Rabindranath Tagore Summary

Abstract: Chokher Bali is an outcome of immense sensitivity on the part of the novelist, Rabindranath Tagore, who was interested in documentation of human psychology in his novels. Tagore could no longer take delight in dead metaphors of idealism, at a time when he perceived that the whole world around him was rapidly changing. Written during the phase of cultural transition, the novel presents the confusing state of slippages from moral line, which Tagore has considered more obvious than sinful. It was almost like beating the same line, if the novelists sought to preserve in their novels moral ideals and virtues in traditional style. Tagore, in Chokher Bali also, like in his other novels portrays human beings in the light of their idiosyncrasies,

Tagore had seen a world of dogma and superstitions, where certain beliefs formed the core of society or more preferably to say they controlled whole system of behaviour and thinking. At such a time when Tagore presupposed such characters as Binodini and Mahendra, who did not believe and behave according to customs, it was rather a visionary and radical side of Tagore’s thinking. Tagore has created lively personae, who walk around us in our day to day lives, talking, living, committing mistakes, repenting and resolving, then again committing. Chokher Bali is a novel of immense sensitivity and awareness of human emotions, weaknesses and wisdom coming in via the way of mistakes. At the same time, the novel offers a colourful examination of perceptions that we have formed in our minds regarding relationships, sexuality and

Child marriage, age differences in marriages, superstitions related to widowhood and subversive condition of women were common in Bengal and whole of the India. Tagore however, was progressive in his approach towards eliminating age- old practices and superstitions of the society which stood in front of the progress of the half- population, i.e. women. As a matter of fact what is most interesting about Chokher Bali is that Tagore envisioned such a strong and potent character like Binodini at his time when it might not have been thought even in the wildest of dreams that a woman can be this much upright and confident. The way Tagore has presented kaleidoscopic vision of human relationships which are intricately woven inside the chambers of a common household is a bigger achievement than anything