The Postmaster

The rain had been falling for days. Water lay in sheets across the fields, and the little village of Ulapur sat in the green dampness like an island.

In a thatched shed beside a stagnant pond, close to a tangle of jungle, the new postmaster sat at his table and stared out at nothing.

He was a young man from Calcutta. In the city he had been used to crowds, conversation and noise. Here, his only neighbours were the clerks and workers of a nearby indigo factory, and they had no time for him. He felt like a fish pulled out of water and dropped on dry land.

Ratan

His salary was small, and he cooked for himself. A village girl came to help him with the housework. Her name was Ratan, and she was about twelve years old. She was an orphan, and nobody in the village seemed to think she would ever be married.

In the evenings, when the smoke curled up from the cowsheds and the crickets began to sing, the postmaster would sit outside his door and call, "Ratan!"

Ratan would be sitting outside, waiting for exactly this call. But she would not run in at once. "Did you call me, Babu?"

"What are you doing?"

"I must go and light the kitchen fire."

"Leave the fire for now. Fill my pipe first."

And she would come in with her cheeks puffed out, blowing on the coals of the pipe.

Stories in the lamplight

Slowly, the postmaster began to talk to her. He was lonely, and she was the only person who would listen.

He told her about his home: his mother, his elder sister, his little brother. Sitting in that damp shed, far away, he found himself remembering them with an ache in his heart. And Ratan would listen and remember too, in her own way. She spoke of her father, who used to come home in the evening, and of her small brother, with whom she had once played at fishing in a pond with a stick for a rod.

Soon she was calling his mother and sister by name, as if she had known them all her life. She had built a little picture of his whole family in her mind.

One afternoon, with the clouds clearing and a soft breeze blowing, the postmaster thought how sweet it would be to have someone dear beside him. Just then he heard Ratan's voice, and he called her over.

"Ratan," he said, "I'm going to teach you to read."

So every afternoon they sat together over the alphabet. Within a short time, she had learned all her letters and was starting on simple words.

The fever

Then the rains came back in earnest. Water lay everywhere, and the postmaster fell ill with fever.

Lying alone on his bed, far from home, he longed for a mother's gentle hand on his forehead, or a sister's care.

But he was not alone for long. Ratan was no longer a little girl. She became, all at once, a nurse and a mother. She called the village doctor, gave him his medicines on time, sat up by his bed all night, cooked him gruel, and asked again and again, "Are you feeling a little better, Babu?"

After some days he was able to get up. But he had had enough. He wrote to his office in Calcutta, asking to be transferred.

Will you take me home?

The answer came. His request was refused. So he resigned. He would go home.

That evening, when Ratan came in, he said, "Ratan, I am leaving tomorrow."

"Where are you going, Babu?"

"Home."

"When will you come back?"

"I'm not coming back."

Ratan asked nothing more. For a long while there was only the sound of the rain dripping from the thatch.

Then, quietly, she asked, "Babu, will you take me home with you?"

The postmaster laughed. "What an idea!" he said. He did not stop to explain why it was impossible.

All that night, awake and asleep, Ratan heard his laugh and those words.

The river

In the morning, she had his bath water ready, as always. He told her he would ask the new postmaster to look after her, and that she need not worry. He meant it kindly. But Ratan burst into tears. "No, no," she said. "You don't need to tell anybody anything about me. I don't want to stay here."

When it was time to leave, he took out nearly all of his salary and held it out to her. Ratan fell at his feet. "Babu," she begged, "please don't give me anything. Please don't worry about me." And she ran away.

The postmaster walked to the river with his bag and umbrella, and climbed into the boat.

As the boat moved out into the swollen river, a heavy sadness came over him. He thought of the simple village girl and her grief. For a moment he wanted to go back and take that lonely, forsaken child with him.

But the sail was full of wind, and the current was strong, and the village was already slipping behind. He told himself that life is full of partings. What use was it to turn back? Everyone in this world is meeting someone and leaving someone.

Ratan had no such thoughts to comfort her. She wandered round and round the empty post office, with tears running down her face. Some small hope still lingered in her heart that her Babu might come back.

About this story

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), the Bengali poet, writer and composer, became in 1913 the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote "The Postmaster" in Bengali in 1891, drawing on his own time looking after his family's estates in rural Bengal. This version is a shortened, simplified retelling.