India, July 26 -- Broken Nest and Other Stories is a collection of three short stories and a novella by Rabindranath Tagore. Capturing the lyricism of the Nobel Laureate's prose, poet and writer Sharmistha Mohanty translates the stories The Ghat's Tale, Notebook and Postmaster, and the novella Broken Nest, from the Bengali. Westland presents the works in a volume with an exquisite red-and-white cover. "For me the light of day and the shadows of night are cast daily upon the Ganga, and are every day wiped away - they never leave an impression. So, even though I look old, my heart is forever young. The algae of years of memories has not covered me so as to keep out the rays of the sun. Sometimes, by chance an algae floats in and clings to my sides, then it is once again carried away by the waves. But I cannot say there is nothing that has stayed. Where the waves of the Ganga do not reach, there, in my crevices, have sprung up creepers and weeds and moss; they are witnesses to my past, it is they who have held the past in their loving embrace and kept it forever green and tender, forever new. The Ganga recedes from me every day, step by step, and I too, step by step, grow older," narrates the ghat in The Ghat's Tale. I hold on to each sentence as I feel my heart swell at the recreation of the beauty of the Bengal ghat. The rhythm of Tagore's prose takes me to the landscapes I know well: those of Bihar, where too life springs around the banks of water bodies, the ghats. The rituals of birth, everyday life, marriage and death conclude here. Through it all, the ghat becomes a witness, wise in years. The Ghat's Tale is the story of a child bride who once played in such a place and now returns as a young widow. Tagore wrote about women being abandoned by love, by their families, and by society. He wrote about abhagini women, those who were abandoned by fate. One such story is that of Charulata in Broken Nest, which inspired Satyajit Ray's film of the same name. Through Charulata's experiences, Tagore wrote about the loneliness of married women. When her husband's cousin, Amal, comes to live with them, she is initially annoyed by his demands. Yet, for the first time, she feels like someone needs her and she can't help being attracted to him. Tagore is possibly at his best in this story; what is left unsaid leaps out at the reader. Through shared moments in which they write and talk, Charulata and Amal experience a togetherness that is lacking in her marriage. Her husband Bhupati is not particularly interested in literature. But touched by sorrow, he turns to poetry for the first time in his life. He wants to work on his writing so he can be a companion to Charulata and help her write more. After Amal leaves, Bhupati senses her sadness though he cannot understand why she is sad. In an attempt to comfort her, he decides to translate Tennyson's poetry into Bengali and read it out to her. In Postmaster, a young orphan girl, Ratan, comes to care deeply for her employer, the postmaster. He arrives in the village of Ulapur for work but decides to return to Calcutta. When Ratan asks him to take her along, he laughs off the idea as impossible. However, once on the boat to Calcutta, he begins to regret his decision. "Suddenly he felt a strong desire. "Let me go back, let me take that world abandoned orphan with me"- but the sails had caught the wind, the monsoon current was flowing swiftly, the village had been left behind... in the wistful heart of the traveller being borne away on the river there arose this philosophy, there are so many separations in life, so many deaths, what is the point of returning? Who belongs to whom in this world?" But no philosophy arose in Ratan's mind. She kept circling the post office, tears in her eyes. In the preface, translator Sharmistha Mohanty writes: "These are women of unbearable dignity, forced into a suffering to which they are almost always equal, and the only travelling they do is towards an acceptance of stasis within which they must live." Broken Nest and Other Stories exemplifies Tagore at his finest. As always, in prose rich with lyricism, the great polymath explores the depth of the human experience....