#Book Review: Red Oleanders by Rabindranath Tagore

I was intrigued to pick up this book due to the fact that it is a work of translation by the Nobel Laureate himself Rabindranath Tagore and I have no shame in accepting the fact that I had no clue that Tagore also wrote in English.

This is the story of Nandini, a beautiful woman who appears at a time of the oppression of humanity by greed and power. The antagonist in the story is the King, who represents enormous authority but barricades himself behind an iron curtain. He transforms a town in to a fort and the humans into digging machines who grope in the dark searching for gold.

In this soulless mining town, people forget the beauty of nature, the green meadows, the dazzling sunshine, the tenderness and love between humans. Nandini arrives to salvage humanity trapped behind mechanized tyranny. She eventually frees the oppressed souls who are toiling and underground, but at a great sacrifice. The story ends in an unexpected climax after Tagore knits an intricate network of sequences that ultimately becomes a parable.

Red Oleanders (Raktakarabi) is one of the more than sixty plays, dance dramas and dramatic sketches by Asia’s first Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. The play, written in 1923-24, was begun during a visit to Shillong, Assam, and inspired by the image of a red oleander plant crushed by pieces of discarded iron that Tagore had come across while walking.  A short time later, an oleander branch with a single red flower protruded through the debris, as if, he noted, “created from the blood of its cruelly pierced breast.”

In 1987, Ananda Lal published a translation of three plays by Tagore, including Red Oleanders, which was a welcome addition to making Tagore’s works accessible in English.  Lal’s work represented a faithful recreation of the original work, and it also included pertinent scholarship on the history and context of the plays.  His translation of Red Oleanders was finally staged in 2006 at Camden Peoples Theatre in England.  Again, the reception was less than enthusiastic with charges that the play was too heavily symbolic, the production too long, and the language not modern enough.

The book is a good break from the monotony of our mechanized life and evokes hope. This book is surely a good pick for writhing souls who want to break out and see the shining sun of tomorrow.

Genre : Drama

Publisher – Niyogi Books