Wider World

A play by Rabindranath Tagore

The Post Office by Rabindranath Tagore, translated by Devabrata Mukherjee

A boy is ailing, incurably ill, watched over by his adoptive uncle, the wider household and its hangers-on. The boy, Amal, is in high spirits, despite his physical diminishing. He wants to know everything and go everywhere. He’s confined to the house. He can’t go anywhere.

A doctor visits at the beginning of the play and says as much. The air is bad, he tells the boy’s uncle, and so you must keep him inside your place — deeply and profoundly inside — and never permit him to leave. Amal does not like this, however — though he accepts it. He wishes to see the world, to meet people. And he hears the people come and go, and sees them move about, as he sits by his portals to the outside world.

Amal’s uncle says to him that he ought to be more learned. If he were a learned boy, spending all his time indoors, poring over books, he might amount to something.

Wouldn’t you like that? he asks, attempting to convince the boy of something. Wouldn’t you like to be learned and to spend the rest of your life indoors?

Amal does not agree with him and enthuses about all the places he would visit and witness if he had his health. If the doctor did not confine him indoors. He would wade across streams, fording the cold water. He would go up hills and down into valleys. He would see everything, travel far and wide. He would learn things, perforce, but he would do so only by travel, by experience. His uncle despairs and eventually desists. He tried to do his best.

Amal sits by the window and tries to see and to hear the people.

As they pass, he has a word for them, tries to catch their attention. One of the earliest of his temporary visitors is the man who separates the curds and sells cheeses.

They banter a little, Amal almost prattlingly. He asks the cheeseman whether it’s necessary to be learned to make the cheeses, or to go door to door delivering them. The cheeseman is from simple stock. He neither feeds nor entertains the boy’s illusions. He’s quite kind to him and goes about his day. After all, he has work to do.

Another one of the travellers is the watchman who sounds the village gongs. Some of this is mere municipal timekeeping, best ignored. And some of it, of course, has other uses. Perhaps the gongs sound for weddings but, when he is hailed happily by the boy, the gong man can only think of his sound marking the death of a villager, of accenting a funerary procession. The boy chatters on and the gong man almost goes silent. He’s thinking, trapped in a reverie. Eventually, he leaves.

Other passers-by come and go. One is the headman of the village, pompous and cruel: a caricature of vanity and spitefulness. Amal informs the headman that since the post office was built nearby all kinds of letters have been coming and going.

And I’ve been wondering, Amal tells the headman, if the king might write a letter and send it here to me.

What reason could the king possibly have to send little boys letters? the headman says. I can’t think of any. Not one.

Amal does not dispute this, though he does not change his mind. He has imagined or he has been told the king may write to him, indeed almost certainly will. And he is content to wait for the letter to arrive, as it must inevitably. Amal’s only problem is practical. So far as he knows, he cannot read. It’s difficult to interpret a letter from the king if one cannot read.

Other people come by. Some of them are a group of boys. They’re off to play on their own — the rambunctious games that Amal cannot join. Amal tells them that he can’t come out — doctor’s orders — but suggests that they tell him about their games. They’re just about to agree and head off when Amal remembers something. He has some toys for which he has no use.

Would the boys like them?

The boys are cautious. There must be a catch. It’s possible they’re useless toys, old and broken. But no — they’re new; they’re nice. One careful owner. Amal is handing them over willingly, and he even offers to replace them when they get wrecked, if they tell him of their adventures. The boys thank him and leave, both groups having got something from their meeting.

And along comes Sudha, a flower-gatherer. She’s the sweet young daughter of the flower-seller and is initially reluctant to stop. Amal seems to enjoy her company, however, and so she stays a moment or two. When he tells her he’d like to do as she does — to gather flowers, to deliver them to customers — she tells him that you mustn’t be naughty and disobey the orders of doctors. A good child is an obedient one.

And anyway, the girl tells Amal, I really ought to be off. The flowers don’t deliver themselves, to which Amal reluctantly agrees.

Will you come and visit me? Amal asks; and she tells him she will.