September 22, 2002

Human beings have a gift for fantasy, which shows itself at an early age. Society can either quash this talent by moving a child away from art and literature towards a Spartan ideal of conformity or nourish it by exposing children to creative influences. According to Andy Baumgartner, winner of the 1999 award for the National Teacher of the Year, one must build children’s imaginations so that they grow into adults who can think creatively about how to solve the world’s problems.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Selected writings for children serves as an ideal medium, which can help extend a child’s free spirit of creative thinking. For this book, containing short stories, poetries, plays, Tagore’s accounts of his childhood and illustrations, provides the reader with a complete artistic experience.

Here Tagore, the multifaceted genius, appears in a number of veins as a poet, writer and a sage. The short stories and plays have a spontaneous child like joy and ecstasy while in the poems one can feel “the stillness of nature”. These delightful poems, originally written for innovative Bengali textbooks, are simple, sober and unpatronising like Ismail Meerathi, Iqbal and Sufi Tabassum’s Urdu poems for children.

Tagore credits children with intelligence and in his work puts forward a gamut of tales — some are overtly moral, others are imaginative and lively, while some expose social evils. For instance, in the poem “The tiger”, Putu a boy husking rice is threatened by a tiger that will “crunch you up, flesh, bones and all”. To which the boy replies that he is of a low caste and touching him will ruin the tiger’s reputation. This frightens the tiger:

“The tiger quaked in mortal funk./ Don’t come near me or I’ll be sunk!/ In Tigerville my name will stink,/ With no one could I eat or drink,/ Or marry off a single daughter.”

There are stories that exude sheer magic, where motifs are taken from fairy tales and reworked in the light of real experiences. “The fairy” is one such tale. Here Kusmi asks her grand-dad to tell her a “...true story for a change”. To which her grandfather replies “...I deal with the more-than-true”. He elucidates the concept by telling Kusmi that other people know her as Kusmi, he knows her as a fairy from fairyland. This is followed by a lovely description in which the grandfather weaves an exquisite tale with moonlights, Fairy King and a ferry boat made of white clouds on which Kusmi reaches earth and is picked up by her mother.

These descriptions complete with a foray into a land of fantasy thrills Kusmi who excitedly asks her grandfather, “Is it true?” to which he replies, “Who ever said it was true? What do I care for the truth? This is more-than-true.” This story demonstrates all the necessary ingredients of a short story for children; it’s lyrical, imaginative and touching, while being able to put forward intricate philosophical thoughts in easy terms.

Further interest and visual pleasure is added by illustrations which accompany the text. In a conversation with Romain Rolland in Paris (April 21, 1921) Tagore said, “Words are too conscious, lines are not. Ideas have their form and colour, which wait for their incarnation in pictorial art.” The illustrations follow this logic and provide enhanced aesthetics by balancing form and content.

Overall, this book is a treat for the senses and the intellect. A child can relish Selected writings for their simplicity, lyrical beauty, imagination and artistic expressions. And it is a book a parent or a teacher can read to a child, and then discuss with him the ideas and the issues raised.

Selected writings for children
By Rabindranath Tagore
Edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri Oxford University Press, 5 Bangalore Town, Sharae Faisal, Karachi-75350
Tel: 021-4529025
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net
ISBN 019565873-6. 260pp. Rs700

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