Mashi and Other Stories - Rabindranath Tagore

 From the collection of Tagore's works that Sagar gifted me on my birthday a few years ago, is this book 'Mashi and Other Stories. They are set in Bengal and reflect the times - of widows, patriarchal families, love and intimacy, betrayal and hope,

'Mashi' is about a couple, a young man who is craving for the attention of his young wife who is is not as interested in him as he is in her. His aunt, Mashi, tells him nice stories about his wife, painting a good picture of her. It is only in the end when he is seriously ill that the girl returns from her father's house. (Or something like that. I need to re-read that story.) In 'The Skeleton', a skeleton speaks about how she was a beautiful young girl and murdered the love of her life and then died. In the 'Auspicious Vision,' a rich man marries a girl thinking she is another but later realises the girl he saw was mentally imbalanced and finds it was not a bad thing after all. In 'The Supreme Night' a man meets the girl he always loved but who marries someone else when he moves away and cherishes the one night they spend together in a storm. In 'The Raja and Rani' the Rani plays her cards such that a person who is getting close to the Raja is sent away. In the 'Trust Property,' an old man plans to sacrifice a young boy to safeguard his wealth so it comes back to his descendants (apparently an old practice), but ends up sacrificing his own grandson. In 'The Riddle Solved' a young man ousts all of his father's tenants and specifically one troublesome one, only to find that he was his half brother. In the 'elder Sister' Sasikala tries to do the right thing for her younger brother at the cost of her life. In 'Subha' the girl is dumb, but she is married off without telling the groom, who marries a second wife. In 'The Post Master' the postmaster showers his attention on the girl who helps him and leaves her for Calcutta when he gets bored, causing her immense pain. In 'The River Stairs' a sanyasi meets his wife whom he had abandoned and runs away when she recognises him. 'In the 'Castaway' a young boy who is taken into a rich household at the lady's insistence becomes jealous of her brother and steals an inkpot - with painful consequences for all. In 'Saved' comes a guru who falls for a married woman and poisons her husband and se kills herself when she realises what he has done. 'In 'My Fair Neighbour' the hero falls for a widow next door and wants to marry her, and soon finds that a friend of his, whom he had been encouraging to marry widows, had changed his view and married the one h had set eyes upon.

Interestingly most stories have angles of love, of man-woman romantic love. Most also have tragic endings. Most also pick subtle misunderstandings or desires as the cause of the trouble. Most characters have some flaw - physical or psychological. All of them show the emotional upheaval humans go in the chain of human relationships. Wonderful reading because it gives a wonderful picture of life in those times. 

Thanks Sagar.