Curiosity and Growing Up Theme Analysis

One of the characteristics that the narrator and Mini share is their curiosity about the world. They both have a thirst for knowledge and an openness to new experiences, but in their little Calcutta neighborhood, they are stuck in a domestic routine with few opportunities to explore something new. This changes when Mini spots Rahamat, a Kabuliwallah selling fruit in the neighborhood, and calls out to him. The unlikely pair become fast friends. As the narrator states, Mini “had never found so patient a listener” (except for the narrator himself), and Rahamat satisfies her desire to ask questions and learn their answers. For the narrator, who dreams of adventure, Rahamat offers the opportunity to learn about different worlds from someone with firsthand experience. However, not everyone in the narrator’s home shares their friendly feelings towards Rahamat. Mini’s mother has no curiosity and is terrified of the dangers that exist outside of her home. Rahamat’s arrest after stabbing a customer who refused to pay seems to validate Mini’s mother’s fears, and over time Mini grows apart from her father and gradually loses her innocent curiosity about the world and other people. To Tagore, few things are more tragic than a child’s loss of curiosity and innocence as they grow up.

The narrator and Mini are very close and spend a lot of time together during her early childhood, bound by the mutual pleasure they take in Mini’s curiosity and the narrator’s ability to satisfy it. Mini’s mother has little patience for Mini’s chatter and prefers to “make her shut up” when she asks questions rather than answer them, but the narrator thinks it’s “unnatural” when Mini isn’t being inquisitive, suggesting that such unbridled curiosity is simply a part of being a child. The narrator’s positive and patient attitude towards Mini’s curiosity—which Tagore seems to imply is the right way to respond to a child’s endless supply of questions—is due to his own curiosity about the world. The narrator has never left his hometown, but his “mind roves all over the world” and he expresses his desire for adventure by devoting writing adventure novels. When Rahamat enters the scene, he indulges both the narrator and Mini by answering their questions and listening to them, becoming a symbol of their shared curiosity and desire to explore the world around them. Their mutual friendship with Rahamat is the one real adventure they have together, but when Rahamat goes to jail, he seems to take their shared curiosity about the world with him.

With Rahamat no longer in their lives, the narrator and Mini grow apart from one another, and their curiosity about the world begins to unravel. Mini stops coming to his father’s study to chat, and he “in a sense, drop[s] her.” As she grows apart from her father, Mini grows closer to her mother, who has a very different outlook on the world. Mini’s mother is “easily alarmed” and believes “the world is overrun with thieves” that might hurt her or Mini. As Mini grows closer to her mother, it’s natural that she would start adopting her worldview, especially as her mother prepares her for her future domestic role of wife and mother. This is in part because, as a wife in a society that upholds traditional gender norms (despite having “progressive” parents) Mini’s place will likely be in the home, and too much curiosity and hunger for adventure could be considered bad qualities in a wife or a distraction from her eventual duties as a mother.

Furthermore, the narrator also seems to lose his own openness to experiences and people, shown by his new distrust for Rahamat after his release from jail even though the narrator knows he is a kind person. When Rahamat suddenly appears in the narrator’s study eight years after his arrest, the narrator has little interest in reigniting a friendship with him because he is a “would-be murderer,” which seems to somewhat justify Mini’s mother’s fears about him. However, Rahamat reveals that he also has a daughter, and that they are both united by their fatherly love for their daughters. With tears in his eyes, the narrator imagines Rahamat’s “little mountain-dwelling Parvati,” and it makes him nostalgic about his own daughter, who is not so little anymore.

The narrator calls Mini into the room to say hello to her old friend, but she, too, has lost her openness to the strange and unfamiliar that Rahamat represents. Instead of boisterously entering the room like she did as a child, Mini comes in “timidly” and “[stands] close by” the narrator instead of going forward to her old friend. As Rahamat attempts to interact with her in the friendly way they used to, Mini stands silently and blushes, obviously uncomfortable. She then leaves the room without a word. Seeing this evidence of Mini’s loss of openness, the narrator’s “heart ache[s],” and he mourns the curious and friendly little girl that his daughter once was. Rahamat is also saddened by this interaction, as it is an indication of the changes that likely have occurred in his own daughter in the eight years he’s been gone. With heavy hearts, both fathers realize that with age comes a loss of innocent curiosity and a certain zest for life—a perhaps normal but nonetheless tragic part of growing up.

Despite the heaviness of this scene, the story ends on an optimistic note with the narrator giving Rahamat enough money to go back home and “become re-acquainted” with his daughter. However, the fact remains that their two daughters are no longer children and are now entering womanhood. The tragedy of this story is not so much Rahamat’s loss of time with his daughter or Mini “darken[ing] her parents’ house” by leaving it, but the poignant loss of innocence, curiosity, and openness happens as children grow up.