RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Published by Random House India in 2012
Copyright © Radha Chakravarty 2012
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EPUB ISBN 9788184003635
To Ma and Baba
INTRODUCTION
‘The literature of the new age seeks not to narrate a sequence of events, but to reveal the secrets of the heart. Such is the narrative mode of Chokher Bali.’ In these words from his Preface to Chokher Bali, Tagore announces the arrival of the modern Indian novel. Emphasizing psychology above plot and external action, Chokher Bali marks a radical break with literary tradition, a bold and self-conscious attempt at steering the novel form in new, uncharted directions.
Chokher Bali was serialized in the periodical Bangadarshan from 1902 to 1903. In 1903, it was published as a book. The novel was long in the making: Tagore had been working on it as early as in 1898 or 1899. He completed the draft version in his notebooks in 1901. Tagore’s letters suggest that he had earlier used the working title Binodini, changing it to Chokher Bali shortly before its publication in Bangadarshan. When the novel first appeared as a book, Tagore deleted certain passages from the original serialized version. Several of these excised passages were restored, with Tagore’s approval, in the first edition of Rabindra Rachanabali (1941) and some more in the independent Visva-Bharati edition of 1947.
The first English translation of Chokher Bali appeared in The Modern Review in 1914. Translated by Surendranath Tagore, this version was named Eyesore. In 1959, the Sahitya Akademi published Krishna Kripalani’s translation, titled Binodini, which was based on the earlier book version with all its excisions. The present translation includes the restored passages of the revised Visva-Bharati edition. Of particular interest is the restored ending, which carries the narrative beyond the scene in which Rajalakshmi forgives her son and sees domestic harmony restored between Mahendra and Asha. Although Tagore’s novels did not lend themselves readily to dramatization, Chokher Bali was recast as a play first performed at the Classic Theatre on November 26, 1904. The play was probably scripted by Amarendranath Dutta, who also enacted the role of Mahendra in the first performance. Subsequent stage and screen adaptations of the novel testify to the interest it continues to generate.
Though published in the early twentieth century, Chokher Bali is set in a slightly earlier time. From the details of female education provided in the novel, readers surmise that the action of the novel takes place somewhere between 1868—when it was still customary for Englishwomen to be engaged as teachers for female pupils—and 1883, when the university produced its first female graduate. This was also a period of sweeping economic changes that resulted in the emergence of a new middle class in Bengal. Between 1875 and 1941, the bhadralok or gentlemanly class, earlier rooted in the economics of the zamindari system, had begun to move from the country to the city in search of new professions such as medicine, law, engineering, education and government service. Mahendra in Chokher Bali studies medicine; Bihari joins him at medical college after dabbling briefly in engineering. They clearly belong to a social world where a professional qualification is desirable, but not financially necessary. Mahendra can combine his sporadic forays into the world of medical training with a dilettantish lifestyle in an affluent Kolkata household. Bihari gives up medical college to set up a charitable hospital in a garden estate acquired for the purpose.
While the male characters in Chokher Bali pursue a professional degree, the education of women remains a domestic matter. Binodini’s father engages a ‘mem’ or white woman to educate his daughter. The subjects taught would normally include some works of literature, mathematics, and the history of Bengal. Along with needlework, a basic knowledge of English was also considered desirable. Bengali remains the dominant language: although Binodini recognizes Bihari’s name and address on a letter inside a glass display case at the railway station, her expertise lies in Bengali literature rather than in English. She leaves volumes of Bankimchandra and Dinabandhu in Bihari’s room during their early acquaintance at Barasat. Asha, meanwhile, is virtually illiterate at the time of her marriage to Mahendra; even under her husband’s tutelage, her education does not extend much beyond the primer Charupath. Yet, even this limited education invites the wrath of Asha’s mother-in-law Rajalakshmi, who is clearly not highly educated herself, although she comes from a good family.
The complex forces of tradition and modernity, Hindu orthodoxy and British liberalism create a strangely contradictory social milieu. New systems of knowledge jostle with the old—when Rajalakshmi sends for the family astrologer to seek advice on Mahendra’s predicament, her son, a man of science, feels exasperated at her blind faith in horoscopes and magic. In Chokher Bali, there are only passing references to caste, as in the mention of Kayet Thakrun, Rajalakshmi’s friend and confidante; yet the novel conveys the sense of old hierarchies and attitudes that remain in place even as new socio-economic forces threaten to destabilize them. On these issues, Tagore’s position remains ambivalent. The protagonists in Chokher Bali belong to a Hindu social framework, but the Brahmo element, traceable to Tagore’s own upbringing, is evident in many contextual details.
Although Tagore was reared in a large family, he had sensed by the late 1890s that the joint family system was on the decline. Chokher Bali presents a small, compact family with a single male head. In Mahendra’s household, Asha, the new bride, is expected to be subservient to her widowed mother-in-law Rajalakshmi; dependents, such as Annapurna or Binodini, remain short-term visitors. By 1911, nearly two-fifths of the urban population of Bengal lived in Kolkata and Howrah. In keeping with these changing demographic patterns, the city, too, was striving for a modern lifestyle. Chokher Bali presents an impressionistic image of life in Kolkata in this period of transition.
