Rabindranath Tagore's
Kabuliwala
Abdul Rehman
Khan a poor Afghan widower borrows money from a money lender
to pay for his little daughter Amina’s medical treatment.
He sets out
to India to make some money by selling dry fruits and nuts.
There he meets Mini, a little girl who reminds the lonely Kabuliwala of his own motherless daughter in Kabul. Mini is
the only child of a middle class family in Calcutta.
The Kabuliwala and Mini
form a special bond. He finally manages to save almost enough money to
go back home. One day he goes to collect the last of the monies owed
him. The man refuses to pay and insults him. In a fit of rage he
stabs him. Kabuliwalas were generally looked upon as foreigners and
looked down upon. He is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment
When he is released he
goes to Mini’s house with a gift of a few almonds and grapes a
countryman of his had given him. He had not a paisa to his name. He
imagined a joyous meeting with his little Mini. The world had frozen in
time for the Kabuliwala. For Mini it had moved on. This was her
wedding day and she does not remember him. He thinks of his own little
girl Amina and wonders if she too will have forgotten him.
Mini’s father takes out
a bank-note and gives it to the Kabuliwala. He now cannot afford all the
trappings of a lavish wedding for his daughter, but to him “the wedding
feast was all the brighter for the thought that in a distant land a
long-lost father met again with his only child. “
Rabindranath
Tagore was a
Bengali poet, philosopher, artist, playwright, novelist, and composer
whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. He became Asia's first Nobel laureate when he won
the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.
