The short story as quintessence: The Art of Rabindranath Tagore

When the Kabuliwala is finally released from prison, he comes to pay Mini a visit. It is the day of her wedding, and officially a day of parting in any Indian/Bengali household. He calls for her. She comes down having forgotten her old childhood mate. When he asks her about her marriage, she leaves the room in embarrassment. The Kabuliwala realizes that time has passed and that his own daughter in the remote mountains of Afghanistan, would probably not remember him too. This is how specificity merges with universality in Tagore, with the story exploring the relationships of fathers and daughters and the shadow that falls within.

Structurally, the story is straightforward without taking recourse to “ambiguity” and “ellipsis” as narrative modes. Compared to a short story by James Joyce or Katherine Mansfield, the story puts forward its universal aesthetics in unambiguous ways. Formally, Rabindranath’s pieces are in the tradition of Maupassant rather than Chekov, because not only do most stories have formal completion they also have a more or less definite closure.

The short story as quintessence: The art of Rabindranath Tagore

In Kabuliwala named after a generic figure popular in 19^th century and even early to mid 20^th century Bengal, Rabindranath not only demonstrates his capacious empathy for a spectacularly large range of people of various psychological and social registers, but also his acute observation of his times and the specific forms of domestic trade and barter  in upper-middle class Bengali households. 

The Kabuliwala or trader from Afghanistan, who traded in raisins, nuts and pistachios, items that have always been rare and expensive in Bengal because they are not produced  here, would hail Mini as “Khonki” which was his own inimitable reproduction of the Bengali word “Khuki” meaning  “little girl” but inflected with an inflection that was foreign to Bengali ears. He would walk into the courtyard of Mini’s house, a little intimidating for the women in the house because of his large size and unfamiliar clothes, and not to say, unfamiliar racial antecedents. Even if the narrator’s wife (the narrator being Mini’s father) would express concern over how the Kabuliwala gained easy access into the house and that it might be dangerous to allow their little girl to get so close to a stranger, the father remain indulgent and accepting towards the Kabuliwala, allowing the interactions of the stranger and his daughter to go on. It is possible that there is some self-inscription on Rabindranath’s part here because he too was the father of many daughters.

Eventually, sorrow makes an entry into this pastoral world as the Kabuliwala is taken to jail because he had killed someone in a brawl where a party that had borrowed money from him denied his debt. Simple, unsophisticated and direct, the Kabuliwala stands for a generic type that was known for both simplicity and violence.