“Frailty thy name is woman”, Shakespeare had said. But the Shakespeare of India, Rabindranath Tagore would beg to differ without aiming to dispel the aesthetics of a woman being petite, frivolous on one hand and the mythical kali swaroopa on the other. Subtle exquisiteness has been the forte of Tagores female protagonists. The social milieu he places his female characters in is predominantly and strictly quite indigenous. They hail from all walks of life and depict a mosaic of grays and greens of femininity. He playfully renders an abstract impression to the “character of women” through his stories.
Ghore Baire (The Home and The World) is one such unhurried but glorious story of Bimla, the beautiful, well kept wife of an educated and modern zamindar, Nikhil. Set in colonial Bengal at the time when tides of transformation swept its cities and villages, both reside in a huge haveli, amidst the clatter of maids and servants. Bimla’s World is this Home she stepped in as young apprehensive bride. Here, Tagore reiterates the enormity of alteration that marriage bestows upon a girl at the threshold of womanhood. Bimla so far has been unaware of the fears and thrills of a free flight. The dungeons of orthodoxy and aristocracy she has stayed in since childhood has conditioned her deeply to accept whatever comes her way. Now, Nikhil is essentially the hero of this story for he believes to love truly and let go fully! He is never rigid to his homely wife but constructive in adding to her assets as a skilful Bimla. He enrols her for piano lessons and tries to adept her in English styles of attire and hairstyles with some assistance of a British helper. She accepts all willingly.
Bimla in her haven is extremely grateful to have a husband ever so caring and loving. She is content but even in this contentment lives a lingering desire, a desire to fulfil what she too knows not, maybe a free flight!? It is this mysterious nature of her being that is out of grasps even for Bimla herself. Probably the pleats of saree she dons everyday meticulously has kept her real self hidden even from herself. She disrobes herself slowly but vehemently in front of Sandip, Nikhil’s so-called political revolutionary, feminist friend. Interestingly Sandip always refers to Bimla as mokhi, Queen Bee – Goddess of the Nationalist Movement, thus eventually instilling in her a sense of novel power and importance. This is when she gets a glimpse of the world outside the portals of her home. Being oblivious to Sandip’s manipulations she blindly mistakes her affliction as love. Here too Tagore never judges her character negatively because this is the first time she is confronted with the question “Who am I?”. And as this existential thought strikes, her journey inwards begins which finally ends with Nikhil waiting for her.
The two dimensions of time and space in which the story has been woven is no doubt of the pre-independence era but it hasn’t lost its relevance even today. Through this story of Bimla, I could strongly personify Nikhil, as the free, pious, thoughtful, pure human love filled heart, the Home for Bimla. And Sandip on the other hand as the crude, futile, luring, pseudo-humanist, hypocrite world which Bimla tastes and chooses against eventually for her good hearts sake.
