Women of unbearable dignity

Broken Nest and Other Stories is a collection of three short stories and a novella by Rabindranath Tagore.

- Sharmistha Jha

Capturing the lyricism of the Nobel Laureate’s prose, poet and writer Sharmistha Mohanty translates the stories The Ghat’s Tale, Notebook and Postmaster, and the novella Broken Nest, from the Bengali. Westland presents the works in a volume with an exquisite red-and-white cover.

“For me the light of day and the shadows of night are cast daily upon the Ganga, and are every day wiped away ~ they never leave an impression. So, even though I look old, my heart is forever young. The algae of years of memories has not covered me so as to keep out the rays of the sun. Sometimes, by chance an algae floats in and clings to my sides, then it is once again carried away by the waves. But I cannot say there is nothing that has stayed. Where the waves of the Ganga do not reach, there, in my crevices, have sprung up creepers and weeds and moss; they are witnesses to my past, it is they who have held the past in their loving embrace and kept it forever green and tender, forever new. The Ganga recedes from me every day, step by step, and I too, step by step, grow older,” narrates the ghat in The Ghats Tale.