird went on all the afternoon repeating the burden of its one
complaint in Nature's audience chamber.

The postmaster had nothing to do. The shimmer of the freshly washed leaves, and the
banked-up remnants of the retreating rain-clouds were sights to see; and the postmaster
was watching them and thinking to himself: "Oh, if only some kindred soul were near—
just one loving human being whom I could hold near my heart!" This was exactly, he went
on to think, what that bird was trying to say, and it was the same feeling which the
murmuring leaves were striving to express. But no one knows, or would believe, that
such an idea might also take possession of an ill-paid village postmaster in the deep,
silent mid-day interval of his work.

The postmaster sighed, and called out "Ratan." Ratan was then sprawling beneath the
guava-tree, busily engaged in eating unripe guavas. At the voice of her master, she ran
up breathlessly, saying: "Were you calling me, Dada?" "I was thinking," said the
postmaster, "of teaching you to read." And then for the rest of the afternoon he taught her
the alphabet.

Thus, in a very short time, Ratan had got as far as the double consonants.

It seemed as though the showers of the season would never end. Canals, ditches, and
hollows were all overflowing with water. Day and night the patter of rain was heard, and
the croaking of frogs. The village roads became impassable, and marketing had to be
done in punts.

One heavily clouded morning, the postmaster's little pupil had been long waiting outside
the door for her call, but, not hearing it as usual, she took up her dog-eared book, and
slowly entered the room. She found her master stretched out on his bed, and, thinking
that he was resting, she was about to retire on tip-toe, when she suddenly heard her
name—"Ratan!" She turned at once and asked: "Were you sleeping, Dada?" The
postmaster in a plaintive voice said: "I am not well. Feel my head; is it very hot?"

In the loneliness of his exile, and in the gloom of the rains, his ailing body needed a little
tender nursing. He longed to remember the touch on the forehead of soft hands with
tinkling bracelets, to imagine the presence of loving womanhood, the nearness of mother
and sister. And the exile was not disappointed. Ratan ceased to be a little girl. She at
once stepped into the post of mother, called in the village doctor, gave the patient his pills
at the proper intervals, sat up all night by his pillow, cooked his gruel for him, and every
now and then asked: "Are you feeling a little better, Dada?"

It was some time before the postmaster, with weakened body, was able to leave his sick-
bed. "No more of this," said he with decision. "I must get a transfer." He at once wrote off
to Calcutta an application for a transfer, on the ground of the unhealthiness of the place.

Relieved from her duties as nurse, Ratan again took up her old place outside the door.
But she no longer heard the same old call. She would sometimes peep inside furtively to

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find the postmaster sitting on his chair, or stretched on his bed, and staring absent-
mindedly into the air. While Ratan was awaiting her call, the postmaster was awaiting a
reply to his application. 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. At
last, after a week, the call did come one evening. With an overflowing heart Ratan rushed
into the room with her—"Were you calling me, Dada?"

The postmaster said: "I am going away tomorrow, Ratan."

"Where are you going, Dada?"

"I am going home."

"When will you come back?"

"I am not coming back."

Ratan asked no other question. The postmaster, of his own accord, went on to tell her
that his application for a transfer had been rejected, so he had resigned his post and was
going home.

For a long time neither of them spoke another word. The lamp went on dimly burning,
and from a leak in one corner of the thatch water dripped steadily into an earthen vessel
on the floor beneath it.

After a while Ratan rose, and went off to the kitchen to prepare the meal; but she was not
so quick about it as on other days. Many new things to think of had entered her little
brain. When the postmaster had finished his supper, the girl suddenly asked him: "Dada,
will you take me to your home?"

The postmaster laughed. "What an idea!" said he; but he did not think it necessary to
explain to the girl wherein lay the absurdity.

That whole night, in her waking and in her dreams, the postmaster's laughing reply
haunted her—"What an idea!"

On getting up in the morning, the postmaster found his bath ready. He had stuck to his
Calcutta habit of bathing in water drawn and kept in pitchers, instead of taking a plunge in
the river as was the custom of the village. For some reason or other, the girl could not ask
him about the time of his departure, so she had fetched the water from the river long
before sunrise, that it should be ready as early as he might want it. After the bath came a
call for Ratan. She entered noiselessly, and looked silently into her master's face for
orders. The master said: "You need not be anxious about my going away, Ratan; I shall
tell my successor to look after you." These words were kindly meant, no doubt: but
inscrutable are the ways of a woman's heart!

Ratan had borne many a scolding from her master without complaint, but these kind
words she could not bear. She burst out weeping, and said: "No, no, you need not tell
anybody anything at all about me; I don't want to stay on here."

The postmaster was dumbfounded. He had never seen Ratan like this before.

The new incumbent duly arrived, and the postmaster, having given over charge, prepared
to depart. Just before starting he called Ratan and said: "Here is something for you; I
hope it will keep you for some little time." He brought out from his pocket the whole of his
month's salary, retaining only a trifle for his travelling expenses. Then Ratan fell at his
feet and cried: "Oh, Dada, I pray you, don't give me anything, don't in any way trouble
about me," and then she ran away out of sight.

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The postmaster heaved a sigh, took up his carpet bag, put his umbrella over his shoulder,
and, accompanied by a man carrying his many-coloured tin trunk, he slowly made for the
boat.

When he got in and the boat was under way, and the rain-swollen river, like a stream of
tears welling up from the earth, swirled and sobbed at her bows, then he felt a pain at
heart; the grief-stricken face of a village girl seemed to represent for him the great
unspoken pervading grief of Mother Earth herself. At one time he had an impulse to go
back, and bring away along with him that lonesome waif, forsaken of the world. But the
wind had just filled the sails, the boat had got well into the middle of the turbulent current,
and already the village was left behind, and its outlying burning-ground came in sight.

So the traveller, borne on the breast of the swift-flowing river, consoled himself with
philosophical reflections on the numberless meetings and partings going on in the world
—on death, the great parting, from which none returns.

But Ratan had no philosophy. She was wandering about the post office in a flood of tears.
It may be that she had still a lurking hope in some corner of her heart that her Dada
would return, and that is why she could not tear herself away. Alas for our foolish human
nature! Its fond mistakes are persistent. The dictates of reason take a long time to assert
their own sway. The surest proofs meanwhile are disbelieved. False hope is clung to with
all one's might and main, till a day comes when it has sucked the heart dry and it forcibly
breaks through its bonds and departs. After that comes the misery of awakening, and
then once again the longing to get back into the maze of the same mistakes.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33525/33525-h/33525-h.htm (Accessed 16 Jan 15)

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