In the process, though, Binodini herself does not realize the havoc she will cause with not just Mahendra’s and Asha’s lives, but others as well-including her own. Her befriending of Asha is merely a means to get to Mahendra-and to seduce him.
Little does this family realize that Binodini, bitter and resentful at the way she was spurned, sight unseen, by both Mahendra and Bihari, wants her revenge. The married life of the young couple is blissful: they are so absorbed in each other that Rajlakshmi, suddenly bereft of her son’s adulation, finds herself neglected, furious, and at a loose end-and, on a visit to her village, returns from there with Binodini, since married and widowed, in tow.īinodini’s arrival turns the household upside-down: her beauty, her education, her poise and grace, her capability when it comes to supervising the household or looking after an ailing Rajlakshmi… all are in sharp contrast to the abilities of the young and naïve Asha, and all quickly make her indispensable. Bihari falls in love with Asha, but so does Mahendra-and he ends up marrying Asha. Neither of the men do marry her (all without ever having met the girl), and eventually arrangements are made for Bihari to marry the teenaged Asha. There’s a brief but abortive episode in which negotiations take place to get Mahendra-or Bihari-married to a certain Binodini. Mahendra’s dear friend Bihari is considered almost a part of the family as well.
Mahendra lives with his widowed mother Rajlakshmi (who is utterly devoted to him, a devotion returned in full by Mahendra), and her sister-in-law, Mahendra’s aunt Annapurna. Set in the Calcutta of the late 19th century, Chokher Bali ( ‘The Mote in the Eye’) is about the dynamics in a small and prosperous family. Why those ratings, I’ll explain towards the end of this review. Mahendra’s dea Let me clarify that rating: 4 stars for Rabindranath Tagore’s novel, 2 stars for Sukhendu Ray’s translation.
The Indian Bengali-language television serial Chokher Bali, which aired on Zee Bangla from 2015–16, was adapted from the novel.Let me clarify that rating: 4 stars for Rabindranath Tagore’s novel, 2 stars for Sukhendu Ray’s translation.
A stage adaptation was first performed in 1904, and other versions were produced on screen and television, for example, Chokher Bali by Rituparno Ghosh in 2003, and in the television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore in 2015. Ĭhokher Bali has been adapted a number of times in film, television and theatre. A transliteration in Devanagari script, with footnotes in Hindi, was also published by the Sahitya Akademi in 1961. Mahendra Bora, published by Sahitya Akademi in 1968) and Urdu.
It has also been translated into other non-Indian languages including Russian (1959) and Chinese (1961) and into most of the Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Assamese (translated by Dr.
It was then translated into English by Krishna Kripalani, and published under the title of Binodini in 1959 by the Sahitya Akademi. The first translation of Chokher Bali was by Surendranath Tagore which appeared in The Modern Review in 1914. Some passages were deleted in the initial serialization and publication, but partly restored in the anthology Rabindra Rachanabali published in 1941, with more restored in an independent edition in 1947. It was first serialized from 1902 to 1903 in the periodical Bangadarshan, then published as a full book in 1903. He began working on the novel in 1898 or 1899, and a draft version was completed in 1901. Tagore prepared himself for writing the novel by writing a spree of short stories and it was his first serious effort at a novel. Tagore had used a working title Binodini before its publication. "Eyesore" was used as the title for its first English translation by Surendranath Tagore published in 1914. The title of the book can be translated as "a grain of sand", a "constant irritant to the eye", or an "eyesore".