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Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861. He wrote this book of memoirs late in life. By that time, he would have witnessed many changes, in his own life and also changes in life in general.
The closing of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century ushered in many radical changes. It introduced electric lights, telephones, and motor cars which would have been far removed from the mid-nineteenth century recollections of his childhood.
That is just what he records in My Boyhood Days. He recollects the days of oil lamps, hackney carts and palanquins, when there were no cars or buses, when the streets were mostly dark and quiet during the nights.
The author recollects images of young girls being carried in palanquins towards the Ganga river for their bath when wrestling matches and ancient plays were highpoints of exciting entertainment.
He writes of a boy who hid himself inside an ancient and forgotten palanquin and used to dream away the hours, indulging in many imaginary adventures. A boy whose vivid imaginations and powers of composition later made him one of the foremost literary figures of modern India.
He writes nostalgically of the street plays and other simple entertainments, the verdant fields and fertile plains, of horse drawn carriages, all of which started to slowly disappear as the advances of science and technology introduced movie theatres, cars, and industries in their place.
My Boyhood Days also recounts his exciting memories of long dark corridors which encouraged young minds to scare themselves with thoughts of ghosts parading down them, of the lone Badam tree in the courtyard and the ghost that was supposed live in the tree.
My Boyhood Days is a trip down memory lane for one of the greatest literary figures of India, a nostalgic look at the days of a bygone era when life seemed simpler and more enjoyable. A slight undercurrent of poignant underlines the narrative as he looks back on those days, most of the signs of which had vanished with the march of time.ISBN - 9788171676347
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Pages : 120
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