In this time of flux, the position of women was a hotly debated issue. Although Keshab Chandra Sen had presented his wife in public in 1862, it would take many years for women in larger numbers to shed the purdah, and participate actively in the Swadeshi and Non-cooperation movements. Chokher Bali is set in the interim period, when elite households still kept women segregated. The novel also refers to the oppressive effects of the dowry system. In part, the disastrous trajectory of Binodini’s life is due to her lack of dowry, because her father spends too much on her education. It is significant, though, that Mahendra marries Asha, a dependent orphan, without any dowry: the Brahmo influence is clearly visible here. Orthodox society in Tagore’s time still disapproved of widow remarriage, in spite of the Widow Remarriage Act, which legitimized it. Some readers feel that Chokher Bali should have ended with Binodini’s marriage to Bihari. The novel, however, suggests another reason for Binodini’s rejection of Bihari: knowing her reputation to be tainted by her association with Mahendra, she is unwilling to let the social stigma affect Bihari.
At the time of the novel’s publication, notions of ‘originality’ and individual authorship had not yet gained wide currency in the Indian literary establishment. Yet Sureshchandra
Samajpati, a contemporary critic, accused Tagore of plagiarizing the work of Panchkori Bandyopadhyay whose novel Uma (1901) was about a promiscuous widow named Binodini. As modern commentators point out, however, Tagore’s novel, unlike its alleged original, is neither self-consciously sensational, nor a cautionary tale trapped in a rigid morality, but a probing analysis of the inner psyche of its protagonists. In the characterization of Binodini, we see Tagore’s attempt to question contemporary gender stereotypes, and his recognition of the conflict between women’s need for freedom and the pressure of social constraints. The complexity of the character of Binodini is matched by the representation of Bihari in the novel. A landowner without materialist aspirations, a dabbler in different trades who is neither an idler nor a dilettante, Bihari is the product of a particular historical moment. Yet Tagore’s handling of Bihari’s character is distinctly modern in its psychological subtlety. Morally upright, with an acerbic tongue and a stringent sense of personal and social responsibility, Bihari could well have remained an uninspiring ethical emblem, but his fallibility, his inner torment and his susceptibility to love provide shades of gray that preclude conventional moral stereotyping.
While Chokher Bali demonstrates Tagore’s familiarity with Bishabriksha (1873) and Krishnakanter Will (1878), novels by his Bengali literary predecessor, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Tagore’s nuanced writing also carries overtones of the nineteenth-century European novel. The historical moment, coupled with his own upbringing, enabled Tagore to straddle two literary worlds, synthesizing features of both to create a narrative mode both uniquely his own and a signal of things to come. To this mingling of approaches, the critical establishment responded with mixed feelings. Accusing Tagore of writing an English novel in the Bengali language, Prashantakumar Pal conceded: ‘But it is a masterpiece.’
A century after its publication, Chokher Bali continues to surprise readers with its startlingly modern approach. Of its time, yet in many ways ahead of its time, it confirms Tagore’s position as a world novelist, a facet of his genius not yet sufficiently recognized. Translating Chokher Bali for twenty-first century readers has proved both a challenge and a reminder of the need to look afresh at texts that have changed the course of our literary history.
Radha Chakravarty
1
Binodini’s mother Harimati appealed to Mahendra’s mother Rajalakshmi to consider a match between their children. The women had once been childhood playmates in the same village.
‘Baba Mahin,’ Rajalakshmi urged Mahendra, ‘we must rescue this poor girl, a poor man’s daughter. I hear she is very beautiful, and has even been educated by a memsahib—that would suit your modern sensibilities.’
‘Ma, there are plenty of other modern young men, besides me,’ said Mahendra.
‘That’s the problem with you, Mahin, one can’t mention the subject of marriage.’
‘Ma, since there’s no dearth of other subjects to talk about, it’s not a fatal shortcoming.’
Mahendra had been fatherless since childhood. His behaviour towards his mother was somewhat unconventional. Although he was almost twenty-two-years old now, and had started studying medicine, when dealing with his mother, there was no end to his moods, whims and fancies. Like a baby kangaroo that lives in its mother’s pouch even after birth, he had grown accustomed to the shelter of his mother’s protective care. He depended on her for all his needs, be it food, entertainment, rest or leisure.
Now, when his mother insisted that he should consider marrying Binodini, Mahendra consented. ‘Very well, let me go and see the girl once,’ he said.
But on the appointed day, he protested, ‘What purpose would going to see her serve? It is pointless to weigh the pros and cons when I am marrying only to please you.’
There was a hint of anger in his words, but Rajalakshmi expected Mahendra’s sharp tone would soften after the shubhadrishti ritual—when the bride and groom see each other for the first time—for then her son was bound to approve her choice.
With a carefree mind, Rajalakshmi fixed the date for the marriage. As the day approached, Mahendra grew more and more anxious. ‘No, Ma, I just can’t go through with it,’ he finally declared, a few days before the wedding.
