Paradoxical Situations in Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore is one of the prominent short story writers in Indian literature. Most of his short stories, which examine humble lives and their small miseries, have poignancy, laced with gentle irony. His stories present social and political satire both. The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon sorrows and sufferings of common people through short stories of Rabindranath Tagore. In his stories he satirizes the society through the character of Gokulchandra, Himangshu‘s father and Harachandra, Banamali‘s father that how a little dispute becomes the reason for break of friendship between two friends. Gokulchandra and Harachandra are so selfish that they cannot share even few lemons with each other while on the other hand their children are sharing their feelings and emotions. Though Tagore belonged to an aristocratic family, he had a heart which throbbed for the poor, the destitute, the neglect and the oppressed. He loved the people of his country and strove for the rights of the rural poor to ensure for them a life of dignity and social justice. He has satirized the issue of exploitation and torture of widows, heart-rendering problems of women who are not able to bear male child and torture of those who have not bought the sufficient amount of dowry with themselves, according to their inlaws at the time of marriage and later. A pungent satire has been witnessed in his stories where he brilliantly satirized some ironical situations and characters, e.g. the denial of respectability to Nirupma in her lifetime and the ‗celebration‘ of her death through a grand cremation in ―Profit and Loss‖ and the renunciation of his own son for the sake of caste by Harihar Mukherji respectively. The problems which he has discussed in his stories are universal; these issues are relevant in even present times. More than hundred years have passed, but these problems are still present as these were in his period. The importance of stories of Tagore is hidden in its message as he not only presents the problems through his stories, but the solutions of various issues are also there in the form characters, decisions or punishments etc. There is a universal appeal in his stories which transcends all boundaries of space and time.