Mashi and Other Stories Quotes

“happiness is like those stars. They don't cover all the darkness; there are gaps between. We make mistakes in life and we misunderstand, and yet there remain gaps through which truth shines.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories

“They come from my imagination; for, as you know, truth is silent, and it is imagination only which waxes eloquent. Reality represses the flow of feeling like a rock; imagination cuts out a path for itself.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories

“human society is a web of mistakes; nobody has the sense to do the right thing at the right time, and when the chance is gone we break our hearts over vain longings.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories

“While thus engaged, I heard in a side-room the softest possible jingle of bracelets, crackle of dress, and footfall; and I felt certain that two curious eyes were watching me through a small opening of the window. All at once there flashed upon my memory a pair of eyes,—a pair of large eyes, beaming with trust, simplicity, and girlhood's love,—black pupils,—thick dark eyelashes,—a calm fixed gaze. Suddenly some unseen force squeezed my heart in an iron grip, and it throbbed with intense pain. I returned to my house, but the pain clung to me. Whether I read, wrote, or did any other work, I could not shake that weight off my heart; a heavy load seemed to be always swinging from my heart-strings. In the evening, calming myself a little, I began to reflect: ‘What ails me?’ From within came the question: ‘Where is your Surabala now?’ I replied: ‘I gave her up of my free will. Surely I did not expect her to wait for me for ever.’ But something kept saying: ‘Then you could have got her merely for the asking. Now you have not the right to look at her even once, do what you will. That Surabala of your boyhood may come very close to you; you may hear the jingle of her bracelets; you may breathe the air embalmed by the essence of her hair,—but there will always be a wall between you two.’ I answered: ‘Be it so. What is Surabala to me?’ My heart rejoined: ‘To-day Surabala is nobody to you. But what might she not have been to you?’ Ah! that's true. What might she not have been to me? Dearest to me of all things, closer to me than the world besides, the sharer of all my life's joys and sorrows,—she might have been. And now, she is so distant, so much of a stranger, that to look on her is forbidden, to talk with her is improper, and to think of her is a sin!—while this Ram Lochan, coming suddenly from nowhere, has muttered a few set religious texts, and in one swoop has carried off Surabala from the rest of mankind! I have not come to preach a new ethical code, or to revolutionise society; I have no wish to tear asunder domestic ties. I am only expressing the exact working of my mind, though it may not be reasonable. I could not by any means banish from my mind the sense that Surabala, reigning there within shelter of Ram Lochan's home, was mine far more than his. The thought was, I admit, unreasonable and improper,—but it was not unnatural.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories

“They who from birth have had no other speech than the trembling of their lips learn a language of the eyes, endless in expression, deep as the sea, clear as the heavens, wherein play dawn and sunset, light and shadow. The dumb have a lonely grandeur like Nature's own. Wherefore”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories

“When a material body breaks it may be put together again. But when two human beings are divided, after a long separation, they never re-unite at the same place, and to the same time; for the mind is a living thing, and moment by moment it grows and changes.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories

“The hidden clash of a silent conflict like this is far harder to bear than an open quarrel.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories

“The greatest changes in a woman's nature are wrought by love; in a man's, by ambition.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories

“The idea became rooted in my mind that I had a special right to Surabala above that of people in general. So it happened that, in the pride of ownership, at times I punished and tormented her; and she, too, fagged for me and bore all my punishments without complaint. The village was wont to praise her beauty; but in the eyes of a young barbarian like me that beauty had no glory;—I knew only that Surabala had been born in her father's house solely to bear my yoke, and that therefore she was the particular object of my neglect.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories

“Mashi, happiness is like those stars. They don't cover all the darkness; there are gaps between. We make mistakes in life and we misunderstand, and yet there remain gaps through which truth shines. I”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Mashi and Other Stories