Mahendra had enjoyed every possible indulgence from his childhood; hence his desires were unchecked. He could not tolerate the pressure of other peoples’ expectations. Because he felt coerced by his own pledge and the requests of others, his inexplicable distaste for the proposed match grew very pronounced, and as the event drew near, he utterly rejected the idea of marriage.
Bihari was Mahendra’s close friend; he used to address Mahendra as ‘Dada’, his elder brother, and Mahendra’s mother as ‘Ma’. Rajalakshmi considered him a beast of burden to serve Mahendra’s needs, like a trailer tethered behind a steamboat, and hence she also felt a maternal tenderness towards him.
‘Baba, it is you who must fulfil this duty,’ Rajalakshmi appealed to Bihari, ‘or else this girl, a poor man’s daughter …’
Joining his hands in supplication, Bihari said, ‘Ma, that’s the one thing I cannot do. At your request, I have often eaten the sweetmeats rejected by Mahendra, but when it comes to a prospective bride, that would be intolerable.’
‘As if Bihari would ever marry!’ Rajalakshmi thought to herself. ‘He is devoted only to Mahendra; the idea of bringing home a wife hasn’t even occurred to him.’
The thought enhanced the pity mingled with tenderness that she felt towards Bihari.
Binodini’s father was not particularly wealthy, but he had employed a missionary memsahib to train his only daughter in literary and creative skills. The daughter would soon be past marriageable age, but he was not conscious of the fact. Finally, after his death, the girl’s widowed mother was driven to desperation looking for a match. There was no money, and the girl was also too old.
Finally, Rajalakshmi got Binodini married to the nephew of a fellow-villager from her birthplace, Barasat.
Not long after, the girl became a widow.
‘Thank goodness I didn’t marry her,’ laughed Mahendra. ‘Had my wife been widowed, I wouldn’t have survived an instant.’
One day, about three years later, mother and son were talking to each other. ‘Baba, it’s me people blame.’
‘Why, Ma, what harm have you done them?’
‘They say I’m not getting you married for fear of losing you to your bride.’
‘You should be afraid, indeed. Had I been a mother, I would never be able to bring myself to get my son married. I would accept people’s criticism with bowed head.’
‘Just listen to what this boy is saying,’ Rajalakshmi laughed.
‘A wife takes over a man’s whole life upon arrival. Then the mother who has lavished so much care and affection on her son is forced to step aside; even if you like this state of affairs, I don’t like it at all.’
Rajalakshmi was inwardly delighted. ‘Listen, Mejobou,’ she said to Annapurna, her widowed sister-in-law, who had just entered. ‘Just listen to what Mahin is saying. He doesn’t want to marry for fear that his wife will supersede his mother. Have you ever heard such an outrageous thing?’
‘My boy, this is rather extreme on your part,’ declared Mahin’s kaki. ‘It behoves you to act in accordance with your age. It’s time to let go of your mother’s aanchal and set up house with your wife; it seems shameful for you to still behave like a little boy.’
Rajalakshmi did not find these words pleasing, and what she said in response, though simple, was not sweet. ‘If my son loves his mother more than other boys love theirs, why should you feel ashamed, Mejobou? You would know what it means to have a son if you had one of your own.’
Rajalakshmi thought this sonless woman envied a mother like herself, fortunate enough to have a male child.
‘It was you who spoke of finding a bride, Didi,’ replied Mejobou Annapurna. ‘Else, what right would I have to speak of such things?’
‘If my son does not bring home a bri
de, why does it offend you? I have spent all these years raising my son, and can look after him even now. There is no need for anyone else.’
Mejobou left in tears. Mahendra was inwardly hurt, and returning early from college, he went to his kaki’s room.
He was certain that there was nothing but affection in what his kaki had said to him. He also knew that the childless widow had an orphan niece, whom she hoped to wed to Mahin, thus finding a pretext to keep her bonjhi, her own sister’s daughter, close to herself, and see her happy. Though averse to marriage, he nevertheless found his kaki’s secret desire natural and extremely moving.
When Mahendra went to Annapurna’s room, the day was waning. She was sitting by the open window of her room, her head resting against the iron grill, her face wan and dejected. In the next room, her rice lay untouched.
Tears tended to spring to Mahendra’s eyes at the slightest reason. Seeing his kaki now, his eyes grew moist. ‘Kakima!’ he called gently, coming close.
‘Come, Mahin, sit down,’ said Annapurna, trying to smile.
‘I’m very hungry. I want some prasad, food blessed by your touch.’
Seeing through Mahendra’s guile, Annapurna checked her brimming tears with difficulty and after her own meal, she fed him.
Mahendra’s heart was filled with pity. After the meal, wishing to console his kaki, he said impulsively, ‘Kaki, this niece of yours you spoke about, won’t you let me see her once?’
The moment he uttered these words, he grew frightened.
‘Is your mind inclined towards marriage, then, Mahin?’ smiled Annapurna.
‘No, I am not asking for myself, Kaki,’ Mahin declared hastily. ‘I have persuaded Bihari to agree. Please fix a date when the girl can be seen.’
‘Oh, could she be so fortunate? Can a boy like Bihari really be part of her destiny?’
On his way out of his kaki’s room, Mahendra bumped into his mother at the door.
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