… more than a ‘graveyard of empires’ … it’s a mother of vicious circles – Maureen Dowd
The man from Kabul, we used to call them. Kabuliwala! Seen walking around town during my childhood in Calcutta … their oversized kurta, loose-fitting salwar, and the huge tote sack rendering their identity unambiguous. They’d sell dry-fruits sourced from Kabul. And what I didn’t know till much later in life was that they also specialized in moneylending, mostly to laborers who needed cash to tide them over till payday. At exorbitant interest rates, of course. Legends about the Kabuliwala abound. Behave yourself, or the Kabuliwala will put you in his bag and take you away, worked well on me and my siblings, and (I suppose) on other kids around town. By and large they were seen as an honest and sensitive lot, forever away from home, longing to receive a letter from family they had left behind in faraway Afghanistan. Simple times. Complex times.
Later in life, when I became interested in reading, I came across a short-story by one of the world’s most revered writer-poet-romantic-philosopher-musician-painter-educator-and_more, all rolled into one, a giant among giants. Born in 1861, he published a collection of poetry in 1910 then translated it himself into prose poems in English, as Gitanjali: Song Offerings, which was published in 1912 with an introduction by William Butler Yeats. He wrote what is now India’s National Anthem. Yet another of his poems is now the National Anthem of Bangladesh. In 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Prolific would be an understatement when describing this man’s productivity.
His name – Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore, is all you need to remember (to Google later).
I am pleased to share a most delightful Tagore-short-story with you. “Kabuliwala”, which Tagore wrote in 1892, is about a fruit seller from Kabul who visits Calcutta each year to sell dry fruits … and then Destiny pays him a visit.
CLICK HERE TO READ/LISTEN to “THE MAN FROM KABUL”
Till we meet again, this is Storyteller Vish wishing you a fine rest_of_2022.
Thanks for reading.
